Blog – Off Grid Electricity Need

WATER

Clean Water and Filtering Solutions

ELECTRICITY

How much do you need and how to generate

HEATING

Heating Solutions

Agriculture

Tips for agriculture

Introduction

Many people ask how much power they need. This is something that can only be answered by analyzing your situation. It will depend on which appliances you use, do you use them at same moment, weather conditions, …. If you have airco’s and summer is very hot, no need to say you will use a lot more energy. Also there is a big difference in quality and efficiency of appliances. An inverter heat pump airco from Daikin will pull much less energy than a standard Qlima airco.

Some basic calculations and need-to-knows

Volt x Ampere = Watt.

For example 220 Volts, 10 Amperes will result in 2.200 Watts.
If you have Wh or KWh it indicates how many power you can draw in 1 hour.

So if you have a 1000Wh battery, and you pull 1000W (for example your microwave oven) it will run for 1 hour.

Battery Types (AGM, Lithium, LIFEFO4)

Some type of batteries such as AGM batteries (car batteries) can only be used from 100 % till 50 %.
So if you have a car battery 80 Ah you have total power 12.8 V x 80 Ah = 1.024 Watt, but you can only use 50 % so 512 Whr. So in this case the microwave can run for 30 minutes.Lithium ION, LiFePo4 batteries can be use fully. So a Lithium Car Battery same power, you are able to run your microwave for 1 hour.Sealed, AGM, Acid batteries can be charged let’s say 250 times. A lithium ION battery can be charged 500 to 800 times. A LiFePO4 battery between 3000 and 6500 cycles.

Let’s take a current question “Can I run this appliance eg coffee machine with for example a 3 KWh battery” as example. There are 3 things to consider.

Appliances sometimes at startup require more power. For example an airco system when switching on will pull for a very short time much more power. Therefore you can count on the inverters “Surge Power”. Surge Power is the power that can be delivered for a couple of seconds.Let’s take the example of the coffee machine. I have in my car an Nespresso Machine. It pulls when heating up 1.100 Watts. In my car I have an Goal Zero 3KWh battery with 1500 Watts continuous power. So in theory I can run the coffee machina 3000 Wh / 1100 Watts = 2 hrs 43 minutes. BUT it will only draw 1.100 during warm up and this is for 15 to 20 seconds. Afterwards it goes to 140 Watts during making of coffee.
So in real life I can make a lot of coffees with my battery.

Current setup and example

I will use my own situation as example.

I live in a 465 m2 home (5000 square ft) and my average consumption is 6000 KWh per year, which is 16.5 KWh per day. As we have a night / day meter I know my consumption is more or less 4 KWh during night and 12.5 KWh during day. Heating is on gas, but we use Airconditioning during summer and sometimes we use it to heat. Cooking is also electric (induction), 4 airfryers and traditional oven.

Solar Panels and Batteries

To date I have 12 solar Panels 380 Watts peak each attached to a 5KW Hybrid SolarEdge X1. This produces depending on weather between 9 KWh (cloudy and rain) till over 30 KWh per day. Due to the quality of the BEEL panels they peak a little over 400 Watts.

There is also a TRIPLE battery connected 6KWh and 2 1.5 KWh batteries. For now the batteries are used as backup in case of grid loss. In my case this should be sufficient because at night I use the batteries and during the day my panels produce enough power to fully charge the battery and provide electricity for normal use.

Update september 2023

Meanwhile I added 72 Panels of 455 Wp, giving 32,7 KW. Total it is approx 38 KW.
Batteries are approx. 50Kwh. I have 3 x 10KW 3-phase hybrid inverters in parallel.

I am completely OFFGRID.

My central heating is using Daikin Heatpump systems. No gas used or any other source where I am dependent.

Links

Natural Water Cleaning

These are a group of passionate people to help you with all you water filtering solutions. There are specialized in natural solutions like Hennep cleaning.

Link

AquaTrue Waterfilter

Removes chlorine, fluor and other poison from your tapwater

Garden Home with solar panels

Optimal settings, high efficiency Natural Wooden Garden Home

Feasibility and summary

Electricity

Easy, average investment 1 EURO per Watt including batteries.
Cost over 10 yrs 0,1 EUR per watt vs 0,27 EUR per watt from provider.
The bigger the installation, the lower the price per watt.

Heating

There are several ways. Heat Pump Systems are the most efficient solutions in combination with solar power.
We are working on a FREE HEATING system. More information will follow.

Water

Using grond water pump power by solar or wind energy. Needs conversion of installation.

Recommendation to use multiple filter systems.