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I've been given the option to buy a really nice parcel of cabin land for dirt cheap and the only options for power are solar/wind or generators. Before I buy it I want to do a little more research, but with all the nutjobs trying to get off the grid finding reputable information or vendors seems like a daunting task. Anybody with any knowledge able to steer me in the right direction?
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May 10, 2016 14:21
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| # ? May 3, 2024 00:14 |
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I can tell you right away it's going to be awful unless you want to invest a boatload of money into it.
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May 10, 2016 22:51
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Boiled Water posted:I can tell you right away it's going to be awful unless you want to invest a boatload of money into it. Well, I mean, I'm going to be spending money on it. I understand the cost that goes into this Edit: It'd also be nice to know because I'm an electrician and getting some knowledge in niche markets is never a bad thing.
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May 11, 2016 00:05
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It depends on what you're talking about, I guess. Is this gonna be a hunting/fishing/vacation cabin where you just want an AC unit at night and maybe a coffeemaker in the morning, or are you talking about a primary residence type of situation? The former is pretty easy and can be fairly cheap as far as these things go. The latter can go gently caress itself imo.
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May 11, 2016 02:11
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find out what rebates your state offers first. If you have more specific questions I can ask my dad who has been selling and installing solar for the last 2 decades
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May 11, 2016 06:58
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It would be very expensive to run any meaningful A/C with a solar/wind power system. Outside of that, you live in a good era to have this problem. You can get a decently sized TV that burns 100 watts, LED light bulbs burn <10 watts, cell phone / computer / tablet / are all very low wattage. Furthermore, your solar will produce DC, your batteries will store DC, and all that stuff will use DC - no inverter loss. We looked at some off-grid beach housing in Mexico a few years ago, the houses were very nice, state of the art, with no water, no sewer, no power, and no gas. They truck in the water and gas, septic the sewer, and solar panels feeding a bank of batteries in the garage.
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May 11, 2016 07:32
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Khizan posted:It depends on what you're talking about, I guess. Is this gonna be a hunting/fishing/vacation cabin where you just want an AC unit at night and maybe a coffeemaker in the morning, or are you talking about a primary residence type of situation? The former is pretty easy and can be fairly cheap as far as these things go. The latter can go gently caress itself imo.
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Nov 3, 2016 00:23
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Like everything else, it depends on what you want. If you want the kind of convenience you get from utility service, well that's prohibitively expensive. You haven't said where this cabin will be located, I'm assuming somewhere that is temperate in the summer, cause you can go ahead and nix having a/c. Other than that, in short you can easily heat with wood/gas/pellets in a well insulated cabin, and use solar panels and batteries to store power for, like, charging your phone or other smallish electronic devices pretty cheap.Then have a generator to run occasionally for whatever else. You planning to put down a well? Trying to have running water is another potential headache, not impossible just depends on your budget and how you expect to use it.
