How much are you paying for the electrickery? At residential rates that equates to > 5kW on a 24/7/365 basis - are you using electric heaters (as well as water heating)? This is well above the expected usage for a 3 bedroom house (baseline usage in California is 20-35 kWhr / day for an all electric house in winter). I suggest you should investigate some non-electrical solutions first - diesel or solid fuel heating (especially if you can get free wood from anywhere). Combined heat & power from the engine for hot water - it's a very simple plumbing job to get the hot water & you can fit a beefed up alternator for electric (ideally on a separate belt that can use a large proportion of the engine power). I've done both of these and lived very frugally on a stinkpot (although neighbors aren't always happy with a daily 1/2 hour engine run).
Wind and/or solar will keep you going for low usage situations in a very green & neighbor friendly way, but they won't do 100kWhr/day. Hugh. Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:08:12 -0400 From: Noel Russell <[email protected]> Subject: [Liveaboard] Getting off the electric grid! To: liveaboard <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Ok, Enough is enough. Wife got yelled at by the receptionist/bookkeeper/Bad Lady (kids statement next day at daycare) with our child in tow because she did not like our electric bill payment. Tirade was not good and I am dealing with that end. However, how hard is it to go off grid? Our stinkpot has room for 2 wind generators and some solar panels, so what am I looking at doing? Also, right in front of the water heater is room for another battery bank :D . Think of it this way... $600 a month in electric if not more during the winter so.... Noel _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
