Living in Luxury Off the Grid - For We Who Hunger for Power! (part 1)
With great power there comes great responsibilty
hard work!
No one knows this better than those who are setting up their own power grid.
| As a computer engineer (a person who takes a finished program and modifies it to work for a specific client), Doug (Dearest Hubby) needs computers that run 24 hours of the day… |  |
 The generator shack as it was when we moved in. |
When we moved into our house there was a functioning hydropower generator which allowed for:
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If either the TV or too many lights were on then the stove wouldn’t light and if the stove was on we had to turn off almost everything except the fridge. By modern standards it worked but there wasn't enough power for Doug's computers!
Thus began our quest for the ultimate power.
A power grid generally works like this:
1. You need power sources to create DC (Direct Current) power. We have 3. The DC power produced can't be used as it is and if it isn't stored in batteries it is lost. It also puts out a steady amount of power. It doesn't give more when you need more or slow down when you need less.
2. The power produced is sent to batteries (for more info on how batteries work, see @shelby’s great post about power. The info on batteries is about half-way down). The power stored in the batteries allow for the changing amount of power needed minute to minute by releasing on demand.
3. The batteries need to connect to an inverter which changes the DC electricity to AC (Alternating Current), the kind you can use when you plug in your stuff.
4. Wiring from the inverters delivers any the power you require to your house, shop, gazebo, cable car, welding machine, and back at the outbuildings where your power sources are installed.
Check in on part 2 where I scare you with visions of what a hydro generator looks like and why we want to keep ours!
Good thing I have the knowledge to make such arrangements, with the electric generator and batteries that allow you to store the electricity generated, to be able to maintain the house even if it is only a room and a bit of television, in the end I think that like me little time will have to watch the television, at the same time.
The last time the central electricity box of the house made a strange noise, like a laser, opened the box and saw so much cable ran to find the electrician to change that, because with electricity and less to see both connected cable gave me fear jaaaaaaaaa.
How good that you can, if I can as an auditor public auditor, I only know numbers, and agriculture, which is my passion, I do not even get better electricity.
I hope you and yours have enough energy to keep your adored little house warm.
a big hug, ahhhh and sorry for being late.
By the way what beautiful house between the forest.
Reestem too
Thanks! We have a lot of fun with all the stuff here. My husband, Doug, likes numbers too! When Doug went to university he got a degree in Electrical Engineering so he had a lot of basic information about how electricity works so when he wants to know something about a project he is able to understand books that gave him more specific information.
We haven't tried a lot with agriculture. Neither of us knows a lot. When we first moved here there was a garden but it seems like every time we tried to plant it we would find some new wild animal that likes to eat garden plants!
Ohhhhhh this is a social activities you are gives food to this poor and wild animals who do not have who food them. :) (sorry i al kidding and bothering) please excuseme.
well it is nice that you and your husband have a great projects with electricity is amazing build your own electrical resources.
Well i loved the plants as you see in my posta we have a little homestead were i grew up, and for this reason i know a lot of carefully about plants año harvest, specially corn, beans, rice, a little ok orange trees, avocados, tangerines, and another kind of amazing plants pety poas, pumpkings, wild endibles plants, i love gonna to the mountaint and found endible plants, we are a foraging practice with my wife, and sometimes, i loved to traslate from mountaint endibles plants to our yard, sorry for your problem with wild animal, but what about if you catch some of this animal and eat them, could be for example some endible wild animal included, rabbit, fox, armadillos, mapaches, tacuacines, castor, i do not what kind of animal wild affects.
Well if are animals little you could uses a insecticide, for protect them you could uses chemistry or make by yourself the poison with some herbs like garlic, onions and others strong plants to let far from yours plants
Please slowly work in your gardening harvest to let you get your own amazing endible plants, because nothing is more satisfy than harvest the food
Be paciente my friend.
