Solar, battery and off-grid installer for Uki, Tyalgum and the Tweed Valley villages

Work we've done in the valley

• Off-grid homes in the hinterland: full-time stand-alone systems and weekenders around Uki, Tyalgum, Kunghur, Byrrill Creek and Doon Doon, on Victron inverters with Australian-made MPS batteries. See the off-grid case studies.
• Solar, batteries and rural electrical for homes and farms right through the valley: switchboards, sheds, pumps, long underground runs and battery backup for properties that lose power whenever a tree comes down.

Local network notes

The valley villages are on Essential Energy, mostly on long rural feeders that run up from Murwillumbah. Two things follow from that. First, outages: a storm, a flood or a tree across the line between Murwillumbah and Uki can take the whole valley out for hours or days, and that's exactly what happened in the 2022 floods and during ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred in 2025. Second, export limits: on a standard connection it's 5 kW, but on weaker rural lines Essential Energy sometimes approves less, and on single-wire earth return (SWER) lines in the back valleys exporting may not be allowed at all. We check your line before we design, and we'll be straight about whether a grid-connect system with a battery, or a full off-grid system, is the better buy.

Tyalgum has talked about becoming energy self-sufficient as a village for years, and the practical version of that is happening house by house: solar with enough storage to ride through an outage, and properties at the end of the line going stand-alone. We've built both kinds.

Travel and service

Uki is 15 minutes from the workshop, Tyalgum and Chillingham about 25, Burringbar and Mooball about 15 the other way, and the back valleys 30 to 40 minutes. No travel charge anywhere in the Tweed Valley. For off-grid customers that proximity matters most: when a system needs attention we can be there quickly, and most issues we can see and sort remotely through Victron's monitoring before anyone drives out.

Grid-connect or off-grid?

If the pole is on your boundary, a grid-connected solar and battery system with backup, typically $18,500 to $30,000 installed with the federal battery discount, gives you most of the independence at a lower cost. If Essential Energy wants tens of thousands to connect you, or you're on a SWER line that drops out every storm, a stand-alone system, from $25,000 for a weekender and $40,000 to $70,000 for a full-time home, is the better long-term answer. Either way we size from your actual loads, not a package.

Get a Tweed Valley quote