Last summer, I installed an off-grid Victron + Discover-battery system for a small Stockton farm (August 2025 blog post here). I didn't include enough PV (lesson learned), and the system wasn't keeping up with the 5-horsepower pump. Not good.

Remotely, I recently helped the farmer add six more modules (which the existing charge controller could support). Now, PV power is typically around pump load on a sunny day... the farmer can run the pump all day.

The farmer wrote to me:

Now I'm happy with the supply of power that I need. Thank you.

Off-grid systems are hard to get right. At least for this dumbass.

But now the system is right.

It feels good to know this system is providing abundant water pumping for organic local farming (with the veggies getting distributed direct to friends and family). Here's the farmer with some squash.

Here's a screenshot of the (beautiful) Victron VRM software's farm-status overview, in real time while I'm writing this.

BTW, here's a recent video about one of the dopest (Victron) PV / battery systems on Earth.

If Victron had arc-fault protection on their charge controllers and the UL 1741-SB listing... I'd be a happier guy.

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This blog and AI: I use AI all the time, to understand things better. But these blog posts are 100% written by Mike (for better or worse).