With the outside trenching mostly wrapped up, it was time to start the part of this build I was actually looking forward to — mounting gear on the garage wall. Strut channel, the EG4 GridBoss and FlexBoss21, a properly-sized feeder to the shop, and a side-quest to fix the water line I cut up last weekend.
Day 1 left off with about 300 ft of ditches dug in the front yard. This post documents the next couple of days — digging the remaining ~300 ft, running cable, and tunneling under the sidewalk (round 2).
Now that I've collected most of the hardware for Project Offgrid, it's time to start the actual work — gathering materials, planning the panel rack, and digging a lot of trench.
About 6 months ago, I moved to a new house. The original solar project was never intended to be the end-all, be-all solution — we had already been planning on moving for a few years when it was installed. But I did want to get something going to gain hands-on experience and a feel for what my future needs would be.
And that future time has come.
Continuation (and conclusion) of the home solar project. As the house was sold in Q4 2025, the system had to come down. This post walks through the removal — roof, garage, and exterior — and what's happening to the hardware next.
Continuation of the home solar project.
Around Midnight, Saturday June 17th, a very strong storm passed over my house, and hit my town and surrounding areas with a 115mph wind gust.
Power was out for around two and a half days, in which case, I powered my house fully off-grid.
While- this doesn't sound like a huge deal- do note, I was able to maintain climate control in my home, along with my ENTIRE rack of servers.
Starting your A/C compressor generates a massive inrush current. Many inverters will have issues getting the motor spinning.
In the case of my 3.5 Ton unit, the L.R.A. (Locked rotor amps) is 112.0 amps @ 220v (24,640 watts). This is far more current then my inverter can provide. This is the amount of amperage which it can potentially take to start the compressor motor.
This post, describes how to install a soft start, which will allow your compressor to easily start off-grid using your solar array with inverter and batteries, or via a smaller generator.
Continuation of the home solar project.
Part 4 of the home solar project. Adding monitoring tools and hardware.
Will be adding Iotawatt for per-circuit energy monitoring, and solar-assistant for monitoring the performance of my inverter / batteries.
Per my home solar project, I needed a method to collect data from both my batteries and inverters, in near-real-time, with no dependency on the internet.
Since, my inverter's connection relies on cloud applications to move data around, I decided to give Solar Assistant a try after reading of its support for the solark-12k.
Finished Energy Dashboard:
Installation of my home solar project.
As apart of the Home Solar Project, I purchased and assembled an EG4 battery rack.
This post outlines the process of assembly, issues I encountered, and my final opinions.
For the second part of my Home Solar Project, I researched possible solutions and ordered batteries.
This post, describes some of the decision making process I went through.
One of my projects I have been working on over the last two years, is adding solar panels to my house to offset some/most of my electrical usage.
Here are the goals I wish to accomplish, and how I plan on accomplishing them: