Is there someone here living in the U.S. with practical knowledge and experience with solar energy as pertains to setting up a house to be "off the grid" that would be willing to spend some time on the telephone with me?

I am at the very haziest beginnings of an idea that might involve this, and need to find out whether my ideas are feasible and affordable, where to obtain the things I would need, pitfalls to avoid, installation/construction requirements, maintenance requirements, information about government subsidies/tax breaks, etc.

I am woefully ignorant on this topic and would be pretty much starting the learning process from scratch. If you are able to help and would like to do so, please PM me with a phone number and a day/time that would be convenient for you and we'll see if you can teach this old dog a few new tricks.

Thanks in advance.

tanstaafl.

I haven't started my 'off-grid' project at my property yet, but I've been looking around for good sources of information.
Here's my favorite magazine:
http://www.homepower.com/
It's worth the subscription, IMO.
Good luck!

These guys I've found to be pretty good:

http://www.solardepot.com/r_solar_electric_systems.htm

Wow, according to their numbers, I would need over 1.5 times the area of my entire roof in order to make up my power consumption needs. (as well as $200k or so in spare change, that's more than my house cost). At that rate, It would take me -=40=- YEARS to make up the difference. I think I'll be waiting a while

FSCK! I had a grand post but my cat ate it!

Doug, I second the HomePower magizine. You can download the previous to current issue for free, along with many other good articles. The also sell the entire back catoluge on CD for $190, which would be a good investment.

I do have to ask as to why you want to be off the grid. Is it something to do with the utilities, the high cost of power, wanting to be green, wanting to be energy independent?
The reason I ask is that the battery part of an off the grid install is a chunk of change. If you stay grid connected you can use the grid as a battery selling it your excess energy and buying it back when you need it. Read up on net metering. Of course when the grid goes down so do you.

You also just mention solar power, is there a reason for leaving wind and hydro out? At a per watt installed cost these are both cheaper then PVs, of course having a stream running accross you land isn't exactly common, but even a small stream can produce a lot of power as it will churn out power 24/7. Though you do have to consider freezing, but depth might help there. It is the same for wind, though it's a little easier to find it in most places.

Below are some random though on what I'd do, if I could. These are not based on experience, but more of a wish as I'd like to be more energy independent. The thoughts are not directed towards been off the grid, but more towards been energy independent. They are ranked with the cheapest or best ROI first as few of us have $50k (random numbner) to plonk down.

#Reduce. Something like every dollar spent on reducing consumption will save you nine dollar on PV power. However still try to live a normal life. Start with the obvious like CFL bulbs, the 15 years old freezer in the basement, and then move on to things like your VCR, fax machine, alarm clock that are plugged in 24/7 consuming only a few watts but doing so all the time. Do the math, and then plug out the VCR, get a battery power clock, and use E-Fax.

#A large amount of our energy cost are heating. While it is possible to heat your house from the sun, see www.solarhouse.com, few of us get to build a house from scratch. You can you some solar air heaters to take the chill out of a basement or garage. But lets just ramble on about regular hot water. This gives gives you a good idea of how the system would work, you just need to figure out how much hot water you need. The do sell solar hot water tanks for big money, I fail to see what sets them apart from a regular hot water tank. I'd be tempted to just get a large electric tank from your local big box nad just disable the eletric part. The link system depends on thermo siphoning to move the water bettween the heat exchanger and the tank, I did read an article (I believe on HP over the past year) where some one installed a pump to improve this dramitcly. Said pump would just have it's own PV panel so it only ran when there was hot water to move.
If your system is under sized or you have long periods with out sun you'll want some sort of backup heat source for it. This could be a tankless propane hot water heater, or the top element in the eletrical tank. Another advantage of using an eletric hot water is that the lower element could be used load dump for your windmill or hydro after you've fully charged you batteries, the energy has to go somewhere!

#As much as I'd like a micro-hydro the odds of having a stream in your backyard are slight. But if you do go take a look at how much water flows by 24/7/365, and thing that for a few thousand dollars you can harness that.

#For electricity I'd start with a windmill. Probably the most important thing to consider here is the tower, the taller the better, and for a big turbine, like the www.bergey.com 10Kw this can be very expensive (site is currently down, but from memory the 10Kw turbine and tallest tower runs close to $40k, but this is a lot of power and for some states, NY, will cover half you costs). My point here is don't try and save money with a shorter tower, a small turbine on a tall tower can produce power 24/7 and keep your batteries charged while your PVs will on average only produce power 4 hours a day. For me, I'd probably go with the Skystream 3.7, it a grid intertie turbine that with installed costs about $10k and produce about 400KWh/month. Use those number as a rough guide, marketing and all that, but you get the idea and there are similar sized and priced systems designed to charge batteries.
Do check out the Bergey site as there is a wealth of information and the do sell a smaller system and have full prices on all the bits you'd need plus provide an idea of install costs. Some of there systems are hybrids, ie wind & PV.

