e’ve started this section about “Is off-grid solar worth it?” with a chapter about financial viability for a reason: it answers one of the most common questions we get every week:

“Can you help us? We’re looking at a property without power, and we want to compare the cost of a grid connection with an off-grid solar system.”

nce you have a reasonable idea of what getting connected to the grid will cost, the next step is to work out the real cost of the off-grid solar alternative.

So that you can get a more accurate idea of whether off-grid solar is worth it for you, you need to be careful when making comparisons.

For example, you might see an off-grid solar system advertised for $20,000 or $30,000, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the all-in included price.

ssuming you now have a realistic all-up cost for getting connected to the grid and a realistic all-up cost for going off-grid, you can start comparing the numbers.

The difference between the two upfront costs is a useful starting point, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you which option represents better value over time.

The difference between the two upfront costs is a useful starting point, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you which option represents better value over time.

How long you intend to own the property should be considered. If your off-grid solar system costs more upfront, the longer you own the property, the more time you have to recover that difference through the power bills you’re no longer paying.

Here are three simple examples using an all-up off-grid cost of $40,000.

or most of the people we speak to, ‘is off-grid solar worth it?’ comes down to the price of an off-grid solar system compared to a mains power connection.

But is it always about the money? No way.

If you’ve reached this point and think off-grid solar is worth it for your situation, or maybe you’re still unsure but want to understand more, the next step is to get some expert advice about your particular situation.

You don’t need to know how many solar panels or batteries you need, what size inverter you should have, or even which system you should be looking at.

That’s what the design process is for.

This matters because two homes using the same amount of electricity over 24 hours can need quite different off-grid systems.

kW and kWh measure two different things

One of the most important distinctions is between power (kW = kilowatts) and energy (kWh = kilowatt hours).

kW tells us how much power your appliances require at any one time. This helps determine the inverter capacity you need.

An induction hob, oven, jug and hairdryer may only operate for relatively short periods, but several running together can create a high AC load.

kWh tells us how much energy you use over time. This helps us determine how much solar generation and battery storage you need.

Both matter.

Designing around daily kWh alone can result in an inverter that is too small. Designing around appliance wattage alone tells us very little about how much energy needs to be generated and stored.

Small loads can sometimes use a surprising amount of energy

The wattage written on an appliance doesn’t tell the whole story.

A 2 kW jug running for three minutes uses only about 0.1 kWh. By comparison, a device drawing just 60 W continuously uses around 1.44 kWh over 24 hours.

This is why continuous loads such as internet equipment, water treatment, septic systems, ventilation and older refrigeration can sometimes have a much greater effect on system sizing than people expect.

When you use power matters too

Power used while the sun is shining can often be supplied directly from your solar panels. The same energy used after dark generally needs to come from your battery bank.

Some loads can also be deliberately shifted into the middle of the day. Washing machines, dishwashers, water pumping and other flexible loads are good examples.

So we don’t just ask how much electricity you use. We look at when you use it.

A useful way to think about your appliances

Most household loads fall broadly into five groups:

• Low-power intermittent loads, such as televisions, computers, lighting and chargers.
• High-power loads used for short periods, such as jugs, ovens, induction cooking, microwaves, hairdryers and power tools.
• Lower-power loads that consume significant energy because they run continuously, such as satellite internet systems or water treatment equipment (UV).
• Loads that can be shifted into daylight hours, such as washing, dishwashing and some pumping.
• Normal 24-hour background loads, including refrigeration, routers, ventilation and other equipment that cycles or operates throughout the day and night.

Understanding these different behaviours gives us a much better picture than simply making a list of appliances.

You may be surprised to know that in rural parts of New Zealand we still discover clunky ‘dog tucker’ freezers from the 1980s hidden in sheds.

Many of them from this era are quietly sucking up 4 kWh per day compared to approximately 1 kWh per day for a modern freezer!

It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s exactly these items that can make a big difference to your final design and cost.

What does this mean for choosing your off-grid solar system?

You don’t need to calculate all of this yourself.

Our job is to work through your appliances and how you expect to use them, then translate that into the inverter capacity, battery storage and solar generation your home actually needs.

The important point is that the right off-grid solar system is designed around the way you use power, not simply the number of appliances you own.

