Living “off grid” - solar panel updates & water ideas??

[Sligh1]

I haven’t looked into this for some time…. I’ve got cabin/house on my main farm where the electric bills are around the $75 to $200 mark each month. Water is $25 to $100 per month. Place is maybe 2,000 sq feet, spray foam insulated. Metal exterior.

I’d like to start with solar WHEN the technology & price makes sense. Which, last I checked, meant “subsidies” or tax credits. I want it so I get legit batteries so it can run it like a house & not pay utility company. QUESTION: is the technology there where this is “bullet proof” or a price that makes “somewhat reasonable sense”? For example: if it cost $15-30k all in & it last many decades…. That’s getting close to point where makes sense. If it’s $50k+, doesn’t make sense. I don’t need it pencil perfect… part of it- I don’t like monthly payments on ANYTHING!!!! & yes- like any TECH - I have to imagine it advancing each year both with panels & batteries. Would need to last a long time & not be susceptible to hail, etc. They got this down?!?!

**i spend $2k on propane a year to heat - GUESS…. Not sure if solar could ever heat my home with running electric or how crazy that upgrade in capacity is?

2nd ….. cost to drill a well? I have ponds & creeks all over. No clue how this works on exploring or drilling for a well. Any thoughts on cost and where I would start there?!?! Downsides of doing this?

U guys pry get it “spend tens of thousands & then- few or no bills for decades” is about where i bottom line it.

The “fun part” ….. we could feed the fam with fruit, veggies, fish, deer, birds, etc….. a gazillion times more than what we need. If crap hits the fan- we‘ll take some in. ***NO LIBS!***** .

Food & shelter- we golden. Need any feedback, price examples, tax credit status in 2023, etc to get off grid of power & water. Any help appreciated!!! If anyone has done this , be great to hear as well.

 

[IowaBowHunter1983]

Well be 10k+ I bet. That will never come close to pencling out vs just buying rural water. Well will add to electric bill too.

 

[sure shot]

I'd guess you are going to be 50k or more into solar by the time you add on the batteries, and you probably won't still have the capacity to be off the grid in the winter time. There just isn't enough solar power and daylight hours in the winter.

As far as heat, go with a wood stove, not electricity. Or geothermal, but that's pricey as well.

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[Wi transplant]

Fwiw.. i know a guy in Wyoming that has 250k into solar and wind set up and it barely runs his house set up there he says buy 8pm he's telling his kids to turn off much as possible to have no worries of power to make all night in winter! So i dont believe the technology is good enough yet !!!

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[newfarmer]

Knowing some of the local power guys- Solar is great, it helps ease your cost, but after 10 years a lot of times you are already replacing panels to get back to 100% efficiency. You would be hard pressed to ever be 100 with just solar. Most people around me that are trying to be as much off grid as possible have both windmill and solar.
As far as a well, you figure 10k and up- neighbor just drilled for 27k, I dont remember exact depth, but slightly rocky.
Ive wanted to make the jump into off grid, but its a different lifestyle change too- not just cost savings IMO.

 

[gunrunr]

I see some farms and rural businesses with their own windmill - is that more cost effective for making electricity than solar?

 

[sure shot]

Keep in mind that you pay a service fee to be connected to electricity. MVEC charges $40 a month. My average bill is around $150 a month, which is $1800 per year, but only $1320 of that is electricity. The other $480 is service fee.

Also, they sell solar by tax credits and the fact that you can sell excess electricity in the summer to make up for the shortage in winter.

If you are off the grid, you have to have to capacity to power yourself during the short winter days. You have to generate 24 hours of power to store in your batteries in a very short day. Also, keep in mind you lose 20-30% of that solar power when converting it to stored battery power.

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[sure shot]

I see some farms and rural businesses with their own windmill - is that more cost effective for making electricity than solar?

Depends a lot on how much wind you receive.

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[Obsessed]

I'd guess you are going to be 50k or more into solar by the time you add on the batteries, and you probably won't still have the capacity to be off the grid in the winter time. There just isn't enough solar power and daylight hours in the winter.

As far as heat, go with a wood stove, not electricity. Or geothermal, but that's pricey as well.

