I’ll be moving in a few years to an area with no power lines. I was thinking of using a commercial UPS that would be continually recharged by wind turbine and PV cells. My question is, is there an easier way to do this considering I can’t use the grid to store the excess power generated? Also, since this is a few years off, what is the opinion of using a flywheel (preferred) or fuel cell for storage?
You’ve got the right basic idea, but I don’t know what you are doing with flywheels and fuel cells. What you really need are batteries and a good sized inverter. A UPS contains batteries and an inverter, but they aren’t designed for house sized loads. Get something that is designed for the job.
If you’ve got a fuel source available, you could also use a diesel generator.
Either way, the system really needs to be put together by someone who knows what they are doing and knows how to calculate loads, required capacities, etc. and also knows how it should be wired up so that it is all safe.
My Wife and I also have property that we have considered living on. I agree that a combination of technologies is your best bet (wind and solar).
Do you have this book yet? The ‘Solar Living Source Book’ It’s a must. Lots of information and equipment.
If you have the option consider small scale hydro, it could mean a steady supply of power day and night.
You will still need a battery bank to take care of peak and valleys of power demand.
You can also look into propane based backup generators if you can get propane delivered, which propane can also be used for refrigeration requiring no electricity. I know that fuel cells are used in some places to convert natural gas to electricity on a small (home) scale, not sure if it will work with propane however, but even if it does, the fuel cell is not a energy storage device, but a more efficient generator.
While you are still considering your off-grid options. Consider an air-to-water generator. It is not part of your electric system, of course, but it will draw quite some power from it and you should take that into account when estimating your needs. It is also a good way to use excess power in something you do need. Also, if you are considering AC (another big factor in calculating your power needs), some A2W gens double up as AC units so this might improve your efficiency.
My grandparents retired to Southern Oregon, where they were off the grid. They had like three generators. They only used one of them (a 5 hp Tecumseh, IIRC) but they had another one and a Willys Go-Devil jeep engine powering one too. Grandpa started up the jenny at sundown. When it ran out of gas it was time to go to bed. In addition to powering the 110v devices, it also recharged a 12v battery for the 12v lights. The refrigerators were Servel gas refrigerators. They ran on propane, which was stored in a very large tank in the yard. One of the stoves and the water heater were also gas fuelled. In addition there was a woodburning stove in the kitchen and one in the dining room, and a fireplace. Water came from a spring that fed into a tank uphill. They didn’t have a TV, and personal computers were a couple decades away. Still, they lived quite well for over 30 years ‘off the grid’.
My own house has a propane heater. It irks me. I don’t like having to wonder if the propane guy will get there before the gas runs out. I really should repair the fireplaces, just in case. Power comes from Puget Sound Energy, but I did buy a 3kw generator when my friend who is living in my house said the recent storm knocked out the power. Winds can be fierce up there, but only sometimes. Since I’m on the bay, there’s usually a breeze. I don’t know if it’s reliable enough for powering a house. And solar power would be problematic most of the year.
To do this correctly you should seriously consider building the house to spec to take maximum advantage of natural heating, cooling and lighting. I recommend Emailing **Stranger on the Train ** for leads and links to an efficient home, in a prior thread, he seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the subject.
Use Solar PV Cells, Wind, and a large battery array and install Geothermal for heating and cooling. Ensure you buy every appliance with the highest energy efficiency that you can find, pay the premium up front. Plan on Compact florescent light bulbs and keep an eye on what develops in the LED lighting market.
Telling us where you are moving would help with providing advice. You need to build a home to take advantage of Southern Exposure as much as possible. (Assuming you live in the North). Heavy insulation, lots of efficient ceiling fans, wood stoves for supplemental heating assuming you will have a ready supply of firewood. Remember an airtight woodstove is far more efficient than a fireplace.
The Fuel cells are worth keeping an eye on, great supplemental power as long as you can get a ready supply of propane as needed. They are still not quite ready for residential use.
Buy a good quiet high efficiency gas or diesel generator for emergencies.
Design the breaker panel systems very carefully. You will want a design that lets you power vitals and cutoff non-vitals without much effort. Ensure you buy quality equipment to bring different power sources into sync safely.