Best regard. @galberto
Recuerdo haber hecho algo de jardinería cuando era joven, pero mi familia hizo la jardinería en nuestro patio trasero en la ciudad. Había muchos menos animales allí. Simpatizo con los pobres animales hambrientos (¡la comida de jardín es mejor que la comida de bosque!), Pero es desalentador encontrar todas las plantas que se comen hasta el suelo tan pronto como aparecen. También tenemos animales subterráneos que comen todas las raíces. Intentamos un poco de veneno en las madrigueras que hacen, pero había demasiados y no funcionó. Lo intentaré de nuevo sin embargo. Tienes razón. ¡No hay nada mejor que una comida hecha con alimentos frescos de jardín!
Did the Spanish translation work? I'm afraid I know no Spanish. I turn on the Google translation when I come to your blog and I forget that you post in Spanish when I reply!
English:
I remember doing some gardening when I was young but my family did the gardening inour back yard in town. There were many fewer animals there. I do sympathize with the poor hungry animals (garden food is better than forest food!) but it is discouraging to find all the plants eaten down to the ground as soon as they come up. We also have underground animals that eat all the roots. We did try some poison in the burrows they make but there were just too many and it didn't work. I will try again though. You are right. There is nothing better than a meal made from garden fresh food!
The wild animals have an incredible communication system it seems that one counts the food and in seconds an entire army appears to enjoy our harvests.
Good thing that you could do it before harvest in your yard, if you please keep trying to harvest your own food, thank you for understanding me to feed the hungry poor animals of the forest, it seems that our plants are much richer than wildly grown.
I hope you have good harvest in the future, and continued share interesting information about plants here in steemit.
a big hug.
Happy week.
Happy week to you too!
We will definitely try again this spring. Steemit makes gardening sound very attractive!
I found this post because of @galberto (thanks for resteeming it)
No puedo ver en ningún lado que te haya agradecido el tiempo, pero realmente lo aprecio. ¡Eres el mejor! ¡Gracias!
I can't see anywhere that I thanked you for the resteem but I really appreciate it. You're the best! Thanks!
You do not have nothing to thank, for the resteem, it is always a pleasure to we share post very interesting about great topics like you share with ours here on steemit, we always do when considering that information could help others.
Have a great day.
Wow - that generator looks super-badass!
We're really missing an opportunity by not setting up solar power in our place. We have southern exposure and a big flat roof that could support 1000+ square feet of panels with a clear view of the sky. But when we first settled into this place it was just to watch over it for a few months with grandpa in a nursing home. Now it's been 3+ years and a solar installation probably would have paid for itself.
Professional installations are expensive, though. Maybe you'll inspire us to do the work ourselves.
That is a rather extended temporary visit!
Check out the solar sites. I haven't done it myself but I've been reading that it is getting much easier to DIY it. Of course, if you're going to connect it back into the city grid they aren't going to let anyone but a pro play on that but some places they will set up an alternating system that allows you to feed solar that you aren't using back into the grid for a deduction on your bill so it would make it even a better deal in the long run.
You know, solar is a really fail-safe addition as a power source. Once it's set up you'd have to do something pretty traumatic to the system for it to need much maintenance or repair. The only thing that we do to ours is to watch the battery fluids. If you hook up to the grid you don't need your own batteries so that isn't even an issue. It's that original cost that makes people pause.
Hooking back to the grid sounds like a mixed blessing. No batteries but if you lose power, you're right where you started. (I guess we still have the generator.) Plus I'm sure you've got to be inspected by, and answer to, TEH AUTHORITIES.
Some years ago I read an article about using electric cars as battery reservoirs for excess solar power generation. As you mentioned, uncollected power just winds up getting wasted - why not dump it into a vehicle? It sounded like a pretty clever idea to me.
Not bad. If really stuck you could plug your car into your household grid. Without batteries you can't store energy but you can still use it while it is being generated can't you? for example, If you want to run your dryer or cook during the day when your solar is active it would work even if your home doesn't have the supplemental grid energy? We don't have any option to plug into the town grid so I've never looked into the method power sharing takes.
Wow - you guys are really completely disconnected?
