We’re spending too much time in it! Just as well we love it. It’s quiet, fast, sticks to the road and free to drive…. It used to cost us over $50 to go to Melbourne and back, $5 to $10 to visit our local town to buy milk, visit the beach, see family and friends,Continue reading “The problem with our EV is….”
Category Archives: Solar Power
We bought an EV – our Zappi does a great job
We said as soon as our local town got an EV charger we would buy an electric car. In September, a charger was installed, so we carried through and bought a car. Our car has two and a half times the battery capacity as our house, so we needed a smart charger – one thatContinue reading “We bought an EV – our Zappi does a great job”
Solar Performance Update
We’re using a lot less power than we thought we would, but there are some swings and roundabouts.
A solar update
So with the installation of the Daikin ducted RCAC, water & sand filter pumps and the Reclaim 315l heat pump hot water we are finally able to draw some reasonable power from the solar system and start testing things. SMA – Sunny Boy/Sunny Island Inverters SMA have been very unimpressive to deal with. In Australia,Continue reading “A solar update”
Solar systems problems – 2 x 50% saves the day
We got a phone call from the tiler saying the power had tripped. Went down to investigate – no breakers tripped, but the system in fault. After quite a bit of fiddling (didn’t get any decent instructions from the installers on start up and shutdown) and some googling manuals, finally managed to fully shut itContinue reading “Solar systems problems – 2 x 50% saves the day”
We’ve finally bought our solar system
We’ve finally purchased our solar system. Bid evaluation was interesting!
Heating
We knew that power in winter was key to sizing our solar system, so heating was a key focus. We wanted to be able to heat the whole house, so wanted something beyond the wood heater planned for the living room. One of the reasons that we chose our builder was because they had recentlyContinue reading “Heating”
Cooling
Cooling was an easy decision. Installing ducted air conditioning might seem counterintuitive for an off-grid, energy efficient house, but one of the learnings from the shed is that there is a lot of excess energy available in summer. When you do the numbers, it works easily. Depending on our final system sizing, it might notContinue reading “Cooling”
Starting the load list
So we knew that the most important place to start with the solar system for the house was to work out what our electrical load was going to be, in both summer and winter, and what compromises we were prepared to make to our day to day living. We use approximately 12 kWhr/day at theContinue reading “Starting the load list”
Solar 20 years ago
We installed solar on the shed 20 years ago. The key learning was to understand your requirements and ensure your system is designed to meet them. Design it for winter.
Off Grid Living - Building the Dream 