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easyshack
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# Posted: 13 Nov 2011 10:55am - Edited by: easyshack
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Off grid, takes lots of money or better design.
We have a total off grid house.
Our house is 30x30 with upstairs loft. 3 bed room, one bath. We are 100% off grid. Our total system cost us doinging it ourselves 5500.00.
( about one years light bill up front)
On this system we have
chest freezer
500ft well
refridgerator
small microwave
washing machine
2 box fans
one PC
water circulating pump for hot water.
The problem with off gride, you must select things that use less power and stay away from things like AC/ and electric heat, electric heaters and electric ovens.
We use wood heat, gas oven and stove. Off gride you can use AC and electric ovens, but you need much, much more money.
We bought land in the noth at 700ft, even in summer nights are 55 degrees, so no ac unt is needed. If you live in the south where it get 100 degrees and stays there for months, off gride will not work very good unless you have lots of money or can sleep while you sweat.
For tips on free solar panels for old constuction sites,here is a helpful link.
http://www.drillcat.com/solar
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neb
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# Posted: 13 Nov 2011 11:26am
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Good info and thanks.
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Mtnviewer
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# Posted: 14 Nov 2011 12:05am - Edited by: Mtnviewer
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I've lived off grid for 8 years now & I definitely don't have a lot of money. I learned as I went along. I made some bad decisions such as getting 3 costly propane appliances & installations & now greatly regret the waste of needed money. I use my quiet diesel generator for anything electric & at the same time it charges my used 12 x 2 volt batteries. Sadly they are getting old & unless I buy used again, then they could be a high cost.
To combat high costs, I try to find major items used, like the batteries, inverter, generator & other things. I heat & cook a lot with a woodstove, my main expense for a high cost new item that has been worth every penny.
Better design & needing lots of money IMO happens more with being on grid. So much money & people's time & energy is wasted on poor design, poor energy use, inefficiencies out the wazoo, silly things that we buy & do to "entertain" ourselves in the name of preventing boredom or loneliness amongst the millions of folks that share the same cities.
For me, being off grid with no close neighbours & 250 kms from the nearest city was just something new to learn about, vs. may wasteful, over worked, over spent, poorly designed urban ways.
I got 160 acres of old mixed forest, a 1200 sq ft cabin / house with gorgeous mountain views, privacy, wildlife, & more for a FRACTION of the cost that a similar but poorly designed house or even condo in many cities would have cost. Too me, getting set up & living off grid has been a HUGE BARGAIN, & I lack little that my city friends have, other than their high overhead & their jealousy of my much cheaper but nicer way of living. My taxes, $300 last year, are 1/10th to 1/20th of theirs, depending on the town or city. I need to work FAR less just to make ends meet. In the big picture & the long run, I find life being off grid much more affordable. There are costs to both, & always ways to make life more expensive or not.
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smitty
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# Posted: 14 Nov 2011 01:41am
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I had this same conversation with some friends the other day.
They were talking about the high cost of solar to run their homes.
I told them, to find alternatives to the energy hogging appliances, and you don;t need such a big system.
The way I have ours planned, the only things we will be running on solar, are some LED lights, laptops, and small gadgets.
A small PV system with a few batteries will do us just fine, and for under 500 bucks..
And people can do this anywhere. They can go off the grid where ever they live right now. With a few changes.
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easyshack
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# Posted: 23 Nov 2011 03:49pm
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With light bills for any average house 400 to 500 per month and electric prices going even higher, off grid is where its at.
No one would pay for a car for the rest of your life, so why pay electric bills for the rest of your life!
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 23 Nov 2011 08:10pm
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Quoting: easyshack 400 to 500 per month
kWh ?
Depending on equipment choices that would come to something like $16-18K for a grid tie setup that could result in a net zero bill. Lots of cash to come up with. Even more for off grid independence;
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NoSolar
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# Posted: 23 Nov 2011 10:01pm
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My "average" house at 3,000 sq. ft. only runs me about $200 for grid-tied electricity. Sure I'll pay for the rest of my life, but solar isn't free after the initial setup. Batteries, chargers, and inverters don't last forever. My 14X20 cabin is off-grid but run by generator because I don't want to spring for a solar setup.
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Erins#1Mom
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 07:37am
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Is there so way to have the best of both worlds at a low cost? My hope (ha ha, if I ever get started) is to try to use both solar and electric. My dream is to be able to use my cabin year round; possibly, every weekend and a night or two during week.
