Off Grid Living

Video Transcripts
Off  Grid  Living  Video  Transcript  

Table of Contents

Title

Introduction ........................................................................... 3
1: Inside House..................................................................... 4
2: Passive Solar.................................................................... 7
3: Lighting ............................................................................. 9
4: Heating ........................................................................... 10
5: Wood and Tanks ............................................................ 11
6: Washer Dryer.................................................................. 12
7: Solar Array...................................................................... 14
8: Panel Wiring ................................................................... 16
9: Charge Controller & Batteries......................................... 16
10: Inverter.......................................................................... 24
11: Generator – Inverter Wiring .......................................... 28
12: Generator ..................................................................... 29
13: Wind Wiring .................................................................. 31
14: Wind Generator ............................................................ 32
15: Wind Installation ........................................................... 33
Interview with Kriss and Sue .............................................. 35
Conclusion .......................................................................... 44

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Introduction

Hi there. My name is Kriss and I want to congratulate you on taking the first step towards

energy independence.

In this video series we’re going to show you how my wife and I live in the mountains of

Colorado completely off the grid, generating 100% of our own energy from solar and wind.

We’ll start off in the house showing you how we really live. I’m going to show you all the

little tweaks we made to save energy so that we don’t have to have a huge solar and wind power

system.

These little tweaks you’ll see are pretty easy to live with and really we enjoy almost all of

the same conveniences and comforts of any average American home. But with these little tweaks

we get to live completely off the grid and completely independent. For us, it’s worth it.

So we’re going to take you through the house, show you how we live; then I’m going to

take you out back, show you the complete solar and wind power system. I’m going to show you

all the little nitty-gritty details of how we set up our system. How we did it for maximum

efficiency and how you can do this too.

So come along with me, let’s get started in the house.

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1. Inside House

So this is the inside of the house. I’m going to pan around here and show you how we live.

So there’s my office. You can see I’ve got a regular old desktop computer with two

monitors.

Here’s our kitchen. And there are a few subtle differences in our kitchen that I’ll show you.

And there’s our wonderful windows with the view we have.

There’s Riley. Riley just had surgery on her legs so she’s a little under the weather.

And let’s see if I can tighten in. There’s our entertainment center. It’s pretty much like

everybody else’s in the world or in the country. Big screen TV, surround sound, stereo, all the

goodies. Now while we’re looking over there, let me show you a few things.

[Removes camera from tripod]

The most important part of this setup is the power strip. Every night before we go to bed

that power strip gets turned off. That is an essential part of how we live so that there’s no

phantom loads or vampire loads, maybe you’ve heard them called, that suck power all night.

Here’s my office computer. There’s also, if you look back in there, there’s also another

power strip. That gets turned off every night as well. That is very important for making sure that

you’re not wasting energy. And it’s really one of the simplest ways to save energy.

So you can see we have all the toys but we just use them very judiciously. Let’s check out

the kitchen for a second here.

See my wife’s got a Cuisinart over there, blender. This is a gas stove. There’s a very good

reason for that. I’ll talk about that in one minute. Dishwasher. High efficiency refrigerator.

Your refrigerator is by far one of the biggest consumers of energy. So you really have to

get a good efficient refrigerator. And the new ones now are super efficient. If you’re getting a

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new refrigerator, it probably already is high efficiency but you should check the energy rating on

it.

And that, buried under those plants, is a wood stove. That’s how we heat our house. That’s how

we heat almost the entire main level of the house is that wood stove. And we use beetle kill

wood. For those of you who don’t know, in Colorado we have this beetle that’s killing off a lot

of our trees and so this wood is dead and dying anyway. So we’re burning that wood to heat our

house. It is extremely efficient and extremely affordable.

You can see over here coffee maker which we do not use very often. And that’s actually a

yogurt maker which is a long story but I won’t get into.

But what you won’t see here is a microwave. A microwave can use; some of them use

2,000 watts of energy. So to run that even for just a few minutes a day would just completely

wipe out our batteries if we used it a lot. So that’s one thing that we don’t have and we don’t

really use that coffee maker that much.

We had some guests this week and they really wanted the coffee made that way but what

we usually use is a, I thought it would be over here but it’s not. It’s actually like a press where

you boil water and you put the grounds; you’ve probably heard it called a French press. Maybe

we should call it a freedom press. But that doesn’t use any electricity.

So anything that generates heat is really inefficient with electricity. Okay? All of our heat

is generated either from wood or from propane gas. So we do have a propane tank outside that

I’ll show you in a little bit. So that is a really critical part to all this.

