Anyone running their workshop "off the grid" and green?

[Kev]

Hi All,

Curious whether many of you have ventured off the grid and how you're set up. I'm looking to move to a property with a few hectares of land (that's a few x2.45 acres for our US kin) and I'm seeing some properties with established solar setups, but nothing I'd consider really sophisticated. The majority seem to go for a few panels and feed the grid .. so not particularly independent and zero storage. The most impressive setup I've seen had a 40 kilowatt solar panel setup .. that was a LOT of panels !!!

Obviously the traditional option is a diesel generator and total lifetime cost is a major consideration, the long term cost of solar - with the replacement of panels and storage batteries could make diesel look cheap!!

Tesla's offerings are interesting for storage, but I haven't seriously looked into alternatives and the relative pricing. My gut tells me you could get the same performance as the Powerwalls and Powerpacks at a much lower price if you make the effort to break out the screwdriver and pliers!

So ... who of us have gone green for energy?

Kev.

 

[Alan Mack]

Hi Kev,
I'm off grid, running my house and a small workshop in the basement. Using a 4.5kW PV array with storage in a forklift battery 24x2v cells. Island grid created by a Victron Multiplus 5000 inverter charger. This puts the energy into the battery pack and supplies house with the demand. Have a diesel generator for backup and when solar is low, such as from Nov to Feb. (In Inverness, Scotland). Rest of the year solar is sufficent. Wind turbine in basement waiting to be put up which will complement the solar.

If running planer/thick for more than just the odd pass, if not a good solar day, then I might run the genny while the machines are on, otherwise just run on sunlight. The victron gives very clean power, pure sine wave, better than grid! It also allows for power assist, where it will supply battery power in addition to genny power if high loads demanded.

Any questions ask away...

Alan

 

[NL-mikkla]

I'm an old sparky and completely "on the grid" but still  [popcorn]

 

[eeeesh]

I don't think it is not cost effective at this point to be totally 'off the grid' (at least in the U.S.) unless you have to be.

Even with some of the incentives, a Tesla Power Wall is still too expensive.  Quote was for around $20k, after incentives dropped it to around $12k.  For the few times our power goes out, I could buy a whole house generator for that

 

[grobkuschelig]

Hi Alan, thanks for the input!

As NL-mikkla, I am also completely on the grid, but am looking forward to the discussion for future endeavors...

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[HarveyWildes]

Many Almish woodworkers use machinery off the grid.  Might try researching that.  I'm not the expert, but I did visit an Almish furniture shop once and they had some truly impressive off-the-grid machines.