When we design a system, we don’t look at an old power bill to guess what size battery bank you need. While that can be a useful starting point, we calculate your specific night-time power draw, factor in local winter sunshine variations (like Palmerston North’s historically low sun hours), and look for your system’s battery autonomy “sweet spot”.

How much battery autonomy do you need? Everyone’s different, but we generally recommend one or two days, depending on your power requirements.

There’s a lot more to choosing the right battery bank, including usable capacity, autonomy, battery lifespan and safety.

Once we’ve completed your Load Evaluation together, we have a good estimate of how much energy your home is likely to use. From there, we calculate how much solar generation is needed to support that use and recharge your batteries.

Your Location Matters

Where you live also matters. Winter sunshine varies considerably around New Zealand.

For example, according to Earth Sciences New Zealand’s annual climate report for 2025, New Plymouth, one of the sunniest places in the country, received around 30% more sunshine hours than Dunedin.

We have lots of customers living off the grid in Dunedin, but they’ll generally need more solar panels than customers with similar power use in sunnier parts of the country.

Then we look at the site itself. Where the panels are going, which way they’ll face and whether anything is going to shade them.

Your solar panels and batteries also need to work together. More battery storage doesn’t necessarily improve reliability if there isn’t enough solar generation to recharge it, particularly after consecutive poor winter days.

So the real question isn’t simply “How many solar panels do I need?”

It’s “How much solar generation does my system need in winter?”

It’s an important part of your off-grid system design, and one that we can work out quite quickly.

An induction hob can draw a reasonable amount of power, with individual elements capable of drawing around 3,000 W depending on the hob and power setting, particularly when several elements are being used at once.

Add the oven, jug or microwave while you’re preparing dinner and suddenly there’s quite a lot happening at the same time.

Inverter selection

That’s why cooking can influence the inverter capacity you need. If you’re not sure what we mean by AC power, have a look at How We Correctly Size Your Off-Grid System above.

There’s another consideration too. A lot of cooking happens in the evening, particularly in winter, when there may be little or no solar generation available. That means the energy is coming from your batteries.

LPG is still an option, particularly if keeping the initial system cost down is important.

Your situation will be different compared to others

There isn’t one answer that’s right for everybody. LPG may reduce your upfront off-grid cost, but the ongoing cost of gas (and prices aren’t likely to come down) makes it less attractive for many of our customers.

Hot water and home heating can have an even bigger impact on overall energy use, so we want to understand those plans early as well.

Electric hot water, wetbacks, wood burners, heat pumps and other options can all change the way we design your system.

The important thing is to make these decisions before we size your off-grid solar system, not afterwards.

We’ve written a separate and detailed article looking specifically at off-grid cooking, including induction versus LPG, energy use and the effect each option can have on your system design.

An induction hob can draw a reasonable amount of power, with individual elements capable of drawing around 3,000 W depending on the hob and power setting, particularly when several elements are being used at once.

Add the oven, jug or microwave while you’re preparing dinner and suddenly there’s quite a lot happening at the same time.

Inverter selection

That’s why cooking can influence the inverter capacity you need. If you’re not sure what we mean by AC power, have a look at How We Correctly Size Your Off-Grid System above.

There’s another consideration too. A lot of cooking happens in the evening, particularly in winter, when there may be little or no solar generation available. That means the energy is coming from your batteries.

LPG is still an option, particularly if keeping the initial system cost down is important.

Your situation will be different compared to others

There isn’t one answer that’s right for everybody. LPG may reduce your upfront off-grid cost, but the ongoing cost of gas (and prices aren’t likely to come down) makes it less attractive for many of our customers.

Hot water and home heating can have an even bigger impact on overall energy use, so we want to understand those plans early as well.

Electric hot water, wetbacks, wood burners, heat pumps and other options can all change the way we design your system.

The important thing is to make these decisions before we size your off-grid solar system, not afterwards.

We’ve written a separate and detailed article looking specifically at off-grid cooking, including induction versus LPG, energy use and the effect each option can have on your system design.

Just how low is the winter sun?

The winter solstice in New Zealand is around 21 June. This is our shortest day of the year, when the sun also sits at its lowest angle in the sky.

At solar noon, when the sun is at its highest point for the entire day, it’s only around 30 degrees above the horizon in the far north and around 20 degrees in the deep south.

People are always surprised when we explain how low that actually is.

