Garden office solar — worth going full off-grid or just a hybrid setup?

by Van Sue · 1 month ago 67 views 0 replies
Van Sue
Van Sue
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Joined May 2024
1 month ago
#8146

Finally pulling the trigger on a proper insulated garden office this spring. It'll be about 4x3m, running a monitor setup, laptop, small fan heater occasionally, and I want to charge the car from it eventually (slowly, via a 3.6kW EVSE, not a rapid charger).

Current thinking is a Victron SmartSolar MPPT, maybe 600W of panels on the roof, paired with 2x Fogstar Drift 100Ah LiFePO4 in a 24V config. That gives me roughly 2.4kWh usable which feels tight for winter days when I'm in there 8–9 hours. The office will have a grid connection available — so the question is whether I bother with a Victron Multiplus for grid fallback, or just go pure off-grid and accept limitations in December/January.

The EV charging angle complicates things massively. Even a slow 3.6kW draw overnight would flatten that battery bank in under an hour. I'm wondering if anyone's actually made solar + storage work for EV top-ups in a garden setup, or whether that leg of it just needs to stay grid-tied regardless. Keen to hear from anyone running a similar hybrid arrangement — especially what inverter/charger combo you went with and whether the Multiplus was worth the extra outlay.

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