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Yep. Batteries to function 100% off grid makes this an expensive project.

@Sligh1 , Contact out One Source Solar out of Ankeny. Great guys to talk to and work with and they can give you way more information about this than I'm betting anyone on here can, including myself. Technology and prices have changed too much since I added solar panels to my home, for me to provide you with accurate current info.

 

[Farm boy]

So we put up a 30 KW system in 2021 cost $50 K. We run r farm and house off these panels.
If I would have added batteries the price would have doubled.
At that time batteries were not the way to go way to expensive.
First full year of being on solar I paid $5,000 for my electric bill,
Solar saved me $3,500.
1 year after we had these my solar guy called asked how they were doing and told me they went up 35% in price (covid inflation) got them up just in time.
The formula for a FULL calendar year is you can figure 4 1/2 hrs (average per day) of sun.
When I am not using all that I produce it goes back into the grid and I get credit for it.

 

[NextBuk]

I can only speak to some research I did pre-covid...7 years ago. I looked at installing a solar setup in my backyard to feed the house. It would've been about $30-$35K...I don't recall the exact size, but my house is around 4500 sq ft now. Tax credits would've been around $10K at the time. It almost made sense until I factored in the lifespan of the panels, which seemed to be around 10 years at the time.

 

[Obsessed]

In late 2020, I installed a 50 panel system at my large home. I opted for a single 11.4kwh DC to AC converter instead of 2 converters in an attempt to save $, as converters are pretty expensive. On sunny summer days, I have about 1 to 3 hours where I max out the inverter, but the loss of potential lost energy is minimal. Modern solar panel efficiency does degrade minimally year to year, and the research I performed said that life expectancy is around 25 to 30 years for them. Plus they come with a good, long warranty as well. If I'm alive and still living here in 25-30 years, technology will have improved quite a bit by then, I would assume. My system will pay its sell off around year 11 or 12. Battery backup systems are expensive and none of them have been around long enough to legitimately provide you with an estimated lifespan of solid operation. I feed back onto the grid. (I installed a backup propane generator, but it wasn't necessary. If I didn't install it, I would have absolutely still installed the disconnect switch so I could attach a generator at a future date and not feed back into he grid.) I pay a surcharge fee of $8.50 every month, no way of getting around that, but that's it. The first 3 months of 2023 were the only months that I didn't have enough banked electricity with MAE, so my bill each month was around $30.00. I have an extremely large home and many family members who tend not to turn stuff off.

If I were to go off grid with a cabin, I'd implement the following:

Poor mans geothermal with water tubing loops buried under ground along with solar collectors. (Water would constantly be circulated through the entire loop.)
Outside wood burning boiler system tied into the geothermal loop, on the feed side into the cabin.
* Geothermal pump would run constantly to keep cabin above freezing, but when I was there, I would fire up the boiler to bring the cabin up to temp.
Solar panel system, (panels, converter, etc.)
Small battery backup to run the geothermal circulation pump continuously.
Connection point for a generator for when I was there, so I could power everything else.

Unsure of cost. Solar panel system would only need to be big enough to charge the battery backup in order to keep the geothermal system operational. Less important in the summer. More imprtant in the winter.
Outside wood burning boilers can sometimes be found used for $4k or so.
Solar collectors are easy to fabricate or buy used.
Burying poor man geothermal piping under ground is cheap to do if you have your own machinery.

Done.

 

[JNRBRONC]

We replaced an old windmill driven well that had been converted to an electric motor when we bought our farm circa 1991. The well drillers took the windmill components for resale in the Kalona area, but the windmill still turns, raising and lowering the pump shaft. That well was sealed off to protect the water from contamination when they drilled the new well 15 yards west. I think they hit water at 208'. If memory serves me, the cost was about $15K. Needed a pressure tank in the basement of the house, some lines to waterers replaced, etc.

That is all fine and dandy, but if we lose power, we lose water. Best and easiest solution would be solar or a generator. I toyed around with the idea of putting a hand pump out on the well head, something like this:

Bad part is you need to fetch buckets of water to bring in the house, but on the cheap, you will have some water, better than none.

