Off-Grid · Power · Solar
Solar Panels: Catching the French Sun
Solar is where your off-grid power comes from, and in most of France there's plenty of it — the south is genuinely sunny, and even the central belt does well eight or nine months a year. The art isn't the summer; it's sizing and angling the array so it still does useful work in a grey December. Get that right and the panels quietly run your life for decades.
This is the array — the panels, the frame and the charge controller that feeds yourbattery. It's the cheapest part of the system to oversize, and oversizing is exactly the right move off-grid.
The golden rule off-grid: size for the worst month, not the average. An array that's perfect in June is half-useless in December, when the day is short and the sun sits low. Panels have never been cheaper, so the sane approach is to fit more than summer needs and let the surplus be "wasted" in July — that surplus is what keeps the lights on in January.
How solar fits with the battery, inverter and generator — the whole system on one page.
Read the hub →🔌 Inverter/chargerThe box that turns battery DC into 230 V and ties the whole system together.
Read the guide →🌬️ Wind turbinesSolar's tempting winter partner — and why it's usually the wrong buy inland.
Read the guide →How much sun does France actually get? a lot, mostly
The south is a solar goldmine
The Mediterranean and south-west see some of the best sun in mainland Europe — long, reliable summers and decent winters. A modest array there goes a very long way.
The central and eastern belts are good — with a real winter dip
The Morvan, the Limousin and the Jura get plenty of sun spring to autumn, but the deep-winter yield drops hard — short days, low sun, grey spells, and in the uplands, cloud and snow. Perfectly workable off-grid; you just size and angle for it, and lean on a generator for the blackest fortnight.
Ground-mount, not roof the right call on a wreck
Your roof is a building site — put the panels in the garden
On a renovation the roof is exactly where you don't want fixed panels: you'll be re-tiling, re-battening and working up there for years. A ground-mount frame keeps the array off the build, at a height you can clean and clear of snow, at an angle you choose — and it's trivial to bolt more panels on later. It's the obvious answer for a derelict.
Angle it steep, and point it south
Face the array due south, and tilt it steep — around 50–60° — not the shallow "annual optimum." A steep panel catches the low winter sun square-on and sheds snow instead of holding it. You give up a little summer (when you have surplus anyway) to win the winter (when every watt counts). Some people even build a two-position frame — steeper for winter, shallower for summer.
Watch the shade — trees move the maths
Forest country is lovely and shady, and shade murders solar output. Site the array where it clears the tree line through the low winter arc, not just at midsummer. A south-facing bit of open garden is worth real money here.
The panels and the charge controller
Panels: cheap, standard, buy monocrystalline
Modern monocrystalline panels are efficient and astonishingly cheap by the watt. There's no need to chase exotic kit — standard large-format panels, well mounted and angled, are the right buy. Because they're so cheap, more panels is nearly always better value than clever tricks to squeeze the last few percent out of fewer.
An MPPT charge controller — not the cheap PWM sort
The charge controller sits between panels and battery. Spend on a proper MPPT unit (not a basic PWM one): it harvests noticeably more, especially in weak winter light and cold, which is exactly when you need it. Size it to your array and your battery voltage — a 48 V house system wants a matching controller.
One French thing worth knowing
Off-grid means self-consumption — no EDF paperwork
A grid-tied system that sells power back to EDF involves contracts and declarations. A true off-grid array feeding your own battery is self-consumption — you're not connected, so there's none of that. It's simpler precisely because you've cut the cord. (If you ever do connect to the grid as well, that changes — but that's a different project.)
What it costs
DIY, self-installed ranges for the array only (battery and generator are separate). Panels keep getting cheaper.
- £400–900A starter array — a few hundred watts to a kilowatt of panels, a ground frame you build, and an MPPT controller. Runs lights, laptop, fridge, charging.
- £1–2.5kA proper household array — a few kW, sized and angled for winter, on a solid ground-mount. The everyday backbone of an off-grid home.
- + laterBecause it's ground-mount, you extend it a panel at a time as the budget allows — the easiest part of the whole system to grow.
Solar is one piece of the build
Panels are where the power starts; water, waste and a warm room are the rest of going off-grid. See the whole plan, in order.
The whole off-grid build →