Coffee makers, microwave ovens and the worst one of all? Hair dryer. A hair dryer can use

1,500 watts and as a lot you know, ladies, and there are a lot of men out there that use them.

They use them for 15 or 20 minutes. That is a huge amount of energy for something that really

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doesn’t give you that much. So my wife has just learned to dry her hair with towels and let it air

dry.

And all of this stuff including not having a microwave oven is very adaptable. You just

forget that you don’t have it after awhile. It’s not like we’re camping. You can see that we live in

a nice home. We have a great view, the mountains. We have entertainment devices, certainly not

boring here.

But we don’t have a microwave. We don’t have, we don’t use the coffee maker much. And

we don’t have a hair dryer. And the reason for that is we have to conserve energy because we’re

generating everything that we consume here. So that's one of the key differences.

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2. Passive Solar

The next thing I want to show you is our window coverings; our blinds. Now you’re

probably thinking, ‘Well everybody has window coverings – what’s the big deal?’

It’s especially critical in a house like this because we use the sun for passive means called

passive solar. So what that involves is basically using your window coverings for maximum

effect.

Now its summer time right now so what we do to keep the house from heating up too much

is we actually close the blinds. So we’ll close these blinds after about 9 or 10 AM and trap in the

cool night air.

We leave the windows open over night to get the cool air throughout the house and then

close the windows, close the blinds and trap that cool air in.

In the winter time it’s pretty much the opposite. We leave all the windows closed of course,

and we keep the blinds open and let the passive solar sun heat in. And that actually on many

mornings for most of the year that’s all we need as far as heat and cooling. To just limit the

amount or maximize the amount of sunshine and cool air that comes into the house.

We do heat the house as I mentioned with the wood stove but that’s really just for about

four of the winter months. So we can get away without air conditioning, without using our

furnace because we use the passive features of this house.

I’ll show you we do have a forced air furnace.

[Removes camera from tripod]

No, that’s the water heater, just a regular old gas water heater with insulation on it; extra

insulation. And we’re going to be doing the water solar thermal system from the Power4Patriots

here this fall. So I’ll show you that when that’s done.

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And here is our furnace, regular old forced air furnace that hasn’t been turned on in five

years. It is brand spanking new. You can even look at that filter and see that it’s clean as a

whistle. We just don’t use it.

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3. Lighting

The critical thing is the lighting. That is an old fashioned incandescent bulb. And you can

see I just unscrewed it just enough and left it in there so it’s not bare. But we had enough

lighting canisters in this kitchen that… sorry it’s not focusing here. But there we go.

But we had enough lighting canisters in this kitchen and we didn’t need all of them. There

were 8 canisters in this kitchen; we only needed like 4 so I just unscrewed the bulbs. And in

these ones that’s a high efficiency bulb. That is one of those CFL’s the compact fluorescent

bulbs. That is really critical because it uses about 10-20% of what a normal bulb uses. So that

means it uses 80-90% less power.

Most people have heard about these bulbs so I won’t belabor that point but the bigger point

is is that our kitchen in a lot of new homes in America these days are just over-lit. There’s just

too much lighting. You don’t need all those lights on all the time. So I just unscrewed these two

right here. Left the bulbs in so it’s not a bare spot. And that saved us a lot of power too.

Let’s head into the basement next and I’ll show you how we heat that.

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4. Heating

We’re in the basement now and this is a propane stove and we got this down here because

we didn’t want to mess with putting wood into a stove and keeping a fire going in the basement

cause we’re down here very rarely. It’s actually just a guest room and kind of a workout room.

We don’t use it very much. So we wanted it to be heated but we didn’t want to mess with a

wood stove and all the work that that really creates. You know, starting a fire and then keeping it

going. We’re fine with doing one of them up in the kitchen but to keep two going would be kind

of impractical so we use this.

It’s also hooked up to a automatic thermostat. Most of the time it just keeps this room at

50° F because we don’t need it to be any warmer than that and it doesn’t have to work that hard

at keeping the room at 50° F because there’s only windows on one side of this room. I’ll show

you that now.

So there’s some windows and a nice view out that door of some mountains. And then on all

those windows are dual insulated thermo blinds. Kind of honeycomb style blinds. So in the

winter time when it’s cold those will stay down pretty much all the time to keep the heat in here.

Right now you can see we’re getting a nice passive solar element so this room will stay

warm without ever, without the propane stove ever coming on really all winter.

