14 Years with Solar Power - Is It Still Worth It?

hey folks welcome back to the channel in today's video I'm going to talk about whether or not having solar power at an off-grid cabin has been worth it so let's get to it I saw a video that a guy did I didn't watch it I just saw the title of it and it was offgrid power is it worth it after one year I thought you know what I've had offgrid power for 14 years yeah it's worth it but if you came here to just find out is it worth it well then you know thanks for watching I appreciate it but hear me out now 14 years folks 2010 is when I put in my off-grid power my first system which there are still components of here today I have upgraded over that period of time and I want to talk about the upgrades why I did them and whether it was worth it all along so let's let's let's just get right to the elephant in the room the cost of putting in utility power to this cabin would have been in between 20 and $30,000 and potentially even $40,000 at the time now bear in mind I am nearly 3 miles from the nearest pole line that I'm aware of and paved road so you're talking about putting in about 3 miles of Po and poles when I was in the Telecommunications industry a 30 35t pole was between $2500 and $3,500 for just the pole poles can be put about every hundred yards I know that installing power out here would have been very very costly and my first solar power system that I put in was under $3,000 was it worth it of course it was right but there's more oh been a long day so that first system was $3,000 approximately 27 $2,800 and it provided me with enough power to run that refrigerator right there keep my lights running do the basics that I needed but but it was barely enough it it worked for a quick weekend as long as you paid attention to what your your voltage was on your batteries and at that time I didn't really have a way to do that outside of a multimeter so you know check it periodically with a multimeter and make sure you don't go into low voltage and kick your generator on if you need to power your batteries back up but it worked it was a simple system a lot of Hands-On and you could think of that perhaps as a con because if you just paid the $40,000 or whatever to put in utility power he come out here and flick the light switch whereas I had to come out and turn the inverter on and then flick the light switch but then I did some upgrades now if we fast forward to today 14 years later I've got life po four batteries I have 360 amp hours of lithium batteries folks and I put those batteries in last year they were $3,600 something like that I can't even remember but we'll call it between $3,000 and $3,600 that's a very expensive battery bank but I put it in for a reason at the time I had 8-year-old 6vt golf cart batteries in a series parallel configuration to give me 24 volts and it was 660 amp hours at 24 volts but with those flooded lead acid batteries you really don't want to drain them that much if you drain them down 50% you lose a lot of cycle life on them so I always tried to keep them at about 20% now those batteries are said to be good for 3 to 5 years I was eight years into using them and could probably get another year or two maybe but I also knew they were starting to push it and in the winter I'd have to run my generator a lot more and I didn't want to do that the idea here is to get away from running your generator all the time which you can probably hear is running behind me well in the back over there and I got the window open so you could hear it a little better but that's cuz I was abusing it for a video I just did I can drop a link down below but it's on the new inverter that I have and so anyway I I drained these batteries down to 262 these life pole batteries I could have e let them go to 25 volts or something or 24 I don't and I learn that with my lead acid batteries if you only drain them about 20% they're going to last longer you can get 10 years out of them but I didn't want to run my generator all winter long I wanted to be right now with with over 45% propane still in my 500 gallon tank and I am whereas years passed I'd be at 25% so that's a bonus big bonus saves money propane's getting expensive so I put in some other features I put in a battery monitor system that could tell me the state of charge on my batteries what my voltage was how many amps were coming in or going out I added six more solar panels on the roof I added a new charge controller an Outback Flex Max 80 charge controller I have a magnum energy automatic generator start switch and I also have 24volt to 12vt converter to take that 24volt battery bank and run my car stereo and things like that all of that cost me less than $20,000 so I think I did the math on it I'm into it about 12 to 14,000 in 14 years I have been able to come out here walk in here and turn the power on now it used to be that my inverter was outside in the porch so I'd walk into the porch flick the inverter on the lights would come on life is good then I got to go out and connect up the generator battery so it doesn't die I keep it disconnected when the inverter's off and now I've got generator battery charging up it's ready to go I can power up the generator and charge things up I had an automatic generator start switch so my power got down below 24 volts it was fine I want to get a new one of those but I am now running two wires for the two wi start on the generator through my inverter so it's set to 21 volts which is catastrophic you're close to 100% at that point I know that this life Poole battery monitor system will cut out at about 20 to 21 volts so the all inverter companies seem to do that I don't like that let me give you a few pros and cons for having your own offgrade power obviously cost if you're doing an offgrade cabin like this it's cheaper it's it's way cheaper and not only that I don't have a monthly bill so once I put it in I invested that initial money I don't have