When we moved to our farm on the coast in Victoria Australia over 20 years ago our mains power was delivered by a single wire earth return (SWER) power line and we were the second to last house connected to it. This was just after the misguided privatisation of the power grid delivered this lifeline of civilised existence into the greedy hands of ‘competing’ power companies.
The previously state owned ‘Gold Plated’ system now had to turn a profit for investors so preventative maintenance services were cut.
We began to experience power outages, these were usually brief but occurred at least weekly. They would sometimes extend for hours and more than once for more than a day. With rainwater tanks and an electric pressure supply we couldn’t fill a kettle or flush a toilet.
The first response to this was to install a 5,000 litre tank on a hill 15 metres above the house with a 40 mm pipe to the house. We kept it full and only used it when we had to. One problem solved, but we were still sometimes reduced to kerosene lamps and candles after dark and couldn’t reliably run a freezer to store the food we produced.
So we decided to go off grid. It was a few years before we were fully independent of mains power.
Our system grew over time as finances permitted, technology improved and our experience and knowledge grew.
Now we have two three-bedroom houses 800 metres apart. One is 35 years old and only moderately energy efficient the other is eight years old and optimised for passive solar with excellent insulation, double glazing etc.
Both homes have wood-burning kitchen stoves with boilers for hot water in winter and for hydronic heating. They also have bottled gas stoves and solar hot water with instantaneous gas boost, which is almost never required because the heat exchanger on-stove boiler keeps the tank hot all winter. When the stove is not in use the solar hot water system with its heat exchanger does the job.
We grow all our own firewood. Providing around 100 kg of seasoned hardwood per house per week for the colder months is labour intensive and requires petrol powered chainsaws and a wood splitter.
Each house has its own completely separate power system, each with 30 solar panels of 300-440W capacity, MPPT solar controllers and a 1 kW wind turbine on a 19 metre mast of 80 mm diameter steel tube, stabilised by about 100m of 10mm steel cables and 3.6 cubic metres of concrete.
Running 24 hours a day the wind generators can sometimes equal the total daily solar input.
The power storage systems consist of a total of 60 German made lead acid gel 2V 600 amp hr batteries, shared between the houses (24 and 36). Each of these batteries weighs 48 kg and currently retails for $474 (AUD). They are rigged in series to provide 24 V power to a computer controlled DC linked inverter/charger. Each house also has an interconnected AC linked inverter/charger that sends 240 V AC power from part of the solar array directly to the house switchboard and also contributes DC charge to the battery bank.
In theory we have three to four days of zero input power supply if we were to flatten the batteries, but in practice we don’t let the batteries drop below 70% capacity in order to protect them and make them last as long as possible. So we are limited to about one day of stored capacity.
Both house systems are close to as optimised as we can get them and represent a total investment of around $160,000.
So how do they perform?
In summer perfectly. We don’t have to do much other than check in with the laptop once a week to monitor the system, and we often take the wind generators offline for extended periods.
In winter, when solar energy input per square metre drops to about 30% of peak summer level and then for only a few hours a day, the systems still work pretty well but require more monitoring involvement.
To some extent power usage can be matched to storage levels and fluctuating input from the wind generator. However, the total renewable input is just too patchy and unreliable so petrol or diesel powered generator backup is absolutely required.
It’s not just in winter, but in autumn especially and sometimes in springtime too. When cloudy skies and windless days persist we need to make recourse to our petrol generators, sometimes everyday for a week at a time to keep the batteries charged and provide peak load supply. The inverters are linked to auto-start the generators as required when the battery voltage drops below a set level or demand rises too high. They often come on in the evenings and have to be sited to minimise noise.
In the early days it was a case of dishwasher now, washing machine later, maybe tomorrow etc. and minimal use of electricity to heat things. Nowadays such restrictions on usage are limited to days when the generator starts to automatically kick in – we take that as a signal to check the system and ease off to save on fuel.
