My Bio

[ozhank]

Live near Texas QLD in South West Queensland (about 4.5 hours south west of Brisvegas) on 320 acres timbered country (White cypress, narrow leafed ironbark, long fruited bloodwood, brigalow and others). I have a 1953 Cat D2 dozer (needs repairs to turning clutches and brakes), an Austoft skid steer, and a Peterson sawmill. In process of completing mud brick home. We run 100% off solar power. Establishing an aquaponics system over the next 6 months to feed us and sell to neighbours.

:drink:http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/images/smilies/new/drink.gif

 

[Muhammad]

Welcome to TBN.

 

[creekbend]

Good to have you aboard, new member from "Down Under".:tractor:

 

[TripleR]

G'day and welcome to TBN.

 

[AndyMA]

Wellcome to TBN. Interested in learning more about your off grid experiences.

Andy

 

[ozhank]

Price to get mains power was over $100K. So we had to go solar. Setup at present is 16x125w panels connected as 24v to 1100 amp hour battery bank via 60 amp Plasmatronics regulator. I have 2 1500w continuous inverters - one for the shed and one for our house, running standard 240v appliances about 80m away. Can't run washing machine and dishwasher at the same time, but we work around this. No toasters or electric kettles etc. Gas cooker and oven, but most of time we live outside on verandah which overlooks one of our dams. We have 12kva backup diesel generator, and a 55amp 24v diesel driven truck alternator, but need to rebuild engine. Due to drought over 10 years, left and worked away, and now on way back home. I'm going to add a 500w 24v wind turbine, and add extra solar panels, to provide more power for the cloudy days.

 

[ozhank]

Biggest issue to date are problems with inverters when I have been away for a few days, and running power tools. So we have a genny day - welding/fixing/ironing and other big power uses. For my woodturning, would love to have mains power connected, and then use our solar system to feed back into the grid when we are not using much, so that power cost is almost neutral. Am going to investigate in the near future. Also have issues with white ants (termites) eating the insulation from the copper wires! This means all cables have to be laid in conduit, making it much more expensive.