Action plan (off-grid)

The columns

Each row is one calendar day; each column is one quantity. The colour coding flags which days need attention:

• Date — the calendar day in your site’s local time zone.
• Solar (kWh) — predicted solar energy produced by the panels that day, after temperature derate and system efficiency. Includes energy that the battery couldn’t store and had to be curtailed.
• Load (kWh) — your daily load (the value you set in the form). Same on every day for now; future versions may model day-of-week variation.
• Headroom (kWh) — green when present — solar that exceeded what the battery could store on top of meeting load. This is your “free electricity” window: appliances run during a headroom day cost you nothing.
• Shortfall (kWh) — amber when present — load that the system couldn’t meet from solar plus battery without dropping below the minimum reserve. This is the gap you’ll need to plug with a generator, shore power, or by reducing load.
• Directive — a single-sentence recommendation for that day, written so you can paste it into a calendar reminder. Tone matches the day’s severity.

A well-sized system has zero shortfall days and modest-to-decent headroom on most days. A system showing shortfall on more than one or two days a week is undersized for the chosen load — either bigger panels, bigger battery, or a generator plan.

Reading the table for trip planning

For caravan / rv setups, the most useful read is to scan down the Shortfall column. Days with a dash in that column are fine — solar plus battery covers your load. Days with a number are the days you’ll want to plan a powered site stop, run the generator, or cut non-essential loads. Headroom days are bonus opportunities to top up devices, run the air-con harder, or pre-charge spare batteries.

For off-grid home setups, the same scan tells you which days are good for heavy appliances (washing, water heating, shop tools) versus which days you’ll want to start the generator. Pre-scheduling heavy loads onto headroom days dramatically cuts generator runtime.

Marginal days

A row with shortfall under cloudier-than-expected weather but not under the nominal forecast is a marginal day. These are the trickiest to plan for: the simulator says you’ll be fine, but a run of overcast weather would tip you over. The Week ahead summary’s Low column counts these. If you’re heading somewhere with no fallback, lower your forecast confidence and watch for shortfall rows appearing — those are your at-risk days.