I’ll just show you this room real quick. It’s a nice big space. Eventually we’re going to use

it a lot but now that’s the other thing my wife and I do, we practice is just efficiency. We don’t

need a ton of stuff; we don’t need to fill up every room in the house. We’ve got plenty of room to

grow when we have children and relatives come over and all that stuff.

So we don’t just fill every space. We try to use just what we need.

Let’s head outside and I’ll show you our septic tank and our propane tank.

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5. Wood and Tanks

Alright we’re now in the garage and you can see our wood storage. It has about probably

almost two cords. It’s got two, two rows of it.

All of our toys and camping equipment and then right here, that is our septic vault. It gets

pumped.

And over here is our propane tank. It gets filled up maybe twice a year. Usually just once,

but I’ll say once every nine months or so. So that is really our only connection, that’s really the

only thing you could call ‘grid tied’. It’s not even grid tied it’s just that a truck comes and fills it

up. Like I said, every nine months.

And then up there, that is a compost bin. My wife Sue makes compost and we put it in the

gardens. Our gardens are just getting started so I’ll show you those a little bit later. We’re really

starting to generate our own food a lot now. It’s hard in this climate but we’re starting to do that

more and more. So I’ll show you more of that later.

And let’s just end with the nice, nice quick look at the view. We’d have a, it’s always a

nice reminder to know why you live some place.

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6. Washer Dryer

Hey folks, wanted to do a quick video and show you our washer and dryers because they

are critically important to our overall home power system because they’re so efficient. So we’ll

take a walk in here real quick and I will show you what is probably a very disorganized laundry

room. That’s how everybody’s looks, right? [Laughs]

So first and foremost the dryer, can’t really tell anything outwardly by this dryer but this is

a gas dryer. It’s actually a propane dryer. If you watched the other videos you know that we have

propane in the house.

Electric dryers use a ton of electricity. As we talked about hair dryers and things like that

can use like 1,500 watts and things like that? A dryer can use that much too because its

generating heat with electricity and electricity is a terrible way to generate heat. You probably

know that by now if you’ve watched our videos.

Gas dryer way more efficient and anybody who’s ever used one knows that it’s much

easier to use. It dries the clothes in like five or ten minutes less or in five and ten minutes time

total you can do what would take an electric dryer like thirty minutes to do.

So the gas dryer still uses some electricity to turn the drum but since we’re using it with an

efficient propane system we use if for 75% less time because it’s that much more efficient so we

use less electricity too.

So if you follow that, we use less electricity because it doesn’t generate electricity with, it

doesn’t generate heat with electricity, and it uses less electricity because it’s just runs for less

time. Hope you followed that. I confused myself a little bit there.

Next up, let’s talk about the washer. And this is one of these side load jobs and it is more

efficient for a variety of reasons. Number one it uses a lot less water. Your typical washing

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machine that’s the vertical drum style, it has to fill up the entire drum with water to get all the

clothes washed and wet.

Whereas a side load, the water really just fills up to about 25%. If you look in here the

water really comes up to about there. Okay? And then the clothes are rotated through the water

so uses a ton less water and because it’s moving less weight, rotating less weight, less water; it’s

using a lot less electricity too. Uses less soap.

The reason we are concerned with water usage is number one our water pump is electric.

So every time that water pump runs we’re draining our batteries. So therefore we are water

efficient because we need to be power efficient.

Second of all, I’ll show you in a video that we have a septic vault where our water is

pumped out. We don’t have a septic field we just have a water vault where our water gets

pumped out. It doesn’t go out into a field. It just stays in there until a big truck comes and pumps

everything out. So every ounce of water we use ends up in that vault and therefore we have to

use less water.

So we are efficient with water and electricity for those reasons.

Hope you followed along with that. Let’s go on to the next video.

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7. Solar Array

Hey folks, wanted to talk about our solar panel array. A lot of questions about how we

have our solar panels set up.

So as you can see here this is our entire solar array. We have ten 130 watt solar panels. So

that means we have 1,300 watts total.

But the total wattage is important as well as the how they’re wired together. Okay? So you

can see they’re arranged in two rows here and that’s actually really important.

Each solar panel is 12 volts. Okay? It’s 130 watt 12 volt Kyocera solar panel. We went

with manufactured panels instead of making our own panels because I got a smoking deal on

these panels.

So the reason that they’re setup the way you see it here is that we are wiring each row in

series. So this row each solar panel is wired to the next one in series. That means positive to

negative, negative to positive. Okay?

