Off Grid living, (not using a power company) is a requirement for some remote locations like a cabin at the lake, hunting lodge, campsite, barn, field station, mobile home or a yacht. To live Off Grid you need to make your own electricity. Conventional ways could include a gas or diesel powered generator that costs $1,000 $5,000. The fuel cost alone to make energy will be expensive as much as ten times what a Power Company charges. What if you could make free power? Consider the Sun, Wind and Magnetism as free energy sources.
Living Off Grid can be a way to save cost but that would require no cost power. Making power with solar panels, wind turbine generators or magnetic powered generators is how you can create free energy to get Off Grid. You need to know how to put these free energy generators all together for a reliable system. Concern for reliability may still include a gas or diesel generator but need a much less significant size and cost.
Evaluating Your energy Load
Your main electrical loads are appliances, cooking and lighting and in a few situations hot water heater, heat and air conditioning. All have a calculation and a duty cycle. For an illustration a refrigerator consumes between 350 550 watts while the compressor is operating. The compressor ON ratio to compressor OFF is the duty cycle. In a day the 350 watts multiplied by the duty cycle of say 30 would evaluate to 24 x 350 x 30 = 2520 watts per day or 105 watts per hour average. Your energy source and power storage would need to be hefty enough for this load. Repeat the calculation for all the loads and you will determine the size of the Off Grid scheme.
Power Sources
If you enjoy a lot of sun you ought to consider Solar Panels. These devices can yield 70 175 watts of free energy for each panel for a portion of the day. By having several panels, 1,000+ watts of free energy is feasible. Wind turbine generators can generate 450 1,000 watts of energy the entire day. How much free energy they manufacture can vary with the wind patterns. Magnetic generators are allot smaller devices in the order of 24 100 watts. Their advantage is making free energy at a regular rate 24 hours a day, each day regardless of the weather. Several magnetic generators should be considered. A normal gas or diesel powered electric generator can produce energy also but not free energy.
Energy Storage
All the above energy sources need to deposit their energy supplies to get totally Off Grid. Power storage is in the form of deep cycle storage batteries. Deep cycle batteries are unlike than your car batteries. Car batteries release a lot of energy for a few seconds then get re energized. Car battery s chemistry will be damaged if they get strongly discharged. Deep cycle batteries can provide power for hours by design an are not damage by severe discharges. Deep cycle batteries approximate cost each is: $129 @ 33 Amp Hour to $200 @ 450 Amp Hour. The battery Amp Hour rating should be two times the predictable load. The batteries last longer that way. To correctly charge a battery from the above energy sources you need a charge controller (regulator). The controller will take a variety of energy source voltages from 14 volt to 48 volts and regulate it to charge the batteries safely. Over charging protection circuits are included. Charge controllers cost from $24 to $84 for 4 30 Amp models.
Energy Inverters
To use the free power that you have stored you need to take the battery voltage and direct current up to household voltage and alternating current. Household voltage of 110 Vac or 220 Vac are electronically made with a device called an Power Inverter . Inverter power output range is important to consider. This power output needs to exceed your peak power load. Inverter cost range is at $36 @ 400 Watts to $852 @ 2,000 Watts. Having more than one inverter gives you built in backup.
Backup Systems
Backup systems are necessary for Off Grid living. By definition you do not have access to the Grid energy. Your stored power is your foremost line of backup. That should be designed for a 24 hour load. What do you do after that? If your solar, wind and magnetic power sources no longer work you will need a gas or diesel generator. Because you have power storage, you merely need to refresh the batteries and that will take a much lesser generator. A 400 watt gas generator will cost $102 and a 3,750 watt gas generator will cost $500. Don t forget these generators have a fuel and service cost and don t provide free power.
Conclusion
Off Grid living is an exciting idea and can have free power. Live or play anywhere without a Power Company. If you purchase Solar Panels @ $5 per watt or Wind Generators @ $1 per watt you will be paying 3 to 10 times what it would take to make your own Solar Panel or Wind Generator. Magnetic Generators are near impossible to buy. To make your own power sources buy a guide. The guides will show you how to make these power sources at home. Free power is the way to go Off Grid.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")