We live on a rural property which was set up over many years by the previous owners. It has a pool, two houses and a very large shed. It is set on 13 acres and is located in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

We purchased this property over 10 years ago and share ownership with another couple. The way the usage is defined we share the pool but I have sole use of the shed. However the power for the shed is from the 2nd house so the challenge was trying to split the power from the 2nd house without effecting them in any way.

The only 2 options were running a new cable from the main distribution board or generating local power at the shed.

Running a new cable from the main distribution board turned out be prohibitively expensive and very difficult to implement.

Generating power locally would be either

• Generator – Diesel or Petrol
  • Almost as expensive as running a cable with ongoing costs of fuel and also the noise factor. Not ideal in a rural situation.
• Off Grid Solar Power
  • Challenge here was that I was very unfamiliar with Solar (although I had implemented solar charging on my off road vehicle)

So with the decision made off to Solar school I went.