New battery for the hut

2026-01-07

Today I received the new battery for my hut’s off-grid solar panel setup. I will now be reliably online during my evening/night hours (the timezone is Europe/Athens).

I installed the battery by myself by reading the manual and paying close attention to the wiring that was already in place. My electrician friend had already done the hard work of setting up the solar panels, the inverter, the combiner box, and the connection to the house. My job was to simply replace the old short cables with longer ones and attach them to the poles of the new battery; a task that I did diligently. Then I read the inverter’s manual on how to switch to the new battery type and here I am!

I have been playing the long game with the hut project. I knew from day one that the original batteries I had were not powerful enough to cover my needs throughout the darker months (shorter days and more cloudy skies are the norm from roughly early October to late February). But it was the best option I had at the time, given my budget. The previous arrangement effectively gave me two years of “okay” uptime during which I was able to save the money I needed for investing in this new battery.

The past year was especially difficult for me because my old batteries were deteriorating and losing their effectiveness by the day. They stopped working completely in mid-November 2025. There were days where I did not have any electricity and others where I would only get a maximum of four hours on the computer. I was thus unable to handle my email correspondence the way I like to. There have been messages I completely missed and meetings I could not arrange.

The new battery is a major upgrade for my house. I will have electricity all day, which gives me the luxury to commit all the time I want to my computer-related projects.

This experience has taught me how to live within my means energy-wise. It has also made me more patient about a subset of my wants. I am more resilient as a result.

I started the hut project in Spring 2023 with a 5-year plan: to begin with something modest—and admittedly inconvenient in many ways—and continuously refine it until it is a beautiful rural house that lives up to the average standard. I am on track to do this and am happy that my efforts are having the desired impact.

Like the turtle, I proceed one step at a time. Slow, steady, and with unwavering determination.