Off-Grid Living: Two Months Later — I Don't Miss Eskom

When I started this off-grid journey, I wasn't trying to prove that I could live without Eskom.

In fact, going off-grid wasn't a new idea at all. When I built our house about 15 years ago, I had already designed it with eventual energy independence in mind.

What I didn't expect was that Eskom would accelerate the timetable.

At the end of June 2026, Eskom disconnected our electricity supply because of an unresolved billing dispute. By that point I already had a solar system, but it had originally been designed primarily as a load-shedding backup system.

The disconnection changed that overnight.

Two months later, on 26 August 2026, we're still completely off-grid.

And we haven't had a power outage.

From Backup Power to Genuine Independence

Our original system consisted of a 5 kW Deye hybrid inverter, six 550 W JA Solar panels and a 5 kWh Volta battery.

It was never intended to run the entire house indefinitely. It was there to keep life going when Eskom failed us.

And Eskom did fail us.

We later added another four 600 W JA Solar panels to increase generation capacity. Then, after the disconnection, the 5 kWh Volta battery was replaced with a 16.4 kWh Dyness PowerBrick Plus.

That battery upgrade was the point at which the system changed from being a backup system into something capable of genuine off-grid operation.

The overall system has evolved over about three and a half years, rather than being bought in one enormous transaction. The total investment so far is approximately R141,000.

That's an important distinction.

I didn't wake up one morning, spend R141,000 and suddenly become energy independent.

The system grew as we could afford it.

The First Day Didn't Go According to Plan

I don't want to pretend that everything was perfect from day one.

It wasn't.

On the first day after installing the Dyness battery, we lost power because the wrong communications cable had been installed between the battery and the Deye inverter.

We sorted it out the following morning.

Since then, we haven't had a power outage.

That's worth mentioning because there is a tendency to think that an off-grid system has to be absolutely bulletproof from the moment it is switched on.

It doesn't.

You need to understand the system, monitor it and fix problems when they occur.

The difference is that there is no Eskom network sitting behind you waiting to take over when something goes wrong.

So What Is Off-Grid Life Actually Like?

The honest answer is:

Most of the time, it's completely normal.

That surprised me.

Initially, I thought living completely off-grid would be difficult. And during long periods of rain, it can get a little touch and go.

We watch the sky more than we used to.

But for the most part, we carry on with our lives exactly as we did before.

We don't sit in the dark.

We don't live by candlelight.

We don't spend our evenings worrying about whether the batteries will last.

We simply became more conscious of electricity.

That's a subtle but important difference.

When the Weather Turns Against You

The difficult days are the long, wet ones.

We live in KwaZulu-Natal, and our property is heavily wooded. Solar production can drop dramatically when the weather turns bad.

Our worst period so far was two consecutive days of rain.

Through careful management, we reached the end of the second day with the battery at about 20%.

That sounds frightening until you understand the system.

The battery can safely go down to around 5%, so we still had usable capacity available.

And on the third day, the sun came out.

By approximately midday, the battery was back at 100%.

Those prolonged rainy periods are also why we're expanding the solar array.

More panels mean more generation capacity when conditions aren't ideal.

Even when some of the panels are shaded, having more generation capacity gives the system more ability to harvest whatever sunlight is available.

We've Changed Some Habits — But Not Our Lifestyle

There is a difference.

On a normal day, we don't think particularly hard about electricity.

On a bad solar day, we do.

We'll switch off lights more often.

We'll move cooking from the electric plates to the gas hob.

If the weather is really bad and we think it is necessary, we'll move frozen bottles of water from the freezer into the fridge and switch the fridge and freezer off for the evening.

That's not something we do routinely. It's an emergency conservation measure for the really bad days.

We've also changed when we use electricity.

The dishwasher and washing machine used to be things we could run whenever we wanted. Now, wherever possible, we run them during the day.

And that makes sense.

If the sun is shining, there is little point taking energy from the battery when the panels can supply the appliance directly.

A Sunny Day Is a Completely Different Experience

Today, for example, the battery reached 100% at around 11:30 in the morning.

As winter moves toward summer, that happens earlier.

Once the battery is full on a good day, we try to make use of the available solar generation.

Heavy appliances get run during the middle of the day wherever possible.

The energy effectively goes:

There are losses in every energy conversion, so if the sun is producing more than we need and the battery is already full, using that energy directly makes more sense than deliberately cycling the battery.

