anyone totally off the grid?

I live outside of town on a lake. The previous home owners covered the well and connected to a rural water company. I live at the eastern end of the lake and get wind pretty much 365. One very large side of my roof faces the south. Been thinking about cutting the cord and being self sufficient. Would like to hear pro's and con's and any good resources for kits/materials/businesses on the subject.

thanks

Tag for replies.

In my reading on this topic you are never going to come out on top from a cost perspective.  When I build my retirement home someday I want to have enough renewable energy to maintain a reasonable amount of comfort during outages or long term SHTF.

For me, that would mean enough power to keep the HVAC blower operational or an attic fan, keep the freezer/fridge working, water/well pump, power my ham radio, some basic lighting, and charge my laptop.   If your property adjoins the lake could you take advantage of that for a geothermal heat pump using a lake loop.  I would plan on using fuel oil for supplemental heat with a large tank.  I guess if you had a very large supply of wood you could use a wood stove.

You might want to post this in the survival forum.  Lots of people there have some experience doing this.

Some good stuff here...

Mike's windmill shop

When I was looking, wind was the best rate of return.
the vertical wind mills were the best choice. less parts to have to maintain or replace.


your biggest expense however wasn't actually the wind mil/generator.

you need a power inverter and batteries.

even though you say 24/7 365 wind, at some point it will not be windy. or you will have to take the generator down for maintence.
at that point you need to run off bateries. EVen if you plan on doing without power during those times, you still need some batteries to act as capacitors to help with spikes or dims in power, ie brown outs vs whiteouts.

Not sure about your situation, but I believe it's easier to use solar pannels and wind energy to supplement, not totally replace a grid connection.

Buddy is running a solar powered well pump for his cabin and cattle.  It is a low volume, high head, DC pump. It is tied to a pair of 50 watt solar panels with no batteries or controls.  It pumps into a 400 gallons tank that sits on a 15' platform.  The overflow from that goes to a water trough, then the trough overflows to a stock tank.  The pump produces a steady 2 gallons/min on a sunny day and a trickle in heavy overcast.   That's a LOT of water over the course of the day.

The elevated cistern give enough pressure for showering, the toilet, and the tank-less hot water heater.

got some 55 gallon drums
video

or heating oil tanks?

look into savionus rotos... simple vertical turbine. wont nessecarily create much power but sure could pump water...

Where do you live?

You'd be surprised at just how much wind it takes to actually get decent power and go "off grid".

You'd also be surprised at how high up you need that wind mill and how far away from other interference it needs to be.

Wind Maps

Wind power starter

This is one of the best places to start to gain a perspective of what you are trying to do. Solar/Wind/Hydro. Not trying to totally discourage you, just trying to make sure you aren't going off half cocked.

HomePower


Oh yeah, if you are going to do solar panels, this place is usually very competitive price wise. Just in case you need to "price check" other panels on a watt for watt basis.

SunElec