Off-Grid Living Australia

[edz]

If there is enough interest I'll document it on the forum.
So we are on 8ha in the Huon valley in Tasmania. Up high and an awesome view straight down the valley.

We've got a shed already and I should have solar system running by the end of month. We are putting 5kw of solar on plus a lot of other gear. The batteries in lipo are getting cheaper and cheaper which is good. So we've got one going in immediately with an expansion a little later.

Any updates on the off grid build Justin ?.

[firefox]

Yeah and no..
One lesson the solar market is full of people doing the wrong thing.
I've sacked our original solar guy as Dogy brothers inc.

But we should have the core running today tomorrow and will post some pics

We are now going initially. Phase 1

6kw sun power panels
5kw sunny boy
6kw sunny island inverter
LG CHem master LION battery 6.4kwh plus expansion module 3.2
Home manager
Sunny Webbox
Energy meter and a few other monitoring systems.

phase 2
8kva generator auto start and integrated into inverter and grid
5kw trina solar panels
5kw sunny boy
Plugged into master grid


Phase 3
4kw sunny island inverter as slave to 6kw
Second LG CHem master battery and expansion means total of 20kwh usable battery

Phase 3 or 4 will introduce potentially a spa swim pool on solar and maybe another 5kw.

Had NBN wireless connected on Thursday.

I'll send some pics today making some changes to prep for the panels tomorrow.
Generator should be here this week

[Symon]

Wood heating is great if you can grow enough on your property.  Rocket mass heaters are the most efficient but not the only option for wood based heating (and water heating)

If you are going off-grid for environmental reasons then you don't want to be burning timber.  Gas is much cleaner.

See if I can kill this thread by mentioning straw bale building. Worked on the last thread like this 

I was watching Grand Designs a few months ago and they used this technique, looked awesome and incredibly cheap.

Decent insulation including double glazing will keep the house cool as well as warm-  30% or so of heat transfer comes through glazing. Shade the Windows, glaze them well. Other things like a central courtyard with water feature will cool the building core. Place bedrooms in the core, venting roofs etc.all help. Even just changing your habits like keeping the blinds and internal doors closed on a hot day.

The other thing is EAVES.  So many houses these days don't have them, or are so small that the sun just heats up the walls. 

Lower your expectations off grid and all will be fine. Expect to live like you do in the city and you'll need a city job to get the systems up and running and keep them there.

Bingo.  This is something I think many people overlook.  There is a lifestyle change associated with going off-grid, and this does not suit everyone.  As this is a camping forum I am sure many here would be able to adapt quite easily if they haven't already, but there is a sizeable chunk of the population that are not used to that lifestyle.

You also have to look at ongoing costs of going off grid.  They are not 'set and forget'.  Solar panels have a lifespan of 25-30 years.  Depending on what kind of batteries you get and your useage you will need to replace them every 10-20 years.  Inverters are ~15 years.

So if you are going to go off-grid, make sure you do the numbers and be prepared.  It is not as easy or cheap as many assume.

[Alan Loy]

If you are going off-grid for environmental reasons then you don't want to be burning timber.  Gas is much cleaner.

If you are burning timber that you grow (as opposed to old growth forests) then it is carbon neutral.  If you combine this with efficient combustion then you're onto a winner. Gas is a fossil fuel with all those issues even if it burns clean.

If you are interested some options this thread is an example of some of the newer heating ideas complete with emissions analysis. http://donkey32.proboards.com/thread/355/small-scale-development

[prodigyrf]

Here's an excellent online solar power tracker in Melbourne for you to scroll through the various menus and see how a serious solar setup works-
https://mediaserver.avenard.org/power/home
He's got a swimming pool he runs at night which the tree-changers can discount, but that aside you'll quickly appreciate that without storage capability, daily and seasonal variability is a major headache for going off grid.

There's a tendency for many solar fans to believe that technological advances with solar can overcome the problem but it's not so when you think about it. Currently solar systems can convert around 16% of the sun's energy into useable power so you might consider the Utopia of 100% conversion which would defy all Laws of physics but hold that thought. What you get with such an imaginary system is instead of an X KWhr maxm output system it now becomes a 6X KWhr system and simply 6 times the variability since 6 times nothing at night is still nothing. The Utopian solar system cost is irrelevant although when it's producing nothing you'd obviously prefer it cost nothing as well.

[Cruiser 105Tvan]

You could add a wind power generator into the system.
That would run night or day. 
I doubt you would like the headache from blowin on the thing when there's no breeze though.
You could con the locals to do it for you I suppose.

[briann532]

Just finished working out a quote for a standalone 4 KW system with 6.4KW battery bank.
$14,200.

Sounds steep and too small, but with gas for cooking, rooftop solar for hot water, it will do the house required.
Retired couple no kids and reasonable frugal with power.
They will require a genset for powering AC, but using it only on really hot days for a minimal fuel cost it won't be too expensive.
Wood fire for heating in winter and thermally efficient house will meet their needs.

