Bunjaree Cottages is a completely off-grid solar installation: we keep our environmental footprint to a minimum, and we do it without drawing a subsidy from the government.

To power four houses – the four cottages, plus our home – as well as running a washing machine and sundry other stuff needs a lot of power. So Bunjaree Cottages runs 34 solar panels as its collecting system.

Bunjaree Cottages' 34 solar panels live down at Rosella Cottage and power the entire property.

These feed through two Outback Power Systems VFX inverter/charger units and Flexmax charge controller to charge our battery bank, which can store 8kWh (kilowatt-hours). When fully charged, the batteries have enough storage to keep things going for two or three days without sun.

All of this is installed at Rosella Cottage, with the 240V power distributed throughout the property via underground power cables.

Even a partly-cloudy day will often be enough to give us enough charge to keep the lights on overnight. However, sometimes the weather will be so bad, for so long, that we need to call on our backup generator, a “portable” Honda 6kW generator that’s easily big enough to run the entire site.