We live in a half-finished house outside inland Valencia, still more plaster dust than paint. We came here to stop burning out and to see if we could run the place cleaner without pretending we’re heroic off-grid types. Characters so you know who’s who: me (tired but stubborn), my partner (practical, owns the spreadsheet), our neighbour Vicent (speaks in proverbs, has opinions on everything), and a cat that adopted us during the roof works and inspects the panels like a little foreman.

Kit I can lift without swearing

I kept the setup small on purpose so I’d learn how it behaves before throwing money at it.

• Four panels, 250 W each, on a ground rack I can tilt by hand.
• 2.4 kWh LiFePO₄ battery with a Bluetooth BMS so I can watch the pain in real time.
• 2 kW inverter/charger and a modest MPPT; nothing heroic, just honest.
• Grid still connected because I like sleep.

The electrician who helped me wire the sub-board, Luis, left me with one warning: “Tu casa come cuando duermes.” Your house eats while you sleep. He wasn’t wrong.

The baseline that steals breakfast

I did a night audit last week. Plug-in meter per circuit. Clamp on the mains. Notes on my phone at ridiculous hours.

• Router and mesh: 12–15 W.
• Fridge: averages 45–60 W, spikes to ~120 W when it feels dramatic.
• Gate receiver and alarm: around 8 W.
• Inverter idle: 25–30 W.

Tick-over is roughly 100–130 W. Ten quiet hours is 1–1.3 kWh gone before sunrise. That’s a third to a half of my battery without touching a light switch. If you feel like your battery “does nothing,” this is why.

The day the sky forgot its job

Forecast promised “brightening later.” Later never came. I set a rule at breakfast: no grid unless battery volts get rude. Kettle banned. Saucepan on gas. The cat judged me.

07:30 Battery at 92%. Partner already rationing sockets. “Laptop yes. Hair dryer no. Coffee… negotiate.”
09:40 Panels limping at 350–400 W. That runs a laptop, phone charging, a couple of LED bulbs, and optimism.
11:10 The borehole pump bursts into the chat after a toilet flush. 600–700 W surge for seconds. Battery dips from 78% to 74% faster than morale.
12:30 Vicent appears at the gate with tomatoes and news. “Las nubes hoy son de mala leche.” The clouds are in a bad mood. He points at the panels, tells me I should “put two more and stop pretending you’re romantic,” then eats half his own gift on the spot.

Loop, not landmark (for power too)

You know how tourists enter Phoenix Park and chase the far thing on the horizon? I do that with electricity. “We’ll just run the washing machine quickly.” Quickly turns into a sulk. New rule: set a time and a cap instead of chasing a chore. If the array is under 500 W, I don’t start anything with a heat element. If we haven’t seen 700+ W sustained for half an hour, the washing waits. Sounds boring. Saves afternoons.

Deer, tomatoes, and demand spikes

The deer really did hop the fence at dawn last week and sample Vicent’s plants. He blames my “green aura” for attracting them. I blame the fact he planted a buffet. Either way, wildlife visits are a reminder that pumps, lights and “quick checks outside” add up. Motion light comes on, pump runs for a second, inverter wakes a bit more than it needs to. It isn’t one big thing. It’s twenty little ones. That’s off-grid reality nobody puts in brochures.

Toilets, showers, and honest water math

We keep showers short and at night if the battery is full from a good day, or midday if the sun finally shows. If it’s cloudy and you shower long, you pay twice: once for the pump and again for the morale hit when the battery drops. Small house truth: hot water timing matters more than brand names.

What we actually ran

Cloud stayed. We still lived.

• Two laptops on and off.
• Phone charging in disciplined waves.
• Lights in the interior hallway where the plaster eats daylight.
• Fridge being itself, which is loud at the worst moments.

What we didn’t run: toaster, hair dryer, washing machine, vacuum. Partner did the pan-toast trick; claims it tastes better. I pretended to agree while scraping black bits into the sink like a Victorian.

A real number so this isn’t vibes

By 16:00 the array had given us just under 2 kWh for the day. Battery sat at 48%. That’s the ugly middle: not low enough to justify giving up, not high enough to get cocky. We chose to hold the line. No grid. Early dinner. One lamp. A book. The cat doing quality control on the blanket.

What worked, what didn’t

Worked:

• Pre-committing to a “no heat elements” rule on a cloudy forecast.
• Doing the boring audit so we knew our silent loads.
• Keeping the panels low and tilt-able. I squeezed another 40–60 W by nudging the angle twice.

Didn’t:

• “Just popping” the borehole for hose fun. That spike’s a mood killer.
• Opening the fridge to think. Think with the door closed.
• Leaving the inverter on “performance” instead of “eco” overnight. I forgot once; it cost us ~0.2 kWh for no reason.

The neighbour’s proverb and the plan

At 18:30, Vicent called over the wall: “Casa que canta, luz que aguanta.” A house that sings is a house that endures. He meant the radio. We’d turned it off to save power and the silence felt stern. So we allowed ourselves one hour of radio at low volume. Cost us maybe 30–40 Wh. Bought us a better evening. That’s the trade: a tiny spend to avoid the “why are we doing this” conversation.

Plan for next month:

• Add two more panels when the next pay cycle lands. Same series, same tilt frame.
• Move the router to a smart plug with a schedule; it doesn’t need to broadcast all night.
• Replace the fridge seal. It’s cheap and probably the easiest kWh I’ll “gain.”

The honest bit nobody likes

Small solar won’t save you if the house is sloppy. It will make you notice every drip, every standby, every silly habit, which is the point. We didn’t move to play pioneer. We moved to stop burning out, spend less on waste, and feel like we’re pushing in the right direction. On a grey day, that looks like pan-toast, a bossy cat, a neighbour with tomato theories, and a battery that ends the evening at 41% without touching the grid.