Dodgy Roamer

The reflectivity gains are highly dependent on your specific albedo values—white gravel or limestone will give you 20-30% uplift, whereas dark soil or tarmac barely registers.

The tinned copper route is solid, @RustyTinker, though I'd push back slightly on freshwater being uniquely problematic — it's actually the lack of dissolved salts that causes issues.

The real question is whether you're actually drawing 200Ah or if undersizing your charger is the bottleneck.

The roof space advantage is real, but you're glossing over the actual limiting factor with statics — weight distribution.

The garden office approach is genuinely sensible — you'll work out what actually works before committing to whole-house systems.

The real question is whether you're doing this for the learning, or purely for cost savings. If it's the latter, you're probably looking at breaking even rather than getting ahead. I've got a...

Worth separating the theory from the narrowboat reality here. Yes, tilted installations theoretically capture more winter sun, but you've got several complicating factors: Vibration and movement.

Depends entirely on your power requirements and whether you're looking at AC or DC charging for an EV tow car.

Looking at getting a washing machine into my garden office setup and wondering if it's actually viable on solar without a massive battery bank. Current setup: 6kW nominal solar (mix of Fogstar and...

The biggest challenge I've found isn't technical—it's psychological. You spend months obsessing over battery capacity, inverter sizing, and solar yield calculations, then the reality hits: you're...