We're 4 miles from the end of the power/phone grid. It's pretty rough terrain and they don't see the benefit of bringing it out this far for just 4 families. After a bunch of time and effort and a lot of arguing we got the trash pickup truck to make those extra 4 miles (but they still refuse to do it in the middle of winter even though we are able to get our roads plowed.... another frustrating non-story!) Doug spent a couple years trying to legally force telephone through but it was pretty much a wasted effort.
That's some serious independence, though. You and Doug should be really proud of your set-up!
How much did the pelton wheel cost, or if it came with the house (so you don't know) ... let's say (god forbid) it broke, how much would the same one cost to replace?
I directed this question to my husband. His reply:
Wow! I can tell this is going to be a fun series. I'm excited for part 2.
It looks like a fun life to me. Thanks for sharing it with us...
I was involved with some people that were 'off the grid' in the early 90s when they had to be seriously dedicated to the life. It was enlightening to say the least. We were also involved in converting VW Rabbits to electric power. Alas, that part of the venture got busted by the NTSB as we had zero safety ratings or tests :)
I'd say that girlfriends and wives tend to get a little testy when their men start playing with unreliable electricity and the manufacturing thereof! If the NSTB hadn't shut you down you might have heard a little more about it closer to home! Hahaha
I'd say that there are easy ways and hard ways to go off the grid. I read other off-the-gridders who are farming, ranching, have to create elaborate ways to obtain water, and who use way too much creativity in waste management. We're quite happy to be 'living in the lap of luxury' where we have more than adequate water, lots of power, and space for a good septic system (that we're very careful to fill as slooooooooowly as possible. 😉
Strangely enough, we get a lot of bikers up our way. I have no idea what they do but they're all over the place up here. Wave if you go past!
That's cool you are self sufficient in this way! Do you mostly get enough from the solar/wind?
Hi meesterboom! Good to see you!
We sit in this nifty little pocket in mountains and while there is a sweet wind tunnel that follows the river channel we only get wind when there is a storm which has, of course, knocked over enough trees (firewood) for us to use for all of this winter and some of next. The bulk of our power comes from our hydrogenerator plant. The stream gets a little dry in the couple months in the middle of summer and we have to turn it down but we get 2 excellent months of solar then.
Our backup generator really is only backup. The others put out enough power that we could become mad scientists and resurrect an army of Frankensteins.
That looks so cool. I'm kinda jealous. We've always lived in a city, but my family did so much camping. Who knows.....maybe someday. :)
It's a lot of fun but I would advise that you never find a place offline unless you are ready to deal with the withdrawals. A week or two you miss it but I came close to dying in that first couple months when we had no internet!
I see you fish! We are far enough from the river that there is no chance we'll slip in during a flood but close enough for an easy walk. I'd certainly advocate for you finding one similar! 😉
Haha. You are reading right into my off the grid dreams.....and the nightmares. :)
This is very interesting - I try to be environmentally aware and leave as small a footprint as possible - this could be interesting. Using the sun and the water for power...I love the idea. I hate being on the coal/diesel grid. Not only harmful, but very unreliable especially during storms or snow. This would be a cool alternative.
It is kind of funny that you mention storms - that is one of our most reliable times in comparison to the people in the towns around us. Other people will be without power for 2 days to 1.5 weeks a couple times each year and we'll be doing great. There's often maintenance and occasionally repairs that you generally don't deal with on the grid but what's life without a little adventure and the acquisition of knowledge that you never thought you'd need to know? 👍😊
Having more than 1 source has been a huge help particularly as the seasons change.
Thats so cool! I need to do something like this :)
Awesome this is something i've been highly interested in but as federal law makes living off of the grid illegal, I am trying to find other options.
You made me Google! I had no idea that there were so many people trying to live on their unconnected land who were being hassled like that. We aren't so bad off but we have neighbors who currently have a much better quality of life off the grid in property that they own out-right than if they were to sell out and live in town paying utilities and rent or mortgage, etc.
Good Luck!
You know i was thinking to live in a modified van and explore around
To be completely off the grid
Check this trip i done before
https://steemit.com/travel/@ashkanco/the-black-mountain-orchestra
This post has received a 3.7 % upvote from @boomerang thanks to: @re-engineer