So the voltage adds up. So 12 volts + 12 volts + 12 volts + 12 volts + 12 volts is 60 volts.

So this makes for a 60 volt solar panel system because these solar panels add their voltage

together and then each string – this is called a string – each string is wired in parallel. And I’ll

show you the wiring on the back of these in the next video.

But these are 12 volt panels x 5 panels is 60 volts. And then the two strings are wired

together in parallel so then the amperage adds up. You add the amperage from each string

together. So if that’s confusing, review the section in the book on wiring in series and parallel.

Because it is confusing and it’s going to take you a little bit to understand that but once you do,

it’s pretty easy.

But that’s how we have our solar panels set up. Two strings, this row is wired in series, that

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row is wired in series, and then the two are wired together in parallel. And again they’re 130 watt

12 volt DC Kyocera solar panels.

Now we could have saved money, a lot of money, by building our own solar panels but

this, we put this system in about five or six years ago and like I said, I got a smoking deal on the

solar panels. But I didn’t know how to make solar panels back then. So if I were to do it over

again today I’d probably make my own and save even more money. So that’s a great option for

you.

Now this solar panel array puts out what we call 60 volts because as I said the voltage adds

together. But you’ll notice that my battery system and everything inside is 24 volt system. And if

you’ve read your book you know that you can’t mix and match the voltages. You need, you’re

going to have a 24 volt system you need to have a 24 volt array unless you have an MPPT charge

controller. Okay? And that’s what I’m going to show you in a subsequent video is our MPPT –

that’s multiple power point tracking charge controller.

Those charge controllers can actually take an input voltage at one voltage and knock it

down to another voltage. So our controller takes the 60 volt power from the solar panels and

takes that down to 24 volts for the batteries.

Now if you don’t have one of those controllers or you don’t want to get one, they’re a little

expensive sometimes; then you need to get a 24 volt solar panel system and match that to a 24

volt battery system. Or a 12 volt solar panel system and match that to a 12 volt solar battery

system. Okay?

Hope you followed that. Lot’s more videos to come – stay tuned.

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8. Panel Wiring

Okay, here we are back behind the panels. Let me get a good angle on it here. Now you can

see this black conduit, this just houses the wire that goes into each junction box.

This is called a junction box here. Let’s see if the light will adjust so you can see this.

Okay. So you can see the red is coming in, that’s the hot. It’s going to this terminal here.

Alright?

You see this white, it’s actually coming in as negative but it is going to the positive. If you

can see in there, right in here is positive. So we’re connecting negative to negative, positive to

positive. I’m sorry, negative to positive, positive to negative and that’s how we’re getting our

series wiring.

In this terminal right here, that’s made specifically for series wiring. Okay, and that’s why

you see that there. So the positive comes in here to this terminal. The negative goes to actually

what is the positive terminal here and then this negative goes in, this will go into the next solar

panel which is right here.

You can see that this, that was the white wire, it’s coming in here and it’s actually going to

the positive terminal. Okay? Hope you can follow that it’s a little confusing. But you can see we

actually taped this off as red. It starts off as negative but we tape it off as red because we’re

connecting it to the positive.

You can also see in there, right here, the blocking diodes. Okay? This one has six blocking

diodes. I think you’ll generally want at least three in your system. And it doesn’t matter too

much where those are as long as they’re wired into the circuit. I’ve seen them both on the

positive and the negative side, you can we’ve got some on the positive terminal here and on the

negative terminal up here. So that doesn’t matter so much.

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So this is the end of the string. This is the last panel. You can see then we have this gray

conduit and it comes out and we’ll trace it along here. Comes out, goes down the wall here; this

is our shed where we store all of our gear. And then it comes in here. Okay?

And you probably can’t see through this tangle of wires but the hot wire, the positive

actually ends up here. Okay so two strings, the one we just looked at comes in here and then the

other string comes in right here. So this is wired in parallel. And then you can see two fuse

busses right here. That’s a big fuse.

So this is wired in parallel so the two strings are wired in parallel to each other. The panels

within each string are wired in series but the two strings are in parallel.

And down here is another very important item; lightning arrestor. These are cheap and well

worth the money. The idea is that if this unit were, the solar panels were struck by lightning, that

it would stop right there. That’s the theory. I’m very curious if that’s the actual practice too, let’s

hope so.

Okay. And this is just your basic disconnect and fuse box. Nothing special here but

whenever we’re working inside I generally disconnect this so that the solar PV isn’t running.

