How much is it to put Solar power in ? and can you run appliances off of it?

Question

There 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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

I agree with John's conclusion. To protect against power outages, what you really want is a portable generator. It will be small, cheap, and low maintenance, considering how rarely you use it. The kind of solar that will provide power day or night is expensive, because of the batteries required. I think that 38 cents per kWh would buy a system including batteries, though. Another type of system, the kind we have, has no batteries, and does not provide backup power when the grid goes down. If the system we have were installed today, it would be more like 7 cents per kWh before incentives, perhaps 5 cents per kWh after. But we live in an area that is pretty much optimum for solar. In a cloudy or northern climate, or where labor rates are high, it could run several times that.

Answer 3

it matters which appliances you want
if you just want a couple fleurescent or LED lights, then that is cheap
refridgerators use alot of power but most people consider them nessesary.

If you were willing to do without a dishwasher, that would help
electric clothes dryers use a ton of power.
maybe a clothesline will do for you
and a woodstove for heat if there are many trees around you.

if you have a stream then mini-hydro would be a much better way to make electricity
or if it is windy there, put up a wind turbine

I think solar panels are about $5 per watt
then you need batteries, a charge controller, and an inverter

there is a magazine called homepower that will teach you about it

good luck

Answer 4

To be compleytly off the grid with the same amount of electricity the average homeowner uses will run around 20,000 dollars US. Some of theis can be recovered in tax rebates and selling back power to the local utility. The technology is changing rapidly so do some research as my figures are over a year old.

Answer 5

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