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 10:49am
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The place to start to get the cost down is to cut the electric use down, if possible. Do that without robbing peter to pay paul though. That is I see no advantage in using a propane refrigerator in place of the electric one if the goal is to cut energy use. Sometimes though as in total off grid that may be necessary for some folks.
If you have something like a Kill-A-Watt meter you can actually measure how much power your various electrical devices use in a day/week/month. It's handy for things that don't operate for set periods of time. Power use of a light bulb is easy to calculate but the refrigerator is not.
There are many sites where you can easily size up a grid tied PV system if you know the number of kWh used in a month. One is to be found here at Affordable Solar. (I live near them, have bought from them) All you need to know is your use in kWh and the cost of your power. Fill in the blanks.
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steveqvs
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 07:06pm
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Conservation of energy is the first step. I would like to augment my home power with solar but I am not sure how to tie a small system in. I have a battery bank running off the small harbor freight system as a test system. My plan is to run my garage with it. Not a lot of energy saving but maybe some. The batteries I got for free. The problem is the cost. I have a small 3000 watt inverter but the fan blows all the time when its on. I think I should use something better. I just not have seen solar set up to be a retrofit or and expansion a current system in the house.
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Anonymous
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 08:05pm
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You are right steve, conservation is a huge part of making a solar system work. I was able to add (retrofit) solar to my existing cabin. I was able to add dedicated solar outlets to my existing wiring in the cabin. Could you possibly run new electric lines from your solar system into your house through your rim joist (band board) either through the basement or crawl space? If not, could you remove an existing circuit breaker from your panel, then hook it into your system? That way you could choose which outlets in your house are solar powered. I am currently paying less than a dollar a day for actual power used from the grid. That includes running a water heater, fridge and things like that from the power co. I put my water heater on a switch, so when we need hot water, simply turn it on like you would a light. Hope this helps you....
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 08:38pm - Edited by: MtnDon
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The following is just my opinion. I believe the best way to augment the power for a currently grid connected home is to do a grid tie system where your PV modules feed any excess power back into the grid. The system uses the power grid as a battery and saves on that usually large expense. This works as long as the connection uses net metering; the meter turns backwards when your excess power goes into the grid. The best of those are with power companies that pay you a better rate than what you pay them. That's what we have; we get 13 cents per kWh and get charged 8 to 11.5 cents for power we buy. Check your local power company, they vary widely in what they do.
With something like the Enphase grid tie inverters it is also easy to grow the system over time.
The downside of a grid tie is that if the grid goes down you don't have power even though you have PV modules. You need some battery capacity for that as well as an automatic switch to isolate your system/home from the grid when/if the grid goes down.
Our goal was to just reduce the power bill. At present that is a better return than having the money invested in the market. We also have a small battery bank that can supply enough power to run the fridge and some lights for up to a day. For the most part we've not needed that.
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Anonymous
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 09:33pm
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How much does it cost to get the grid tied connection box?
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MtnDon
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# Posted: 24 Nov 2011 10:37pm
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Quoting: Anonymous How much does it cost to get the grid tied connection box?
I'm not exactly which part you mean. There is a grid tie inverter; these vary in price with capacity. The Enphase start at around $200 and handle up to about 250 watts. That way one or two modules can be easily added to the system by adding another Enphase inverter. A traditional grid tie inverter like ours that connects up to 5000 watts worth of PV modules to the grid costs around $3200 today.
It cost us a couple hundred dollars in fees which included an inspection to get the actual PV system connected to the grid. Those fees are going to vary from power company to power company.
Hope that helps.
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larryh
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# Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:23am
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Quoting: easyshack With light bills for any average house 400 to 500 per month and electric prices going even higher, off grid is where its at. No one would pay for a car for the rest of your life, so why pay electric bills for the rest of your life!
Before I even read much farther I have to wonder about this. Our power comes from a high priced electric co op in southern illinois. Even so with a minimum of 25.00 basic charge, my total electric bills almost never go over 40.00 a month. I have always used limited amounts of power but don't go to extremes I suppose. I have a small electric refrigerator, often use a electric coffee maker and heat my water on a electric coil type hot plate. I run a nice sized computer and fans all summer for cooling. I have music or radio playing nearly all the time. Somehow I am puzzled by the usage and cost incurred by many.
My heat while expensive at the moment since I had to return to oil for this winter, still it uses no electric to operate although I run a ceiling fan near it 24/7. I have a wood cooking range, but rarely use it any longer since I also have a small kerosene cooking stove. If I figure that the basic power cost me 25.00 per month without including any real power, then my bill is more like 15.00 a month or often less?
