Off Grid Project

Joined
Oct 21, 2017
Messages
51
Hello

Amazing website of battery cell information! Awesome!

So my question is and this may not be the best place to post this, if so sorry I couldn't work out where to slide this is in.

I am looking to build a completely off grid home. Future wise I am looking to fed in to creative an income, small but something is better than nothing.

I am considering at the moment two routes. One is a route solar/wind with ground source heat pump for heating solution. Number 2 is the option I am most interested in which is 100% fully electric home which includes all heating solutions.

Now I am trying to spec a powerwall to cope with this and struggling to guess a size to aim to achieve. I have an average use of electric per day. I have and average heat use per day too. But if I go fully electric and then power Heating for the home, all hot water, tumble dryer and washing machine,and up 2electric ovens I can vision complications ahead as take Christmas these all could be running at the same time.

Sounds crazy maybe but I can't see why this couldnt be done by planning ahead. I do plan on using 66 Solar panels on the roof of the property so during the day even in winter when I get 8hrs of sun light this should help ease the load.

Any of you guys gone down this route?
 
What's the stats on the panels? What's the stats on your peak power usage (not average)?

And what do you mean by:
Future wise I am looking to fed in to creative an income, small but something is better than nothing.

I doubt you can make much $$ from the power company feeding back into it as I believe most power companies will have a cap on how much you can dump to them.
 
Welcome,

Sounds like a project... :)

I would ( and i did ) go for the heat-pump solution, it is still 100% electric but it needs just 1/4 of the power to generate the same heat as a direct electric heater, it also can take care of your hot water needs.

66 solar panels (W?) wil generate a lot of power, but if it is heavy clouded for a few days, they do almostnothing... depending of your location, you will need a secondarypower source..likewind turbine, generator, water tubine ... or all above ;)
and of coursemany many many 18650 to store the energy until needed.
 
66 panels is what i have here on my roof. 66*260Wp

With that said if you build the house there is several things that easily can reduce the useage since you say that you want to heat the house.

For instance firewood as base in winter to heat a water system that is in the house saves alot. If you dont have that cold winters a heat pump would work. There is such with coop up to and baove 5. ie 1x of electric in and 5x the heat out!! But they get very inefficient when its cold outside.

But heating is not a problem as such. Make sure you can keep the heat inside the house. Isolate! And Isolate even more! Just make sure you got proper ventilation and you dont need to heat much.

Next is to reduce useage of appliances. Make sure to get A+++ appliances and you save alot of power.

Do you get 8 hours of sunlight in winter? You mean its bright 8? If so you perhaps have 4 hours of sun that is useable. Here in Sweden in winter i have 10% of the power from the panels compare to the summer. That is some difference so check out programs that calculate that for you. Thats needed because its the winter that is the problem.

Size your battery bank as big as you want it to be able to cope with worst weather ever! For me that is currently 1 Week but im working my way towards 2 weeks.
My system is good enough for 10 out of 12 months at current setup. I went from 9 to 10 months but that needed 7kWp added extra just for 1 month.

Make sure you can fill the battery bank in case of emergency. Generator or something that can hand out big amount of umph in short time. Preferable so that you can charge that bank up within a couple of hours!
 
Korishan said:
What's the stats on the panels? What's the stats on your peak power usage (not average)?

And what do you mean by:
Future wise I am looking to fed in to creative an income, small but something is better than nothing.

I doubt you can make much $$ from the power company feeding back into it as I believe most power companies will have a cap on how much you can dump to them.
First of thanks for all your replies!

The panels are Panasonic HIT N245 245W or HIT N330 330W just depends on budget. Peak Power Ill try and add up everything i am hoping to buy but at present I don't honestly know and was hoping you guys could have a rough guide. Here in the UK its around 4p per k/w but once my battery bank is charged hope it will just be oven or induction hob use daily at the moment that will drain in the evenings so hoping that during the day it will be more making use of my waste which may produce a small income to cover maintenance.

wim said:
Welcome,

Sounds like a project... :)

I would ( and i did ) go for the heat-pump solution, it is still 100% electric but it needs just 1/4 of the power to generate the same heat as a direct electric heater, it also can take care of your hot water needs.

66 solar panels (W?) wil generate a lot of power, but if it is heavy clouded for a few days, they do almostnothing... depending of your location, you will need a secondarypower source..likewind turbine, generator, water tubine ... or all above ;)
and of coursemany many many 18650 to store the energy until needed.

Think you've answered my heating but Ill add more below with daromers reply ; and batteries well thought I would base my whole concept on what powers a Telsa P85 so I believe its around 7100+ batteries and god I will not be doing this all at once. My plan is in stages with dates to hopefully give me some plan of when they may need age related replacements.

daromer said:
66 panels is what i have here on my roof. 66*260Wp

With that said if you build the house there is several things that easily can reduce the useage since you say that you want to heat the house.

For instance firewood as base in winter to heat a water system that is in the house saves alot. If you dont have that cold winters a heat pump would work. There is such with coop up to and baove 5. ie 1x of electric in and 5x the heat out!! But they get very inefficient when its cold outside.

But heating is not a problem as such. Make sure you can keep the heat inside the house. Isolate! And Isolate even more! Just make sure you got proper ventilation and you dont need to heat much.

Next is to reduce useage of appliances. Make sure to get A+++ appliances and you save alot of power.

Do you get 8 hours of sunlight in winter? You mean its bright 8? If so you perhaps have 4 hours of sun that is useable. Here in Sweden in winter i have 10% of the power from the panels compare to the summer. That is some difference so check out programs that calculate that for you. Thats needed because its the winter that is the problem.

Size your battery bank as big as you want it to be able to cope with worst weather ever! For me that is currently 1 Week but im working my way towards 2 weeks.
My system is good enough for 10 out of 12 months at current setup. I went from 9 to 10 months but that needed 7kWp added extra just for 1 month.

Make sure you can fill the battery bank in case of emergency. Generator or something that can hand out big amount of umph in short time. Preferable so that you can charge that bank up within a couple of hours!

I have looked at wood burners but for more on demand use gshp sounds a better option. I feel for you guys in sweden in the winter! last time I was there it start getting dark after lunch hahahha tables get turned in the summer though ;;)

The main reason I was thinking electrical heating is down to low profile installation as I am using shipping containers for the build and every mm taken up on the floor is mm lost in ceiling height! And trust me they are being well insulated! To the max inside and outside additional cladding in various placing to add to amount of glass going into the build!

All appliances will be A+++ and lighting is going to be LED only internal and external. But will try and make sure every thing is as a+++ as possible!

Wow thanks guys for the input so far!!


P.s. I am considering Wind turbine too as that is almost 24hrs a day of power producing craziness. The product I am looking into is britwind R9000 5kw a day and the bonus with this is its almost 9p a kw fed in :)
 
I use Visio.
 
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