Hold your arm out towards the north and raise it to about 25 degrees above horizontal. That gives you an idea of how low the midday winter sun actually is.

And that’s at midday.

Earlier and later in the day it’s even lower.

That low sun angle, combined with much shorter days, is one of the reasons trees, hills and other shading that might cause no problem at all in summer can have a significant effect on solar generation in winter.

It’s also why designing an off-grid solar system around how well it performs in summer would be a very bad idea.

Off-Grid Solar Design for winter

Some parts of New Zealand need more solar.

True, but also obvious.

Once we’ve completed your Load Evaluation and have a good idea of how much power you’re likely to use, we calculate how much solar generation you’ll need where you’re actually going to live.

We use published data from Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA) to help us do this. Their climate records provide monthly sunshine and solar information for locations throughout New Zealand.

There are some parts of the country where we routinely allow for additional solar generation. The Central Plateau, including Taupō, and anywhere south of Ashburton are good examples.

You can still live comfortably off-grid in regions with historically low sunshine hours (we have many doing exactly that).

All it means is that we design the system for the conditions where you actually live.

Average sunshine hours vs seasonal reality

Averages are only averages.

The official data is incredibly useful, but there’s something important to understand about it.

Much of the climate information we use is based on long-term averages. Earth Sciences NZ, for example, publishes 30-year climate normals to describe typical conditions for different locations.

But the climate doesn’t know or care what the average is.

In our office we still talk about Auckland in the early 2020s when it seemed like we hardly saw the sun for weeks. We had customers whose generators were starting in December, which was very unusual.

That wasn’t just our imagination. The summer of 2022–23 was Auckland’s wettest on record. Earth Sciences NZ described Auckland and several other North Island regions as having a predominantly wet and cloudy season, and Auckland was the least sunny of New Zealand’s six main centres that summer.

That’s a good example of the limitations of averages.

A region can have excellent long-term sunshine figures and still experience several consecutive days where there’s very little useful solar generation.

What happens when the weather doesn’t follow the averages?

Long-term averages are useful for designing an off-grid solar system, but they can’t tell us exactly what the weather will do next winter.

For off-grid solar, the important point isn’t trying to predict exactly what the climate will do over the next 20 years. It’s accepting that we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Your house doesn’t stop using electricity because you’ve had three ugly or stormy days in a row.

Your batteries continue supplying the house while receiving much less energy back from the solar panels. Occasionally, that can even happen in summer.

That’s one of the reasons we generally recommend a properly integrated backup generator. It’s not there because we expect it to run all the time. It’s there for those occasions when the actual weather bears little resemblance to the historical average.

Other important factors about your location

Regional data still only gets us so far.

Two houses a few kilometres apart can have quite different solar conditions.

A house sitting on an open site with good exposure to the north might receive useful winter sun for most of the day. Another property nearby could lose several hours because of surrounding hills, trees or other shading.

Remember how low that winter sun is.

Here are some other factors that are unique to each site (even if your neighbour down the road is also living off the grid):

• A tree or hill that doesn’t affect your panels at all in January can be a completely different proposition in June.

• A north-facing roof is straightforward, but tricky layouts might require splitting arrays across multiple roof pitches or opting for a ground-mount system.

• The direction the panels face, their angle and any shading all affect the amount of useful energy they can produce.

• Roof type and pitch can matter for another reason. Different roof construction, tilt requirements and mounting arrangements may require additional hardware and can affect the installation cost.

None of these things are necessarily a problem. We just need to know about them before we finalise the system design and your options.

Can location affect the whole off-grid solar design?

You bet.

So when we ask exactly where you’re building, we’re not making small talk.

Your location and the characteristics of your actual site can affect the number of solar panels you need, how they’re installed, battery and generator strategy, and ultimately the cost of your off-grid solar system.

That’s why we don’t design every Power Station system around some theoretical average New Zealand house.

We design it for where you’re actually going to live.

And even a huge system loaded up with solar panels and batteries has its limits. If you get a week or two of exceptionally ugly weather, eventually the batteries will run down if the solar panels aren’t producing enough energy to replace what the house is using.

You can’t store sunshine that hasn’t arrived.

That’s why we normally look for the sweet spot between solar generation, battery storage and backup power rather than trying to design Mother Nature completely out of the equation.

We call this the Goldilocks Zone. Not too big. Not too small. Just right for your situation.

