almost off-grid

[lauerpower]

well this site is great.  i have read a lot of posts and gotten a lot of great info.  i built a 26 x 54 pole barn.  half is shop and half is cabin.  cabin side  has a loft which is 13 x 26.  will have a wood burner in both cabin and shop for heat.  when we thought about building here, we really didn't care if we had power or water, sewer, etc.   now that i have been spending so much time building and enjoying the place, we love it out here.  we live in central iowa.  so our problem is, getting power,  mid-america power wants 28,000 to bring power from 1/2 mile away.  they no longer will bring power to your place and then you pay to your home.  my question is,  does anyone on this site live almost off-grid.  we will have wood burner for heat,  bring in rural water, put in septic,  have propane for cooking, dryer.  have checked into wind power and i think it is a little out of reach, dollar wise.  we don't mind sacrificing, but would still like to have lights, micro, fridge, laptop, t.v. and small applicances.  thanks for your help.

[Sassy]

   Your place sounds great!  Lots of info here on off-grid  - there's several people here who are using solar & a couple using wind generators, I think.

We're totally off-grid with both wind generator & solar.  We also use a generator at times in the winter when we have no sun or wind.

You can check out  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.1920  -  that's the last page - there's 97 pages...

[glenn kangiser]

www.sunelec.com has good cheap solar panels.

Get a good quality inverter -full sine wave only - sunelec's is not so great on that.  Check out our off grid thread for more info too.

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=6059.0

[lauerpower]

is there any info for solar that a dummy can understand.  i know nothing about electricity.  i know for alot of you, you are way past this point.  thanks.

[gandalfthegrey]

You mentioned some items there that run on propane.  There are more like refridgeerator (Sun Frost) generator so that would give you electricity. You can buy a lot of propane for $28000.  Just a thought.  Good luck.

[lauerpower]

is sunfrost, the name of the generator or fridge.  are the generators made to run 24/7, and what about the noise.

[glenn kangiser]

is there any info for solar that a dummy can understand.  i know nothing about electricity.  i know for alot of you, you are way past this point.  thanks.

No dummies.... just uneducated in the way of ______________ (fill in the blank).

We try to remedy that for free.

Read over the various thoughts on off grid here then ask questions on the parts you don't understand.  I suggest studying a bit of basic solar power first.

Many sites assume you know a lot already - I had to look a while to find this one to start at -

http://www.solar-facts.com/overview/

There are efficient fridges you can run from solar power or keep increasing size and run any of them.  I think Sunfrost is an efficient electric one - not sure.

Generators just need to run once in a while in low solar days.  The battery bank will store power from them to continue with them off.

Some are noisy - some are whisper quiet.  Quiet usually costs more.  Some generators run on propane too but I prefer a diesel one for efficiency on fuel - it is just a backup for storms.  I use a welder.  Best is to get a big enough generator that it does not have to run that long to help bring the batteries up then you don't have to listen to it so often. We run the welder an hour or so during stormy weather.

I haven't read it all but it looks good on the first page.

[bgarrett]

I am off grid and learning.
North Arizona Wind and Sun has a very good forum

http://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/

[Ndrmyr]

I had a similar situation where I needed to run elec. 2700 ft. in from the road.  The local electric company wanted $21,000.  Pricing with an independent contractor dropped it in half.  Getting utility contractors to moonlight it on the weekend dropped under 1/2 of that. Paying in cash is like double coupon day at the supermarket. A big factor will be the cost of the wire, with metals so high, the cost of the wire is really going to drive the cost of this project.  You will need to run high voltage wire to a transformer at your building site, otherwise there will be too much line loss. Unless you can drop the electric cost substantially, it would be tempting to pull an Amish.  Propane appliances, a high quality diesel or propane generator can all be had for far less than your projected costs.

[lauerpower]

amish sounds good to me, but i don't think the wife and kids could adapt, even though it sounds glamorous to them.  it seems all advertising is aimed at more technology,  ( which in my mind, means more juice)  maybe i'm wrong.  about how much solar would it take to run lights, and small appliances?  thanks.

[MountainDon]

Not sure if anyone is almost off grid?     The first thing to do is to determine your electric power needs as best as you can. If the new place will be outfitted with much the same appliances, etc. as the old it's easy. If the new place will have many changes then you need to do some homework.

Country Plans has a downloadable off grid calculator that can assist in sizing an off grid PV system. Get it[urlhttp://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=8192.0] here. [/url]  It is set up for PV, but would still be handy for adding up the power use and sizing the battery bank.

We use a PV system at our cabin. You can find mention of it in a few places on this forum. It is also mentioned in the Off Grid topic Glenn mentioned.

http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=2335.msg95631#msg95631
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=2335.msg96238#msg96238
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=2335.msg97236#msg97236
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=2335.msg97242#msg97242

Our cabin system has ample power for us. The hardware cost around $8.5K and that was using name brand PV modules, charge controller and inverter. The power grid connection was estimated at $55K. I mainly only run the generator a couple times a year to equalize the batteries and exercise the generator itself every couple months. This past week was the first time in about a year that I ran it to augment the PV modules as it had been cloudy for over a week straight.

When thinking about what parts to use note that sometimes spending a little more for equipment can save money down the road. In cloudy weather, for example, an MPPT type charge controller can deliver much more power than what would be ontained with a non-MPPT controller.

But first look at what your electrical needs are. While considering that there's a balancing act at times. A propane refrigerator can be substituted for an electric one, but the propane unit will be smaller most likely, cost more definitely and in the long run be less energy efficient. Propane is substituted for electricity; one "man" for a different "man".

