Try not to limit your thinking to conventional off grid methods. You're outside boiler heat might be the perfect place for TEG like I've been working on in another thread in this section.
I had Generac quote me a system for $80k. The max batteries they could provide would only provide 16 hours of backup power. They were trying to sell the system so I could sell energy back to the grid.
This is a very good answer, it fits in with what I tell people thinking of solar power, I always say to think minimally, don't try to run everything in your home, that's the ideal we live by otherwise your costs will be prohibitive. Many years ago we switched to mostly LED bulbs for lighting, that reduced electrical usage by better than 50%. Our Solar backup system can supply power for two large refrigerators, one large and on small chest freezer, lights and outlets and even a 42" flatscreen TV plus DVD player. There is a price to pay for those abilities, just this past year I replaced all of the deep cycle batteries in our system, plus I added one more bank of four 6 volt golf cart batteries which cost $2518 for 24 batteries, that price included $15 each for core charge, I will say the the original batteries took a beating because I really put the system through a lot of tests over the 9 years of the first set of batteries, I saw discharge and charge amperages that were scary but the system worked and the made me happy. If there is one recommendation I can give, its do your research, talk to people who build systems and if you decide to go solar, pick up all the equipment as local as you can do to high shipping costs, we did that and saved over $200, and one more thing, don't go to RV parts stores for inverter/charger units, they can be hundreds of dollars above places like www.donrowe.com, I also used Costco for the deep cycle lead/acid batteries, they are branded as Interstate and are a lot less than equivalent batteries from Interstate, they are not "seconds" but are not as high in Amp Hour ratings as you can get at Interstate, ours are 210 Amp Hour. Of course a lot of people are opting for newer high tech batteries but I'm happy to be able to afford what we have and I can just add distilled water when their electrolytes get low and so far the new set of batteries are not needing as much topping off as the old set did, but I check them once a month anyway.
When I was applying for water rights on our spring I tried to get water rights for a stream that was about 15 feet west of our spring the county said no and that the water had to go unhindered to the creek that goes through our valley, I had thought of running a fairly large pipe down to our place to run a Pelton wheel powered generator. As it is we pored a 1,100 gallon concrete cistern at the to of our property and I dug nearly 600 feet and put in a 1" PVC scedule 40 pipe from the spring to the cistern we have been using this gravity feed system since the mid 80's and it gives us 25 psi at our home, it might be interesting sometime to sit down and figure how much it would have saved us over having a well and pump system.
If I get a system, I want to use a reputable company that will warranty all the parts including the battries. The last thing I want to do is cobble together a system on my own, I have read too many horror stories about folks trying to do it them selves. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.
To each their own. Good Luck!
ours has been here for 7 years and the only thing we replaced is the charge controller which cost a little under $200
OH no not lack of k owledge. I know how to calculate it and I'm an electrician. I want the warrante. If I can't find what I'm looking for, then ya I'll just build it my self.
I'm no electrician but I've been using a home cobbled system for 16 years.
whatever it is the thing will break 1 day after the warranty expires OR something the warranty doesn't cover breaks
We bought all of our solar equipment from reputable companies, Solar panels are from Grape Solar, they supply many big box hardware stores, and other stores including Costco, Costco batteries have a good warranty, Don Rowe sells inverter/chargers all over the word, our 4,000 watt pure sine wave inverter is made here in the US, the MorningStar solar controller was purchased from Grape Solar in Eugene, Oregon. My biggest pet peeve is solar companies selling grid tied systems that have no battery backup to them, I've seen some of the solar panels they use and I don't like the plastic panels, the very best is monocrystaline, with tempered glass and aluminum frames. I have also learned that panels with higher cell counts are good, they give higher output voltages, which when ran through MPPT solars controllers use those higher voltages to give you a longer solar day of charging, on an average sun day I can have above 60 VDC near sunset, As for batteries, I'd love to have all my batteries like Mountaintrappers, Rolls Surrette but with our limited income, I can afford 24 6volt GC batteries, 6 banks of 4 each for 24 volts. Our solar backup system kicks in in 14 microseconds, if the grid goes down, if I blinked my eyes when the change over happened I wouldn't realize we've change over to solar. I will say that I have been doing my own electrical work for many years and when I worked for the local school district I had a limited industrial electrical license, when I do electrical work on our property I have followed the electrical code book, I do things myself because I have put hours into studying what I had to do, I did this when I built our home as well because I was never taught how to do carpentry, but I bought a lot of books on how to do things.
