We had NO CHOICE but to go Off-Grid 

Thanks! Hope it was helpful.

Thanks!

I’ve thought about a few ways to better insulate this shed but tbh it’s too small anyway so I think a full upgrade to a bigger shed with properly insulated walls and ceiling will be the project for this spring.

Oh that’s really good to hear about the shed, I’ve been nervous about how it’s going to cope in summer. It’s out in the full sun so I definitely think I’ll at least want to insulate the north side of it (where the door is). Yeah, so true about electrical rules. Are you running off-grid, or connected to mains? Do you reckon it was worth it in your case?

Woah, that’s crazy! And I feel like stuff like that is only getting crazier and more and more unrealistic hey. What would it take for you to disconnect? That’s a pretty epic setup. Very similar to us and we’re 100% offgrid. But mind you we’re on a “tiny home” setup and are only using about 18kwh/day.

@@reganperry Hi, thanks for the reply. It sure is crazy and it drives me mad. We hear plenty about going green and saving the environment but there is very little incentive to do so, and as you say its getting crazier. As far as disconnecting, I would love to, but I am still working out if I could. I live in the south of NSW and solar production drops off hugely in winter. Many overcast and rainy days. My system has only been up and running since late November last year and this is my first winter to judge how well the system works. In February I produced 1258kwh's of solar but so far this month I have only produced 344kwh's. I am not even charging my battery at the moment. Most of the year is no problem, the battery is fully charged by lunch time and I export many kwh's back into the grid. I believe for me to disconnect I would need to run a generator in the bad weather of winter. Not sure what the neighbour's would think of that. I generally use about 20 to 22kwh's a day, but its cold now and the wife loves the split system A/C. So that pretty well doubles our usage. I was like you when designing my system. I spent many many hours watching youtube solar and off grid vids. I researched batteries, solar panels, inverters, charge controllers, cables and all associated electrical equipment. I dealt with a company in Victoria who are off grid specialists and Victron suppliers. They were very helpful. I was a little undersized with the 4kw Multiplus II but I have allowed for expansion of the system. I wired the board ready for a second Multiplus to run in parallel when I need to expand. As I said in my message above, I would love to buy some land, build a container house and go completely off grid. ( have watched many youtube vids on building container houses too ) lol. Maybe one day I will but I think I might have left it too late, might be getting a bit old for that now. You seem to have worked your system out well but if you have any questions or anything I can help you with just ask. cheers, Brian

Definitely. They get great sun where it is, but I think it’ll protect the panels a bit more from wildlife and ground moisture if I can elevate the racks. I’d love to put them on a system that I can adjust the angle for each season too. Putting the solar gear/shed under the panels is actually a great idea! That would just look a whole lot nicer. And, reduce the cable length from panel arrays to MPPT - I like it!

@@reganperry I have tiltable panels (vertical angle) which I adjust every month for best results. I get about 10-15% more power than my fixed angle panels for the garage. What surprised me was that I could get about 20% more power by pointing them straight up on cloudy days in Winter, which has the additional benefit of making them less vulnerable to Winter storm force winds.