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Nov 6, 2016 16:28
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When we moved out to rural hawaii (big island) we did the research and shopping to go full solar and it was one of the awesomest decisions we've made. Its daunting at first, but having solar is pretty bad rear end especially if you DIY. I ordered stuff from an Idaho company "Backwoods Solar" mostly because they were close enough to where we were in WA state that we could visit and see stuff in person. They also have various "kits" for DIY'ers. However its still daunting as gently caress when you get all these parts and poo poo and have to wire it to an electrical box etc. We run a full house on our $10k kit (48v system, 9x 265w panels, a beefy 4400 inverter and 8x L16 batteries for storage). On a good day we pull in around 6~8 KWh and plenty to spare. At night playing games and watching TV we drain about 20-25%...we'd like to get another set of panels to keep things topped off and eventually a few more batteries. For a small cabin - you could get away with around 200~400watts (2x 300w panels and youre set) and that'd be plenty to power a full sized fridge and 1 electronic device (laptop/PC/TV etc). You will not however have the amps to run anything heavy duty like an A/C or power tools.... DO NOT buy wind generation devices, their output is stupid low for their cost even if you get 24hr wind. Here we get very gusty sea breezes and its just not worth the it for a personal wind turbine (also they spin up in the wind and make horrible HORRIBLE noise) and they are tall and fugly. Edit: Also get a small gas generator for days you get low or no sunlight so you can top-off the batteries. We have a big rear end 6250watt running genny, but something like a 2200w would be fine for you. For water - look into a catchment tank, they are super common here in Hawaii. Slayerjerman fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 08:11
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Keep in mind as well, that renewable and/or highly sustainable energy systems require a lot more maintenance than the choices most folks live with. For instance if you don't regularly clean your PVC arrays, you'll get buildup from lichens and moss and/or tree leaves and pine needles depending on your environment, or you might have dust problems. Hell, even just rainwater evaporating leaves a residue. You really want to be cleaning that on a regular schedule. Regular maintenance is like 30% of making renewable energy feasible, and more like 80% of why it often fails after the implementation stage.. Energy managers get laid off after a company sees savings for instance, and then after a year or two, all those complicated systems start running like a car engine without oil, and then they begin to fail and cause a cascade effect and then the managers bemoan and blame the systems instead of going "oh hey, they only failed because nobody was keeping them running at top notch performance."
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Nov 9, 2016 23:29
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I live in South Africa, in a suburb of Johannesburg and have been 100% off the grid (not connected to municipal power at all) since about a year ago with great success, using a PV Solar installation. (with a backup 40kVA generator which hasn't been required since system is fully running) We had a number of teething problems when it started as a smaller system, especially in terms of managing power usage, which were essentially solved through going bigger and over engineering everything. Outside of simply going larger on the PV Installation & Batteries, we also changed a lot of other stuff, such as replacing old geysers with solar water heaters, more efficient aircons, full LED lighting in the house, electric stove & oven to gas and so on. This made a massive difference. Since that point it has been absolutely perfect, and we run a large house with 4 people without restricting ourselves in terms of energy consumption at all. In terms of maintenance, keeping the panels clean is really the only issue that I have to deal with, and it comes down to me cleaning my panels with a high pressure hose whenever they get dirty, which isn't too bad of a job (and usually outsourced to my gardener). Obviously this depends on how your house is set up and how reachable the panels are, but if it's a cabin, it should be a 5 minute job tops? If your panels are on the roof of a 4 level house, this will become a much bigger problem. The cost of the panels was pretty reasonable, but the batteries & inverters were pretty expensive. Furthermore, the batteries have a life expectancy of 5 to 7 years and will then need replacing. I doubt that it will pay for itself for the next decade, but in my case it solved some other issues such as regular power outages through load-shedding and some really creative billing by the municipality and the following fallout I had with them. I don't know the technical aspects of it as I simply hired someone to install everything, but in terms of brands I am using Panels: Solar Frontier x 96 Batteries: Hoppecke x 24 Inverters etc: Victron The basis for purchasing above brands was due to all being high quality components, and them all being customers of mine as well. Lessons learnt: 1. As a starting point, I would ensure that all appliances / lighting etc are changed to energy efficient equipment. 2. We then began to measure consumption of electricity over a period of two weeks to determine equipment needed (which I understand you can't do, but as an electrician this shouldn't be a problem for you?) 3. Batteries were the key to the system as most of my consumption is after the sun has set and family is at home running TVs, Aircons, making dinner and so on. 4. We are using way more panels than we need in order to ensure that the batteries are always fully charged and hence extend their lifespan. Panels are cheap and have a long lifespan, batteries are neither. 5. It's not likely to pay for itself in even the medium term, which is a result of many factors such as the over-engineering part as well as the fact that we are off the grid without actually being willing to restrict our energy usage in any way. 6. The fact that in winter, when my consumption is highest, we also have 95% sunny days, plays a big role in making it work (combined with low temperatures, which also increases efficiency) I am very happy with the decision to go Solar, and it works better and more reliably than South African municipal power. The feeling of smugness I get when I turn my sound system to full volume for the benefit of my neighbours during power outages helps set off the money spent immensely too. (I am aware I am a man-child, my wife points it out to me daily) Here's a bunch of pictures, I can go into more detail in terms of actual specs etc if needed, but have to get them from my installer as I still consider electricity some sort of scary voodoo magic.   