Here is a recent thread worth looking at for a major breakthrough in PVs.
Major Solar Cell Breakthrough with Scientific American Article link.
If you have questions about current PV installations, I can try to answer them. I have a 6700-watt system on my roof. I am part of the grid and have no batteries at this point.
Look for government incentives, programs or tax breaks to help build your house or at least some of the power systems. Seriously look at the Geothermal heating and cooling. This is costly, but well worth it. There are land and water requirements, but I am guessing if you are moving to a place off grid, it should meet the requirements.
Have you purchased yet?
Are you buying just land or land and a house?
There are several more things to watch out for on the efficiency side. As you buy appliances, always looks into amperage or wattage use. There is a huge difference in power consumption between an LCD and Tube monitor. Laptops are far more efficient than an entire desktop computer setup. An LCD TV uses half the power of an equivalent Plasma TV and 75% of the power of a DLP. Watch out for surprises, some simple clock radios use 2-3 times more power than others. If you keep an eye on all the little appliances in your home, you can save a lot of power.
Absolutely install a programmable thermostat. Consider installing motion sensing light switches. They are cool and can save a lot of power.
Jim
Sapo – Air to water generator?
We have a passive solar house in a very, very cold region. It gets down to about -20f just about every winter.
It works surprisingly well. All the snow on the roof helps insulate us, and the snow on the ground helps reflect the sun into the house.
For about 13 years our only heat source was a wood stove. We have since switched to a propane stove, and I put in-floor heat in my addition (run off of a propane water heater).
Wood heat is fine, but I finally got tired of the work and the mess. I would come home from work and the first thing I had to do is get the stove going. It would take a good hour before it put out any real heat (biggest, best Vermont Castings w/catalytic converter). I think it was rated at about 40,000 btu.
Our new propane stove is also a VC. It’s on a thermostat. It’s great. Really nice to be able to come inside and get warm by the stove. It’s funny, my brother has forced air, and I always miss the stove when I go to his house.
I here ya about wondering if we might run out of propane. But it has yet to be a problem.
an air-to-water generator is basically a machine that condenses water vapor from the air and stores it for use. The larger units double up as AC units because they share a lot of the same parts (look at an AC unit dripping and imagine a bucket underneath 
)
There are several available that are small enough to fit on top of your water cooler and they are not particularly expensive
The technology has advanced to the point where they work in arid conditions, but for the most of us (who don’t live in arid regions), the more basic older generation machines do just fine.
Needless to say, the water is as pure as it comes and you can just forget about any filtering you might need from another source.
I have been researching the technology for quite a while but can’t really recommend you a brand since most I haven’t found any that will deliver to Puerto Rico (there is a local provider but charges an arm and a leg for even the smalles units) so I haven’t bothered with the acqusition part of it yet.
excuse my general lack of spelling and grammar on my previous post!
Sapo: RE your air-to-water generator. Surely this can’t provide sufficient output for a household’s typical use. Are you suggesting it as a source of filtered water only (for drinking, say)?
Ahhh.
I thought the air to water generator was something to generate electricity.
That would be quite a trick.
“Home Power” is a magazine dedicated to this subject, and has been around a while.
Other battery technologies are lighter and more compact, but less efficient. In a fixed set up, size and weight don’t matter, just cost and efficiency, thus you end up at one conclusion: Lead acid batteries are the way to store electrical power. You will still lose around 20% in the process, so it is much better if you can use the power as it is produced.
Water pumping, for example, can be done while the sun shines, or wind blows, and the water stored either in a tower mounted tank, or a gas bladder pressurized tank. This is nearly 100% efficient storage of the pump’s energy.
The cheapest power is the power you don’t need: Clotheslines and hand tools use far less power than the alternatives for example. You don’t have to live a pre-industrial life style, just think twice before buying an electrically powerd gadget…hand cranked blenders and coffee grinders are not a huge burden to use.
Heating/cooking: The latest issue of “home power” had an article on cheap, low-tech biomass digesters for methane production. Apparantly the “output” from a couple of animals (goats, sheep, humans, etc) will supply cooking gas for a family. If your house is well designed for passive solar, your in. Active solar panels are a pretty good fit for water heating.