to pay every month so if you bring grid power out here now you still got to pay them every month and maybe it's only 50 or $60 or $100 a month because it's an off-grid cabin well it would be on grid then but you're still paying them for all the power that you use I'm not doing that I don't have to pay anybody anything so no big initial investment no monthly payments now to be fair I have a 360 amp hour battery bank that's pretty good that will last me a long time because I only use between 45 and 75 amp hours a night so I could go a week just about without needing my generator easily 3 or 4 days my target is 3 to 5 days without needing the generator living out here so I could do that today I couldn't do it before but I'm not talking about running air conditioning and washers and dryers and all that kind of stuff so if you're looking to power a house I'm not sure it's necessarily worth it right I mean I know guys that have spent $80,000 putting their systems in on their big houses to run their house and folks the years it would take to amuze that versus just having utility power wow long time I even saw a post by a guy that was putting in about $80,000 worth of solar to charge his electric car I'm into off-grid folks but that just seems ridiculous I guess some people have more money than sents I don't so for a house is it worth it I don't know off-grid cabin absolutely I don't have to call anybody if something goes wrong that's a pro and that's a con obviously if you're not electrically inclined and something goes wrong you're going to have to call somebody and that's not necessarily a good thing if the power goes out then you could just call them right but if my power goes out I am the power company and I built the system I know every component in the system so I should be able to fix it or know what needs to be fixed and I've got some redundancies built in I do have a backup inverter it's a smaller one I've got it at home but I do have another one now I've got two so I do have another inverter I've got two charge controllers so I've got I've got backup here I don't have to call anybody I call myself you could look at that as a pro and con but here's the thing when the power goes out down below because there's been a storm and the trees have knocked out the power lines I don't even know that it's happened I usually find out on the radio cuz my power's still working so I don't have a power bill I didn't have to pay anybody to put this in I did it myself I am my own power company I come out here I flick the inverter on the lights come on I'm good to go I know my own system I built it I know its limitations I know how long it'll run and I've built in enough redundancies that I've got lots of solar power I've got a generator for backup I can put in a windmill which I think I may yet do this system is awesome I love it and I'm not paying anybody but but setting aside the paying thing I guess they probably don't even know I have power that's what being off the grid is all about isn't it I don't rely on anybody else I Rely solely on myself I don't care what the power company does you don't pay your bill to the power company they shut you off well guess what in fact you know what I have a little story to tell you my wife and I moved into our new house almost four years ago we've been ban the water bill every month and we pay our bills however back in December I came home one day and there was some water I didn't have a problem with the water but about an hour later I went to wash my hands and the water was off and I thought what the heck so I called the neighbor I said hey is your water off he said no it's working fine and I thought uhoh what's happened so after looking around I couldn't figure it out and finally I thought uhoh what if I remember Darcy saying something about the bills and something got mixed up and she sent in a bill and it came back something something was Goofy on one of the bills and I thought I wonder if it was the water bill so I went and I looked and she actually had paid the water bill but when it was first due something had happened and so she had to rewrite the check and resend everything in and by the time she got it all figured out and resent it in it it hit them like the day of or the day after that was the final date for them to shut it off and so they shut the water off we've never had a problem paying the bills folks it was one time in well Darcy and I have been together for 22 years in 22 years we haven't failed to pay any bills and they shut it off just like that and and they apparently part of the problem was Since I no longer was working the phone number they had was my old phone number and so rather than coming out to the house and knocking on the door they just came shut the power or the water off I guess the power company could probably do that too of course I called them up they said we haven't paid your bill I'm like yeah my wife sent the check in they said well we haven't got it yet and I said well can I just pay it over the phone and they said yeah I will connect you to somebody to pay it so then it took me a while to get connected but I got on with them and I literally took my debit card and I paid the bill it wasn't even a Big Bill I think it was like maybe a hundred I don't know it wasn't very much so I paid the bill and within an hour the water was back on well folks out here there's no forgetting to pay my power bill because I don't have one so this power is always going to work as long as there's no failure in the system nobody can shut it off on me no one has control over it I have total control that's what off-grid is all about it's Freedom folks total freedom so is it worth having power it an offgrid cabin you better believe it now some people might say well let's it's a cabin why do you need power well unless you're going to use a cooler to keep your food cool all the time you're out here you got to have a refrigerator and even if you run a