BlueBull fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Nov 10, 2016 |
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Nov 10, 2016 08:08
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When you say energy are you referring to electrical or thermal? If thermal, you can do solar hot powered water coupled with radiant floor heating for pretty cheap... Electricity, not so much.
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Nov 13, 2016 13:07
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^^ Heat is energy, it really doesn't matter what kind of energy you've got as much as if you've got the ability to sustain it, but floor heat/cooling would be badass in a situation like this, if you linked it to an active radiant system feeding off of the passive solar oneBlueBull posted:I live in South Africa, in a suburb of Johannesburg and have been 100% off the grid (not connected to municipal power at all) since about a year ago with great success, using a PV Solar installation. (with a backup 40kVA generator which hasn't been required since system is fully running)  cost every few years though, batteries are definitely the weakest point of any system which cannot provide on-demand energy through other means as necessary - I might consider adding more digitally automated controls and setting up a genny to turn itself on to cut off peak loads (and because motors that don't regularly run, don't want to start).I'm curious - did you explore geothermal for cooling or heating? It could potentially really cut down on the number of solar arrays you need to cover peak demands, because the earth is a giant thermal dump which you can pour heat into or leech heat out of to sustain livable conditions with really extraordinarily low maintenance and equipment costs. I'm assuming beause you live in a clime which specifically has a ridiculous amount of solar availability you're mainly only worrying about storing enough energy for overnight or maybe a day or two of bad weather for the most part. Is your heating and cooling load entirely by on-demand electrical devices or are you using passive building to leech all that gorgeous amount of sunlight in your climate? Did you build your southern-facing wall as an extra-thick heat sink made of brick or concrete, for intance? That pays off in both hot and cold temps, in loads and loads in an environment like yours. Do you have any way to reclaim lost heat and other energy when you use hot water for dishes or a shower, or heat something up on the range to cook, etc? You can reclaim a pretty significant amount of therms from your outflow exhaunst and plumbing systems for instance. Also what kind of greywater reclamation are you using? In a clime like yours I imagine water must be super expensive unless you're using your own private well and pretending that it's never going to get dirty or run out. But storage is always the big "gently caress you" of living off the grid. With a system l;ike yours I'd actually be more interested in getting in touch with my local utility providers and offering to allow them to use my structure and systems as a buffer in case of emergency power spikes - it's super common in commerical and industrial buildings for the private company to have a big fuel tank and backup system in place to provide power for themselves if and when things like long-stretch cold snaps, or disasters, fck up the main grid and the demand skyrockets. and for your sake I hope you are doing maintance runs on that backup genny every month or two at least, and not leaving it with old fuel gumming up the parts. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Nov 15, 2016 |
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Nov 15, 2016 03:02
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I haven't really looked into Geothermal energy, as it's not something that is available at all, especially not for the consumer market in South Africa. Scanning over a few websites I see they talk about having to go 4000m deep, and considering the cost of drilling it's not really an option. You're spot on regarding the climate & biggest issue being the storage part, and considering the current drought we are experiencing with sunshine all day everyday, I am not quite sure how long the system can actually last in bad weather conditions. But again, I have a diesel generator as well in case of emergency. In terms of starting it every so often, I have a maintenance contract with someone who services it, starts it and so on. Regarding insulation / passive building, I have *very* little going on outside of insulation above my ceilings. No double-glazed windows or anything of the sort either, we basically took a brute power approach at solving the electricity problem, as my wife would have murdered me if I had started replacing all the windows for example whilst she was pregnant or with baby in the house. It's on the to-do list in the future, but making sure we have enough water so our garden doesn't die whilst we have an ongoing drought is taking up all financial resources really. On the subject of water, we are currently building our final underground storage tank of 150,000 Liters for a grand total of just under 700,000 liters due to the current drought in South Africa and associated penalties for using municipal water for the pool / garden. Nevermind ethical concerns, i.e. watering my garden whilst people are suffering. See pic below to get an idea of the size of it. I'll take a picture of one of the completed ones when the manhole cover isn't as hot as the surface of the sun.  