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larryh
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# Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:30am
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Quoting: MtnDon The place to start to get the cost down is to cut the electric use down, if possible. Do that without robbing peter to pay paul though. That is I see no advantage in using a propane refrigerator in place of the electric one if the goal is to cut energy use. Sometimes though as in total off grid that may be necessary for some folks.
Don, At one time gas was a much cheaper operation of refrigeration than electric. I used to have the old Servels all the time, but the past 10 or more years the cost has soared and electric is now a much lower cost per month even though I still like the silence and dependability of gas especially if the power fails.
As to the electric boxes, I made a discovery that what many consider to be old energy hogs are actually much cheaper to run than many new boxes. I hear all the time that the cost of operation of a new refrigerator cost about 8.00 a month. I had a 1937 GE that did everything I needed it to do, made ice and kept the food cold, all in near silence. It used only 250 watts and barely ran my electric bill up, in fact many months I couldn't determine what it cost the amounts remained so close to my old ones. After that as I needed a smaller scale box I ended up purchasing a Chinese made, (which I hated to do), Whirlpool that cost about 350.00 up front. It also used very little electric and ran quite nicely. So choices are out there but you can't go for the biggest and endless automatic features.
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larryh
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# Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:40am
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Quoting: Anonymous Could you possibly run new electric lines from your solar system into your house through your rim joist (band board) either through the basement or crawl space?
I know some are opposed to 12 v lines but I ran a separate set of lines over my attic and then down the walls next to the 110 lines that I use for lights, fans, music, and other 12v items I have. Once in a while I use a small power mate inverter that is large enough , 300 watts, to power my smaller stereo set up as well. Probably if I had it to do over I might use standard power with a decent inverter. But in the days 25 years ago when the 12 volt was installed most inverters were very expensive and used a fair amount of power to operate. I had to rig some standard 110 type plugs to the Y outlet cigarette type plugs standard to many 12 volt items. The lighting though I simply install 12 volt energy saving bulbs in the regular lamps and they work fine. I do have a few places where I hardwired the 12 volt to wall or ceiling lights as well. In a power failure I can pretty much operate most of my house with ease.
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brandywine
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# Posted: 25 Nov 2011 08:01pm
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Forget grid-tie. They can change the contract at any time...even eliminate the payments for the power you are sending them. The TVA contract says they can pay you TWELVE MONTHS after you generate the power.
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easyshack
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2011 02:28pm
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net 0 billing. Is a joke. If you make more electicty than you use, some states make the power company buy it back from you. Problem is you may be paying 14 cents per KW, but when they buy it back, they only pay you 2 cents per KW. what kind of deal is that. One of those things like electric car, sounds good, but the numbers just do not work out.
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neb
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2011 05:57pm
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easyshack
The power company will only pay you what they buy power for from their power suplier. If that is the case from your power company with 14 cent KW charge they must be buying at 2 cents a KW. That is a big differance from wholesale to retail. That power company has some great margins and looks like it may have or had some poor management.
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Martian
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2011 06:25pm - Edited by: Martian
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Our sailboat, which we lived aboard full time, had all 12VDC appliances; TV, fridge/freezer, lights, everything. Power was provided by a Four Winds, generator style wind turbine about 80% of the time. The high output engine driven alternator charged the 4 batteries (wired as two battery banks) when the winds were light in two thirty minute periods; morning and evening. Our normal usage was around 70amps/day. Water was heated on the kerosene stove for showers.
We learned to live within the power limitations but really appreciated the times of higher winds. If it was windy, and we were at anchor, it was movie time!
I've found it very expensive to set up anything for off-grid living. When I built this cabin, I thought about making it off-grid just for the freedom of having my own power source. It was impossible to justify the cost since there is power available, and my electric bill is less than $30/mo.
Tom
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neb
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# Posted: 27 Nov 2011 06:58pm
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Martian
I would have to agree with you on being expensive to get set up. The pay back would take a life time plus to have it pay out. At a buck a day it is worth being on grid. For some the cost to get power to them my be expensive also but you have to keep in mind once it is there if there is problems PC has to fix it. I'm all for wind and going green but again wind is only and will only be a back up source of energy. I do think wind generation is a good thing and does help to a very small percentage.
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ranchboss
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# Posted: 8 Dec 2011 01:21pm
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I have ben using this inverter for about 3 years now and it is awesome and cheap use L16 12 volt batteries a good charge controll and solar panels harbor freight work ok and this inverter and you have power for every thing, put ac. and it will run a window unit just suck batt. down.
http://www.invertersrus.com/pwrinv500012w.html
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