What would it take to go OFF GRID.
 

With the turmoil in the world I have been putting in all building equations "off grid".
What I am looking at are when I build a Dry Kiln for my mill using Solar as the primary, When I dispose Slabs use a Gasifier to convert them to electricity at peak electrical usage times. Using Solar greenhouses to heat water which I would store in the root cellar for heat supplement.
What I have come up with is that most of the projects when people look to have them are to encompassing and defect their self before they are implemented.
I recommend all homesteads to strive to be off grid, but off grid is a goal and benefits are there even if you become partially off grid.
I recommend that you look for the long run of your homestead 100 years from now. Yes I understand that you may not have a child with the inkling of your homestead but all we can do is have faith that our lifestyle will speak for itself and others will follow and if they do they won't have to reinvent the wheel.
Now for the million dollar question if you were to wake up in teh morning and decide to be off grid what would be the cost?

I researched solar panel prices last year. Plus wiring, charge controller, etc. Also batteries and a gas generator.
Along with that, I also figured in rewiring my house for all 12volt dc.
Only needing an inverter for refrigerator. Also putting 12volt dc motor on wood stove blower and a 12volt well pump.
I was looking at almost $16,000
That also included 2 smaller wind generators.
Now, add in the cost of building a solar water heater, and replacing the lp cookstove with a wood burning cookstove, and for summertime comfort in the house, build a small summer/canning kitchen. That means another wood cookstove.
That all adds about $10,000 +/-
Then I have the cost of the psychiatrist bills for the mental anguish associated with my wife and kids no longer having cell phones, internet, etc.....lol

The cost would be a lifestyle change.

Going off grid is more about using less electricity, than it is about generating it yourself.

Paul

Rambler, I understand what you are saying, and agree to a point. But "off grid" means disconnected to public utilities, mainly the power grid.
Off grid doesn't have to mean live in the dark like the pioneers.

I lived off of the grid comfortably for about 2 years. With no lifestyle changes, the cost would be prohibitive for most. You can live off of the grid spending a few hundred or tens of thousands.

We did it for a few years and loved it, however it was completely different than how we live on grid. Personally I would go back to it in a heartbeat and hope to someday but due to DH job we had no choice but to do what we are doing now.

We had 3- 125 watt solar panels and a battery bank of 8 batteries. We ran our lights, tv, and small appliances off of that. We had a wood stove for heat and used a propane refr. and stove. Laundry was done with a hand washer from Lehman's and a clothes line. Water was catchment and we hauled some water in a water tank that fit in the back of our truck. TV was antenna and we used internet only in town when we needed to. WE had a propane auto. hot water system and sometimes just warmed water on top of the wood stove. Composting toilet and a gravity shower. WE also had a small generator to use in the summer for air-cond. if we needed to cool of the house but that was seldom as fans worked on our solar panels.

Just talking about it makes me homesick to go back. It was so peaceful. WE weren't completely off grid I guess but pretty close to it. We were set up where we could go completely off grid if we needed to. Storms scared everyone that their elec. would go out but we just laughed at them. We were good to go....always had elec. and wood heat....no worries. This year I worried we would freeze to death if our elec. went out. :)

The problem with people in todays mindset and also wanting to avoid electric bills, is that people want to live as they are used to today, AND YET have the convience as they are used to living it, with NO electric bill

My folks and grand folks and on back didn't go to bed when the sun went down for the heck of it. They had kero, but at a dime a gal, they couldn't afford to be using it just to stay up late. Sides, IF they were holding onto the lines of 3 or 4 horses all day, they were ready to go to bed as quick as they could. Same if they were cutting wood, setting fence posts, thrashing/haying, ect.
Someone said kids get into trouble today cause they got nothing better to do. Put them behind 4 rangy mules on a Gang Plow all day, and theyed be ready to go to sleep laying on the cows flank as they milked her.
IF you throwed out every electrical appliance, what would you replace them with? IF you sold them at auction, you might get enough to pay for a 1/5th for a replacement for a appliance that was non electric.