Right now the sun is shining. You can see it’s sunny out here so there’s power flowing.

There’s power going through these solar panels and through these wires. It’s very important to

keep that in mind when you’re working on your system. If the sun is out – there’s power.

So a lot of times if we’re doing maintenance or anything like that we’ll actually put

blankets or tarps over the solar panels. This is important for safety.

Next step we’ll cover the entrance of the solar power into our solar shed and how it wires

from there.

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9. Charge Controller & Batteries

Okay folks, we are now inside the power shed and I’m going to show you how everything

connects in here. This is where really everything comes together in here. The only things that are

really outside are the solar panels and then the wind generator which I’ll show you in a couple

minutes.

But I’ll show you where the solar power comes in. Okay so it goes right into there and

comes back in to this unit. Now this is another DC system disconnect. You’re probably

wondering, didn’t we just come from a disconnect? Why do we need another one?

Well first of all code requires that we have one on the outside and the inside. And this also

will disconnect the battery bank. So you can see right there it says ‘array’ – hope you can see

that. And that one says the battery.

So this one would completely shutdown batteries and the PV array if we ever had to work

on this system, that’s why you need that.

Then the power goes into this system here. And this says DC disconnect as well but it’s

really the overcurrent module that is the functional part of this particular unit here. It works in

conjunction with the charge controller there to regulate the amperage going into the battery bank.

Okay?

So this unit, which is the actual charge controller and the overcurrent module, really work

hand-in-hand to regulate the power going into and out of the battery bank. So you’ll see that this

unit has power coming in from, this is from the PV array; comes into here. It’s regulated by the

charge controller. Okay?

This has an out going into the battery bank, which I’ll show you in a second. And also goes

out into the inverter. Okay. So it’s a little confusing but essentially what the power is doing is it’s

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coming out of this unit into the overcurrent module which is controlled by the charge controller;

out of the overcurrent module into the battery bank here. Okay?

And also, this is why this pipe is so thick because there’s wires coming out of the battery

bank going back into this unit and then into the inverter here. Okay. So this unit here basically

just sort of organizes the wires and will disconnect them if need be. It comes from the array to

the controller to the batteries, away from the batteries into the inverter.

Okay. A lot of times what we’re seeing now with these new units is that the charge

controller and this unit are really kind of integrated so it’s not quite as confusing. And this is

actually a pretty easy setup. I can take the front panel off that, you can see that there’s directions

on where to wire everything. It’s actually easier than it looks.

But right now I want to go over the charge controller because this is really where you get to

see the most. This is where you get to actually see what you’re producing. So let’s try to zoom in

on that. Okay.

So this is an OutBack Power Systems I think it’s an FM60 charge controller. And I really

like OutBack for the charge control capabilities. And with the new systems, like I said, this unit

would be an OutBack as well and it would be integrated in with this.

So first thing we’re going to look at here is “In” and it’s fluctuating between 79 and 80

volts. Now if you remember earlier, see if I can do this, earlier I said that our array was each

string was generating 60 volts. Okay. So why does that say 80 volts?

Well we have what we call a nominal voltage and then a maximum voltage on an array. A

nominal voltage, nominal just means name. So we’re naming it a 12 volt. But a 12 volt panel

under maximum sunshine is actually going to generate more like 18 or 19 volts. It’s actually

closer to 17 volts. Okay?

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So when say that its 17 volts, maybe 16 volts x 5 solar panels all wired in series that would

equal 80 volts. 16 x 5 would be 80 volts. So that’s what our system is actually generating right

now. You can see that we’ve got some good sunshine still so that’s what we see on here is it’s

actually 80 volts.

Okay. Now ‘Out’ here, that’s what’s actually in the battery bank so what happened here?

We went from 78 to 23. Okay. This charge controller is what we call a multiple power point

tracking charge control. And that is a fancy way of saying that this charge controller is the most

efficient kind of charge controller you can get because it regulates the voltage and amperage with

maximum efficiency.

But it will also change the voltage. It’s changing 80 volts down to 23 to 24 volts. And the

reason it does that is because it’s the most efficient way to get the power out of the panels is to

get the highest voltage. Okay? And there’s some scientific theory I don’t even really understand

it but they want to get the panels at the highest voltage possible and then you want to put it in

your batteries at a voltage that’s efficient for the batteries, and that’s usually a lower voltage.

