Taking your house, shed or garage 'off-the-grid' is a very exciting thing to do. On this channel, I share my experience and thoughts of taking my garage offline, disconnecting it from the power supply and run it solely from solar and batteries (for teaching and testing purposes). We will do a lot of testing here on the channel, batteries, cells, BMS, electronics, solar charge controllers and even panels.
I will explain how everything works in a beginner friendly way. We will also do smaller side projects to break things down and make it easy to understand. So no previous knowledge or experience necessary to build your own solar-battery system.
You can get more information on my website: off-grid-garage.com
DISCLAIMER
By watching these videos, you agree:
All electrical work must be carried out as per your local laws, rules and regulations. Installations and setups shown in my videos are for test and demonstration purposes only and may not satisfy regulatory requirements.
Off-Grid Garage
We're now fully off-grid! Jason from Powermate was here yesterday and spent a whole day upgrading the switchboard inside the house from old MCBs and RCDs to RCBOs. At the same time, he also installed a transfer switch, so we can connect the house now either to the grid or the off-grid battery system.
This came all much earlier than initially planned, but I'm glad we got it done in time and are ready now for whatever comes in the future. My wife is now addicted to dashboard in HA where she can see the live power usage. She turns appliances on and off and watched the power consumption. Great, she is interested in this and develops a feeling and sense of what we can turn on at the same time and when it gets too much.
Of course, I already did the test yesterday and turned off the main switch to the grid. As expected, the lights inside the house stayed on and from now on, we won't feel anything if the power in our area goes out.
The video is coming soon!
2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 411
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Off-Grid Garage
Happy (Winter) Solstice everyone! I had a pretty good and cloudy day down here and managed to charge over 19kWh into the battery. Not bad for the shortest day of the year.
What are your stats today and also let us know your location.
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 158
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Off-Grid Garage
I'm doing a full capacity test on the top shelf battery this weekend. I'm testing the pack- as well as single cell-capacity. It has been 4yrs and 2 months since the installation.
What is your prediction of degradation of these none-compressed cells?
1 month ago | [YT] | 457
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Off-Grid Garage
Can't believe we can finally cross this project off the list. The AC has been installed and is a great success. Unbelievable, what a difference it makes!
I also made already two videos in my new 'studio' while the rest of the garage was cooking at 40°.
Wifey suggest to put a couch and TV in there plus a S.P.A.T fridge instead of batteries😄
The AC- video is coming very soon and I'll show you the power of this cooling apparatus!
5 months ago | [YT] | 515
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Off-Grid Garage
Happy New Year everyone! I wish you and your families all the best, lots of health and peace for 2026!
Just before Christmas, I managed to fully charge all connected batteries for the very first time from solar. That's the 3 batteries of the shelf and additional 10 batteries connected through the PowerWall. All in total 200kWh.
I show you this in the next video and also explain my dashboards and how I monitor all 13 batteries down to the cell level.
Of course, we have more batteries to connect. Not too far in the future, we should have the Battery and Systems Room ready to take all the batteries.
Next big milestone will be January 5 when the AC will be installed and connected. That will be cool❄️🥶
Thanks for all your amazing support in 2025. You are the best!
See you next year (we only have 6 more hours)
6 months ago | [YT] | 484
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