Get rid of the electric can opener, mixer, butter churn, iron, hair curler, barber clippers, griddle, microwave, mixer, iron. Fans, air conditioner, clocks, TV, puter, (another hard one to give up), heat lamps, brooder heaters.
washer, dryer, stove, both gas or electric heating and range, refrigerator and freezer, both electric and gas, IF YOUR GOING TO TRY TO ADVOID A ELECTRIC BILL, MIGHT AS WELL GO ALL THE WAY AND AVOID A GAS BILL ALSO.
Saws, drill. charger. (That would be a hard one to lose, as theres nothing to replace it, other than keeping a GOOD spare battery). grinder,

WHAT would you replace all these tools/appliances with? Many, you could find at a big auction like where I go to, OR at a big antique store. The rest, you would have to buy new, like from Lehmans, ect. Refrigeration, especially down here in this latitude, Okla, it would be hard to keep anything cool or cold.

Id suppose IF you only wanted to partially go off grid, you would/could evaluate each of the abover, as to the necessity of having itr remain electric, and replace what you didn't need to be so. Course, in still maintaining a electric service, you pay a certain amount whether you use the service or not. SO, in all likely ood, to see a significant drop in the electric bill, you would need to dispense with electric all together.

Ive tried to get rid of all plastic things in the house, and on the farm. Ive had a HECK of a time achieving that.

We have been off grid for a couple years now. The initial cost was around $5,000. Plus another grand this year to get more batteries. This provides power for our frige, chest freezer, washer, lights and tv/ internet and well. Most of this has been a lifestyle change. We heat with wood and cook with propane. Our house has 110 wiring so none of our appliances are 12v. We use LED light bulbs and only a small flat panel tv, iPad for computer. The only time we have had to use our generator is if we have days of no sun to beef up the batteries.

Blow dryers, vacuums, toaster etc.. All use a lot of power. This creates to much of a draw on the batteries and we don't do that. If my husband needs to use big tools he runs the generator and runs the tools of that.

My husband also installed all of this himself to save money. We have 6 -180 watt panels, xantrex mppt60? Charge controller, 2000 watt inverter, 4 220amp hr batteries and a gizmo to plug in generator to batteries and charge controller. He built the racks himself. We have no grid tie since it was $10,000 away.

Most of this requires thinking about your power. Checking your batteries before doing laundry. Doing the monthly maintance. Also realizing that you pay in advance for your power instead of getting a monthly bill.

Here, I would save around $500/800 a year if I didn't have electric. Id have to wait 10yrs to make the amount of changes you have made. That would be fine if I were 21 again. Not hardly worth it at 66, and my wood cutting days are near an end.

I know someone that's been off grid for about 8 years.. he just recently got electricity.. He had nothing before hand.. no solar... If he needed any power tools for working on his house, he used a generator.. other than that, he lived with no electric.. I couldn't do it, but he said he had no problems with it..

So, the answer is, it could cost you nothing so long as you're good with no electric.. Water can come from streams or springs if you don't drill a well.. you can use the outdoors as your toilet..

As mentioned.. it all depends on what you want to live with or without as to what it's gonna cost you..

I've got free gas.. I could run a generator on it 24 hours... so it would cost me the upkeep of the engine... fairly cheap..

I had to laugh a little at this. I would go to antique stores and ask for items and they would tell me that it could be "cute" if it was cleaned up....and I would say well does it work? They would look at me like I was crazy. Yep, I was looking for things to do what we needed done the old way without elec. or gas.

Well, I was thinking of coffee pots, which I bought one last winter and loved it. irons, dryer racks, sewing machines, can openers, push vacumn cleaners, water pumps, cook ranges, ice boxes, wringer washer and tubs, crocks, doagh makers possibly, kero lamps, battery radios, butter churn, hand drills, and saws, . Stuff like that.