A properly integrated generator might only be needed occasionally, but when the weather does something well outside the averages, it’s there.

For a closer look at generator sizing, integration and when you might actually need one, read our detailed guide: Do You Really Need an Off Grid Solar Generator?

1. Organic Growth: Your Lifestyle Changes

Your off-grid home might stay exactly the same, but your electricity requirements increase. Some common examples include:

• Buying an EV or spa pool

• Switching from LPG to electric cooking or water heating

• Installing a heat pump or getting a larger one 

• Children getting older and using more power.

You may not know exactly what you’ll want in five or ten years, but it’s worth discussing the realistic possibilities before choosing your system.

2. Phased Development: You’re Building Your Property in Stages

We design for this situation all the time. You might start by living in a caravan or minor dwelling, or build a pole shed first. Then, perhaps a year or two later, you build the family home.

Your Stage 1 power requirements could be quite modest compared with what you’ll eventually need. In this situation, we want to understand the finished project before designing the initial system.

What Actually Makes an Off-Grid Solar System Expandable?

When people ask us about expansion, they’re usually thinking about adding solar panels or batteries. But we also need to consider the inverter.

There are three parts of the system that affect your expansion options:

• Inverter capacity: Determines how much solar generation the system can accommodate (related to the number of solar panels connected) and how much AC power it can supply at any one time.

• Solar generation: Adding panels increases the energy your system has the potential to generate

• Battery storage: Adding batteries increases the amount of energy you can store

These components need to work together. For example, adding more batteries won’t necessarily solve a problem caused by insufficient solar generation. And adding panels or batteries won’t increase the AC output of an inverter that’s already operating at its limit.

Every system has expansion limits, so we need to understand what you’re trying to achieve before recommending additional components.

That’s why we don’t simply ask, “How many more batteries would you like?” We ask why you need more power and what you want the expanded system to do.

Can I Add More Solar Panels Later?

Usually, yes, provided the system has the capacity to accommodate them. But there are good reasons to consider your future solar requirements during the original design.

One of the first things we look at is where any additional panels will go. Will there be enough roof space? Is there another suitable location on the property? And can the original installation be designed to make adding more panels easier later?

Let’s say your Stage 1 system needs 14 panels, but we expect your completed property will eventually need 24.

Depending on the site, system design and your budget, it might make sense to install all 24 during the original installation. The installer is already there, and adding the extra panels at that stage may be considerably less expensive than arranging another installation later.

Solar technology moves fast. Manufacturers regularly introduce different wattages, dimensions and electrical specifications. The exact panel we install today may not be available when you want to expand several years from now.

You can still add more panels, but it can complicate the process.

Can I Add More Batteries Later?

Yes. Our battery systems are modular, so additional battery modules can generally be added as your requirements change.

If your daily power use hasn’t changed significantly and you’d simply like more battery autonomy during poor weather, additional storage may be a sensible option.

However, if you’re adding batteries to accommodate a higher daily load, you may also need more solar panels. It depends on how much surplus solar generation your existing system has (if any), particularly during winter.

Adding extra batteries gives you a larger storage tank, but it won’t generate a single extra watt of power to refill it during a dark winter week.

What About Inverter Capacity?

Your inverter setup affects both the amount of solar generation your system can accommodate and the AC power available to your home (what you can plug in or use at any one time).

For example, if you start with a system designed around relatively modest AC requirements but later decide to install an induction hob, an electric oven or a granny flat, your original inverter capacity may no longer be sufficient.

Depending on the system, expanding could involve adding inverter capacity or replacing equipment.

Getting the inverter setup right at the start can make expansion much easier and help avoid unnecessary equipment replacement later.

Building Your Property in Stages: Two Different Approaches

If you’re developing a property in stages, there’s an important decision to make before installing your first off-grid solar system.

Will the Stage 1 system remain where it is, or will it eventually become the power supply for your main house?

There are two approaches worth considering.

Option 1: The Two-System Approach

You install a smaller, self-contained off-grid system for your initial requirements. That might be a caravan, minor dwelling or pole shed.

When the main house is built, you install a separate system designed specifically for the house. The original system remains in place and continues supplying the shed or other building.

This can make sense where the two buildings have separate power requirements, if there is a considerable distance between them, or where the initial system is unlikely to have capacity for the Stage 2 property.