So this charge controller takes the voltage down from 80 to 24 volts. Okay and it does that

by, it conserves energy. It uses a little bit of energy in that process but if you know your power

formula, which is volts x amps = watts; you’ll know that if you reduce the voltage to maintain

the wattage, the amperage must go way up. So that’s what this does. It boosts up the amperage,

busts down the voltage, and maintains the wattage. Okay?

So that’s what we’re seeing here: high voltage here, low amperage, low voltage, high

amperage. Okay? If you take those two numbers, if you take 77 x 11, well you get about; let’s

see that’s almost 800 watts. And that bears out right there – that’s our wattage, almost 800 watts.

Well 24 x 32, that’s about 800 watts as well. So it’s conserving the wattage it’s just

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changing the voltage and amperage. Okay. And you can see right here, this is MPPT; multiple

power point tracking. That’s what this unit does.

The kilowatt hours, that’s what we’ve generated today: 1.6 kWHrs so we generated 1,000

watts per one hour that would be one kilowatt hour.

Remember I told you that we had a 1,300 watt array, right now we’re getting about 800

watts out of it. And it’s because we’ve just got a light, light little cloud cover. I don’t know if

you can really see that. You can kind of, the camera will adjust but you can just kind of see light

cloud cover.

We’re getting about half the rate of power out of this system. So when the sun is high over

the panels and no clouds that will show right around 1,250 watts. Every once in awhile when it’s

really cold it’ll actually show; every once in awhile when it’s really cold it’ll actually show like

1,400 watts because cold lets electricity flow better, more efficiently.

That’s why we keep our computers cool. That’s why there’s a fan in this charge controller

that you can hear probably. There’s a fan in the inverter as well. Temperature affects how

electricity flows significantly.

Let’s talk about the batteries now. So we’ve got this trunk type thing built. Here’s our

battery array, okay? Each battery is a 6 volt 350 amp-hour battery. These are Interstate

Workaholic batteries; they’re called an L-16. It’s a flooded lead acid. You can tell it’s flooded by

these little caps here because you screw these off and there’s water in there. Well there’s actually

sulfuric acid in there right now but you add distilled water to that on occasion.

So it looks similar to a car battery but if you look down over here to the side you can see

they’re about actually they’re about 18” tall. And I think each one of those weighs probably oh

about 80 pounds? So it’s quite a job getting them in here. Obviously you fill them up after you

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put them in.

So let’s look at the wiring of this. You can see each battery is wired positive to negative of

the next one. Positive to negative of the next one. Positive to negative of the next one. Okay and

then this positive one is wired to the positive of the next row over.

So what does that mean? That means that we have a 6 volt battery so we’re adding the

voltage one, two, three, four; 24 volt battery system. And then each row is wired in parallel so

we’ve added the voltage in the row and then the rows add amperage to add capacity. Okay? So

this is a 24 volt. We could keep adding rows to add more amp-hour capacity. If I had room over

here you could keep adding rows. That would mean, that would maintain 24 volts and you would

add amp-hour capacity.

Again, really you need to understand that that series in wiring system that we talk about in

the book. If you look way down in there you can see that wire, the big orange wire that’s going

off, okay, it’s coming off the negative on this end, on this end of the array of batteries, okay, and

then this one over here is coming off the positive of this end. Okay. So that’s what, those two

wires, this one here and that one all the way at the other corner is what actually what’s going out

of this unit and into here.

You wire the final two wires off the end of the battery bank. So the batteries are easily the

thing that takes the most maintenance; ongoing maintenance. Okay you can see I’ve got a little

bit of corrosion in here. I put Vaseline on this one here you can see and that’s preventing a lot of

the corrosion from spreading but a couple of them have some decent corrosion on them.

It’s really key to keep that corrosion off. Keep it wiped off clean as much as possible. Also

to keep the bolts, nuts and bolts of everything really tight. You’re going to get the maximum

power out of each unit and they’re going to last longer if you keep all of the connections in here

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really, really tight. And I know a lot of solar installers that actually keep a torque wrench handy

so they make sure that they get them tight enough.

But this is where; this is where I spend the most maintenance. It’s still only oh three hours

every six months. Eh maybe four hours every six months. So it’s not bad. It’s just twice a year

but the solar panels take almost no maintenance. I don’t really do anything to the solar panels.

And the inverter and all that really doesn’t take much maintenance.

A lot of the maintenance needs to be done on batteries can be done automatically with this

system. We have this functionality called equalize that I’ll show you in a second. It has to be

done and I’ll show you. That’s a function of the inverter.

