Remote Property Energy Checklist

The property load is not the house load

A bore pump that runs two hours a day can draw more energy than the entire house lighting and electronics. A workshop compressor, an electric fence energiser and stock-water trough heaters are all real, all recurring, and all invisible if you audit only the kitchen.

The full-property inventory is the starting number for every other decision. Walk the boundary, meter every motor for one full cycle, and add the seasonal swings. A pump runs longer in summer. A heater runs longer in winter. A fence is needed year-round.

Once every load is in the table, group by criticality. What must run on the worst day, and what can wait for sun or fuel. A property that knows its critical list runs the generator for three hours. One that does not runs it for twelve and burns through the fuel.

The pump is always the surprise: Bore pumps on remote properties commonly draw 700 to 1,500 watts for two or more hours a day. That dwarfs the fridge. Measure it before sizing anything else.

Inventory the full property, not just the house. A bore pump can dwarf every household appliance combined, and an unmeasured load is a budget that will fail.

One source is fragile; two are complementary

A solar array produces well in summer and poorly under winter cloud. A wind turbine on a good ridge produces well in winter when the sun is weak. Micro-hydro produces steadily all year but depends on seasonal flow.

The combination matters more than the individual sizing. A site with modest winter solar but reliable winter wind can lean on the turbine to cover the seasonal gap. The array then does not need to be enormous, and the bank does not need seven days of capacity.

Where the site lacks wind or water, the honest answer is a larger solar array, a larger bank, and a generator that runs deliberately rather than in a panic. Accept that the winter plan is generator hours and fuel logistics rather than a heroic panel count.

Measure before you buy wind: A small wind turbine needs a mean annual wind speed above four metres per second at hub height. A cheap anemometer on a pole for a season answers the question. Without data, it is a speculative purchase.

Solar plus wind or hydro covers the seasonal gap. Without a complement, the bank and fuel budget grow enormously. Design the mix around the site, not the catalogue.

Autonomy days are a logistics number

A suburban off-grid house might target three overcast days of autonomy. A remote property four hours from a parts shop needs five or seven, because the delivery itself takes time and a single failed component can cascade.

The calculation: worst-day property load in watt-hours, multiplied by the target autonomy days, divided by usable depth of discharge. That is the bank nameplate. Add the inverter's idle drain and the monitoring electronics as a small constant.

The practical constraint is not money. It is space and weight. A lead-acid bank sized for seven days is enormous. Lithium iron phosphate shrinks the footprint and tolerates deeper cycling, which is why remote properties increasingly choose it despite the higher initial cost.

The partial-charge reality: A bank sitting at fifty percent in a heatwave is not healthy. A remote site with no grid connection should cycle to at least eighty percent regularly, or accept the long-term capacity loss. The generator test month can serve as the forced recharge.

Autonomy days equal the worst weather spell plus the parts-delivery lead time plus a margin. That number, not the catalogue, sets the bank size.

A generator is a system, not a box

The generator is only the most visible piece. The fuel, the oil, the air filter, the starting battery, the transfer connection and the load it must carry are the system. A generator that will not start or cannot carry the bore pump is a metal box.

Fuel logistics on a remote property is a planning problem in its own right. Diesel stores longer than petrol, but both degrade. Written dates on containers, stabiliser treatment, and a rotation schedule prevent the discovery that the spare jerry can is varnish.

The monthly test under load is non-negotiable. A generator that idles for ten minutes with nothing plugged in does not reveal a stuck valve or a weak alternator. Plug in a kettle or a heater element and run it for twenty minutes. Circulate the fuel and load the windings.

Transfer to the generator should be a deliberate act through a changeover switch, not an improvised extension cord back-fed through a wall outlet. The safety argument is real, and the code argument is real, and neither disappears because help is far away.

The transfer switch saves lives: Back-feeding a generator through an outlet can kill a linesperson working on what they believe is a dead circuit. A proper changeover switch isolates the property from any external feed. This is not optional.

The generator, its fuel, its transfer switch and its monthly load test form one system. The box is the easy part. Logistics and discipline are the rest.

Distance is voltage drop wearing a long name

A ten-metre run to the workshop at 12 volts carries real current and drops real voltage. At fifty metres, the same load may lose ten or fifteen percent, and the tool at the far end runs hot and slow.

The standard solution is to raise the voltage for the distance. Send 230V AC to the workshop, or use a higher DC voltage like 48V, then step down at the far end. Less current means less drop and thinner cable.

Burial depth, conduit type and marker tape are not a formality. A future trenching or post-driving accident severs an undocumented cable and creates an energised hole in the ground. The as-built drawing is the safety control.

The voltage-drop calculator is not optional: Before ordering cable, work out the drop across the distance at the expected current. The formula is simple and the result changes the wire gauge and the voltage decision.

Beyond fifty metres, DC distribution at 12 or 24 volts becomes impractical. Raise the voltage for the run, then convert at the destination. Document every burial.

You cannot wait for help, so carry the repair

On a remote property, a failed solar charge controller means no harvest until a replacement arrives. That is a week or more of generator fuel and bank drain. A spare controller on the shelf means ten minutes and a screwdriver.

The spares kit is sized by the system's single points of failure. One controller. One inverter. One DC-DC charger. Anderson plugs, fuses, a regulator, terminal blocks and a length of each cable gauge. Nothing expensive, everything that stops the system.

The diagnostic skill is equally important. A multimeter, a clamp meter, and the ability to check voltage at a terminal, continuity through a cable, and current draw on a circuit. A fault located in ten minutes is an annoyance. A fault located in a week is a fuel bill.

One-page fault-finding flowchart: Tape it inside the electrical box. Battery voltage low: check charge sources. Inverter fault: check input fuse. No solar production: check disconnect, controller display, cable continuity. Five branches, five minutes.

Carry a spare of every single-point component, a multimeter, a clamp meter, and the knowledge to use them. Help is hours away; you are the first responder.

Plan the year against the sky, not the average

A system sized on the annual average fails in the worst week of winter. The budget is the shortest, dimmest, most overcast month. Everything you plan against an annual figure has a hidden deficit.

Logging production and consumption for the first year turns the spreadsheet into real site data. The December number replaces the table estimate. The July surplus becomes a known quantity you can plan a heavy task around.

Seasonal scheduling is free capacity. Running the bore pump, the washing machine and the workshop in the sun hours instead of the night hours reduces bank drain and generator time. A timer costs less than a panel.

Pre-winter ritual: Steeper panel tilt for the low sun. Generator serviced and fuel treated. Battery terminals checked. Shed and workshop loads trimmed. One afternoon that prevents three months of stress.

Size against the worst month, not the annual average. Log the first year, then adjust the schedule so loads run when energy is free.