The generators have to be looked after and kept fuelled-up ready to go at all times. We have several of them, including a 70-year-old Lister JP 1/9 Startomatic – a 9 hp single cylinder water-cooled diesel running a 1,500 rpm 6.25 kVA generator that was retrieved from a sheep station in NSW. I recently substantially rebuilt it in my workshop with original spare parts. It is a magnificent 1.4 tonnes of the best of British engineering; it works perfectly and will soon be connected. The other repurposed diesel generator I’m working on is a solid old 1,500 rpm ST-6 designed for nonstop use in a commercial fishing boat. It will be driven by a 10hp air-cooled Yanmar L100N until I can find another auto-start Lister diesel for it. These will both soon take over from two two Honda 6kVA petrol gensets currently connected to the systems and will be about half the cost to run. Most years the annual generator run time is around 60-100 hours at each house but it’s as unpredictable as the weather.
After 20 years the first of our solar panels have started to fail and have been replaced. Rather than dump them into landfill because they can’t be recycled, I’m planning on using them to make north-facing sun traps for heat loving plants in our big vegetable garden.
Renewable energy systems should more honestly be called replaceable energy systems. None of the components can be expected to work for more than 25 years and often a much shorter time than that.
It is the journey as much as the destination. Producing our own power fits with our overall ethos of self reliance. We produce our own free range poultry and eggs and, in a good year, most of our fruit and vegetables. We breed Wiltshire sheep and buy in beef weaners, then we butcher, pack and freeze our own meat supply which we can supplement with hunting and offshore fishing.
Extrapolating from our renewable energy experience, anyone who thinks that a modern society can function with a power grid that runs on just solar and wind power without fossil fuel or nuclear backup that’s able to immediately provide up to 100% of power needs on cloudy, still days and dark, windless nights, is totally deluded!
And getting grid-scale lithium ion battery storage to provide the sort of supply time that we have on our farm would cost trillions of dollars, deplete the planet’s non-renewable resources to the point of imminent exhaustion and then it would have to be done all over again in 10 years.
It matters nought that you have massive renewable generation capacity if you can’t store power for extended periods.
So you can have all the wind and solar farms you want, but without fossil fuel or nuclear back up you’ll need to buy a good supply of warm blankets and candles if you don’t want to be spending a lot of time shivering in the dark.
The author was a part-time specialist medical practitioner until he refused to be injected with the experimental gene-based Covid vaccines just over two years ago and was sacked. Now he’s a fulltime peasant farmer who values his privacy and prefers to remain anonymous.
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“German made lead acid gel 2V 600 amp hr”
Presume that should be 12V
Not necessarily, Lead Acid Deep Cycle batteries come in a selection of voltage and amperage ratings, and linked in series offer a most substantial power output.
Ah yes silly me, he even gave a count of 60.
Oil is great, innit.
Solar power in a bottle. Any bottle will do, large, small, metal, plastic. Just make sure it has a good, firmly screwed on lid.
Thanks for this interesting article.
Whatever you do dont worry !! The google eyed Millipede has all this minor detail under control and when/if the Liemore party win the next election he will be going all out on our behalf to make sure that the Golden lit uplands of self sufficent wind and solar will be there for us all to enjoy at such low prices. Never even consider those dark and windless days we get in Northern Europe most winters .Uncle Eddie has it all in hand .
I am so glad they have such a well thought out plan for us all .Without any of those nasty old fashioned fossil fuelled power sources !!
So just sit back , relax and enjoy
What a disgusting cretin that imbecile is, but the rest of them are not far behind in the disgusting stakes. They all voted for net zero so they are all just a bunch of closet Milibands
The average OAP (like me) wouldn’t have a clue where to begin planning this lot, let alone executing its construction: always assuming, you had the money and land to do so. Cloud cuckoo land springs to mind.
The idea is not for this to ever work, it’s to channel the maximum amount taxpayer money into these pseudo-technologies for the longest possible time. And that’s only domestically, ie, not yet counting the UN which also wants loads of this money for all kinds of projects in extraeuropean countries. Climate change is nothing but a scam to plunder the people as thoroughly as possible.
