Powering Your Off Grid Home

Admittedly it's one of the big sticking points in everyone's move to living off the grid; however, it really shouldn't be. Powering your off grid home is simpler and cheaper than you think.

We recommend first making your home more energy efficient. This means getting rid of those incandescent light bulbs and replacing them with CFL's (compact fluorescent lights), washing your clothes with cold water, turning down your furnace, as well as many other things. Your electric bill should break down how many KWh (kilowatt hours) you use each month so divide that number by 30 to get how many KWh you use per day. For many people this number is 20-30. By using some very simple energy savings tactics you should be able to get this number down to 10 - 15.

If you're able to get this number down to 10 or 15 KWh per day then your job is already two times easier because you only need half as much energy. For example, to produce 10 KWh you need to produce 1000 watts for 10 hours each day. With a couple solar panels and a wind generator this is simple. In fact you should be able to produce 15 KWh / day with some solar panels and a wind generator.

What about the cost though? Many people tell me that they can't do it because it costs thousands of dollars to set up a renewable energy system. This is something that is quite untrue. If you buy it new it would cost you thousands of dollars, but solar panels and wind generators are simple enough that anyone with some DIY skills can do it themselves.

We were in the same position that you are in right now... only 16 years ago. We wanted to make the switch to living off the grid, but was sure that it was too expensive for us to do. After I did some research though, I found that not only is it simple to build a wind generator or build solar panels- it can be done in a couple weekends.

Our first wind generator that we built was quite crude. We just wanted to see whether we could actually do it. Imagine my relief after we put it up and it started spinning happily away! To this day it still sits there spinning away at the top of the tower.

Our motto is "if we can do it then anyone can".

Nothing is more true than that. We had no knowledge going into this, but it was so much fun that we would do it all over again.

Andrew Oke is very interested in renewable energy. Check out his website at Living Off The Grid.

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