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More families live or plan to live in Off Grid Homes to get away from the urban and suburban areas. Off-grid homes can be found in semi-arid areas, in virgin forest areas and on rural ranches. Homes far from the grid still need electrical power for lighting and for electrical appliances. There are different ways to self generate electricity from renewable resources as will be described bellow
Different ways to generate electricity from clean energy resources
Connecting a remote home to the grid is expensive and can cost anywhere between $15,000 to $50,000 per mile. With this money, it is feasible to build a small “power plant” based on one of the following methods (or a combination thereof)
If the land around the house is more than 1 acre (4,000 square meters) in size, and if the region is windy small off grid wind power turbine is the right solution. It is recommended to have both off grid solar and off grid wind and to share the deep cycle batteries
Lucky families that have a water stream on their land, an off grid microhydro plant is a good solution working year around day and night
Based on payback time, invest first in saving energy and in a solar hot water heater, then in a wind turbine if feasible and then in off grid solar power system; apparently, the micro-hydro proposition might be the best option for these people who have a water steady stream on their land
Tax credits and financing
View my page on energy tax rebates. Finance institutes usually lend more easily to grid connected homes, evaluate your financing (and refinancing) situation before you commit to the off grid power system. If you plan a turn key solar system, your easiest approach is to ask one leading company to evaluate your site and propose to you the Solar Power System that fits your needs, has a good price value and takes full advantage of federal and state energy tax credits to provides you with a turn key job.
Off Grid Power Main Components
Any off-grid power system has a power generator such as solar panels or a wind turbine. Necessary add-on components are the off grid inverter and the storage electrical batteries The off grid inverter not only converts DC power to AC power, it is the brain of the system and a good inverter also provide the battery charge controller functionality
