Yup if you really need to be off grid in a climate that has cold, cloudy, snowy winters, you’re probably going to need a generator that runs on fossil fuels. For everyone else, use the grid.

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mnw21cam a day ago | parent | next [-]

Agreed. You can increasingly over-provision the solar generation to reduce the proportion of time when you will need a fossil fuel generator or grid input, and install lots of battery to allow the system to smooth over multiple dull days. But chasing that 100% is going to be very expensive, and at some point it'll be much cheaper to have a fossil fuel generator that you need to run 1% of the time.

	▲	veunes 38 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		At that point, a small backup generator (or even just staying grid-tied as insurance) makes far more sense
	▲	mrexroad a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, w/o grid fallback, I’d much rather aim for 98-99% w/ solar and have an alternate source to close gap, rather than aim for “five 9s” on solar+batt. It’d take a lot to talk me out of a multi-source approach.

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cogogo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does anyone actually use generators for primary power rather than backup? Even the really nice Generac propane backups are crazy noisy. I was in a neighborhood on Cape Cod during a power outage and because about 1/3 of the houses had backup generators going it was unpleasant to be outside.

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jcalvinowens 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's uncommon, but a wind generator can help a lot: in some climates, cloudy days tend to be windy days. Not really practical in a city though.

	▲	pbmonster 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> It's uncommon, but a wind generator can help a lot It's uncommon for a reason. Wind generator capacity rises with the square of the rotor diameter. That means small-ish generators (let's say "small enough to be roof mountable without additional mechanical supports") are significantly below 1 kW of power. Seriously, the systems people by for their sailing yachts make around 50W from a nice breeze - enough for lights and to trickle charge the battery while docked, not nearly enough for a fridge. Combine that with quite a number of moving parts, changing loads and exposure to weather, you get very short maintenance intervals and final lifetimes. If you have any other option for power, its almost always economical to just use that.
	▲	mauvehaus 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The AMC White Mountain huts have been doing this for years. The croo don't tend to maintain the systems, so I've never gotten a sense for what their storage capacity, generating capacity, and loads look like, but from a visitor perspective, the system works well. Reportedly, even the fairy stout wind turbines they use up there have short, brutal lives. I heard the story of a croo that had to lasso/tangle/jam the blades of theirs in a storm because it lost the ability to control its speed and the alternative was letting it overspeed and possibly tear itself apart. They aren't large in diameter, but at the speeds they turn even in normal conditions up there, catastrophic failure could be really bad.

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AngryData 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would use wood power if I was offgrid and needed a storable fuel backup. It is less than ideal, but if you live in a cold place and live off grid with trees around you likely already burn wood for heat.

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mdorazio 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Please note if your goal is minimizing carbon footprint, burning wood instead of other biomass is probably not a great idea [1].

[1] https://www.pfpi.net/carbon-emissions/

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defrost 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It's literally burning surface carbon that's part of the regular surface land, sea, air, carbon flow that's existed for all of human history (and human existence).

It's not adding to that cycle by reaching down into the depths of the earths crust to bring up carbon captured and sealed away for longer than human existence .. you know, that additional carbon that is referred to when increased carbon footprints are seriously talked about.

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franga2000 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This distinction only makes sense if those threes were going to be burned anyways. A can of diesel in a good generator and letting the trees decompose or be used for lumber should be far better in terms of emissions than burning the required amount of wood.

	▲	defrost 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> far better in terms of emissions Particle emissions isn't what I responded to .. in terms of carbon and greenhouse gases what matters more is trees not being replaced. In the course of, say, plantation growing timber for lumber generates sufficient burnable wood for landowners and a wider community - the final lumber trees are the ones that weren't weeded out earlier (and burnt) and have been routinely lopped of branches (more burnable wood) to minimize knots, etc. Forrest management is a thing, timber for lumber, coppicing for regrowth, et al has been going on for several thousand years and has been part of traditional surface carbon cycle. As has large scale grassland (and forest undercover) burning off for fire management.

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Dylanfm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The firewood can be harvested as part of a coppice rotation too, e.g a woodland broken up into 8 coupes with one harvested selectively each year, then starting again at the beginning after regrowth is sufficient. Friends of mine do this and it works well. They replant as necessary as they go.

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rr808 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wood burner is the best companion imho.

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tim333 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's the passive haus highly insulated stuff. Guess that might work?

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mapt 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Full on certified passive house looks very silly with solar this cheap, and frankly the math used to figure out a lot of the requirements is basically faulty.

2025 Code minimum is pretty decent if it's actually complied with, and 'net zero' middle ground with triple glazing is a worthwhile upgrade.

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dzhiurgis 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you wanna spend 2-3x more, yes. Otherwise solar or grid battery is cheaper.

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tenuousemphasis 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Try 30-50% more.

It's so obviously better to reduce your need for heating and cooling than it is to increase your panel. battery, and HVAC size.

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dzhiurgis 14 hours ago | parent [-]

30-50% over 500k build is 10x more than 10k solar or 5k worth of batteries.

I've just setup electrical heating for my bedroom (HA PID sensor). Uses about 450KWh - $90 NZD worth of grid power per winter. Heat pump would take 20+ years to pay itself. Double glazing probably 30-40 years.

To make same amount of solar power per year I need a single $130 NZD panel.

	▲	thijson an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's an interesting way of looking at it. I remember in the 70's baseboard heaters were very common. They use a lot of electricity, but electricity was super cheap back then. It would be interesting to compare baseboard+extra solar to heat pump+less solar. The baseboard is more reliable, so potentially would last longer.

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madaxe_again a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or you find somewhere with terrain amenable to hydropower. It’s how we bridge the gap in the winter.

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DiggyJohnson a day ago | parent [-]

you have personal hydropower? that sounds pretty cool

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darknavi a day ago | parent [-]

A lot of great YouTube videos on personal hydro setups on small sized creeks. Even just a few hundred watts running 24/7/365 is an incredible resource.

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foobarian 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And it's especially great if you have a neighbor with a son who are willing to do the labor for you. [1] [2]

[1] https://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20075110

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flurdy 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reminds me of this great house/greenhouse in Norway with a small "power station" in the stream outside. https://youtu.be/irp_HPzfxbQ?si=ZR3PAXvUyjsSSZx5&t=1658

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insane_dreamer 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

An insane amount of work to build though ...

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madaxe_again 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Tell me about it.

We don’t have a permanent stream, but we do have enough intermittent flow in the winter to keep a 55,000L tank full. So our install entailed building a huge tank, a filtration system for water ingress (as it’s also our potable water supply, and a firefighting reserve in summer), digging 400m of trench over nightmare terrain with 70m of vertical drop, crossing a road twice, burying 90mm HDPE water line, fibre and 4x25mm2 power (latter two not necessary for hydropower but useful to have, and if I’ve got a trench open I’m putting everything in it at once) - and then building a hydro shed, installing the turbine, connecting it to our grid via a grid tie inverter, configuring our grid to accept power from it, setting up automations to turn it off and on depending on power demand and the level in the tank, and of course all sorts of side quests to achieve the above.

It has been neither cheap (about €12,000) nor easy (perhaps six weeks of full days for me, if added up over the year it took), but it has given us enough extra power in the winter that the petrol generator is now under a pile of crap in the shed, getting dusty.

	▲	insane_dreamer 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's some dedication

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ViewTrick1002 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Or run it on biofuels.

	▲	ortusdux a day ago \| parent [-]
		Woodgas would work as well