When we began going down this road it was a little nerve racking. We had to learn an incredible amount.
So many ways to do things and we had absolutely NO experience with any of this besides having read some stories in magazines. We began our research and decided very quickly that a brand new large system was not in our budget. If we were going to spend that much, we might as well bite the bullet and put the commercial power in. We didn’t want to do that so we did enough research to at least feel comfortable having a basic level of knowledge to begin looking for our system components.
Not long after we began down the “alternative energy” road, we found a used system in the classifieds section of one of our local papers. We called the number and went to look at the system. This turned out to be a really good move on our part. We literally walked into a complete system that was in our budget. It was actually several thousand below our initial figures for the commercial power. This was beginning to look hopeful.
Our system components:
A. 12 Siemens 75 watt P.V. panels for a total of 900 watts
B. Fuse box for solar connections at the array
C. Ananda charge controller
D. Trace 4000 watt true sine wave inverter
E. 16 – L16 deep cycle batteries
F. 40 foot tower for wind turbine (lengthened to 46 feet later to accommodate a larger turbine). We actually started out with a wall mount pole that we attached to the shop. Not a very good solution. See story about “The Air-X”
G. Air-X 400 watt wind turbine (way too small – and with other issues)! Read about the “Air-X” adventure.
***The pictures shown on the site are with the current Whisper 100 turbine
H. 125 amp Predator Pro welding generator (way too big)! Read about “The backup generator”
I. Remote meter (for inside the house)
If you have looked around the site, you have probably noticed that I like a good challenge. This was just such a beast! We purchased the entire system and took it home. The man we bought it from is an electrical contractor who was into off grid systems at the time and we have remained friends since. I built a “power shed” off the end of our shop to house all of the electronic components and the batteries which proved to be a good choice. I like having all of them protected in a place where I can get out of the weather to service them while still standing up. With a few modifications, we still have that system in place today - 12 years later, now I would call that success!