Should i run the house on off grid technology?

[waceycornia]

I am looking into building a house and running it off of solar, wind, propane, wood and generator because it will cost a 100 grand to run power to where i want to build. What i am thinking is that i will generate the bulk of the power that the house will use with solar power and supplement the rest with wind and a generator. I will need quite a large system at least 7000 to 10000 watts and produce something around 1000 kwh a year to do this. If i use wood to supplement heat and propane to run some appliances i think it will be achievable but not sure. Is there any good companies that sell solar, wind and gen kits? How hard is this gonna be i have done some small off grid cabins but nothing that is this big and complicated. Am i over my head? Has any of you done this and could give me some advice as to how hard this is and whether it is worth it?

[inetdog]

I am looking into building a house and running it off of solar, wind, propane, wood and generator because it will cost a 100 grand to run power to where i want to build. What i am thinking is that i will generate the bulk of the power that the house will use with solar power and supplement the rest with wind and a generator. I will need quite a large system at least 7000 to 10000 watts and produce something around 1000 kwh a year to do this. If i use wood to supplement heat and propane to run some appliances i think it will be achievable but not sure. Is there any good companies that sell solar, wind and gen kits? How hard is this gonna be i have done some small off grid cabins but nothing that is this big and complicated. Am i over my head? Has any of you done this and could give me some advice as to how hard this is and whether it is worth it?

1. 7kW to 10kW is a big system all right. Look at the posts by member Chris Olson for lots of good information on living large off grid.
with a POCO buy-in of $100K, you could well be able to justify off grid solar. But first see whether you can whittle that 7kW down by accurately estimating your actual year round loads.

2. Supplementing with a generator is absolutely necessary, and can let you get by with a smaller (less expensive) battery bank than you would otherwise need.

3. Small wind is rarely worth the expense and effort. Without a one year wind speed survey at a likely height, like > 50 feet on a tower, you should not count on wind contributing much of anything. Small hydro, if you have a place for it, is much more likely to give a good return and provide reliable charging power.

4. Take a good look at the PVWatts.nrel.gov site to see what a particular sized array will be producing in your area for each month of the year. Design for worst case or plan to run the generator an awful lot during the winter. It takes special batteries to accept a full recharge in only a few hours of strong sunlight in winter.

[Sunking]

I am looking into building a house and running it off of solar, wind, propane, wood and generator because it will cost a 100 grand to run power to where i want to build.

Still less expensive than solar even long term. Just at 7000 watt requires a 5000 pound $20,000 battery every 5 years.

[J.P.M.]

I am looking into building a house and running it off of solar, wind, propane, wood and generator because it will cost a 100 grand to run power to where i want to build. What i am thinking is that i will generate the bulk of the power that the house will use with solar power and supplement the rest with wind and a generator. I will need quite a large system at least 7000 to 10000 watts and produce something around 1000 kwh a year to do this. If i use wood to supplement heat and propane to run some appliances i think it will be achievable but not sure. Is there any good companies that sell solar, wind and gen kits? How hard is this gonna be i have done some small off grid cabins but nothing that is this big and complicated. Am i over my head? Has any of you done this and could give me some advice as to how hard this is and whether it is worth it?

When building a new dwelling, it is possible to lower the energy requirements by a lot using aggressive energy conservation and passive solar techniques. These are usually more cost effective than meeting a higher load with larger solar electric and less costly and less hassle than wind generating systems, particularly when compared to incremental costs for off grid systems.

Building in such a way will cost more than the relatively paltry sum that passive solar and super insulation advocates claim, but will result in an off grid load that will be a boatload less in terms of time, blood and treasure and PITA to meet.

One sure way to reduce the cost of meeting a load is to make it smaller.

[russ]

Before thinking too much about wind read http://www.solacity.com/smallwindtruth.htm

The author, Rob Becker, likes wind and promotes it but likes people to know what they are getting in to. He is very factual - no BS involved.

[peakbagger]

Hire an architect that is familiar with Passive Haus design or equivalent. Spend the money up front to reduce the load as generally the money spent to not use power has far greater return than putting in a large system.