Simple Home Electricity Generation

adrian92

Would welcome any ideas for a simple system

Not talking about synchcronising panels etc.

Perhaps a car altornater and car batteries - stand alone system?

Any ideas welcome.

silentrust

Hi chief,

You might want to have a gander at the Survivalism and Self Sufficiency section to look at different methods.

When I first asked a hardened prepper he first encouraged me to look beyond the problem. It's not so important that you have electricity for instance as it is that you have light to see when it gets dark, so investing in some solar lights or old kerosene lamps might be an idea.

You can also reduce your dependence on electricity by replacing your TV with cards, books etc.

If you want to go down the 12V battery route, charging them via solar panels for instance, I would advise against car batteries which in the nature of things is only needed to provide a brief spike of power. Instead see if you can find any deep charge batteries on eBay or similar - I have one for my shed.

Deep charge batteries also handle being constantly drained and recharged quite well.

Long term I have toyed with the idea of buying a small diesel generator and fueling it with biodiesel, which is extremely easy to do as most modern generators apparently will happily take it.

Of course you still have to pay for the generator, and the biodiesel itself, and you're still liable to pay tax on the electricity you generate but you wouldn't have to rely on the grid and long term it would be cheaper.