I lived off grid for 5 years. After a few got a used propane (Serval) fridge. Charged batterys , the ex worked some, the truck charged. Outhouse. 12 V. lights. Truck attached by a belt to a generator without engine to pump water into the overhead tanks, 1 was a propane hotwater heater. All gravity fed,shower and sink. Wood heat , stove and a radio from a car(12 v.). Heck, it would be really sweet now with all the 12v gadgets one can buy.
Here in this place we'd need a windmill , we have more wind than sun, but between the 2, it would work out.ps. I've collected antiques for years, and prefer most of it over the newfangled stuff. But I would hate washing clothing by hand, I'm messy.

That's what the Jamesway washer is for that Lehman sells.

I need a new battery bank, and a place to live that isn't triple digits for months on end and so humid you need refrigerated a/c. We lived off grid for quite a few yrs in Colorado.

We have lived off-the-grid now since 1999 and our mindset is that it is not old fashioned or doing thing like pioneers or the Amish, for us, it is the way of the future. In the beginning we only had one 55 watt solar panels, a tiny charge controller and 2 fork-lift truck batteries (bought locally at Raymond Corp. where my husband was employed at the time). If we had to charge our batteries due to no sun (and in NY that is pretty common) we used our old car. It was cheap and it worked. We have slowly over the years added more components and better models. Now we have 10 panels and a wind turbine.

As for it being a lifestyle change, well, of course, it is. But I remember the struggle to pay those electric bills over the years. That was a worse lifestyle than living off-the-grid. Sometimes I have to wait to get on the computer due to the power being down (because I stayed on my computer longer than usual the day before, while my husband was watching dvds on his computer). We are slowly adding conveniences back into our life. Our system did not cost that much money at all. Maybe $5000 total over time. No loans or debt to get it. We plan on adding to it probably forever.

Off-the-grid does mean that you are not connected to the electric company. It does not mean you have to live like it was 1830.

We did the research. I have metered every outlet to see exactly how much power each circuit uses. We have shifted some appliances to newer 'Energy Star' models.

We have our PV array in place. We are now saving up for the Black-box and battery-bank.

We should be able to make the shift over to off-grid, without any big changes in our lifestyle, for about $20k.



My Dw's biggest concern was that she wants to avoid shifting energy consumption from one source to another source. We have seen folks who dump their electric refrigerator in favor on a propane refrigerator. Well that may reduce your electric consumption, but then you buy more propane.

The same with kerosene, ....

We have recently, last July, bought our electric solar refrigerator and it has made our life much easier. It never turned on once all winter, this morning is the first time since it got cold. I love it. Our system was not big enough to run a regular refrigerator. In the early years we had the propane refrigerator, then we went 6 years without one so we could save up the money and build our system bigger and eventually buy this refrigerator. This one uses less power than my laptop.

We lived off grid for about 3 years. Our only 'on grid' luxury was city water. We used a gas generator coupled with 4 solar panels and a deep cell battery for power to run the computer, coffee pot and when needed, microwave oven.

The year of the heat wave and 110 degree weather prompted us to install electricity and go on grid. We are not as young as we used to be and that air conditioning felt mighty good when we switched it on for the first time.

The cost for being off grid was the price of the generator, solar panels from Harbor Freight, deep cell battery and the extension cords/power converter to make it all work. The big draw was the gas for the generator and the expense of making regular runs to the gas station to fill the gas cans.

Personally I think our expenses in equipment was about 2,000 dollars. Wiring the house for electricity and having the power company hook us in, probably around 8,000.

The thing is that we know that if push comes to shove, we can survive without electricity. At this point we just don't want to.

I stayed at a "resort" in the Belizian jungle off the grid. They had a generator that used generated hydropower from the river to power the whole place.

$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. :nana:

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".

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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. :cool:

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.

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.

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.