406-780-1173
1074 Springtime Rd
Reed Point, MT 59069
Reed Point, MT 59069
Your decision to live off the electrical grid is a great choice and should bring to you a strong sense of independence. Your motivation may span from doing your part to reduce fossil fuel pollution to eliminating your electric bill, or perhaps your dream property is just too remote from the grid. You should feel very confident about your decision as the technology is well tested, and is safe and reliable. Your renewable energy system is designed to produce and store enough energy for you to live on every day.
Because the sun's rising and setting is quite reliable, a solar array should be considered to be your primary source of energy. In the off grid setup, batteries must be used to store energy you produced during the daylight hours to utilize for the nighttime.
In this scenario, your system components will include a solar charge controller that is designed to take the DC power from your solar array and maximize the charging of the battery bank. Its secondary purpose is to prevent energy from the batteries from flowing backwards to the solar array at night.
When living off the grid you may elect to install a wind turbine as a secondary enhancement to your energy source(s). The wind is a good source of power, but it generally is not as reliable a source as the sun. Before considering the wind as a source for your home or business or ranch, be sure to have completed a long-term analysis of the wind at your site. REM can help you to assess your site and estimate the cost to employ the wind.
Wind turbines are usually more expensive to install and maintain than a solar array, and resultantly, the cost to provide that energy per KW-hour is higher. But wind is significant and should be considered when living off grid as the windy season and solar season often complement each other. Additionally, on a daily level, the cloudy day is often complemented by wind. Why is this important? Because the batteries need to be kept at as high a state of charge as possible. Without sun or wind, you may look to your standby generator to charge your batteries – but that costs fossil fuel!
The battery array is critical to your systems longevity and reliability. Quality deep cycle batteries should be utilized for any off grid system, and like any product, there are manufacturers at varying quality levels. Lead acid has been the leading technology for well over a century, but the newer competition in the form of Lithium technology is making significant inroads. The view ahead looks bright for Lithium, but currently, the cost is high. Everything boils down to economics...
The control and monitoring components of your off grid renewable energy system can be quite sophisticated and your choices are many. Solar generation is always DC power and is used directly to charge batteries. Wind turbines are manufactured in DC or AC models. The DC machines, like a solar array, can be used to directly charge a battery bank. The AC models, however, can be directly connected to your circuit breaker panel to provide energy for your loads, and any available excess will be converted to DC to charge the batteries.
Monitoring a system for its performance is important. Though failures or errors are extremely rare with the modern day components, it is desirable to be alerted to a problem enabling a prompt repair. The technology you choose plays into your financial decision, and the ability to monitor each system component is possible. The controls have the ability to notify you through remote panels, and via web based monitoring with email or text alerts.
REM, LLC is a full service energy company. Though renewable energy is our main focus, a realistic view should consider a standby generator be available for the occasional period of insufficient solar and wind energy shining on and blowing past your site. The generator is programmed to start automatically when the batteries reach a low state of charge, and to fully charge the battery bank while simultaneously powering the loads on your property.
This page is still in development. Please send us your questions so that others can benefit.