# In my head my system for eletricity is centered around something similar to the above Skystream, but PV would still play a part. It seems that even in a high tech country like the US you can loose power for quite some time and it is here for me that PV would play a role. I'd wire the house so the critical circuits are backed by batteries charge by PV. During normal time the PV is keeping the batteries charged, powering the house and selling excess power to the grid. During a blackout most of your house would be off line, but critical systems like heat, fridge/freezer, some lights would stay running. The size of such a system would depend on lenght and frequency of a blackout. It is expensive to try and cover every possible occurance. But PV is something that can be done incremently, you can add more panels, batteries and control boxes over time.

# Back to heating because I remembered another site. Radiantec out of VT have been doing radiant heating for years, according to there site and offer a lot of information on their site. But they also have information on using solar as the heat source. Something to consider, but I'd also have a big wood stove for those long dark winter days!

# So those are my random thoughts on what I'd do, given the right house, location, time and money. It is something that I'd like to think I could do, and when we move it will be something I'll take into account when buying our next house.

Hope some of this is of some help, I'm no expert, but sometimes I get bored at work and read up on random things which is why I have an empeg and drive a diesel and so on.
Good luck, oh and do please keep us informed of what you do end up doing.

Wind map for Fairbanks
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap3/3-58m.html
Doesn't look fantastic, but there is still wind. Most of the map are for large utility windmills, which is a very different ROI.

Sun hours / day
http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-insolation-window.html
I'm suprised, you get an average of 3.99 hours per day. However your range is greater then for me in MA. Ergo you need to compensate for that with either more batteries, utility power or a generator. Would it be that bad to run the generator for an hour a day to charge up your batteries?

First, what is "PV"?

Second, you suggest using both disposable batteries and petroleum-powered generators. I fail to see how they are either more cost-effective or environmentally friendly.

Of course.

Correct Bitt, if one wishes to live "off the grid" one needs to store the energy produced somewhere and a battery is the usual option. Is it perfect? No.

Unless one builds the storage system to cover the possibility of no power produced for several days one needs to obtain power from some where. The over all run time of the generator is usually small. But yes it is polluting.

So your alarm clock is consuming 4.5W, which only cost you $4.32/year and yes that is nothing, but lets add it ALL up.
TV, VCR, DVD, microwave oven clock, wall cube power supply (I know I have many, two cell phones, computer speakers, regular phone, portable power tool charger, laptop), three clock radios, monitor. Plus Tivo, router, wireless, and so on.
I'm not going to pull numbers for all of these, but going by this PDF I'm wasting a chuck of power. When you are attempting to live off the grid you need to chase down all these 4.5W loads and eliminate them, else you have to increase the amount of power you produce, increase the amount of power you store.
So, no, I'm not asking you to replace your alarm clock and save 36cents a month, I'm just advising Doug that he replace his alarm clock and reduce the number of PV & batteries he needs.

As for cost effective, yes it is a long ROI. Think of it more as a life style choice, the ROI is that long.
For me I don't think it is too crazy to spend an additional $10k on a new house to half my eclectic bill, or $5k to have free hot water.
50 years ago houses were poorly insulated, buy hey nuclear power was on the horizon and power would be so cheap we'd not care.

that's 36¢ per month to run that alarm clock.
I'm going to have to confess to not running home to unplug it.

Ah, but Bitt, if you were in the situation that I may be in, where each 170 watts of power requires a PV panel that costs well over $1000 to purchase and install, then your priorities would change.

It isn't about saving 36 cents a month, it's about making it financially possible to have electricity at all.

tanstaafl.

I'm just advising Doug that he replace his alarm clock

Alarm clock? Don't make me laugh! I'm gonna be retired, boy, and there ain't gonna be nothin' waking me up before I'm damn good and ready to drag my lazy ass out of bed!

tanstaafl.

Just out of curiosity, how does the pricing compare to a diesel generator? I would assume it would be cheaper in the short run. OTOH, There are some nice tax breaks for solar panel installation in CA these days.

Matthew

If you can live sustainably in California then why not use this experience to do a self build that is even more sustainable rather than move back into a traditional home in a couple of years?

My argument being that I'd rather pay farmers to do something useful with their corn that pay farmers to let it rot. Neither way is helping the starving masses (yearning to breathe free), but I'd rather move towards a renewable fuel source than nothing at all.