Why I Built My Own Solar + Battery System

About four years ago, I designed and (partly) built an off-grid power system for our house.

I'm not talking about slapping a few panels on the roof and hoping for sunshine. I mean a proper system:

• Solar panel array feeding into a charge controller
• Battery bank for energy storage
• Hybrid inverter to manage AC output
• Generator hookup with a switchover system
• Powerflow monitoring - live current draw, voltage, charge/discharge rates, the lot

It took four days on-site with a sparky to get it fully wired up and tested - but the architecture, the switching logic, and the flow metering? That was all me.

Why?

Honestly? Because I wanted to.

Because I was curious. Because I like systems that work - especially when they need to be resilient. Because there's something satisfying about understanding every part of the loop, from energy capture to final appliance load.

Also, because I'd just spent a few years working on fintech systems with 8 layers of abstraction and 14 microservices between the user and their own bloody money - and I wanted to make something that just worked.

What It Taught Me

It turns out that building a DIY off-grid power system has a lot in common with building fintech infrastructure:

• You have to think about failure modes (what happens if the sun doesn't shine? What if the generator doesn't start?)
• You need switching logic and fallback plans
• Monitoring matters - you can't improve what you can't see
• You get one shot to wire it right - then you flip the breaker and pray

There's beauty in constraints. There's elegance in low-level understanding. And there's peace of mind in knowing the lights will stay on, even if the grid goes down.

And Now?

We're just now decommissioning the whole thing. Our electrician is here pulling it apart as I type. We're moving it to a new location!

It feels a bit like retiring a beloved old server - the one that chugged along faithfully for years without a crash.

I'll probably keep the monitoring unit. It's still fun watching the current flow.

Would I Do It Again?

Yes. And better.

And next time I'll put the batteries inside a proper box before my wife yells at me about the "electrical octopus" living under the stairs.

PS: If you're building your own energy system, fintech architecture, or interdimensional power stabiliser: triple-check the fuses and keep your ground clean.