Living off the grid question?

Question

how many solar pannels would you need to power a house? i'm thinking you'd need enough for: the house, water pump in the well, any out buildings that need electric lighting. i'm thinking bout in the southern ohio/northern kentucky area. . . incase that matters for how much sun the area gets. . . how much would you have to invest for the hook up and maintance of the system?

thanks

Answer 1

doug selsam  look up his name and ask him

good luck

you WILL thank me later

your welcome

good luck

Answer 2

it'll be a 20 year payout, by the time you pay off the loan on the $100,000 system, it'll have to be replaced and you start all over on the payments.

Answer 3

You might expect something close to 2 hours  at your rated maximum panel output /day in winter.

http://www.solarcraft.net/sun-hours-map....

Now every panel you buy is rated to have a maximum output, and you go from there.

You might get 3 hours a day on a year round basis.

You have to know how many kWh you would need to use during a winter day. and assume that for every kWh you need to use at night your solar panel will need to produce about 1.6 kWh to take care of your losses in storage.

You can likely cut your power usage a lot from what you use on grid if you go as far as using LED lights, putting the fridge in a cool basement, a small fridge, using only a small laptop, pumping your water by hand.

If just as an example you decide you can live with 20 kWh per day after allowing for storage, you will need something like 10 KW of maximum panel capacity.

That will provide more power in all other parts of the year.

Remember you need more lighting in winter, so allow for that.