{"id":9182,"date":"2017-03-24T08:50:40","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T06:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/?p=9182"},"modified":"2019-04-23T09:55:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T07:55:08","slug":"the-sun-god-ra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/24\/the-sun-god-ra\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sun God, Ra"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The Sun – our past, our present, our future.<\/p>\n

It was the sun, shining into one of Scotland’s beautiful glens which produced the tallest conifer in Europe – at over 64 metres. \u00a0And it was the sun that nurtured the Scottish Douglas Fir we used for the latest ‘build’ project in our Straw Bale house – the stairs. It nurtured the Straw Bales and Frame too – but it’s those stairs I want to say a word or two about…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Douglas Fir with Silver Birch, Scotland<\/p><\/div>\n

Building an Off-Grid house from Straw Bales at a price we can afford has taken us far from the beaten track \u2013 both in terms of learning new skills, and developing our ideas of what is possible. In the words of William Hazlett. The more you do, the more you can do.<\/p>\n

The bottom of our stairs…<\/h3>\n

Those stairs – I’ve never imagined myself capable of building a flight of stairs \u2013 but when you think about it the joinery needed to make them is no more complicated than building a bookshelf! So Linda and I – in our time rich, cash poor economy – had the time to give it a go!<\/p>\n

Now that we have clean, renewable energy, sufficient to run light industrial workshop tools, I enjoyed watching The Sun power the tools that cut, planed, sanded, and screwed the stairs together.\u00a0You see – it was really The Sun that built our stairs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

…the bottom of our stairs.<\/p><\/div>\n

Linda and I lived with a tiny sustainable energy generation installation (wind and solar) for many years when we lived on board our boat<\/a>. But now that we’ve set up a serious off-grid system on dry land, designed to fully meet our needs, we’re amazed at how easily the power we require is generated. Since the day we turned the system on in January – the dullest of months – we haven’t used our 5kVA back-up generator once.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for that is the way we manage our energy use – and I can’t sing the praises of going ‘all LED’ for lighting highly enough – but mostly the reason is that the technology just works.<\/p>\n

Tailoring the software<\/h3>\n

Phil Smith from Barden<\/a> \u2013 whose office is three hours drive away – offered to guide me through all the settings we need for our installation. He talked me through the menu settings over the phone and when the basic configuration was complete, took control of our system via the Remote Management utility (VRM).<\/p>\n

When we got to the settings for remotely starting the generator according to the Battery State of Charge % , I noticed that the menu offers a second field which allows you to make alternative settings during a Quiet Period<\/em> (e.g. at night). It was then that it struck me how well everything has been thought through. It doesn’t really get much better than that.<\/p>\n

When I’ve laid extra cabling to the Hot Water tank, Phil Smith is going to show me how the system can be programmed to shunt surplus PV power into our Hot Water Tank. Oops! – it just got better!<\/p>\n

(Image, Sun God Ra:by\u00a0fi:K\u00e4ytt\u00e4j\u00e4:kompak<\/a>; improving by\u00a0User:Perhelion<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

(Photograph ‘Glencoe Forest’ is by Mathieu Bouchard<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Read earlier Straw Bale blogs:\u00a0Emerging from the Dark ages<\/a>. \/\u00a0Winter Solstice<\/a>. \/\u00a0Our off grid journey.<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0Introducing Justin and Linda.<\/a><\/p>\n

Read: Justin and Linda sailing to remote places<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sun – our past, our present, our future. It was the sun, shining into one of Scotland’s beautiful glens which produced the tallest conifer in Europe – at over 64 metres. \u00a0And it was the sun that nurtured the Scottish Douglas Fir we used for the latest ‘build’ project in our Straw Bale house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":9190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[133,135,134],"class_list":["post-9182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-users-stories","tag-douglas-fir","tag-straw-bale-house","tag-tallest-tree"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Sun God, Ra - Victron Energy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/24\/the-sun-god-ra\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Sun God, Ra - Victron Energy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Sun – our past, our present, our future. 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Until recently water provision across the property relied on a variety of pumping arrangements which…","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-29-at-09.06.07_323887739-150x150.png","author_name":"justin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/author\/justin\/","author_avatar":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=24","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=48","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=96"},"categories":[{"name":"Users stories","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/category\/users-stories\/"}],"date":"2026-05-29T17:19:32+02:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:19:32+00:00"},{"id":33326,"slug":"energy-security-guarantees-towns-water-supply","title":"Energy security guarantees town’s water supply","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/20\/energy-security-guarantees-towns-water-supply\/","excerpt":"A remote reservoir which provides drinking water to over 35,000 customers is entirely monitored and controlled by an off-grid power installation which must not fail. Electricity energises their control systems, operates the water treatment plant, and opens and closes pump valves. The lead acid batteries which had provided back up power were coming to the…","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/05\/McMinnville_Water_and_Light-McGuire_Dam-Drone_Shots-Artek-260409-021_321822343-150x150.jpg","author_name":"justin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/author\/justin\/","author_avatar":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=24","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=48","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dc1aee15dc88b16fe8302452197d07d203697be68b3ea32d831473d70ae3026b?s=96&d=mm&r=g&s=96"},"categories":[{"name":"Users stories","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/category\/users-stories\/"}],"date":"2026-05-20T08:40:29+02:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:40:29+00:00"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9182"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9224,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9182\/revisions\/9224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}