The result is that on a good sunny day, the battery can sit at 100% while the panels carry the household load.

What Happens Overnight?

This is probably the question people ask most often when they hear that someone is off-grid.

On an average night, we go to bed with the battery at 100%.

By morning, it is normally around 67%.

By approximately 6:30 to 7:00 AM, the solar panels start putting energy back into the battery again.

The exact timing changes with the season and the cloud cover.

But the important thing is that the battery isn't being pushed anywhere near its limits on a normal night.

That's what having enough storage changes.

We Still Get to Enjoy Rainy Days

There is an irony to living where we do.

We rely heavily on rainwater harvesting because of the ongoing problems we've experienced with municipal water service.

So while we're watching the clouds and thinking about solar production, we're also quite happy when the rain arrives.

When the sun shines, we get what I jokingly call "free" electricity.

It's not really free, of course. We've invested a considerable amount of money in the equipment.

But we are generating it ourselves.

And when it rains, we get free water.

So we've developed a slightly different relationship with the weather.

Either way, we're getting something useful from nature.

The Reliability Question

This is probably the biggest surprise of all.

Our local Eskom supply has continued to have problems.

Over the past two weeks alone, our area has been without electricity for several days because of transformer failures and wildlife — particularly monkeys — causing shorts in the electrical system.

We had power throughout all of it.

This isn't something that only started after we went completely off-grid.

Even when our original, much smaller solar system was installed, there were occasions when Eskom power disappeared but our house remained lit and the internet stayed online.

The difference now is that there is no Eskom supply to fall back on at all.

And yet the lights stay on.

That's a strange feeling when you have spent years being told that electricity has to come from the grid.

The Biggest Change Isn't Technical

The biggest change is psychological.

When you are connected to Eskom, you don't really think about where the electricity comes from.

You switch on a light.

You boil the kettle.

You turn on the television.

You run the washing machine.

You expect electricity to be there.

When you're off-grid, you become aware of the energy behind those actions.

You start looking at the weather.

You notice when the battery is charging.

You understand that running a high-powered appliance at midday on a sunny day makes much more sense than doing it at midnight.

But I wouldn't describe that as living a restricted lifestyle.

I'd describe it as being conscious of your energy rather than being oblivious to it.

The House Was Designed for This Long Before the Solar Panels Arrived

When I built the house about 15 years ago, I already had the idea of eventually going off-grid.

I didn't do anything particularly exotic.

KwaZulu-Natal's climate is fairly mild, so extreme insulation wasn't the biggest concern.

Instead, I concentrated on the things that make an everyday difference.

Our lighting uses 3 W LED downlights rather than large, power-hungry lights.

We use a gas geyser rather than an electric geyser — because heating water is one of the biggest energy consumers in a typical home.

Our pressure pump is a 350 W unit. Many homes use 750 W or even 1.1 kW pumps.

We use ceiling and free-standing fans rather than air conditioners.

None of these decisions are revolutionary.

That's the point.

The Solar System Isn't Perfect

One of our biggest challenges has actually been shade.

We live on a forested property.

At one stage, the panels were being shaded badly enough that moss was actually starting to grow on them.

We solved that by raising the roof structure high enough to lift the panels above much of the shading and trimming the trees back.

Since raising the panels, we've only needed to clean them once — and that was because the local hadedas decided that solar panels make excellent toilets.

I check the panels approximately once a month.

I look at the Solarman data roughly once a day.

The inverter gets an occasional glance during the week when I walk past it.

That's about it.

It hasn't become another job.

The Next Upgrade

We're not finished yet.

Next month, we're planning to add another five or six 620 W JA Solar panels and a 6 kW Deye inverter.

The new configuration will make the 6 kW Deye the primary inverter, with the newer 620 W panels and existing 600 W panels working with the 16.4 kWh Dyness battery.

The existing 5 kW Deye, six 550 W panels and the older Volta battery will become a separate system connected through the primary inverter's generator/AC input.

This isn't simply about generating more electricity.

It's about redundancy.

If one inverter fails, we have another system available.

It also means we're not locking ourselves into one battery manufacturer.

If the old Volta eventually reaches the end of its useful life, we can replace it with a compatible battery rather than having to find a battery that can communicate with the Dyness system.

