Anyone living off-grid ?

[Dave Sparks]

There is no other way for me than to be offgrid! I bought land to be away from the problems of too many people and their dependencies. It is not for everyone and probably less than 1% live offgrid.

There are about 32 offgrid installs/consullts under my belt and everyone of them used the Federal tax credit! You can get to my webpage and at the end is a link to pix of my place. It is a simple system and the electronics pictures are old as I test and change things around alot.

http://www.sierratel.com/offgridsolar/

I can think of very few things that are more rewarding! Just do it!

[Mike90250]

http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Updates

$50K of poles away from the powerline. 3000w array goes on the big red pole next to the generator shed. Inverters & batteries go in the other shed. 2 standby gensets, 5Kw & 2Kw, 48V system, will allow me to ease into the off grid from city living.

I guess till the PV goes up, I have a Festivus Pole.

[greenHouse]

http://tinyurl.com/LMR-Updates

$50K of poles away from the powerline. 3000w array goes on the big red pole next to the generator shed. Inverters & batteries go in the other shed. 2 standby gensets, 5Kw & 2Kw, 48V system, will allow me to ease into the off grid from city living.

I guess till the PV goes up, I have a Festivus Pole.

The system I'm planning to build for "The house I want to grow old and die in" is going to have 3KW east and 3KW west, both at 45 degrees inclination. THAT is easing into "Off-grid" living

I wanna have air conditioning. LOTS of air conditioning. With amorphous being as cheap as it is, I figure it makes a great roofing material.

[Dave Sparks]

Lot's of Solar is nice but at least 1/2 of the people who actually do this start small and add as they go. We started with 4oo watts and 18 years later only need about 1.6KW. We completed charge last year all but 7 days.

There are many strategies and as they say, Mike, "it ain't rocket science"

Your gonna love watching a winter storm blow by with the SO and a winter beverage.....

[greenHouse]

Lot's of Solar is nice but at least 1/2 of the people who actually do this start small and add as they go. We started with 4oo watts and 18 years later only need about 1.6KW. We completed charge last year all but 7 days.

There are many strategies and as they say, Mike, "it ain't rocket science"

Your gonna love watching a winter storm blow by with the SO and a winter beverage.....

Winter storms aren't the worry where I want to live -- hurricanes and hot, humid summers are.

I think amorphous, at this point, is a much better approach than polycrystalline. Charge controllers are inexpensive enough that they are practically free in the grand scheme of things. Thin film panels and roll-on sheets are regularly in the $1.00 to $2.00 a watt range, making that next kilowatt really hard to resist.

If someone is going the 2-axis tracker route, for sure I'd suggest loading that tracker up with as much monocrystalline as the checking account can stand. But as a roofing material, my money is on all things amorphous, and in large quantities.

[Dave Sparks]

Think blended topologies Julie! That's what the best are doing right now. Much better than mono if watts per square foot matters!

We don't worry about storms we enjoy them! I lived with hurricanes for a decade! You can have them! To each there own!

[netttech]

I will post another thread on the topic. The amperage load # I gave are close to accurate, but not exact. I used # given in an exercise...to calculate power load. I really think the calculator I used can't calculate the mathematic (as given in the exercise) equation properly. I don't have the numbers/execise in my den, but it seemed like it calculated an extreme number of batteries. So high, it caught my attention.

I will post the question later.

[greenHouse]

You need to, first, engage in as much conservation as possible, and second, determine your ACTUAL loads, and the duration of those loads.

A very common mistake is confusing watt-hours for amp-hours -- what matters is AMP-HOURS since chemical reactions are all about electrons, and that's amps -- and another is failing to take into account Peukert's Exponent and the impact of high loads on available capacity.

A conversation over on the OutBack board made it obvious that a paper desperately needs to be written on the subject because two installers that I respect both seem to believe that watts are what matters, rather than amps. And that's a very wrong notion.

Which is to say, if you have intermittent high loads, you're going to need more batteries to make up for the reduced capacity caused by the increased Peukert Amps associated with high demands.

[texangrinch]

offgrid laws in texas

WE are still in the building process. But Totally off the Grid. It has been an adventure. Of course just the move from Alaska to Texas was an adventure enough. After we bought our property the local electric coop convinced us with there 15,000 estimate that we should go off grid.
I look forward to conversing here
Tight Lines , Alaska

Hi
In planing in a short future to buy land in Texas, but I have seen people having problems with city planning and other regulations..and making them move from the property, or forced to destroy their buildings.
is there any link of information about that
specially Texas Hill Country

thanks