It would be helpful if low revving diesel engines with attached generators could be made available at domestic scale. Diesel has greater energy per Kg and it is safe to store whereas petrol is not only somewhat dangerous to have around but it is illegal to store a meaningful quantity.
Maybe small engines from banned diesel cars could be modified but new would be better.
Is it just me, or does this sound like a full time job?
How would people have the time to do all of this, while working full time/travelling 8-10 hours a day?
It sounds great it your dream is to have subsistence living, bit otherwise….??
I appreciate at some point they might not give us a choice….
It’s just you
Maybe not quite full time, but quite a lot to build this kind of thing. Just growing, collecting, cutting and drying the wood would take many days a year. I know, I have done it. It is the backup systems which take all the time, just the same as the Grid in the UK. We are waiting to start building a dam all around the highlands of Scotland and Wales to build the energy storage necessary for the country, pumped storage of course, but everyone has realised that the entire world supply of cement will be needed, and guess what fuel is used to make that? The whole “renewables” idea is an impossible scam, but keep it quiet, the Public have not realised yet and the ££££ need to keep flowing!
That was my reaction as well. Now add in the impossibility of doing all that in the UK with our weather conditions, over-crowded country and small houses.
The title of this article should really be followed by “yet”. Never say never.
“Yet” might come one day, but
1) It must come in its own good time not by state fiat and
2) What “problem” is “renewable energy” solving?
I don’t think the “yet” should be the focus. The focus should be to destroy nut zero, which is probably the biggest threat to the my wellbeing and that of my offspring.
Benz and Daimler give or take! 140? Years of experience! Ditch it all for political ego’s?
Oddly enough, solar and wind power generation has been about for a similar amount of time, The question is which development is the most successful?
Again
(last Connery bond film, 1982?
Made me stressed just reading this.
Being slightly OCD, I’d never be able to relax, checking, monitoring, topping up, optimising, tweaking.
Presumably it’ll never repay the ROI either.
Well done for trying, needs must and all that.
The author is in Victoria, which is at a much lower latitude than the UK so the sun is at a higher angle in the sky and solar panels will provide more energy. Years ago I often stayed at in eco cottage in the Scottish Highlands that had solar panels on a south facing roof and a few batteries for storage. The only electricity we used were a small number of very low wattage light bulbs, total power usage no more than about 60Watts. Between October and March we were lucky if the lights stayed on until 9p.m. On cloudy days towards the end of November we might be able to have the lights on for an hour after sunset then it was out with the head torches. I only wish people who advocate for a zero carbon grid would go and spend a few days somewhere similar and see reality.
Glad you mentioned the latitude. I once visited in Melborne in June/July, Oz winter. It was around 18C most days, often into the lower 20s and only dropped below about 15C a couple of times. I was in shorts & T shirt most of the time & getting odd looks from the locals, some of whom were in furs – and I don’t consider myself particularly hardy. Total dependence on renewables at the British latitude is completely unfeasible – we know it, they know it, but their puppet masters have spoken.
As a Melbournian, I can say with utmost confidence that you were supremely lucky and your experience does not reflect a typical winter. Usually it will be a high of 15 and a low of 5. That being said, on the days it isn’t overcast or rainy the sun definitely has an intensity that is lacking further from the equator.
Noted. We were there for over a month and travelled around quite a bit – the only time it was (a British interpretation of) cold was up in the Dandenongs; Sydney was positively balmy.
Welcome to the 21st century. And that is supposed to be progress is it? Nope it is the opposite. ——-Our own politicians are traitors and bend over and let the UN phony planet savers whip their ar.e
If the author is supplying 100kg of firewood a week to each house that must equate to at least one medium sized tree a year in a relatively mild climate. It would make sense to double that number for the UK. With over 20 million homes it would probably only take 3 or 4 decades to completely deforest Britain if we all had to rely on wood for heating once commercial premises are included. Even if a new fast growing tree was planted for each one cut down we would probably have to blanket much more of the country in dreary wildlife poor monoculture forests.