Even though you may reject them for base load, consider propane and diesel generators for “peak” loads, or as a “plan B”. Photovoltaic panels and batteries are so expensive that sizing them to handle “worst case” (least sun, most load) will make a generator seem cheap by comparison. Also, while you might have enough battery to sneak through a cloudy spell, discharging below 50% capacity will shorten the life of the cells. Better to run the genny a few hours and top them up after a few cloudy days. Diesel generators are preferred because they are more efficient, the fuel stores better, and they are generally built for long service. Also, if you have no diesel vehicles, you avoid the temptation to burn the untaxed fuel in your car.
I have seen a couple of commercial units with outputs in the range of hundreds of gallons per day. No mention of power requirement or price, though (although I think that the word “commercial” is a solid hint).
Some rationing might be required to live off one of those but it is my ultimate dream of off-grid living. But even with a smaller unit, having a steady, reliable trickle of pure water can make the difference on how you plan your house.
I am really curious to see how these behave in my tropical environment with humidity north of 50% all day every day.
Most of these websites are very “we have the stuff, call an make an appointment” type of affairs so it is very hard getting usable info off them. If anyone is near to one of these and feels compelled to check them out, please report the results.
My inlaws built their own solar adobe house (which wouldn’t work as well in a wet climate, I imagine) twenty-five years ago. They’ve been off the grid the entire time, and they use solar panels, a wind generator, and a bank of deep-cycle batteries, which have to be replaced every eight years or so. They use a propane stove, but their propane refrigerator never did work right, so they replaced it with an efficient electric one about ten years ago, at the same time they put in two extra solar panels. Their panels are on movable axes so they turn with the sun, and the house is oriented to get full solar gain in the winter. The house temperature is remarkably stable, usually in the mid-sixties during the winter and the mid-seventies during summer (they live in a high mountain desert climate, so it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer). They have three cisterns and collect water off their roof for household and livestock purposes, but they buy drinking water.
Home Power magazine is a very good source. The reason it’s so hard to get basic information about many solar systems is that they tend to work best when tailored to your specific environment, location, and budget. Most people who’ve built a house that’s off the grid are happy to discuss the issues with anyone else who’s interested. Here are a few sites that might have ideas you could start with:
Green Home Building
Earthship Biotecture
Solar Energy International
Interesting. They seem so self-sufficient otherwise. I would expect them to use a reverse-osmosis and/or filtering system for drinking water unless they have some wierd contamination that can’t be handled by it.
I don’t know if they’ve looked into it seriously, but reverse-osmosis systems tend to take a whole lot of energy, and they don’t have that much surplus. I suspect they wouldn’t trust a manual filtration system. They were hoping to drill a well, but a lot of their land is solid rock under a thin layer of soil, and drilling deep enough to hit water near their house turned out not to be feasible.
Also, our area of the country is in the middle of a drought, and the amount of rainfall is pretty unpredictable. They installed extra tanks for the times we get a good soaking, but it’s not at all unusual for them to go completely dry for a lot of the summer. During that time, they have to haul water for the horse and goat as well as themselves. They use incredibly little water, all told, and they use maybe 50 gallons of drinking/cooking water a month (in addition to household/horse use).
50 gallons a month?!!! That is most definitely in the range of a water cooler-top A2W gen. They could just forget about buying water and the ensuing pile of plastic bottles.
Here is a site that has a ongoing discussion of the very topic you are wondering about.
The Amish practice off grid living everyday. Might not be just what you are looking for but it can be done and they seem to thrive in their community. We often see the men outside the community building houses, sheds etc. Many hog farmers use them to build hog confinement buildings.
I’m thinking that you cannot survive today by trying to live in your own little off grid world.
Recently I was watching one of those HGTV shows with the wife; it was one of those programs about out-of-the-way and oddball houses. They showed one that was deep in the woods, and, of course, off the grid. Yet the owner was able to power a fridge, lights, TV, and computer based on solar power. Evidently there’s been some progress in this area. You might have to watch your consumption here and there but at least you won’t have to go all Daniel Boone.