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10. Inverter

Okay, we’ve talked about the controller; let’s talk about the inverter a little bit. This really

acts as the brains of your system. The controller really kind of is the workhorse. Maybe you

could call that the muscle of the system. The inverter’s really the brains.

And what we have here is a Xantrex, and this is a 4024; four zero two four. So that that

means, a 4,000 watt inverter which means it can handle 4,000 watts at any given time as a load,

and 24 volt input. Remember that our batteries were 24 volt. So you have to match the input of

the inverter to your battery bank. Okay?

So this menu, the menu’s going to be different on every inverter but I’m just going to run

through some basic functionality. We have a backup generator on our system, I’ll show you that

how that works.

But basically it’s pretty simple. This inverter is grid capable. We don’t have the grid here

so it’s not an option for us and we don’t want it, but you could. This function right here is

‘search’. What this will do is it’ll just search for power essentially. It can search off the grid; it

can search off the batteries.

This inverter doesn’t take power from the photovoltaic array, from the solar panels. All it

does is take it from the batteries. So if the batteries are dead it then will automatically switch on

the generator. That’s why this is on ‘auto’. Okay.

Some of the other functionality of this ‘trace engineering’, we won’t mess with any of that.

The ‘meters’ is nice to know because this shows you the load. This is what the house is using in

amps. Okay and the inverter takes DC power and turns it into 110 AC power. So 110 by about 4

amps is about 440 watts. So that’s what the house is using right now.

So when we need to know maybe why our batteries aren’t lasting that long or anything’s

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going on with our system I come and look at this right away. And sometimes this’ll be up to 12.

So we’ll be using over 1,300 – 1,400 watts out of the house and we’ll say what’s going on. And

we’ll find that maybe the water pump is on, or somebody’s left something on. Somebody’s left a

bunch of lights on or maybe we’ve got a visitor who is using a hair dryer in the basement that we

didn’t know about.

So this is very nice to know here. Oh there’s ‘meters’, ‘error causes’ – sometimes this red

light will come on here. It’s usually if the generator won’t start. That’s the only error cause

we’ve ever had actually if the generator wouldn’t start when the batteries wore down.

Then you can go through here and the ‘error causes’ will, you can flip through here, this is

over kind of, we’ve never had any of these errors come up. Knock on wood. ‘Time of day’,

‘generator timer’ – this deals with when the generator will run and not run. You know the

generator can be locked so you can set it to run just during daylight hours. And this is the end of

the user menu.

If you hit these two buttons at the same time, let’s see if I can do it on the first try – no.

Anyway if you hit those two buttons at the same time you kind of get into an advanced menu and

it, again, every inverter is going to be different so you could look at that if you wanted to. I don’t

really mess with that much.

I come out here to work on the generator now and then. I come out here to check the meter

and the only other thing we have to do is equalize, equalize the batteries. What happens is the

batteries they build up a solid on their plates and that can cause them all to have a little bit of a

different voltage and different levels of charge.

So what we do is we fire up the generator and you can see right here, there’s ‘auto’, there’s

‘on’ – that would just turn the generator on. Then there’s ‘equalize’. That would equalize the

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batteries and that’s a preset time frame and for us it’s four hours. And what it does is it just runs

the voltage up in those batteries and literally the chemical reaction starts bubbling and really

vibrating and knocks all that condensate off those plates.

So we do that about every four to six weeks to equalize those batteries. You’ll notice that

your battery performance will just kind of get worse over a couple months. It’ll just, you’ll just

have less and less power. You equalize and that kind of resets everything.

The other thing that this thing controls is absorption, float, and let’s see there’s bulk

charging, float charging, and absorption. Bulk charging is charging the batteries and this is also

managed by the charge controller. These two talk to each other. Bulk charging is really just a

majority of the charging on the battery. Let’s say that’s 80% full is bulk charging.

Then you have float charging which is the remaining 20%. And then absorption is just kind

of a topping off. So you’ll see those terms, you don’t really need to mess with them much. All of

this is preset in the system. But you’ll see those terms when it comes to inverters and chargers

and stuff like that.

Sometimes when we need to equalize a nice little trick if you just put this inverter to

‘equalize’, the only time it will actually equalize is when your batteries run out of power and

then the generator automatically kicks on anyway. Well if you do that you use a ton of propane

because it’s running the batteries from empty all the way up to way above full to get that

vibration that we talked about. So a lot of times what we’ll do is we’ll wait ‘til the batteries are

full and then trick this thing into thinking that the batteries are empty with the low battery cutoff

number. Okay? So the low battery cutoff number is when the generator will kick on. And right

now it’s set to about 22.8 volts.

