Living Off The Grid: Watch Your Appliances’ Power Consumption

Specific Loads & Specific Solutions When it comes to making load selections, off-grid people without deep pockets always focus on efficiency. Heres some express guidance on common appliances, drawn from my thirty years of off-grid living experience.

Chiller / freezer : Set your sights on intense energy efficiency here, since this is frequently the most important electric load in an off the grid home. Fridges and freezers cycle on and off continuously, and need to run irrespective of sun and windyou cant flex your use to accommodate the adaptations in weather. Using speciality DC appliances may be a great choice in some cases, and getting accurate numbers on energy use
before you buy any refrigeration kit is the best idea. Gear up to spend more upfront for better overall savings over the long run. At least one ultraefficient refrigerator is available in an AC configuration for approximately the same cost.

Lighting : Off-grid houses of sensible design have no incandescent lights. Compact fluorescent lights ( CFL ) and LEDs predominate. Try a variety of CFL and LED options, since quality, colour rendition, and light output varies.

attire washing / drying : Horizontal-axis ( often frontloading ) machines use less electrical power ( and less water, requiring less water heating and pump operation ) than top-loading vertical-axis machines. Check your machine for ghost loads and employ a timer or switch when obligatory. Off-grid houses won’t typically use an electric dryer, and if solar power ( a clothesline ) cant be used, a propane dryer is an option.

Motor loads : In the old days, engineers switched the majority of the woodshop motors to DC, a clever decision in those days of ineffective inverters. Today, it is smart to select prime quality, occasionally variable-speed AC motors ; whether for pool pumps, heat-pump motors, shop tools, oranything else that’s motor-driven. The base line is located with your watt meter, which may tell you how much energy is being used.

Computing / office electronics : A single word gives you the core of the information herelaptops. These often use half or less what a desktop machine uses, and they also incorporate a battery, so in times of very low replenish-able input, you can still use your personal computer for awhile. Peripheralsprinters,
Routers, modems, backup drives, scanners, etc.often are ghost loads, so put them on individual switches and turn them on only when required. These marginals do not usually need to be on for long periods, so ultra-efficiency would possibly not be as crucial as for the PC itself.

Solar hot water systems : For off-gridders, solar hot water systems reduce the requirement for propanemaking hot water with solar electricity isn’t an intelligent option. Frequently its smart to make the electric portion ( for the solar pumps ) separate from your main system to reduce the unpredictable load on the primary electric system. Off-griders prefer PV-direct systems that use a dedicated PV module to run the SHW system pumps.

Get more information about living off the grid, and learn more about alternate home energy, by going to http://OffTheGridHomeEnergy.com.