With this approach, you need to understand from the outset that you’ll eventually be buying a second system.

Option 2: The Future-proof Backbone Approach

This is where we design the original system with your completed property in mind from day one to future-proof your living.

You start with an inverter arrangement capable of supporting your eventual household loads, but install only the solar panels and battery modules needed for Stage 1.

When the Stage 2 house is built, additional components can be installed within the expansion limits of the original system.

The advantage is that you’re planning around the final system from the beginning rather than discovering later that your original equipment needs to be replaced.

The right approach depends on your budget, property layout and how soon you expect to build the main house.

Can I Start With a Smaller System to Save Money?

Yes, within reason. We understand that building an off-grid property can involve some fairly serious financial juggling.

Sometimes the system we’d ideally recommend for the finished property is outside the available budget today. Starting with fewer solar panels or batteries and expanding later may be a sensible way to manage the investment.

But there can be compromises.

During Stage 1, you might need to manage your power use more carefully, rely on your generator more often during winter or postpone installing certain appliances.

That’s fine, provided you understand what the initial system can and can’t do.

There are also situations where buying smaller equipment now could prove more expensive later, particularly if we already know it won’t accommodate your eventual requirements.

Expansion Starts With the Original Design

For some customers, a smaller permanent system is all they’ll ever need. For others, the initial installation is just Stage 1 of a much larger development.

Tell us what you’re planning, even if it’s still a few years away. We can then work out what you need now, what we should allow for, and what can wait.

And even a huge system loaded up with solar panels and batteries has its limits. If you get a week or two of exceptionally ugly weather, eventually the batteries will run down if the solar panels aren’t producing enough energy to replace what the house is using.

You can’t store sunshine that hasn’t arrived.

That’s why we normally look for the sweet spot between solar generation, battery storage and backup power rather than trying to design Mother Nature completely out of the equation.

We call this the Goldilocks Zone. Not too big. Not too small. Just right for your situation.

A properly integrated generator might only be needed occasionally, but when the weather does something well outside the averages, it’s there.

For a closer look at generator sizing, integration and when you might actually need one, read our detailed guide: Do You Really Need an Off Grid Solar Generator?

Just how low is the winter sun?

The winter solstice in New Zealand is around 21 June. This is our shortest day of the year, when the sun also sits at its lowest angle in the sky.

At solar noon, when the sun is at its highest point for the entire day, it’s only around 30 degrees above the horizon in the far north and around 20 degrees in the deep south.

People are always surprised when we explain how low that actually is.

Hold your arm out towards the north and raise it to about 25 degrees above horizontal. That gives you an idea of how low the midday winter sun actually is.

And that’s at midday.

Earlier and later in the day it’s even lower.

That low sun angle, combined with much shorter days, is one of the reasons trees, hills and other shading that might cause no problem at all in summer can have a significant effect on solar generation in winter.

It’s also why designing an off-grid solar system around how well it performs in summer would be a very bad idea.

Off-Grid Solar Design for winter

Some parts of New Zealand need more solar.

True, but also obvious.

Once we’ve completed your Load Evaluation and have a good idea of how much power you’re likely to use, we calculate how much solar generation you’ll need where you’re actually going to live.

We use published data from Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA) to help us do this. Their climate records provide monthly sunshine and solar information for locations throughout New Zealand.

There are some parts of the country where we routinely allow for additional solar generation. The Central Plateau, including Taupō, and anywhere south of Ashburton are good examples.

You can still live comfortably off-grid in regions with historically low sunshine hours (we have many doing exactly that).

All it means is that we design the system for the conditions where you actually live.

Average sunshine hours vs seasonal reality

Averages are only averages.

The official data is incredibly useful, but there’s something important to understand about it.

Much of the climate information we use is based on long-term averages. Earth Sciences NZ, for example, publishes 30-year climate normals to describe typical conditions for different locations.

But the climate doesn’t know or care what the average is.

In our office we still talk about Auckland in the early 2020s when it seemed like we hardly saw the sun for weeks. We had customers whose generators were starting in December, which was very unusual.

That wasn’t just our imagination. The summer of 2022–23 was Auckland’s wettest on record. Earth Sciences NZ described Auckland and several other North Island regions as having a predominantly wet and cloudy season, and Auckland was the least sunny of New Zealand’s six main centres that summer.

That’s a good example of the limitations of averages.

