Battery-ready board upgrade for a hinterland acreage
A five-acre property in the Mudgeeraba hills with solar on the shed, a bore pump, a full switchboard and a home battery on the wish list. We replaced the old board with a larger one built for backup, protected every circuit and added surge protection for the summer storms.
Location
Mudgeeraba
Service
Switchboard and solar
Duration
1.5 days on site
Client
Private homeowner
The brief
The owners of this acreage off Bonogin Road run a home office, a workshop in the shed and a bore pump that feeds the house and the garden. Their 6.6 kW solar system had been added to the switchboard years earlier, and the board had no spare space, only four safety switches covering 16 circuits, and a habit of losing everything at once when one appliance played up.
They planned to add a home battery within a year, mainly for backup during storm outages, which are common up in the hills. Two other electricians had told them the board would need replacing before any battery could go in. The brief was to do that once, properly, so the battery would be a simple addition later.
What we did
Josh Tane surveyed the property and agreed with the owners on which circuits matter most in an outage: the fridges, the bore pump, the office, the lights and the internet. We designed the new board around that list, with those circuits grouped on a separate backup section that a battery can feed directly, and the heavy loads such as the oven, air conditioning and workshop kept on the grid side.
The shed sub-board was the surprise. Its sub-main cable had been run in garden hose rather than conduit, and moisture had corroded the terminations. We replaced the sub-main in proper conduit and fitted a new sub-board in the shed with its own RCBOs. The house was without power for one afternoon, and the bore pump was back on before dark.
Left: the new board with the backup section split out for a battery. Right: load testing the supply on the first day.
The result
The property now has 16 individually protected circuits, so a faulty appliance in the workshop no longer takes out the office and the bore pump with it. The surge protection has already been through two summer storms without a single tripped circuit.
When the owners are ready for a battery, the backup circuits are already wired, labelled and grouped, so the installation becomes a shorter job with no switchboard work and no second shutdown. We have given them a written battery quote based on the new layout to plan around.
16
Circuits on individual RCBOs
7
Essential circuits ready for backup
1.5 days
On site, one afternoon off power
Project at a glance
Fixed-price quote
Planning a battery?
Send a photo of your switchboard and your solar inverter. We reply within the hour in business hours with what the board needs first.
What the owners said
“Josh asked what we actually needed during a blackout and designed the board around it. When the battery goes in, it is all ready to go.”
Andrew C.
Homeowner, Mudgeeraba · Switchboard and solar
The service
Switchboard upgrades for solar and batteries
Battery-ready switchboards, solar connections and backup circuits for Gold Coast homes and acreages, with a fixed written quote from a Clean Energy Council accredited electrician.
The area
Electricians in Mudgeeraba
Acreage properties, older homes on tank and bore water and long cable runs to sheds and pumps. See recent Mudgeeraba jobs and typical arrival times from our Coomera base.
More projects
Related switchboard and solar projects
Get in touch
Getting your home ready for a battery?
Send us a photo of your switchboard and inverter and we will come back with a fixed price, usually within the hour.