Independent of the power grid, closer to happiness
🎙️Power Queen: How long have you been living off the grid? What inspired you to leave 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 we don't enjoy every day. 🤔We dreamed of a simpler and more sustainable life and decided to make that dream a reality, to escape the rat race and the concrete jungle. For us, happiness is an attitude towards 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 you became independent of the power grid?
Dani and Will: Our new life without the power grid is incredibly liberating and enriching! By working with nature to build an off-grid farm, we are creating something we truly believe in. We don't just want to exist, we want to fully enjoy life.🔆 We've never felt more alive since we've been living without electricity!
More precisely, once we had finally installed our solar energy system, it was an absolute pleasure to enjoy a nice cold drink from the refrigerator. 😆
🎙️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 just get on with things! We certainly broadened our horizons 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 battles with the weather last year. Now we have a system with solar panels and LiFePO4 batteries from Power Queen that covers all 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 have learned along the way?
Dani and Will: It might have been helpful to have a slightly better plan and to be aware of the available energy options. We rather impulsively decided to install a solar system based on our electricity consumption calculations—who could blame us after living without water and electricity on our property for over a month! We ended up having to relocate our solar panels to a completely different location and switched our batteries from AGM to LiFePO4 after realizing that this was the more sustainable option.
Lessons learned:
Pay attention to the weather - the sun is your friend!
- Think about what you really need; there's 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 a net-independent life?
Dani and Will: First: Do it! 🌟Living off-grid is a wonderful way to reduce monthly costs, learn new skills, and live more sustainably. Learn as much as you can about off-grid energy systems. This will allow you to adapt your lifestyle accordingly, and if something doesn't work, you can troubleshoot and fix the problem!
🎙️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 to store the energy from our solar power system and supply our house with electricity. During the day, the solar panels generate power and keep the batteries fully charged. When the sun sets, the electricity for our house comes from the Power Queen batteries. We use most of the modern appliances on our property sparingly, and our power system handles it 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, focuses on green and sustainable development.