I've learned this lesson the hard way:

Battery compatibility and BMS communications aren't things you want to discover after you've already spent the money.

If I Could Start Again

I'd buy bigger batteries from the beginning.

That is probably the biggest lesson I've learned.

Solar panels generate electricity during the day.

The battery is what allows you to live your normal life after the sun goes down.

If I had to choose between spending more on battery capacity or buying a substantially larger inverter, I'd put the money into the batteries and solar generation first.

In my experience, a 5 kW inverter can run a normal household perfectly well — provided you remember that you can't run the kettle, microwave, oven and electric hotplates all at the same time.

You don't necessarily need a gigantic inverter.

You need enough generation.

You need enough storage.

And you need to understand your loads.

The Financial Reality

Before going completely off-grid, our Eskom invoices were typically somewhere between R2,000 and R4,000 per month.

Today?

R0.

That doesn't mean the electricity system cost us nothing.

We've invested approximately R141,000 over three and a half years.

But that money wasn't borrowed.

It wasn't a single massive purchase.

We built the system progressively as money became available.

And now something interesting is happening.

Because we no longer have an Eskom electricity bill every month, we've been able to save enough to fund the next stage of the system.

We're effectively taking the money that would previously have disappeared into the electricity bill and using it to increase our energy independence.

That's a very different financial proposition from taking out a huge loan and trying to justify the installation through a theoretical payback calculation.

You Don't Have to Buy Everything at Once

This is probably the biggest thing I'd tell somebody considering going off-grid.

You don't necessarily need to go off-grid tomorrow.

Plan for it.

Build the right foundations.

Buy what you can afford.

Save.

Upgrade.

And negotiate.

The solar industry is extremely competitive.

The price printed on a website or quoted on a price list doesn't necessarily have to be the final price.

Good retailers and wholesalers are often willing to negotiate.

Don't be afraid to ask.

And don't assume that the most expensive component is automatically the best component for your particular system.

Work out what your household actually needs.

Then build toward it.

Two Months Later

At the end of June, Eskom disconnected us because of an unresolved billing dispute.

Two months later, the property is still running.

We've had one commissioning problem caused by the wrong communications cable.

We've had rainy days that required some thought.

We've watched the battery get down to 20%.

We've watched it recover to 100% within hours when the sun returned.

We've run washing machines in the middle of the day.

We've cooked on gas when the weather wasn't cooperating.

We've watched the neighbours lose electricity while our lights stayed on.

And we've carried on living our lives.

That's probably the biggest lesson.

Going off-grid hasn't meant giving up the modern conveniences of life.

It has meant taking responsibility for where the energy comes from.

And personally, there is one part of this that gives me an enormous amount of satisfaction.

I don't have to pay Eskom every month anymore.

There is something deeply satisfying about knowing that the electricity running my home is coming from equipment that I bought, installed and progressively improved myself.

I don't have to wait for Eskom to fix a transformer.

I don't have to worry about whether the next bill is going to contain another surprise.

I don't have to wonder whether the electricity will be available tomorrow.

I look at the sky.

I look at the battery.

I look at the solar production.

And most of the time, that's all I need to do.

You Don't Have to Live Under Eskom's Yoke

This isn't an argument that everybody should immediately disconnect from the grid.

It isn't.

Going off-grid requires planning, equipment, money and a willingness to understand how your own energy system works.

But it also doesn't have to cost more than your house.

You don't necessarily need a loan.

You don't need to buy everything at once.

You need to plan, save and negotiate.

And you need to understand what you're buying.

I had the advantage of having planned for energy independence when I built the house 15 years ago.

Eskom's actions simply accelerated the plan.

What I thought would be difficult has turned out to be remarkably achievable.

The sun comes up.

The panels produce electricity.

The battery stores it.

The house uses it.

And tomorrow, we do it all again.

That's what living off-grid actually looks like.

If you're earlier in the process, our full cost breakdown of going off-grid and why the R141,000 investment didn't hurt us cover how this system was built up in phases. If you're ready to start planning your own system, our Solar Installer Directory can help you find an installer in your area.

All figures and experiences in this article reflect one specific off-grid installation in KwaZulu-Natal. Individual results will vary based on property type, location, shading, appliance loads and system specifications. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or electrical engineering advice. Solar and battery installations must comply with SANS 10142 and be carried out by a registered electrician.