Home based solar, wind and diesel generator Electricity - Off Grid - Cost Analysis

There are a number of folks; supposed experts, which are proclaiming, mightily we should add, that SOLAR AND WIND just doesn't work economically because of time and mostly because of FINANCIAL reasons. No other way for Zenergy to say this, but there seems to be something else driving this conversation. However, we NEVER hear any supporting numbers or evidence for such claims that Wind and Solar just won't work. We'll, let us FINALLY dispel the myth with a REAL WORLD example referenced by real sources. We hope you enjoy this exercise.   

How much electricity does the average US home use?

Great question!  A question that the DOE has answered for us in their typical Excel worksheet fashion.  Check it out:  http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/table5_a.xls

Since we are a Texas located company, we are going to center our example around the average house in Texas. 

The following table shows the average Texas home.  We expand the table to show the amount of average power and calculate peak power, power needed to start the compressor on your AC and refrigerator, with a 7x multiplier. 

How much does traditional electricity cost? 

Something else the kind folks at DOE have shown us via their great Excel file.  In Texas, the average household is paying $.1304/KwH.  We have taken that number and applied a 3% inflation cost and calculated the TOTAL 20yr cash cost of electricity for the average Texas home.  Read it and weep! 

The average Texas citizen is going to pay $47,500 in Electricity costs to the grid over a 20yr period. Not an insignificant number. Just for fun, we decided to calculate the total value of the electricity business in Texas over the next 20yrs. BIG NUMBERS with LOTS at STAKE!!!

Total Future Value of the Texas Electricity Business

Total 20yr Value of the Texas Electricity Market with 3% inflation and population growth: $1,627,239,872,194

Wonder why so many people are arguing against wind and solar? Market share comes too mind.

We digress... The POINT is that current electricity providers don't want to loose market share and are simultaneously and actively promoting clean energy and restricting its growth.  Add the government in the form of incentives etc. that are actually inflating the cost of the market.  Genious!!!  The Bio-Energy conversation in the USA is fundamentally a farm subsidy to create new markets for long stocks.  

Some Power Basics

There are a couple of power formulas and concepts you will need to understand to decipher this exercise.

Watts is the fundamental power formula.  Watts = Volts * Amps.  If you have 12V with 20A you have 240 Watts.  If you have 110V with 5 Amps you have 550 Watts. 

Watt Hours = watts * number of hours.

Efficiency is the amount of power that is lost by either converting DC to AC or transferring BTU to KW through heat loss.  If you have 1000W and you have a 90% efficient inverter, you will end up with 900W of usable energy. 

Battery Backup

You will need a battery bank for your home electricity solution. We thought we would utilize the KISS, Keep it Simple Stupid, method and utilize your average deep cycle Marine Battery from our old favorite Sears. There are probably better solutions out there, but as you will see, even the Sears Diehard does the job quite nicely. We figured we would go WAY overboard and have enough electricity on tap in the form of batteries to run our house for 7 days.

Another trick about batteries is that if they are not discharged fully, they last longer. We also said that we would replace these batteries every three years, which is also probably overkill. However, we want to build a Hurricane proof system. ;) Info about our Sears Diehard Battery

So, with our batteries, we have burnt through $7,332.67 of our total $47,500 20 year electricity budget. Batteries are 15% of our total budget.

Inverter/Battery Charger

Batteries work in 12V DC and Homes work in 110V AC and Batteries. Therefore, we need a piece of equipment called an inverter which will convert our battery energy into energy that will plug into our house. This connection will be made in our existing gray circuit breaker in the average house into the BIG circuit breaker on the top of the gray box.

If you have a automobile cigarette lighter plug-in for your laptop, its the exact same piece of equipment, just larger for a house. If you look at the How much electricity does the average US home use? section, you will see that the average house needs a little over 10,000Watts of energy on tap for startup power for AC and Refrigerators etc. So we need an inverter that will handle 1500 Watts of continuous power and have a peak load power of 10,000 Watts.

It would also be nice if we had an inverter with a Battery Charger in it. Amazingly enough, we FOUND one. http://www.topsalesdepot.com/50wapoin50in.html We could not find any Mean Time to Failure numbers for this piece of equipment, so we took a guess and suggested that it will last 5 years. So over the course of the 20yrs we will have four of them.  I personally have a 45Amp/12V inverter on my 1986 RV which still works like a charm, so 5yrs is probably overkill.  

This inverter will also act as a battery charger, which we can leverage for our Solar Panels, Wind Turbines and Backup Diesel Generator.

Solar Panels

This part of our exercise we really like, because these Solar Panels are made in the USA. Again, we went overboard and gave ourselves 2400 Watts of solar panel. MORE than enough to be the single source of power for our system, but we like redundancy. Sharp Solar Panels

Vertical Wind Turbine

Most County, City and HOA (Home Owner Associations) do NOT like classic wind turbines. Having a classic windmill means there needs to be a plan for it to fall and not hit your neighbors house etc. Introducing the VERTICAL wind turbine. These wind turbine have a MUCH smaller footprint, require no tower and can put out similar watts to the classic horizontal wind turbine siblings. For this exercise we have select the UGE Vertical Wind Turbine. http://www.fastfurnishings.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=UGE_UGE-1K

Diesel Backup Generator

Just in case the wind does NOT blow or the sun does not shine, lets add a diesel generator backup to the plan. Here is a nice one you can get at Home Depot. 3.3G of Diesel put out 3500 Watts for 11 hours. More than enough to run the entire house.  When the generator is used, think of it mainly as a battery charger. Keep 50 gallons of tap, utilize your battery bank and you probably have backup power on tap for about 2 months. If you need that, then our universe has stopped functioning, but again, we said, we wanted to go overboard. Home Depot Diesel Portable Generator

Installation and unforeseen costs

We have solar panels, wind turbine, battery bank, inverter and a diesel generator. We are going to need some hardware and enclosures  and there is going to need to be a qualified crew to install it. We gave a budget of $2500 for extra equipment and and install fee of $7500. Its also important to note that if this business would get any traction all major equipment could probably be purchased direct for a 30%-50% reduction in cost, but we will keep costs retail just to amplify the exercise.

Total OFF GRID, Solar, Wind, Diesel with Battery Backup Solution

Total Conventional Energy Costs for 20yrs

Total Project Profit

Money to be Made!

According to our calculations, their is an average of $51.58/Month in free cash for 20yrs along with a $10k installation fees with products that are purchased on a retail basis. Based on this triple redundant power system. Wind and Solar won't work? Hmmm... Time to find a new story for why we need to utilize Coal, NG and Uranium to power our future.