Energy Matters Forums

[jaahn]

G'day, My wife's brother is going to build a new house on the family farm but has found that running power to it will be a 100k cost that they cannot support.
----Family of four, two young primary aged kids. ---Gas cooking, Wood fire heating,--
If you were going to start again and needed to power a new house totally off grid what would you do.
I would be expecting a normal houses power load with kids watching tv, and other devices etc.
Would they need a back -up geni?
------Many thanks Kean

Hi keanw
i do not live the bush living dream but here is my take on your question.
If I was building a new house anywhere I would make sure that the house incorporated all the design features necessary to reduce the power required. Simple attention to the details are important and can reduce the needs with none or minimal costs. There is plenty of "sustainable house" ideas available and even in your climate the possibility of allmost nil heating and cooling power needs is possible. Natural lighting ?? ETC. Look at another part of this Forum also.
Gas is passe and will be costly forever. Go all electric instead and save money forever. The sun will provide even if you do not put in a $50-60K system. Seems excessive to me !! Why not look into half of that for a start.
An inexpensive generator of mid size seems a reasonable backup that you can manually start if necessary in the occasional needy time.
Jaahn

[new to solar power]

Hi,
I have with no formal knowledge with offgrid solar system designing. However by flying by the seat of my pants I have built my own 6000W offgrid solar system. I have made two poor choices along the way so far, the first one I was sold a PWM solar charge controller and the second mistake was buying from Ebay 2/6000/18000W Gen Power Inverters this was a very poor choice.
I upgraded to 2/80A Fangpusun Solar Charge Controllers and they has been working as it should for 2 years now.
Also I have replaced the Inverters.
First one is a Tingen Inverter 6000/12000w, 24w idle for the house.
The second one is a SC Power Toriodal Pure Sine Inverter 10KVA 230V 50HZ for the workshop.
In the workshop I can use multiple tools at the same time with no problems.
The Mig welder I often use at 100% output from the inverter which is 35A/230Vac
Also the plant room and battery room has ac set to 20c this I leave on 24/7.
The longest rainy period experieced so far has been for 12 days and with being careful with the power usage didn't need to use the generator.
I had change out of 30K designing and building my offgrid solar system from greatly unknown Chinese products also this didn't include labor, warranty or profit.

So having to pay 60K for trusted and known brand products and using proper licensed and registered installers I think the price is reasonable.

Alex

[Gordon-Loomberah]

I had change out of 30K designing and building my offgrid solar system...also this didn't include ... profit.

How do you make profit from installing your own system???

What battery are you using?

[jaahn]

.also this didn't include ... profit.

How do you make profit from installing your own system???

Hi Gordon,
"also this didn't include labor, warranty or profit."
I think what Alex meant was he had spent <$30G and that did not include costs of labour and warranty coverage or business profit, which an installation business would have to allow for to do the same installation.
At least that is what I think that he thinks Makes sense to me !!
Jaahn

[Gordon-Loomberah]

Perhaps he did mean that

However, his own labour must be worth something, I was thinking he wasn't including anything for that, and I assume there is a warranty on all the various items he purchased... although if bought from China, they may be of dubious value!

[new to solar power]

Hello Gordon,
I just said it this way because when you do a project for yourself every dollar saved is a dollar earnt.
For example my project cost me less than 30K in parts so I have more than 30K left in my bank account to cover me for labor, warranty issues, etc.
This makes logical sense to me.
Lead Acid Gel Batteries 24/2V 1200AH 94kg each. I decided to go this way because I don't know enough about the lithium battery technology yet.
I have been to China twice now and have been to the factories where I bought the parts for my system and to the best of my knowledge the quality is good and the warranty isn't a problem but when there is a problem having to pay for the airfreight can be a pain in the pocket.

Thank you Jaahn for understanding what I meant.