"Its been amazing, it makes power on overcast days, we’ve been here 2 years and, in all honesty, we have not seen the battery drop below 82%, it’s been great! When we first put it in, I was checking the readings every day, it’s to the point now where I barely look at the readings. SPS said it would be ‘set and forget’ and it is. I have no qualms at all in going off grid and in fact I am interested that more people aren’t, living off grid is not a compromise at all.”
James and his family of four were building a 4-bedroom home in a remote location and did not have access to power. They approached SPS Solar + Water in 2016 to design a system to power their new home and support their lifestyle so they could live comfortably in their selected location.
“We wanted a modern house on a challenging block, the only power option was off-grid, we got quotes to connect to the grid and they were astronomical. For us it made sense to go with an off-grid solution and even more sense for it to be a local Mudgee solar installer. Initially, it is a bit of a minefield, I went into it with no idea. For us; we wanted someone with good quality products, had done it [off-grid-solar] before and were local.”
The roof-mount system array is 6.16 kW in size with an average daily power production of 28kWh with an SMA Sunnyboy 5.0-1 inverter and 8kW SMA Sunny Island. The Outback 2000Ah Gel battery bank comprises 96kWh of storage capacity allowing just over 50kWh usable energy each day.
The system was designed to provide 3 days of autonomy (for cloudy weather) according to the client’s load profile with zero solar energy input. The expected life cycle of the battery system is 5400 cycles translating to approximately 15 years. A backup generator was discussed, however has never been required, the customer has lived in the home since construction without any form of generator backup.
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