I’ve been interested in making a solar shed, for a year or so after I started designing my garden and found myself wanting to have lights and fountains and decorative things that all required power. I tend to have a hard time volunteering to increase my monthly bills haphazardly, not to mention the installation of electrical wires and conduit and the hassles of inspections, etc., and before I knew it I was scaling down my dreams of having a very cool backyard paradise.

Then it came to me…. SOLAR SHED! A small building to put yard tools, which I need anyway, a solar panel system to power peripheral garden things like lights and pumps and whatever else the system could handle and I get to finally experiment with solar in a meaningful way. This seemed far more satisfying, and knowing that mother nature would be funding the electrical costs of my improvements, was a nice perk.

SO the design began and the cost breakdowns made it clear that if I intended to build this thing fiscally responsibly, it would either need to be quite small (like a large dog house) to cut down on material cost, or quite large (like a tiny house) so I could utilize the extra space for other purposes.

After some deliberation, the desire and benefits of having a large shed outweighed the need pinch pennies…