Last year I wrote about “Why I am using Off-grid Solar energy in my Home office”, and it has become an addicting practice.

When I wrote that blog post, I was living in a rented house. At the end of last year, my wife and I decided to buy a house in Nova Lima, the city with the highest HDI in our state. It is an amazing city to live in — we are in a gated community with a lot of green areas, and we are close to the city center.

Since the start, I planned to make it 100% off-grid. Our condominium already provides the water, so electricity would be our main focus.

I invested in 9 solar panels of 550 W each, 10 smaller panels of 160 W each, 4 batteries of 100 Ah 48 V (LiFePO4), and 2 inverters in parallel of 5 kW (10 kW peak) each, as the main system.

I also had a few spare flexible panels, and I used them to set up my old 24 V system, where I have 4 12 V batteries (2 in series) and one extra 100 Ah 24 V battery. Today it works as a complementary system to my EcoFlow Delta Pro, which I use as a complementary battery system for my network.

With that, my setup has approximately 28 kWh of storage and approximately 3 days of autonomy with low usage, or 2 days with high usage.

I DIY’d the entire setup and it was a great learning experience. The next step will be to learn how to produce food at home, enough quality food to supply most of what my family needs. For that, I am planning to implement a framework called “Sisteminha Embrapa”, a circular system of food production where we will produce tilapia, eggs, and vegetables.

The self-sufficiency activities turn out to be very fun, and an amazing hobby to work on during off hours.

Ever since AI coding took off, I feel like I am working without any blockers, and it is very easy to code for 8, 9, or 10 hours nonstop. Having fixed activities away from the computer like this keeps me sane, and they turn out to be very useful and save money as a side effect. I have not had a power outage or internet outage (because of Starlink) in over a year, and it feels really good — not to mention the $100+ I save every month on the electricity bill. Maybe food is next; let’s see how it goes.