What would it take to go OFF GRID.

$0.

One could simply flip the power breakers and shut off water mains and they will be "off grid" for the total cost of $0.

Ofcourse what one wants to live with or live without is the real question. And that answer will be different for everyone. And it will also depend on how much $$$ you want to dish out. For the majority of people who do not want to change they will be dishing out tens of thousands to "keep up".

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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

Actually you are right. You could test yourself by doing that now, but most people have freezers full of food and don't want to chance losing that. Or like when we moved here, we did not have a system at all and not a lot of money to buy a big one to run a whole house. So we did it one little step at a time. When people ask about how they can do it, they get discouraged real fast, learning that they have to conserve their use. Personally, I don't feel deprived at all. I run an online business and I don't have any trouble keeping up. I am on the computer pretty much all day and so is my husband, who also watches DVD's on his in the evening.

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Homesteading On The Internet
Solar Baby
Reflections of katlupe

You wouldn't happen to have a link to that fridge, would you?

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I believe in God's willingness to heal.

Cyngbaeld's Keep Heritage Farm, breeding a variety of historical birds and LaMancha goats. (It is pronounced King Bold.)

Not much different from when the gird goes down here. We are rural, so we have no municipal water.

When our power goes out, we lose both power and water. At least once/month.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

I'm off the grid right now. It's no big deal as long as I don't try to keep a "town" job in winter. I have solar lanterns and radio, wood stove, rain catch. I have been collecting up parts to run a dc fridge...the only thing I miss. It would save me gas money, and "pay for itself" in savings.
I do have cell phone and internet (limited.)
Also charged by driving too much. (Ha)
Hey, people lived a long time before electric was discovered!

Sounds like a really nice, really affordable setup. So, what does it all consist of now exactly? You can be as specific as you'd like, I'm looking to do something similar. Also, what do you plan to add to it next?

What I see as the core of my post is that those that are successful started small more as a goal and as the benefits happened reinvested their savings in the goal.
My plan is as follows.
1 My garden acreage is too small and also does not contain enough perennial plants (Fruit included)
2 My summer kitchen needs to become more like an commercial kitchen with more surfaces.
3 My business (Sawmill) needs more off grid dry kilns.
4 The business needs to generate energy more than heat for the house, IE: Gasification Generator
5 Canning needs to grow and freezing needs to be reduced.
6 The Work shop needs to be enlarged for building off grid items.

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Follow me at [url]http://www.haneyfamilysawmill.com

Sounds like you have been giving it some thought and are pretty thorough.

I hope you do a separate post on the solar kiln as I would like to see more of that. Been reading up on it lately.

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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

Had a nice long reply but I got logged out and had BIG ADS IN MY FACE. These new site owners are something else. Almost done here.

Here is my blog post with actual pictures of our refrigerator at work, SunDanzer. There are links to the product at Amazon where we purchased it, on the post. It is didn't run all winter and kept the food so cold. I can't say enough good stuff about it. We will definitely buy the freezer next, but the smaller sized one because we don't need a large freezer.

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Homesteading On The Internet
Solar Baby
Reflections of katlupe

Presently our system:

Solar Panels:
2 Kyoceria 85 watts = 170 watts
1 Argo 55 watts
1 Sieman's 50 watts (our first panel)
Matrix Photowatt 75 watts
10 Kyoceria 120 watts = 1200 watts

Total is 1550 watts from solar

Our batteries consist of 24 Exide locomotive deep cycle batteries.
Aims Power Inverter 3000 watt Pure Sine Wave 6000 watt surge
Tri-Metric Meter

Missouri Wind & Solar Charge Controller
WindMax 400 Wind turbine (It is rated at 500 watts but doesn't bring in that much)

Next:
Concentrate on getting our water system inside the house so I can use my brand new washing machine that I bought a few years back and never used.

The hot water heater will go on when the charge control switches to the diversion load, because there is more power coming in and the batteries are already fully charged. That way the power is not dumped.

Generator shed out back for the generator.

SunDanzer freezer (the smaller one)

Solar collectors on the house

I believe we will keep adding more panels. It has become my husband's favorite hobby, working on this system. So it will never be all done. Not if I know this man!

Thank you for your interest in my system. If you have any questions just ask and I can always get the answers from my husband if it is something I wouldn't know. If you want to see my equipment, just go to my blog which is in my signature.

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Homesteading On The Internet
Solar Baby
Reflections of katlupe

I am off grid. I started with a portable generator and a battery for lights,and propane for heat and cooking. Then another battery and pump for water out of the creek with a propane Coleman water heater. The generator supplies my power tools. As you can imagine there is very little cost involved except gasoline. I did spend about $1400 for a propane refrigerator

The first off grid system I had was when I was living on my boat. 12v DC battery, one small (16" x 24" ) solar panel and some 12 volt lighting and a 12 volt blender. That was before computers and internet.

Then after moving ashore, there were the six to ten panels on the roof (the system grew over time), charge controller, inverter, battery bank and gas generator back up. That ran a "regular" household although we monitored usage very closely. We also had curly light bulbs, cooked with gas, gas water heater and no A/C. But Hawaii doesn't need A/C, it doesn't get nasty hot here. Doesn't do the cold thing either so no house heaters. Electric blankets do real well on photovoltaic systems, surprisingly enough.

Now since we've bought a house in town that was connected to the grid, we were on the grid for about a year. First time I'd been on the grid in three decades. Then there was this hot tub at a yard sale at a price too low to resist. Plugged that in and the electric bills went whacko. Our electric is about forty four cents a kilowatt hour so that racks up pretty quick.

We now have a "grid tie" system. Eighteen Sharp 240 watt panels on the roof, each one has it's own Enphase Micro-inverter so we have 120 volts coming off the roof. No battery bank, no generator backup, just a $20 per month maintenance fee to be attached to the grid. If we use more power than we make, then we have to pay for the extra, but we usually have excess. The extra gets banked from month to month although once a year they zero it out so that sucks.

Total cost was $20K, but tax credits and rebates knocked that down by 60% so we only end up paying $8K for the system. We have a 2.75 year payback time and it's been up there for a year. It will pay for itself before we are done using up the tax credits.

The house is a "normal" house, electric refrigerator (max. 22 cubic feet with ice maker in the freezer, freezer on top and EnergyStar), computers, TVs, stereo, vacuums, power tools, electric water heater and that hot tub of course. Which started the whole thing. We're also switching things over to electric since we make more than we use, electric coffee maker instead of the stovetop one, electric rice cookers, etc. Might get an electric ceramic kiln or a welder to use up the "extra" power before we get zero'd out each year.