I used to have a farm, in Northern Ireland. One very wet low lying field was pretty useless so I planted 60,000 fast growing Willow trees. It produced abou 10 tons of dry wood a year, enough for several houses, but was a lot of work, needed continuous maintenance etc. This supply would probably last forever, needing only a little fertiliser occasionally to keep the trace minerals in balance. It did need a lot of space, drying shed, chain saws etc. and a tractor to shift the timber. Overall, except for the time, it was probably cost neutral against heating oil. Strangely, not a particularly good deal on any terms.
What a great article.
would be interesting to know what kWh they were demanding?
Much used for the farm?
1kw from that complex wind turbine isn’t much.
‘PSEUDONAJA TEXTILIS, trans:- into <anct>
Anglo-Saxon, 4 digit pronoun ‘ convt,_ noun,
Taketh} the p#ith!
I enjoyed reading this article.
although I have to admit I started feeling quite tired just reading it.
Hats off to you for your inventiveness and giving it a go.
Net Zero great leap backwards
The UN agenda that western governments follow is to remove affordable unreliable energy and fob us off with unaffordable unreliable energy. Our own governments know this will lower our living standards. They know you cannot power industrial society on wind and sun, but they press ahead regardless because they care more about pandering to the eco socialists at the UN and WEF than to their own citizens. Everything GREEN is more expensive and worse yet this is what our own governments want to impose on us. The excuse for all of this is “climate change”. Notice though that it is the wealthy western countries that must do all the saving of the planet while the rest of the world continues using fossil fuels. It has therefore got NOTHING to do with the planet and everything to do with wealth redistribution. —ECO SOCIALISM. Thatcher knew this 40 years ago and wrote about it in her book “Statecraft”
We only have the power go off in 10 Downing Street , the Houses of Parliament & Buckingham Palace for this madness to fall over.
All that work and in Australia where there is much more sun than we have here, and still just to keep things running is afull time job, imagine trying to do all that in the UK in a attached house, with the garden space most places have, or in a flat? whilst also working full time and possibly looking after a family. They want us to stop eating meat, and eat bugs or the Bill Gates false stuff, so the alternative is, to keep your own, so for some back to living alongside the animals literally.
How much do you want to bet that the Cabinet members, the WEF members, the U.N mandarins, the King, will live such lives? Not going to happen, once again its us the saps who are sent to fight their wars for them, take their experimental profitable injections, work and give them the majority of our wages in various taxes so they can fly around the world meeting one another. Time to say no people.
Thank you for diverting some of your valuable time into writing this fascinating account. I loved the amount of detail – it builds such a convincing argument. We/I could not do what you have done – I don’t have the technical knowledge or physical strength. The only solution (faced with a similar challenge) would be a drastically reduced standard of living. I’d just be cold, miserable, and prone to dying.
When I was young in Mid-Wales we all lived off-grid as there was no grid until 1964. I remember the sound of Startomatics reverberating around us and you always knew if a neighbour got up to the loo in the night and put a light on!
Many of the redundant Startos were exported to Africa. The wise ones hung on to them and a few still work after 80 years!
Great article! You obviously have what so many of our elite ruling class lack, a lot of common sense. Too bad common sense can not be taught in our schools of higher learning.
What a fantastic article. Thank you, sir. Now to get it into the MSM, front and centre…
Main factors determining amount of sun’s energy received:
Average annual sunshine
Melbourne, Australia 2,200hrs
Liverpool, UK 1,500hrs
Latitude
Melbourne, Australia ~38degs
Liverpool, UK ~54degs
I’m always amused by people claiming to live off the grid. Where did the solar panels come from – from people who are not living off the grid.
Wonderful article, seems like a full time job.
Have you considered water as a short term storage medium. Use the solar to pump water up to a tank, use the pressure coming back down to run a turbine. For a larger version see the “Electric Mountain” in North Wales.
Probably not very efficient but I assume your off grid water supply is pumped up the hill too?