Regardless of the power grid, closer to happiness
, From Liu Ling, 4 min reading time
Dani and Will are a couple from Northern Ireland. They now live off-grid in northern Portugal with their dog, Bailey. 👩❤️👨🐕🏡
🎙️Power Queen: How long have you been living off-grid? What inspired you to step out of your comfort zone and live off-grid?
Dani and Will: Almost a year ago, we packed our lives into our camper and moved with our dog Bailey to an abandoned farm in the mountains of northern Portugal. For us, life is far too short to do something that you don't enjoy every day. 🤔We dreamed of a simpler and more sustainable life and decided to make this dream a reality, escaping the rat race and the concrete jungle. For us, happiness is an attitude toward life. It's not about material things, but about enjoying the simple things, appreciating what you have, your relationships, your experiences.
🎙️Power Queen: What has been your greatest joy since living off-grid?
Dani and Will: Our new off-grid life is incredibly liberating and enriching! By working with nature to build an off-grid farm, we're creating something we truly believe in. We don't just want to exist, we want to enjoy life to the fullest.🔆 Since we've been living off-grid, we've never felt more alive!
More specifically, once we finally had our solar energy system installed, it was an absolute pleasure to enjoy a nice cold drink from the fridge. 😆
🎙️Power Queen: What were the biggest challenges you faced as an off-grid couple and how did you overcome them?
Dani and Will: It's fair to say that living off the grid helped us develop our problem-solving skills. Arriving at our mountaintop farm without water or electricity, without speaking the local language, and without a plan, we were forced to take things easy! We definitely expanded our ideas about what's possible and learned a lot along the way.
Our biggest challenge was probably learning about energy systems and figuring out how to install electricity on our farm. We installed our off-grid systems ourselves and had some weather challenges last year. Now we've installed a system with solar panels and LiFePO4 batteries from Power Queen, which provides all of our electricity needs.
🎙️Power Queen: Looking back, is there anything you wish you had known before you started living off-grid, and what are the most important lessons you've learned along the way?
Dani and Will: It might have been helpful to have a better plan and to know the available energy options. We jumped into installing a solar system rather impulsively based on our electricity usage calculations—who could blame us after living on our property without water or electricity for over a month! We had to relocate our solar panels to a completely different location and switched our batteries from AGM to LiFePO4 after determining that was the more sustainable option.
Lessons learned:
- Pay attention to the weather - the sun is your friend!
- Think about what you really need, there is no point in being wasteful.
- Enjoy the process, learn along the way, you can do more than you think!
🎙️Power Queen: Do you have any tips for other people who want to start living off-grid?
Dani and Will: First: Do! 🌟Living off-grid is a wonderful way to reduce monthly expenses, learn new skills, and live more sustainably. Educate yourself and learn as much as you can about off-grid energy systems. This way, you can adjust your lifestyle accordingly, and if something isn't working, you can troubleshoot and fix it!
🎙️Power Queen: What do you use the Power Queen batteries for? Would you recommend the Power Queen batteries?
Dani and Will: We use two 25.6V 100Ah Power Queen batteries as storage for our solar energy system to power our home. During the day, the solar panels provide us with power and keep the batteries fully charged. When the sun goes down, the power for our home comes from the Power Queen batteries. We use most of the modern appliances on our farm wisely, and our power system handles them well!
We can't recommend Power Queen batteries highly enough! They provide us with power for our big adventure: building our farm. The batteries have a large capacity and are lightweight, making them easy to install. It's great to use batteries from a brand that, like us, is focused on green and sustainable development.
Your website: https://www.baileyshomestead.co.uk/
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