Anyone using solar, wind or living off grid?

[Paxton]

Offgrid for just about 5 years now too....4.8kw solar system, agm batteries, kubota 8kw diesel.  We've just hit the time of year where we get enough sun (if its not snowing or cloudy) to be generator free....love february! 

We have a dishwasher, propane dryer, regular clothes washer, normal appliances, Navian hot water on demand....you wouldn't know we were offgrid other than the panels and diesel hum at night in the winter.   :laugh:

[hedgerow]

Offgrid for just about 5 years now too....4.8kw solar system, agm batteries, kubota 8kw diesel.  We've just hit the time of year where we get enough sun (if its not snowing or cloudy) to be generator free....love february!

We have a dishwasher, propane dryer, regular clothes washer, normal appliances, Navian hot water on demand....you wouldn't know we were offgrid other than the panels and diesel hum at night in the winter.   :laugh:

When you made your set up did you do a cost compare between operating a diesel gen instead of a propane gen since it looks like you have propane on site. 

[mudfarmer]

We have been off grid since a tree fell on the service entrance to a place we were renting 10 years ago and the landlord wouldn't fix it. Started with 45w of PV panels, a marine battery, a LOUD b&s gas generator and an automotive charger

Now it is 1800W of PV, 900Ah of LiFePO batteries, Magnum inverter/charger and an inverter generator. It's been a hard knock life. We have always been pretty broke but work hard. Most people would not want to live like we do, and they tell us so. Sometimes we wonder why we keep doing it but then step outside into the middle of paradise.

Time to go kiss the wife and say sorry/thanks for the 10,000th time

[62oliver]

I know this is an old thread, but the advice remains the same. To anyone considering going off-grid, educate yourself first, a lot.  Do this long before you start plunking your money down.

There is a lot of info online, google "Northern Arizona wind and sun", they have a great forum on this subject.

[peakbagger]

solarpaneltalk.com is also an active forum on solar (I am active on solarpaneltalk). Between the previous Arizona Wind and Sun forum and this one, they are the most active forums. Both have various levels of moderation and both have various approaches to spam control which can be annoying on occasion but really keeps things relatively clean.

Another great resource is Homepower.com. Home Power was the longest and best magazine from the beginning of home renewable power to last year. Sadly they stopped publication last year but their archive is online at the site. As the years go on their advice will gradually get dated but still a great resource. They missed the Lithium battery revolution which still is in its infancy for home use. They do have a lot of articles on wind turbines and they should be a must read for anyone considering wind as it reinforces that with very rare exceptions it rarely is good solution for off grid. They also were advocates of microhydro. If someone has the site with adequate elevation and flow it may be nice option many do not consider.

A caveat is that there are many folks working on Lithium chemistry battery solutions for off grid currently but they are still in the "homebrew" stage. Due to the chemistry and charge density, when things go bad they can go real bad like burn your house down and kill your family bad. There are vendors on Ebay repackaging surplus EV cells into home battery packs but in many cases they are not complete solutions, many have the infamous asterisk symbol stating a Battery Management System (BMS) is required. Lithium battery packs are composed of many cells and each cell needs to be monitored and switched in an out of charge mode by a BMS. In general Lead Acid batterys are far simpler but have their limitations.

I am long term, grid tied solar user but have never been off grid, nevertheless I have on occasion in the past been asked to advise on "orphan" off grid systems and also have talked to several current and former off grid owners over the years. The most successful are run by technical folks who learn the basics, design the system and then maintain it. The least successful are purchased systems unless maintained by the person who designed and built the system. Probably the most unsatisfied  owners are the ones where they buys house with a homebrew system, they inevitably end up having to spend a lot of dollars rebuilding the system and many end up reselling the home at a loss and moving back on grid.   

Living off grid is a major lifestyle choice that imposes a lot of limitations on those who use it. Someone used to grid power would be hard pressed to really understand those limitations until they try it and doing it right is an expensive learning experience. In many case couples try it and fairly frequently one side of the couple decides its not for them. While working in VT I ran into several divorced spouses that claimed the divorce was partially or substantially caused by off grid living.      

[maple flats]

