07.12.07
New to the alternative power idea?
How do you start on an alternative power project for your home?
To begin the process you will need a base. That base will always be batteries. Most people cannot afford deep cycle sealed batteries. These are the batteries found in fork lift trucks and other large excavation type equipment. These batteries run several thousand dollars a piece. You could easily be up to $10,000 just in batteries for a small starter project for a cabin in the woods.
A better more affordable solution for those who do not have $10,000 to shell out on deep cycle batteries is to buy unsealed deep cycle batteries. These are sealed but by deep cycle battery standards and terminology they are not. When you look at the battery it is sealed according to what you see but let’s not argue with the experts.
Get to it! What batteries should I get?
Buy Trojan brand deep cycle batteries from a company that sells golf carts or golf cart supplies. Unless you live in a city that has a large battery store such as Interstate Battery you will have better luck dealing with a golf cart supplier or repair shop and you will only pay a little more for the batteries then driving to an industrial battery store that may not even be anywhere near you.
You want 4 batteries that are 6 volt batteries. They will each be over 200 amp hours in storage capacity which will make for maximum storage by having 4 batteries. Sure you could get 2 12 volt or 1 24 volt but you won’t have the battery storage capacity you need. That is why most experts would agree, you need 4 6 volt deep cycle batteries.
These batteries go for about $100 a piece. So your out $400 instead of $10,000. Not too bad. Unlike a Fork Lift battery you can only discharge these batteries about 50% which is why we need a lot of capacity because half of the storage will not even be utilized. If you were to drain them completely you would be severely depleting the lifetime of the battery. Not a good idea!
Now what do you need after you buy these batteries?
These batteries are your base for this alternative energy project. Now you will need a couple of inverters. Why you need two inverters instead of just one is something you don’t want to forget. Laptops, and certain other appliances with low voltage could be destroyed if not powered through an inverter specifically made for these smaller appliances. Be sure you research and buy an inverter for these low voltage items.
The 2nd inverter you buy will be for larger appliances and devices like, air conditioners, refridgerators, microwaves and most other home appliances.
Again cell phones, laptops and these smaller items will need to go through the smaller voltage inverter.
For those who aren’t sure what exactly an inverter is 
An inverter converts the energy produced via a generator whether that generator be a gasoline or diesel generator, a wind turbine, a solar panel as well as many other various generators out on the market and makes it available so that you can plug in a home appliance into a standard power socket and operate your appliance.
If for instance you had a wind turbine you would be feeding this energy into your batteries directly bypassing any other type of generator you had. Ultimately the inverter will always be the end device you plug your appliances into. You would never plug a solar panel, wind turbine directly into an appliance.
I forgot to mention that the inverters will probably end up costing you about $1000
Do I need anything else for my base?
You will also need a device that monitors how much energy is left in the batteries and when it is time to feed the batteries more energy to charge them back up. A light on the device or an alarm will sound letting you know when the batteries are close to their 50% threshhold. At this time you could power on a gasoline powered generator to charge up the batteries or let the wind turbine trickle feed the needed energy into the batteries over an extended period of time. You could also allow both a wind turbine and gas generator to both add a percentage of the needed energy back into the batteries.
This extra device will be the final piece to the basic base station for alternative energy and will cost about $300 at the most.
As you can see you can keep this beginning alternative energy base station under $2,000 and be on your way to being completely off the grid. Now all you need is a generator of some kind. If you have the money you could buy a wind turbine and solar panels if you can afford that. Wind Turbines can be as cheap as $700 and go up from there. Solar panels are basically astromically priced and takes years to recover the money. In a typical scenario it may take 15 years to recover your solar panel investment not to mention the maintenance and possible replacement of old panels.
There are companies out there that let you use their panels for free and you just pay them for the energy they produce. I would check into that if you still are set on buying solar panels.