Off-Grid Living

A community solar microgrid is not a scaled-up residential system. I learned this during a conversation with a township facilities manager in Wellington County. He was responsible for three community buildings: a school, a community centre, and a volunteer fire hall that collectively served as emergency shelters during winter grid outages. All three ran on

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. A solar well pump system that stutter-starts a submersible pump is destroying it one startup event at a time. I had a client replace his well pump twice in three years before

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. A solar powered chicken coop in a Rockwood January is not a hobby project. It is a necessity. In February of last year, a client called me after losing four hens over

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. To run a chest freezer off-grid correctly, the first number you need is not the running wattage on the spec sheet. In August, a client called me after returning from a two-week

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Remote cabin off-grid power done wrong is a system that works perfectly on a Saturday night and fails on a rainy Tuesday. I planned a client’s cabin system north of Rockwood based

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. A van life solar setup guide that starts with residential mounting hardware is starting with the wrong assumption. I have seen this twice in the shop. A Sprinter comes in after a

A soft start AC inverter solution is the difference between a 15,000 BTU air conditioner that trips your system every time the thermostat calls for cooling and one that starts so quietly you have to check the vents to confirm it is running. The Victron MultiPlus-II 3000VA is a 3,000 watt continuous inverter with a

Every time your well pump kicks on in a Rockwood cabin your inverter takes a punch. Not a metaphor a physical electromagnetic punch to the transformer windings. The compressor motor tries to start from a dead stop all that rotational inertia demands enormous current the Locked Rotor Amps event. Your Victron MultiPlus-II handles it this

I have serviced cars that reached 400,000 kilometres without a single major failure. Every one of them had a complete service history oil changes logged, torque checks recorded, brake jobs documented. I have also serviced cars that looked fine on the outside and were disasters inside because nobody kept records. An off-grid solar system is

How to Live Off-Grid on a Budget Off-grid living is not just for millionaires with mountain retreats. It is for anyone willing to trade a little convenience for a lot of freedom. The biggest barrier is not money it is the assumption that you need to buy everything at once. You don’t. Here is how