Getting Your Off-Grid Power Systems Ready for Winter Written by Alan Smith The winter season has arrived on schedule. For those of you in cold and snowy climates, now is a good time to review the maintenance and condition of your off grid power system. For those of you in...
Off The Grid Homes Your own independent off grid power systems can provide most electric conveniences at a remote home site, where bringing in utility lines would be impossible or prohibitively expensive. Just extending utility power 1/4 mile or more to reach a home site can cost $15,000 and up,...
Appliance Selection for Off-Grid Homes Here are some important points about selecting appliances for your off-grid home and some wiring tips for solar panels for homes and off grid solar systems. This is a little different than you might expect for utility connected off the grid homes, and the difference...
DC Refrigerators - Protect Your Food with a Back Up Off-Grid Power Solution In a power outage the food in your home becomes your most important and valuable asset. Protecting the food you've sourced with off-grid power will be the best decision you could make for your family. One of the...
How Much Power Do You Use & How Many Solar Panels Do You Need? TO CALCULATE HOW MUCH OFF-GRID POWER YOU WOULD USE: Start by finding how many watts each appliance needs. Be sure you use watt figures from special energy-efficient appliances recommended for solar electric homes, like compact fluorescent...
Why an MPPT Charge Controller is Needed for Solar Panels in Certain Situations Most higher wattage solar panels are designed for the grid-tie market where array voltage is not as critical as compared to an off-grid battery based system. A 200+ watt panel with an operating voltage in the range...
When to Use DC Appliances and Voltage Converters Direct Current (DC) power in certain applications makes living off the grid less costly and more luxurious. Some folks hesitate to use their battery DC power directly, fearing complexity in wiring for different voltages or believing DC requires large wires throughout the...
Wiring Your Off Grid Home for Efficiency AC Breaker Box An inverter produces 120 volt AC. Normally no 240 volt AC will be used in the off an grid home, only 120 volt AC. So you just feed the same 120 volt hot wire to both legs of the...
Upgrade Your Off-Grid System Did you go off the grid ages ago? 5 years? 10 years? 15 years or more? You may have seen today's prices on solar panels and feel a bit envious. Now is a good time to add a second array to an existing system for minimal...
Off-Grid Solar Array Sizing Once you’ve determined your daily energy consumption in watt-hours, follow the advice offered below. There are many methods used for calculating your system’s solar array size. Traditionally off-grid systems are sized using a worst-case scenario of sun hours for December 21st, the shortest day...
Off-Grid Battery Sizing Worksheet We suggest a battery bank sized to provide enough energy for three days of energy consumption without any charging (solar, hydro, wind, generator) and that will not deplete the battery bank’s capacity by more than 50% and that will compensate for a battery...
Off-Grid Load Calculation Worksheet Start by finding how many watts each appliance will consume. Do not add appliances that should be propane-fueled, such as cooktops, hot water heaters and electric heat. Then multiply rated wattage of each appliance by the number of hours per day, on average, that appliance runs....
