How much is it to put Solar power in ? and can you run appliances off of it?
November 7th, 2009There is a home that costs $6000us to build and I want to build one and they run on solar power and I want to find out more about it and the other systems the house uses. I’m tired of paying everything out in utilities and rent to own nothing. We live in north Georgia. The website for these homes is www.leenks.com/link60723.htm I would really appreciate feedback from anyone that has lived off the grid. We are also SCA
Hi, I live in Montana, I and many others are off the grid. Some have feed backup and sell excess to the utilities but many are totally spearate.
The site you mention is great but represents a whole different world and standard of convienance and comfort than most Americans are accustom to.
Yes, you can build a nice hovel or hole in the ground with strawbale insulation and a level of solor power used in the one depicted for $6K (not including land costs) usd if you have the know how, desire and time to do it yourself. But all three of those componants are key.
Understanding the process right from choosing the right piece of ground is knowledge intensive. Ground stability, moisture content, dainage, compaction, sterilization, just to name a few are critical factors in that initial process.
Solar is the same, it is not all just buying some panels and sticking them up there. Solor design, passive, active and storage of produced engery are also knowledge intensive processes. Not that they are difficult to understand but they do take study and understanding or you are left to the designs of others and $$$ associated with them.
Each step of the building process is frought with decissions that will combine to make the project acceptable and livable to the occupant or not.
If you are truly serious about, undertaking an effort to become totaly self reliant, and understand what that means, then take the time to learn about the alternate building and living opportunites, their advantages and disadvantages.
While the website you cite is cute, and the group in the UK that is actually doing these projects is repuatible, the site doesn’t tell the whole story. I know, I went there, I’ve saw some of their projects and other ecological living projects there.
The group is filled with very capable, well informed people, engineers, researchers, tradesmen, etc. that know their craft and have chosen to apply it in this manner.
It can be fun and very rewarding for the right sort, but for many it turns into their worst nightmare. Work toward it, learn study, practice on non critical structures. See the results of your effors and learn before striking out on your self relient adventure.
We love it and have most of the convienances of standard mid level homes in America. I an others built our place but that was after a 17 year career in realestate development. even then, I had a lot to learn.
Our home, buy the way cost over $500K in materials, and site work to achieve what I regard as comfortable off the grid living, but that is my standard. I know places here that do just fine and have under 10K invested.
Short video about the configuration of my wind turbine charge controller setup. It shows the connections from bridge rectifier to charge controller to batteries to inverter and to appliances. It also shows the system charging and dumping excess power to resistive loads.
Part of a growing trend, a Danish family of seven has installed its own wind turbine to produce all the electricity the family needs while reducing its carbon footprint.
Do-it-yourself Solar Panel
I finished the greenhouse today. The greenhouse is made from mostly recycled materials. I used discarded sliding patio doors for the glass, a screen door from Freecycle.com, 4″ stone floor, concrete patio planters for containers. The soil is 100% organic and my hopes are to provide at least a salad a day for the rest of my life, organic of course. The music playing is Wayana (sp?) on a rummage sale CD player that’s running off of the sun through 3 solar panels into a car battery, then through an inverter. It’s the first day for the solar panels. If I used an Ipod, I could power 50 -100 of them with what the old CD player is using. That would leave lots of electricity to power a laptop, the router, cable modem and printer and 12 volt florescent lights. Even the batteries in the digital camera can be recharged by using the solar panels. I’ve just discovered LED flashlights with batteries also rechargable off of the sun.
http://EnergyForEarth.net -
http://www.firstwind.com/media_center for more First Wind videos about wind energy. The construction of large wind turbines can be a local economic stimulus. Watch one town’s experience when they brought wind power to their community.
Corvallis High School’s video submission for Wal-Mart’s Earth Day Every Day Challenge.
This video is a shortened version of preparing the panels for a MESH DISH conversion. The Acrylic mirror is .118 this is also considered 1/8″ Thicker material does not form well. This is the basics for cutting the material.