I don't live off grid, but I have 3 solar systems. The one at my house is totally separate from the grid, I have 6 panels on a south wall 285 watts each. They run to a Midnight solar charge controller and keep 4 Rolls Surrette 6V 683 AH lead acid batteries and an inverter. The batteries are in the cellar. From there I have a double duplex receptacle in the living room to run the entertainment center, a duplex receptacle in the cellar for the sump pump (and the washing machine when the batteries are near topped off) and this is a duplex house, a line goes to the other side to run that sump pump. I also have a GFCI duplex receptacle on the back deck that runs a pool pump in summer.
My other 2 solar systems are at my sugarhouse and they are grid tied and net metered. I have 1480 watts solar array to a Xantrex charge controller, and 8 6v Trojan batteries. They run to a Xantrex 6048V inverter, which when the batteries are at full charge, it sends excess power to the grid. I also have 22 panels 220 watts hooked to a Fronius inverter and grid tied.
Batteries, a newer battery chemistry in Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4). They can be real good, unless you do what I did. I hooked 16 of them up in my sugarhouse (48V system to the inverter). I read that the LIfEPo4 batteries can't be charged when frozen. I read about how to deal with that and built an insulated box for the battery bank and set them on a 12V heating pad. I added a 48V to 12V transformer to run it. Then I added a Battery Management System (BMS) to keep the batteries balanced and to disconnect when temps fell to 35F. What I failed to do was to hook the BMS to the transformer. The first time I got lots of snow and cold weather, the batteries shut down from charging but the heating pad (65 watts) ran enough to kill the batteries. What I should have done is build a shelf in the only heated room in the sugarhouse which has a propane furnace. The batteries would have stayed warm and would have last 20+ years according to specs. I killed them beyond repair in the 4rd month in service. That battery bank cost $2500, I turned them into recyclable scrap. Once those batteries (each of the 16 cells was 3.2-3.3V) get drained too low the lithium gets transferred to another part and can't be resurrected. I tried in vane to recharge them with no luck. I would have been better off buying lead acid again and done the monthly service. The first 8 last for 10 yr 8 mos. The LiFePo4 batteries were projected to work for as long as 40+ years, but my stupidity cost me the whole battery bank.

[mike_belben]

Man that hurts.  Oof.  



The house i will build is 1/4 mile to the pole and will go off grid, but from the getgo its been planned around diesel generators and vegetable oil which ive gotten cheap a long time ago. Not buying any battery system until the last minute.  Thermal mass, south facing, maybe sod roof and definitely wood heated.  Maybe rainwater too.. Wells arent cheap here with all the rock.


The front cabin shack house thing is grid tied.  I dont mind if it remains a laundromat and chest freezer site.  

[Hilltop366]

Wells arent cheap here with all the rock.

I put in a drilled well because after digging a test hole I figured out that the ground water and the ledge start at about the same level (14'), the well driller only needed to put in 25' of casing so the rock (solid ledge actually saved me a lot of money.

[mike_belben]

Wow thats pretty good luck.  Ours is pennsylvania era sandstone which apparently doesnt hold water so well.. Its all fractured.  Our dirt holds surface water but the ground water seems to be between 600 and 3000ft.  I hear 10Gs for avg well and its just drill till you hit wildcatter style.  Pay by the foot.  No thanks.    

[Hilltop366]

It worked out well ;D, I ended up at 100' with 8 gallons per min, they hit water at 3 different levels. If it wasn't for all the dissolved iron (had to add a iron filter) it would be perfect.  Seems to me it was around $2000-2500.

Halfway down my 1600' driveway there is a test well that was put in for the provincial government ,it was suppose to be 150' deep and the engineer told the well driller that it would likely be 80' before he hit ledge (I'm not sure why, there is ledge sticking out of the driveway) they spent half a day, hit ledge at 2' and gave up at 75' with over 30 gpm, the water goes up and down a few feet with the tide.

Back on topic, I rough priced a wind/solar system before I built it came out around $25000 plus continual maintenance plus having to buy pricy efficient appliances so at $6400 to run power it didn't make sense.

At about $80 per month for power x 17 years I have been here + the $6400 install I am almost to the break even point for the solar/wind with no maintenance/replacement. What may make sense would have been to add solar hot water and reduce my power bill to around $30-40 per month.

[mudfarmer]

We had a well punched this year, 325ft did not hit water until 280ft but hit bedrock at 20ft so saved a bundle on casing. 40gpm. Thankfully the static level ended up at 12ft below grade so we can pump out of it with just about anything. The driller recommended the same Grundfos 11-SQF-2 pump that @JRHill is using and it sure looks like a nice pump to me but the quote based on neighbor's wells was about half as deep as it ended up so we do not have a Grundfos SQF pump yet :D

@maple flats very sorry to hear about your LiFePo4 batteries, that is an awful experience! Ours have built in BMS but are inside and should not freeze. So far, soooo good. Have a tendency to abuse batteries real bad so the lack of maintenance and depth of discharge were biggest selling points for me.

LED lights have come so far and finally convinced high quality inverters are reliable enough that I have been replacing 12v direct wired LEDs with 110v versions from Lowes. More light and less power usage even though it is going DC->AC->DC to get there. Could have just replaced the old tech with newer and stayed 12v but some days it feels good to just go with the flow...

[maple flats]

Mudfarmer, that reminds me of a farm I installed an outdoor wood furnace back in the '90's. We asked how good his well was to know if we had to start filling sooner rather than later. The farmer was told us while we installed the furnace that when he got his 20x40' swimming pool put in. He says he kept asking if he could start filling the pool, the workers said not yet each time and told him it would take a day or two if he could run his well non stop. Then when they went to lunch they said he could "start". When they left he got out his pump and big hose to fill the pool. When the workers returned after lunch they found the pool full. It seems that farm (just 3-4 miles from Lake Ontario) had a underground river just 20' down. He could run a 4" pump and hose full flow and never run out of water. He said the well drillers never could determine the GPM they didn't have a pump big enough.
As I recall, he said it was good water too, no iron nor sulfur or other issues.