Beginner Guide

Off-grid hospital solar failures have a consequence that no other solar failure in this guide has. I was brought in to review the backup power specification for a remote nursing station in the Sioux Lookout zone in northwestern Ontario that had experienced a critical incident the previous January. The facility ran on diesel grid power […]

Battery bank winterization is a lesson most Ontario off-gridders learn the expensive way. In early March I inspected a 200Ah LFP battery bank at a remote cabin north of Parry Sound that had been installed the previous August. The owner had noticed his battery capacity had dropped significantly over the winter but assumed it was

Off-grid EV charging done wrong is a slow thermal failure that announces itself at 2 AM. A client north of Guelph installed a 32A Level 2 charger on a 40A breaker fed from a 3,000W inverter. He charged the car every night from 10 PM to 6 AM, eight hours at 32A and 240V, which

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Solar panel recycling conversations usually start with the wrong question. A client called asking what to do with 16 panels from a 2001 system that a contractor had told him needed to

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Off-grid solar return on investment is not a spreadsheet question. It is a conversation I have in the service drive more times than I can count. A client looks at a $45,000

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Bidirectional ev charging explained starts with a question most EV owners have never been asked: what is your car’s battery actually worth to your house during a blackout? I had a client

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. An off-grid black start is the moment you realise your system is dark, the sun is out, and you do not know why the inverter will not wake up. I have

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Off-grid system insurance is the paperwork that has to exist before the event, not because of it. I learned this on the service drive: a customer whose vehicle was involved in

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The off-grid first 30 days is not the end of the build. It is the beginning of the operation. When a customer picks up their car after a major rebuild, I

Off-grid energy independence is not a product you buy. It is a standard you build to. I know ship day. In the service bay, ship day is the moment a complex rebuild is finished and you turn the key for the first time. The engine either runs or it doesn’t. The work is either right