 

[T_Max]

So we put up a 30 KW system in 2021 cost $50 K. We run r farm and house off these panels.
If I would have added batteries the price would have doubled.
At that time batteries were not the way to go way to expensive.
First full year of being on solar I paid $5,000 for my electric bill,
Solar saved me $3,500.
1 year after we had these my solar guy called asked how they were doing and told me they went up 35% in price (covid inflation) got them up just in time.
The formula for a FULL calendar year is you can figure 4 1/2 hrs (average per day) of sun.
When I am not using all that I produce it goes back into the grid and I get credit for it.

Someone told me here that when you sell credits to the grid, you get some rate, but if you need to then draw power from the grid it is at a much higher rate. Have you found that to be the case? The person was not personally on solar so I question their source, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that true.


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[Obsessed]

Someone told me here that when you sell credits to the grid, you get some rate, but if you need to then draw power from the grid it is at a much higher rate. Have you found that to be the case? The person was not personally on solar so I question their source, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that true.


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In the state of Iowa, with MidAmerican Energy, the only electricity or credits that you 'Sell' to the power company are those that you've over produced at the end of the year, which I believe ends in March.
* The rate that you buy your electricity from MAE, (if you don't have enough surplus electricity banked with them), is higher than the rate that they buy it from you, (if you have electricity banked at EOY).

Throughout the year, the energy that you produce and feed onto the grid, and the energy that you consume and pull from the grid is a one-to-one exchange. No actual $ is changing hands. It's a wash.

Does this answer your question? The difference between those two rates varies, so you'd want to check with your power company.

I believe there are some states that used to, and may still, force power companies to buy solar electricity at the same rate they charge their customers, but Iowa isn't one of those states.

 

[Nrharris]

Someone told me here that when you sell credits to the grid, you get some rate, but if you need to then draw power from the grid it is at a much higher rate. Have you found that to be the case? The person was not personally on solar so I question their source, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that true.


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It depends on what power company you are on as to their net metering policy. My rec is monthly net metering. That means any excess I produce for the month they will buy at wholesale price. If I don't produce enough I buy it at retail. If you have yearly net metering you can stockpile credits to use in later months where you use more.

 

[Farm boy]

Someone told me here that when you sell credits to the grid, you get some rate, but if you need to then draw power from the grid it is at a much higher rate. Have you found that to be the case? The person was not personally on solar so I question their source, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that true.

So my power company charges me 9 cents a kwh plus 4 cents for distribution (maintenance fee).
When I over produce from my solar and send back on the grid they give me 9 cents.
I run as much stuff on sunny days as possible, such as the hammer mill for grinding corn for the hogs.
That is 1 way to try and use as much of my own power.
For me to put in batteries just not cost effective.
Here is a current output from my panels.
Sunny day in michigan

 

[T_Max]

Those are all within the expectation I would guess. I never thought of the wholesale vs retail angle. That would make perfect sense.


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[Slick]

So we put up a 30 KW system in 2021 cost $50 K. We run r farm and house off these panels.
If I would have added batteries the price would have doubled.
At that time batteries were not the way to go way to expensive.
First full year of being on solar I paid $5,000 for my electric bill,
Solar saved me $3,500.
1 year after we had these my solar guy called asked how they were doing and told me they went up 35% in price (covid inflation) got them up just in time.
The formula for a FULL calendar year is you can figure 4 1/2 hrs (average per day) of sun.
When I am not using all that I produce it goes back into the grid and I get credit for it.

I just don't see the math here......put 50k in and save 3,500 per year so you break even in 14 years. If one were to invest 50k for 14 years I would think you could almost double the 50k.

 

[Farm boy]

I just don't see the math here......put 50k in and save 3,500 per year so you break even in 14 years. If one were to invest 50k for 14 years I would think you could almost double the 50k.

Sorry Bad choice of words using (saved me $3,500).
The $3,500 is what I got credit for.
I actually produce more that stayed on the farm.
My electric bill for April before solar was turned on was $751.
Now after the solar was turned the April bill was $340.
Falls right in line with what was calculated for my system to produce.