Thread goal is tracking my spending & discussing off grid ideas & tech.
Reasoning for trying this
I’ve had this land for quite a few years. I bought it out right for cheap in case houses continued to go out of control to a point I couldn’t get one.
I finally find myself in a position to buy a house, but I look at the prices, interest, & payments which makes the purchase very hard to swallow when I already have paid for land.
Plus I have a business idea which is compatible with this lifestyle
Goals:
- Full power tracking of every plug and appliance
- Completely self sufficient, excluding food (for now) & internet)
- Build a small high efficiency & advanced home
To Do:
- Land survey (Quoted $2,300)
- Septic (will install myself)
- Solar ($0.25 per watt)
- Water well (Can truck in water for a while)
Completed:
- Internet (full 5G reception on the property 300mps+)
- 19kw battery bought
Funds spent:
- $3,000 - Property
- $1,760 - 19kw battery (15.2kw tested)
- $80 - 2 food grade totes (275gal each)
- $3,370.88 - 20,770w of solar ($0.162 per watt)
Total: $8,210.88
Thread index:
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Utility Update:
Picked up two 275 gallon food grade IBC totes for $40 each. Might need these temporarily, and they were cheap.
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Power Update:
Picked up a wrecked 2015 Chevy Spark EV for $1760 which has a 19kw battery in it. The cells are large so there will be fewer cells to balance and they run typical Li-ion voltage range which should be 3 to 4.3v (need to confirm these numbers).
This should be about $6k worth of batteries.
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I’ve opened this topic up to the public now. If you guys have any ideas or feedback please feel free to share. Criticism is more than welcome as well.
Thanks.
The moment I read that you bought an EV for the cells I was reminded of this video:
I think you could easily reconfigure the Spark’s battery pack to hook up to your home system (assuming that they’re LiFePo4 cells). 
Oh, if they’re NMC (typical 3.7V nominal voltage) cells, you’ll have to change the series configuration of them, and make sure your BMS & charger can support traditional Li-Ion chemistry.
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They are indeed typical Li-ion and the individual cells are easily reconfigurable.
There are 4 groups that are about 50 - 60v each. I will need to find a good BMS for them. I was looking into that yesterday. Ideally I’d like them to be open source.
I’ll give that video a watch when I get a sec. Thanks.
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I was reading the OP and was about to ask how you got so much capacity for under 2k. Nice find! 
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I couldn’t believe the post was already a week old when I found it. This thing even drives perfectly fine, but he was asking $2,700, I intended to offer 2k flat, but the banks were closed and that is all I could round up out of the ATMs, to my surprise he took it. Sweet! Lol
Realistically this battery will be down on capacity, but I haven’t figured that out yet. I expect to be down %20.
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Still dude, these days, we’ll be lucky to get 5kwh new for $2k.
So hell, call it 25% down and it’s still a steal.
Also, how on earth did you find property for 3k? Maybe I’m not lookin in the right places, but even in states like Idaho/Utah/Montana, I can’t find anything anywhere near that cheap, with no dwellings.
Found it where no one wants to live… Nevada. Lol
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Ahhhh, that would do it. I presume there’s no water on the land.
One of me primary wants is some sort of a stream, so I can play with hydroelectric power, and have a good source of water.
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Yeah, no water normally, I believe there’s a spot that’ll get quite a bit of runoff after rain though.
But TBH I don’t think it matters anymore since solar is 25¢ a watt. I’m eyeing some panels for 21¢ a watt.
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That’s a damn good cost. I just like having the diversified power sources, ya know? Where I’m at right now, it’s got some serious cloud cover from april till end of june, and it’s not realistic to rely on solar 100% of the time.
I had no idea that solar was so cheap now.
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I’ll have a generator for backup. Obviously not ideal, but what ya going to do ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It’ll still cost me way less than rent.
That also have bifacial panels which generate power from both sides and those perform much better with cloud cover and snow.
There’s also panels that can deel with parts of the panel being shaded which is really cool tech too.
And you’d think all this sounds expensive, but it’s all shocking cheap. 33¢ is on the higher end for the distributors I’m looking at. I don’t want to drop any names or links, but a simple search and you’ll find a few options.
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I don’t really think it’s terribly expensive. Remember, I pay $0.26/kwh overnight rates for electricity, so on just the panels, it’s like a 1 year payback period. Add in all the energy storage and power conversion equipment and it’s more like 4-5, but still, at the end of the day, that’s a really good ROI. Especially if the local utility is asking some crazy fee to tie you into the grid.
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I would imagine the second best source of off grid electricity in the desert (first being solar) would be wind. Especially with all the open area!
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I have a large industrial 16kw permanent magnet motor and the motor from this EV which is 120kw.
IDK how that would translate when using them as wind generators, but it is on my mind if needed.
Dang, that seems like a pretty good deal. I’m at $90 per kw and I’ll still have to buy a bunch of stuff & do quite a bit of work.
Not to mention I haven’t read my packs degradation.
$150 per kw is sounding pretty good right now.
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From what I’ve gathered from some of the videos I’ve seen a wind turbine would be just another input to your setup next to where your solar / hydro would enter your system to be cleaned up and stabilized for use further down the line!
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The permanent magnet motor may or may not work. The issue is you have to overcome the locking force to spin so we need a bigger gearbox. Bigger gearbox means more energy from the wind needs to be captured so we need to build not only a taller turbine but higher in swept area.
The induction motor from the EV. Idk which one your referring to so Ill refrain from guessing on 1ph vs 3ph
It can be done but a lot of calculations need to be made to build a useful one. You want the right gear reduction for your optimal output at your expected average wind speed. You also want safeties for over spin etc. It will be heavy, inefficient and far from ideal but serve as backup in some sense when solar fails in winter
