I may wax more philosophical than practical here.
We have NO PROOF of this, but my wife and I have this nagging feeling that one day, the power will go off and never come back on.
As many of you know, we live in a rural area with an electrical utility that struggles to maintain consistent power. Any given week I may have to reset electric clocks 3 to 5 times. Usually these are just 1/2 to 2 second power blips.
And lately, if the wind blows or it rains, the power may go out for an hour or two. Not 70 mph winds or torrential rains, just a little stronger than average, and we are sitting in the dark again.
Well, to prepare for something like this takes a lot more time, effort and money.
Many years ago, our power was so poor that we decided to do something about it. At the time I was traveling and we were told we needed a tax break. So we invested in a wind/solar system for our home.
It eventually failed, so I am not going to give brand names. BUT it worked like a champ for its expected lifespan, which was about 5-6 years. Here are a few quick observations:
#1. A wind or solar system is not something you put up and forget about. That you just sit back and enjoy the benefits therefrom.
#2. Wind power is awe-inspiring. It is scary. It is powerful. It brings in 4 - 6 times as much energy as solar for the same dollar spent.
But it beats your batteries to death. We had to replace our battery bank once and maybe twice in the 6 years. There were other circumstances, so I won't completely commit to replacing it twice only because of the wind.
#3. Our property has wind. A lot of it. Sometimes too much of it. What we get is very turbulent. This is hard on a wind turbine. Without much effort, it can burn it right up. I'll try to add some images of our broken equipment.
#4. Solar on the other hand is getting less expensive each year.
#5. Solar is kinder to your batteries. Solar is predictable.
#6. Solar can not be enough. Even though it is getting cheaper, you may need a lot of solar panels to be sufficient for your needs.
#7. A backup power system needs care and feeding like other things you may own. More maintenance than a lawn mower, less than live stock.
So there are things to consider. It is not something you want to blindly jump into (we already did that).
Our main problem is that we were about 10 years too early. The local utility wasn't required to buy our excess power back at the time and that is one reason for the battery damage we experienced.
Another problem we had was lightning strikes. Our system was safe enough, it was the power grid that wasn't. One night I was taking pictures of the lightning and watched a bolt hit a substation about 4 1/2 miles away. Then I turned around and our house was in the dark.
The power surge backfed 4 1/2 miles and hit our system, damaging our inverters and battery bank.
WE had done everything to protect the GRID from US, but there was nothing in place to protect US from the GRID.
So have I scared anyone away, yet?
Please don't run away, stay and let me finish.
We are again committed to getting as far off the grid as we can. IF we were completely off the grid that lightning damage wouldn't have happened.
But we're kinda addicted to grid power.
So we are going to get as much power as we can from our system and use the grid as our backup, if we need it.
If the power goes off and never comes back on, we will just carefully cut back our useage and live off our own power.
How are we going to do this?
Stay tuned.
Image Credits: blog.emergencyoutdoors.com
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