That said, a few solar panels, windmill, batteries, and inverter would provide you with enough dependable electrical power for low wattage lighting, radio, laptop, wireless Internet, small TV and etc.l
I have a 3KW solar panel grid-tie system. On a sunny day, it generates well over 15KW. Our 2,700SF deep South home is all electric and for the last two months, we've had to buy roughly 2,000 KW a month from the electric company. Last year, without the solar system, we had two buy twice that amount of power.
The system actually saves about 1/4 but has caused us to become more energy aware and that adds about another 1/4 for 1/2 cost of last year.
Without the government rebates (state 50% and fed 35%) it wouldn't have been worth it. Very glad we've had it installed though since costs of electricity have increased over 10% this year alone.
You're doing the right thing by becoming self-sufficent!
In your climate, I'd recommend three to four feet of blown cellulose in the ceiling at minimum.
Hey great!!! For only a forty thousand dollar investment, you’ll be able to warm up a cup of tea—sometimes even twice a day!!!! PT Barnum and WC Fields had a name for people like this.
It really depends on how much juice you need to power only what you should run, if the SHTF. One should expect to run only minimal devices, such as radio, heat, reefer (off and on), etc., to get through the outages. If your wind power generation is 25% now, that is excellent for when the SHTF. Any flowing water nearby?
We have had solar for around 25 years and are in a similar climate. It hasn’t been much use in the winter, so we rely on our wood stove. We also have a generator that we have used to keep our well pump and refrigerator going.
well, if you want a 40 year payback on an item that lasts 30 years, go ahead.
I used to be in construction before I decided to go back to college and get my EE and started designing microprocessors.
Spend the $$ first on making sure your home is fully insulated in the walls, floor and ceiling. This is within the abilities of most home owners.
Get a Kill-O-Watt ($20) and find out where all the high current devices are in your house. Changing them to more energy efficient versions will help more.
Just doing this will save real $$$ while having to spend 20k for a solar array which might save you $10/month.
Lousy idea where you live but if you want a lot more information go to Yahoo.com and join a blog there that will give you a ton of ideas. SIMPLYSOLAR
Your welcome
The system has a moderate battery bank (24VDC) and a 4KW Trace inverter, and whatever source is available charges the batteries.
Spring, summer, and fall, the solar panels provide enough power for my highly-efficient home. Winter... not so much. Sun is a rarity. The wind generator being down at the moment, I have to run the gasoline genny for a few hours once or twice a week to keep the batteries topped up. Usually the wind genny would suffice, since it's pretty windy up here; not steady, but enough.
What you want to do can be done -- I'm doing similar. But it is not effortless. Clearing ice and snow off the panels after a storm is a pain; keeping track of the battery state of charge is a pain.
But on the upside, no electric bill, and the capital investment in the panels, batteries, and inverter has long since amortized away. The local power company (NYSEG) can fail and I don't even know it until a friend calls to ask how I'm doing in the blackout, and I tell them I wasn't aware there was one!
They seem to work well with small things. I have solar front gate that was to far away from my house to run electric to it. I also have some solar fans and lights in the barn. They all work well.
However, I also live in Florida.
Great - if you’re in New Mexico or someplace else with 300+ days of sunshine per year.
The people you need to talk to are the Earthship home designers. http://earthship.com/
They specialize is building “off the grid” homes. You should have a look their site and see if they have any info on building self-sufficient homes in your environment.
Today, my local paper here in NC ran a story about about a guy who recently installed some solar panels.
http://www.salisburypost.com/News/020811-Ken-Clifton-Solar-Power-qcd
Apparently, there is some new technology called ‘micro-inverters’ that are a cheaper way to convert DC to AC.
The guy who the article is about has a blog detailing the steps he took:
http://www.kenclifton.com/wordpress/?cat=14
Wherever you are, you might want to mimic the way the Amish generate their own electricity - generally a combination of roof mounted solar panels and one or two residential sized wind turbines, all charging one or more banks of storage batteries. They tend not to draw a lot of electricity in the house, but they have barns, milking parlors and shops with demands that are comparable to the English.