A region can have excellent long-term sunshine figures and still experience several consecutive days where there’s very little useful solar generation.

What happens when the weather doesn’t follow the averages?

Long-term averages are useful for designing an off-grid solar system, but they can’t tell us exactly what the weather will do next winter.

For off-grid solar, the important point isn’t trying to predict exactly what the climate will do over the next 20 years. It’s accepting that we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Your house doesn’t stop using electricity because you’ve had three ugly or stormy days in a row.

Your batteries continue supplying the house while receiving much less energy back from the solar panels. Occasionally, that can even happen in summer.

That’s one of the reasons we generally recommend a properly integrated backup generator. It’s not there because we expect it to run all the time. It’s there for those occasions when the actual weather bears little resemblance to the historical average.

Other important factors about your location

Regional data still only gets us so far.

Two houses a few kilometres apart can have quite different solar conditions.

A house sitting on an open site with good exposure to the north might receive useful winter sun for most of the day. Another property nearby could lose several hours because of surrounding hills, trees or other shading.

Remember how low that winter sun is.

Here are some other factors that are unique to each site (even if your neighbour down the road is also living off the grid):

• A tree or hill that doesn’t affect your panels at all in January can be a completely different proposition in June.

• A north-facing roof is straightforward, but tricky layouts might require splitting arrays across multiple roof pitches or opting for a ground-mount system.

• The direction the panels face, their angle and any shading all affect the amount of useful energy they can produce.

• Roof type and pitch can matter for another reason. Different roof construction, tilt requirements and mounting arrangements may require additional hardware and can affect the installation cost.

None of these things are necessarily a problem. We just need to know about them before we finalise the system design and your options.

Can location affect the whole off-grid solar design?

You bet.

So when we ask exactly where you’re building, we’re not making small talk.

Your location and the characteristics of your actual site can affect the number of solar panels you need, how they’re installed, battery and generator strategy, and ultimately the cost of your off-grid solar system.

That’s why we don’t design every Power Station system around some theoretical average New Zealand house.

We design it for where you’re actually going to live.

An induction hob can draw a reasonable amount of power, with individual elements capable of drawing around 3,000 W depending on the hob and power setting, particularly when several elements are being used at once.

Add the oven, jug or microwave while you’re preparing dinner and suddenly there’s quite a lot happening at the same time.

Inverter selection

That’s why cooking can influence the inverter capacity you need. If you’re not sure what we mean by AC power, have a look at How We Correctly Size Your Off-Grid System above.

There’s another consideration too. A lot of cooking happens in the evening, particularly in winter, when there may be little or no solar generation available. That means the energy is coming from your batteries.

LPG is still an option, particularly if keeping the initial system cost down is important.

Your situation will be different compared to others

There isn’t one answer that’s right for everybody. LPG may reduce your upfront off-grid cost, but the ongoing cost of gas (and prices aren’t likely to come down) makes it less attractive for many of our customers.

Hot water and home heating can have an even bigger impact on overall energy use, so we want to understand those plans early as well.

Electric hot water, wetbacks, wood burners, heat pumps and other options can all change the way we design your system.

The important thing is to make these decisions before we size your off-grid solar system, not afterwards.

We’ve written a separate and detailed article looking specifically at off-grid cooking, including induction versus LPG, energy use and the effect each option can have on your system design.

Once we’ve completed your Load Evaluation together, we have a good estimate of how much energy your home is likely to use. From there, we calculate how much solar generation is needed to support that use and recharge your batteries.

Your Location Matters

Where you live also matters. Winter sunshine varies considerably around New Zealand.

For example, according to Earth Sciences New Zealand’s annual climate report for 2025, New Plymouth, one of the sunniest places in the country, received around 30% more sunshine hours than Dunedin.

We have lots of customers living off the grid in Dunedin, but they’ll generally need more solar panels than customers with similar power use in sunnier parts of the country.

Then we look at the site itself. Where the panels are going, which way they’ll face and whether anything is going to shade them.

Your solar panels and batteries also need to work together. More battery storage doesn’t necessarily improve reliability if there isn’t enough solar generation to recharge it, particularly after consecutive poor winter days.

So the real question isn’t simply “How many solar panels do I need?”

It’s “How much solar generation does my system need in winter?”

It’s an important part of your off-grid system design, and one that we can work out quite quickly.