propane refrigerator you need power and I don't know lights are nice I mean I don't want to go back to the Dark Ages and start burning whale oil now when we were first building out here I was using oil lamps and gas lamps and all that kind of stuff and I still have those and occasionally we even use them just for fun but we don't have to and when you come out here in the winter time and you get out here at 9:00 at night in the winter time when it's pitch black out I could just walk in and turn my power on and flick my lights on and folks I got lights I love it it's awesome so is it worth having an offgrid power system well I can tell you after 14 years with an offgrade power system you better Bet Your Life on it it's fantastic I love it I would never go back the only thing I would want to do is add more and that is one of the cons I suppose because I've noticed with a lot of people with off-grid systems they're always doing little tweaks and little upgrades and it's kind of like the computer industry you know if you've been around as long as I have you remember the computer industry of the late 70s early 80s rocking into the 90s and then into the 2000s it was like every so many months computer processing power doubled and the need for memory doubled and you had to get more memory and bigger hard drives and faster processors well solar power is kind of like that too I just went from a an 11year old old 4,000 watt as pure sine wave inverter to this new Sun gold power 4,000 watt pure sine wave inverter and folks let me tell you those 11 years features have changed a lot and it's fantastic I love the features on this new inverter well that's kind of thing that can happen maybe you know I I noticed people buy combined systems they get the inverter the charger the charge controller it's all put together in one unit me I'm not going to do that I like having what I call a scalable system I got two charge controllers folks one on the ground Mount panels and one for the panels on the roof and if one of those charge controllers fails I can replace it but I still got the other one working so I don't have an issue there I'm going to have solar charging going on if one of my Chargers fails now I'm only running one inverter but I do have backup inverters because I started with a 2500 watt modified sine wave inverter I still have it I couldn't bring myself to sell it and now I've got a spare 4,000 watt pure sine wave inverter well I'm not going to sell that I'm going to hang on to that too so I've got that back up now the generator yeah okay I do have a spare generator too folks when you get to be my age you tend to accumulate things and some of those things you don't get rid of but my system's scalable I could add another solar array I could add a windmill I could I could add more if I want I don't really need to I'll be honest with you this system's pretty good the only things that I'm thinking of upgrading now is my automatic generator start switch I know that Magnum energy makes a new one with an LCD display that you can adjust the start voltage to to much higher so today the maximum start voltage I can set it at is 24 volts that's fine but the volt ramp on life po batteries is really steep you know they tend to run above 26 volts when they're mostly charged and probably you know they're down to maybe a 75% charge and they're still at like 264 263 like I might have had them down to 60% at 262 but by the time you get below probably 50 or 40% it starts to dive fast so if you set it at 24 volts you could be down around 70% depth of discharge I don't know because I haven't seen the voltage ramp I just know they're steep so what I want to do is get the new Magnum energy auto start switch because I can adjust it above 25 volts and that's what I would prefer maybe even 26 I want these batteries to stay no more than about 25 to 30% discharged so you know 70% full still simply because I have learned with my prior batteries it's really better to not drain them all the way this battery bank is said to be good for 4,000 Cycles at 100% discharge 5,000 Cycles at 80 well folks that's kind of the way batteries work I bet it's over 6,000 at 70 so we we want to keep them above 50% anyway in my mind some people think I'm crazy but I'm hoping to make these batteries last me 30 years I don't want to ever have to replace them but that's the kind of stuff that you can do with solar power you can add to it you can change it and I like the separate components because I just upgraded my inverter if I had an inverter charger and charge controller all in one unit well I couldn't do that I'd have to replace more than one piece now I just replace one piece if I want to get a new charge controller that has better settings I can just pull out the old one and put a new one in so I don't have to change everything else out so I like that so anyway I've gone on Long folks I just wanted to take a few minutes and tell you my thoughts on whether or not it was worth having off-grid power after 14 years and the answer is unequivocally absolutely you better believe it so there you have it folks from the old Jarhead to you now if you like this video folks do me a favor hit that subscribe button it helps the channel out I really appreciate it I'm going to drop another video right here for you to check out youall have a great day the old Jarhead out

Channel: The Old Jarhead

Views: 56,357

Keywords: Is solar power worth it, off grid cabin with solar power, pros and cons of solar power, solar panels, are solar panels worth it, solar energy, solar power, solar panels worth it, is solar worth it, off grid cabin life, off grid, off grid cabin, off the grid, cabin, off grid solar, 14 years of off grid cabin life, cabin life, off grid cabin build, cabin build, solar panel, off grid solar power system, offf grid solar power system, off grid living, is solar power worth it

Id: sB7_qq2Tjj0

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2024