Photovoltaics Off Grid
Offgrid Solar Power

Photovoltaics Off Grid

Photovoltaics off grid power systems are becoming more and more popular. For locations that are remote from the grid (mountain areas, arid areas, rural areas) they provide the natural alternative for electricity supply. Photovoltaics (PV) off grid power systems provide clean sustainable energy. People with aspirations to disconnect from the grid are invited to read my page on grid connected homes vs. stand alone homes. Some states like California provide tax incentives only to grid connected homes. It is harder to get financing for off grid power systems such as solar wind and hydro (water) generators

Solar and Wind goes together

Solar (sun radiation) is available only during daylight. Wind in certain regions is available for more hours and also after dark. Both require electrical energy storage using electrical batteries. Combining off grid PV and off grid wind turbine on the same site provide with more hours of clean energy production and allows for smaller size batteries. By and large, the initial investment in a wind turbine is much less than in a solar power generator with the same production capacity

Microgrid community size power generation and distribution

A small community located far from the grid can join forces and build a community size power plant that will use all available clean energy resources. The main resources are solar, wind, geothermal and hydro (water). For further reading see my pages on community size wind turbine and my Israel Solar page. The city of Palm Desert CA. recently initiated such a program. This is the fastest way I can think of to proliferate the production of clean energy. It has the added advantage of short distance between production point and consumers, reducing to minimum the losses on very long utility power lines. Finding corridors to run "super highway power lines", keeping pace with environmental requirements, planning and funding these lines is a long and expensive process.