Is off grid solar expensive?
It’s not the best policy to give an estimate before speaking with a potential customer but its important for a customer to be expecting a general area of pricing. If your trying to run some led lighting and a minifridge you’ll be less than $10,000. If you want to run a small hunting cabin that should be less than $30,000. Big cabin less than $40,000 and everything larger is just too hard to pinpoint a “less than” number without getting detailed information from a customer. Keep in mind this is just for a general idea. Its not what it “will be”.
DT Solar needs the following to give an accurate OFF GRID Solar quote
Step 1.) Appliances. Each of the things you want to run has a wattage. We don’t need the exact wattage but we do need to know how many of and what the appliance is. EX: (2) 30″ TV’s , Big Fridge, 3/4Hp Well Pump, 6 LED Lights, Satelite Box. * We use this information to calculate the solar system size.
Step 2.) A lot of the off grid sites we’ve installed don’t have an address. That’s Ok. But you will need a spot picked out that has at least 250 square feet of good south facing sun and think about the type of mounting you’ll need. (we do ground mount, roof mount and pole mounts) If it takes a tank to get to your site,.. we might be able to get in there but let us know if we cant make it up there in a Prius!
Step 3.) Submit your information for a quote.
Off grid solar Basics
Batteries – An off-grid solar system has to have batteries to function. The solar panels aren’t going to give power directly to the load. The batteries act as the buffer to keep the power acting fluid.
Appliances – To size the system right, we’ll need a list of appliances and a very good guess at how long they will be on each day.
Expense – Off Grid solar is a bit more expensive than a grid tie system. If you were using a central AC / Heat and your electric bill was over $100/ month. You shouldn’t expect off-grid solar to be cheap.
High Current Devices – 1 HP or higher well pumps, Central AC and Welders cause the cost of off-grid to go up astronomically. So if your preparing to go off grid; make sure your keeping your “Amps” as low as possible. Mini split AC units go up as high as 33 SEER ratings! That means that they work well with Off grid solar. Other alternatives are natural gas heat or wood burning stoves.