Alternative energy - going off-grid?

Question

I'm looking for opinions and what stops single-resident homeowners from switching to alternative energy products (to reduce or remove their home from the electrical grid)

What do you think?

What is stopping people from using off-grid electricity?

Answer 1

Easy, the price.

Most people don't understand that the electrical grid not only acts as the way to get the electricity to your house but also as a big storage facility for all that energy.  The best description of the electrical grid I can give you is a balloon full of holes.  Each hole is an appliance using electricity and the generating stations have to provide electricity at exactly the same rate as it is leaking out in order to keep the balloon at exactly the same size (constant voltage and frequency).

To make an home based generating system effective you must either connect to the grid and buy/sell the power you consume/produce through a "smart meter".  Or else you have to install and maintain a large bank of batteries to store the energy in your home (unless you have an esoteric system that produces H2 or some other fuel) and since batteries are direct current (DC) and appliances run on alternating current (AC) you also need an invertor to turn DC into AC.

So it isn't as simple as putting solar cells or windmills on your roof.  You also need a way to store that energy for those times when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow.  All that extra equipment you need to be independent of the grid is very expensive.

Answer 2

For me, it's just price tag and latitude. To go completely off-grid this far north would mean a really big PV array. I'm currently working on reducing everything I can so I could get by on a 4kW array instead of a 14kW array. I can only count on about 4hrs daily (average) for solar.

Thus I'm also looking at wind power for the future.

In the meantime, I am using some solar to help heat my house.