The underground tanks are fed from a bunch of boreholes as well as rainwater from the gutters. As the property is on a hill, we have also sneakily installed a drain in the road outside of the boundary wall with a pipe into the top tank, so we can grab any rainwater running down the road. Once the last tank is done, we will connect it to a computerized irrigation system for the garden as well as a small water purification plant for drinking water (apparently I can have sparkling water directly from the tap!) The tanks are all built on different levels, so once the top one is full it feeds the next and so on until it reaches above tank. We are not doing anything with our grey water at present, but that's on the long project list for the future and will likely consist of another smaller tank being built seperate from the main tanks, only to be used for irrigating a small section of the garden. One day. This will then mean that we are for all intents and purposes living off the grid with the exception of sewage. I have no survivalist tendencies or anything of the sort, but power / water outages were quite frequent some time back in South Africa, and we prefer to have control over everything ourselves. Boreholes are common in our area, with many people also now starting to use 10,000L plastic tanks for storage. Also, the water issue may kill off our garden into which decades of work and money has gone, which is not really acceptable to us. We have made inquiries into feeding excess power back into the grid but this is not currently allowed where I live, so excess power during the day is transferred to another house next door to bring their consumption levels down. They have no storage at all, so it's really just a matter of reducing the electricity bill in this case.
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Nov 17, 2016 15:35
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BlueBull posted:I haven't really looked into Geothermal energy, as it's not something that is available at all, especially not for the consumer market in South Africa. Scanning over a few websites I see they talk about having to go 4000m deep, and considering the cost of drilling it's not really an option. He's not talking about geothermal energy, which is the "use the heat of the earth to drive a steam turbine" type of thing. He's talking about geothermal HVAC, which basically just takes advantage of the fact that the temperature ~8 feet or so below the surface of the earth pretty much stays the same all year round. You basically have a big water loop buried underground that works as a heat exchanger. In the winter it uses the loop as a heat source to warm your house, and in the summer it uses it as a heat sink to cool it off.
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Nov 17, 2016 15:59
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Khizan posted:He's not talking about geothermal energy, which is the "use the heat of the earth to drive a steam turbine" type of thing. He's talking about geothermal HVAC, which basically just takes advantage of the fact that the temperature ~8 feet or so below the surface of the earth pretty much stays the same all year round. Thanks for explaining, but no, we have nothing of the sort available really down here to the best of my knowledge. I'll speak to my suppliers if this is something that we can have a look at, benefits and fit with the climate and so on next time I see him. I am using normal split-type units for Aircon, mostly for cooling purposes as it rarely gets proper cold where I live, and even then, it's for a very short time only.
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Nov 18, 2016 06:26
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If you're looking at geothermal with an off grid solar electric system, you have to watch out for the power consumption of the pumps. A couple horsepower pump with a duty cycle of 12 hours a day is not unheard of, but that adds up to a couple kwh more per day the electric system has to be sized to support, which adds a few thousand dollars to the cost of the system. Keep your eye out for designs that use pumps that are more energy efficient. Don't get obsessed with it, just be aware of it.
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Nov 19, 2016 20:20
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| # ? May 3, 2024 00:14 |
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Internetjack posted:If you're looking at geothermal with an off grid solar electric system, you have to watch out for the power consumption of the pumps. Unless your house is truly massive you shouldn't need anything more than a fractional horsepower motor to power the ground-loop circulation pump.
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Nov 20, 2016 17:50
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