Off grid energy is used to power houses or business that are not connected to the main electricity grid.

Sometimes the grid is too far away and too expensive to connect to so it is a more cost effective solution to generate your own power from solar panels and to store the energy in batteries for night time use.

Batteries are generally quite large and tend to be sealed gel lead acid batteries. Lithium Ion batteries are beginning to grow in popularity for stand alone power systems however they tend to be more expensive.

They are useful as they weigh less than lead acid batteries.

Lead acid batteries tend to come in large 2V cells which are connected in series.

A common DC Voltage for stand alone power systems is 48V DC. You need to connect 24 x 2V cells in series to achieve 48V DC.

Batteries can be charged with solar panels, wind power or a petrol/diesel generator.

The batteries are fed into an inverter which converts the 48V DC into regular 240V AC power ready for your appliances.

When the batteries start to get flat, you can recharge them by switching on a generator. The generator is usually connected to the inverter and this will start charging the battery bank.