Considering they will never receive a power bill and only have to allow about $1000 per annum for maintenance it's not too bad.
Obviously with prices dropping as time goes, its not that far away before it will be affordable.

[prodigyrf]

They're still trying-
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/redflows-hackett-were-better-than-teslas-home-battery-storage-13405
although to be fair pumped flow batteries like that can have application for commercial/industrial and perhaps large shared residential due to the fixed cost of the pump and delivery/monitoring system.

The history of mankind's ability to store energy is rather pitiful, apart from in the form of calories or water pumped uphill. There are huge hurdles to storing energy electrochemically and in that regard we're still using essentially the same lead acid battery in our cars that Henry was plonking in the Model T. Count me a skeptic that battery storage will ever be the saviour of solar and in Oz we don't have the suitable sites or the water to pump uphill.

[edz]

Hows the off grid retreat in the scub going Firefox, any updates / pics ? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRN0uClnJBw

[edz]

Yes please https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lW4Yux-lzo

[Craig Tomkinson]

I was bought up with a Rayburn and Crown wood stove cooked the tucker and heated our water great, Theses days if we burn timber off our farm that we grow, then put that ash or charcoal back in the garden for the potash, thats a no no, plus if the bush fire brigade I was in did burn offs to control fuel build up on the ground we are called environmental vandals, But when I go up the Cape millions of acres are burnt every year its called fuel reduction burning for carbon credits and the locals are payed big bucks for it, Theses Environmentalist are Fire trucked in the head, what the difference, I would love to have a solar set up in a couple of years good enough to run our house and be 95% self sufficient, but have a diesel or petrol genset good enough to do my welding,  Craig   

[Hookie]

in Oz we don't have the suitable sites or the water to pump uphill.

Not true. The ANU just did a study, finding 22000 suitable pumped hydro sites that could easily be developed into a 100% renewable setup.

"Australia needs only a tiny fraction of these sites for pumped hydro storage - about 450 GWh of storage - to support a 100 per cent renewable electricity system," said Professor Blakers from the ANU Research School of Engineering.

"Fast tracking the development of a few of the best sites by 2022 could balance the grid when Liddell and other coal power stations close.

"Pumped hydro storage, including Snowy 2.0, can be developed fast enough to balance the grid with any quantity of variable wind and solar PV power generation, including 100 per cent renewable energy.

"We found so many good potential sites that only the best 0.1 per cent will be needed. We can afford to be choosy."

http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-22000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-in-australia

[GBC]

Not true. The ANU just did a study, finding 22000 suitable pumped hydro sites that could easily be developed into a 100% renewable setup.

"Australia needs only a tiny fraction of these sites for pumped hydro storage - about 450 GWh of storage - to support a 100 per cent renewable electricity system," said Professor Blakers from the ANU Research School of Engineering.

"Fast tracking the development of a few of the best sites by 2022 could balance the grid when Liddell and other coal power stations close.

"Pumped hydro storage, including Snowy 2.0, can be developed fast enough to balance the grid with any quantity of variable wind and solar PV power generation, including 100 per cent renewable energy.

"We found so many good potential sites that only the best 0.1 per cent will be needed. We can afford to be choosy."

http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-22000-potential-pumped-hydro-sites-in-australia

"Pumped hydro - which accounts for 97 percent of energy storage worldwide - has a lifetime of 50 years, and is the lowest cost large-scale energy storage technology."

Stop right there, I’ve heard enough. Qld already has enough energy pre packaged, stored, and ready to go in the form of black lumps, and also yellow lumps - zero building required. They needed to add a few green adjectives to frame that argument better and exclude other natural resources.

I also like how the ‘cost modelling is underway’. Meaning there were zero other parameters such as ‘commercial viability’ or god forbid ‘environmental impact’ unnecessarily impeding the outcome of our study. Because the Snowy scheme is a screaming success in that department.

I am all for alternate solutions but the science needs to balance the economics before we kick it off or we will end up with another Tesla battery like SA which is the answer to absolutely nothing.

[Hookie]

I think you have to have a pretty loose definition of "energy storage" to consider coal. It's a fuel, not a battery.

I also think that science balancing economics is what has led to many of the environmental problems we're facing today. Perhaps science should be more interested in balancing environmental impacts and long term sustainability, hence this study.

We can't keep burning coal forever. This year is predicted to see the first increase in CO2 emissions after a 3 consecutive year plateau, primarily due to increased coal use in China.

[GBC]

Water behind a dam isn’t energy either. It just has the potential to drive a turbine, same as coal. Last I looked this conversation was about Australia. Let’s not kid ourselves that we are going to change China any time soon, who by the way produce by a huge margin the most hydro power on the planet. More than the next 4 combined - Brazil, Canada, USA and Russia.

[DrewXT]

We'd love to put in a small savonius wind turbine, but not sure what the council guidelines are around something like that

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[GeoffA]

Water behind a dam isn’t energy either. It just has the potential to drive a turbine.......

....potential energy when behind the wall, kinetic energy once it starts flowing....