It can be confusing but there's a lot of help and advise available from our great membership.

[Maxil]

I have been tinkering with the idea of building my little cabin and going off grid as well. I have used solar a bit and run appliances off inverters some as well, it's very easy actually.

To simplify things (hopefully) what I use during a nasty storm is I have a AGM battery a bit smaller than a car battery, it is safe to use inside. I simply hook it to an inverter, which changes DC to AC and can run my TV/VCR and lights if needed. Plug in whatever I need and I have power for several hours. To charge my system with my solar panel just hook it up to the battery and put it in the sun. The only other thing on a solar panel is a charge controller, all that does is it will charge a 12V battery until it is full, and stops charging to avoid damaging it.

I may at first not have enough $$$ to buy a ton of solar panels, but to just run lights/TV and maybe a good energy efficient fridge shouldn't be a ton. The inverter wouldn't have to be huge either, fridge being the biggest draw. Using solar with washer/dryer and heat and cool will require much more power.

Maxil

[glenn kangiser]

That is the way we started - small and built up, Maxil.

Say a decent energy efficient fridge 120 watts for 10 hours out of the 24 for easy numbers - 1200 watts or 1.2 kwh.  About what 250 watts of solar panels produces on a decent solar day.  Just off the top of my head.  Bad solar days - the same panels will produce about 10% of that hence the need for the backup generator.  $99 at Harbor Freight for a small one - about 800 to 900 watts.

[lauerpower]

thanks for shedding some light.  i think starting out slow is the way i need to go.  an more info is appreciated.  thanks.

[considerations]

I started out with a ridiculously noisy 5000 watt generator, and was just wasting gas because I was using so little of the 5Kw and there is no way to turn that gen to an "on demand" mode.  When I wised up, I got a Honda 1000 watt gen and found it kept my 24' 5th wheel running just fine.  Plus my neighbors breathed a big sigh of relief because the Honda is so quiet.  

Then I got a pair of 160 (or so) watt solar panels, a small (300 watt) inverter, and 2 -6volt batteries.  That was about 4 years ago.  

I seldom use the 5Kw genny now, but it is great for hooking up directly to table saws and other monster type electrical loads.  I just landed another Honda gen, the same model as the other and run them in tandem for charging the battery bank, which is now 8 - 6 volts hooked up to act like 4 - 12 volt batteries. I still need to add more 160 watt or so solar panels, like 6 more, but they are pretty much 1/2 the price they were when I bought the first 2.  

The current set up is now running my cabin which is a 14 x 24, and during the short days of winter with the sun basically hitting the panels (on a fairly rare clear day) from 9AM to 3PM, and because I am here most of the time, the gens run most of the time.  

Things I really like about running the 2 gens in tandem is swift battery charging and being able to use appliances that need more than 900 watts to run.  But the best part about the tandem set up is that if one gen needs to be serviced, I can still run things just fine with a single gen, just no baking or microwaving.  Running 2 does not seem to create any more noise than 1.  They are about 75' from the cabin in a ventilated shelter.

So, expanding the capacity of the system in increments has been the winning formula for me.  The Honda eu series generators come in different sizes, like 1000, 2000, and I think 3000 or 3500 watt sizes and most same sized models can be hooked together to effectively double your available power.   By having 2, I've created a "self-insurance" policy that reasonably assures some form of power no matter what happens.

I'd love to get some form of power producing propeller or wheel into the creek that is the south property line, so the adventure continues.  

Someone else mentioned the sine wave quality issue.  Certain gens are specifically designed to generate "quality" voltage, I think that means that the voltage output is steady at a certain level, supposedly like regular grid power.  From that, the sine wave they produce is called "pure".  Some inverters are "fussy" and will not accept power from sources that do not provide "pure sine wave" power.  I have a Prosine 2000 watt inverter.  It will not accept power from the 5Kw generator.

Hope this helps.

[MountainDon]

Just an FYI note:  Generators like the Honda EU series (Yamaha makes some too) are inverter generators. They actually produce DC power and invert that internally to pure sine wave AC power. That is why they have the best, the cleanest output of any generator. The inverter generators are also the only type that can throttle up and down as the load increases and decreases. The standard generator that runs at a constant governed high speed (3600 rpm's as a rule) vary in quality of power produced.

[lauerpower]

considerations and don.  thanks,  that was really helpful.  would it be possible to have a diagram on how you connect the panels, inverter, batteries, and generator together.  thanks again.

[considerations]

"would it be possible to have a diagram on how you connect the panels, inverter, batteries, and generator together."

Don's the man for this one. I know my system is working because I have power and nothing is burning  but he's a real scientist when it comes to this.

[Rob_O]

Just an FYI note:  Generators like the Honda EU series (Yamaha makes some too) are inverter generators. They actually produce DC power and invert that internally to pure sine wave AC power.

Actually, some (most?) inverter generators produce 3-phase AC, rectify that to DC then invert to a pure sine wave AC. End result is the same, that sweet pure sine wave AC electronic devices love to run on

[MountainDon]

.....  would it be possible to have a diagram on how you connect the panels, inverter, batteries, and generator together.  thanks again.

My freehand drawn version of what I built for my system is below... This does not include my generator in the drawing, but the inverter shows the connection point for the generator. If I ever get a generator with electric start capabilities I would then also add a low voltage circuit to tie the auto start ability that is built into my inverter to the generator. Then the system could be programmed to autostart the gen if the batteries got low as well as being able to program in a generator exercise event every month or whatever is desired.







Those are in the Off Grid topic HERE

Plus there is a much more elegant computer generated drawing over HERE in the same topic, thanks to Tickhill.

Any questions, please ask.