Well I’ll come in here and I’ll change that number to let’s say 26 volts and that will trick

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the inverter into saying well the batteries, we have to initiate low battery cutoff and therefore

start the generator. So let’s say the equalization will take the batteries up to 31 volts, okay? So

instead of going from 22 volts which is empty, up to 31 volts which is at equalization, you’re

only going from 26 or 27 volts to 31 volts, okay?

So you’re saving all that propane that it would take to get from 22 to 31, instead you’re just

going from 26 to 31. And let me explain a little more about that. Let’s go back over here to the

charge controller. You can see here we’re about 23.9 volts. Okay. So a lot of people wonder well

what is that? Is that full? That’s actually kind of low.

When you hear about a 24 volt system, ‘full’ is right around, what we would call ‘full’ is

probably around 25 maybe 26 volts. Empty is right around 22.5 volts. Okay? So it’s not like

there’s 0 to 10 or 0 to 100. It goes really from 22 to about 25, 26. Alright.

The same is true of a 12 volt system except it’s just cut in half. 11 volts is about empty and

14 or 13 volts is about full. So you have to kind of get, adjust your scale and know what this

number really means. That’s the out, that’s the voltage in the batteries, and right now it’s about

half way. When it gets up to about 24.8, I would consider it full.

It will bounce up when the wattage cranks up. When we get 1,200-1,300 volts I will see

this voltage jump up to like 26, 27 volts. And that’s when this charge controller will actually

switch off the power from the array to protect the batteries so we don’t overcharge them. We

don’t want to overcharge them on a regular basis but like I said with the equalization we actually

wind them all the way up to 31 volts and just to get that vibration so if you do that every once in

awhile it helps your batteries. But if you were to overcharge them on a regular basis it would ruin

them. So that’s kind of counterintuitive but that’s a little nuance of batteries in off-grid living.

Next up let’s talk about the generator.

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11. Generator - Inverter

Now I wanted to show you real quick the inverter output just basically goes into an AC

system disconnect. Remember on this side of the inverter it’s going to be 110 AC and this just

basically goes into a disconnect and the output from there just goes right into the house.

You probably noticed this other output over here. This goes to our water pump. Water

pump’s right there. Water well; of course the pump’s down there a few hundred feet. But that

goes straight to the water well.

One other item that we have in here it’s nice. When we first set this system up we had

some problems with our backup generator and we needed a backup for the backup. So we set this

up. And what we can do we can take this, your basic extension cord with the end cut off, and you

take that and you go black to black, well yeah; black to black, white to white, green to green.

And then you take that end and you just plug it into a simple Honda generator; portable

generator. And it will actually back the power through the inverter and then into the batteries.

So that was a nice little fix for when, when we first moved in here it was a really, really

bad winter; super snowy and we didn’t have much sunshine, and the generator wouldn’t work.

So we didn’t have power. So we got another, I had a construction company and I had another

generator and we just wired this thing up and that was the backup for our backup. Normally you

wouldn’t need that but if you don’t have the propane generator like we have you can hook up this

to a regular Honda generator and you could charge your batteries.

Now I’m going to show you how this generator works and how it actually runs through the

inverter, because the generator generates AC power. So it has to go back through the inverter, be

converted to DC, and then go into the battery bank. So it actually works reverse through the

system. Let’s go check that out now.

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12. Generator

Okay. This is the generator. This is the really, the only “grid” related thing that we have.

And it’s not really grid related.

This is a propane generator and it is fed by a propane tank that we have on the other side of

our property. So we do have to have propane hauled in maybe twice a year just to run this thing

in case of emergencies.

This generator probably only runs maybe once a month and a lot of times that’s just for the

equalization like we talked about just a little bit ago. Sometimes we’ll have a lot of clouds,

sometimes we’ll have a lot of snow because we live in the mountains and we have to use this as a

backup.

You really do need some kind of backup for your system. You don’t want to be completely

dependent on solar and wind for everything. Or you better be prepared just to be without power

sometimes when the weather turns. If you’re okay with that, that’s not a big deal.

This is our generator and it’s really not much different than every other generator in the

world. Combustion engine, electric coil, and it generates AC power like I talked about. So it’s a

one liter Generac engine and this is a, I believe it’s a 15 kilowatt engine. So it will, I’m sorry, 15

kilowatt electric motor – so it will really charge those batteries fairly quickly.

When the batteries are empty it can charge the batteries in probably 2-3 hours. But I also,

like I said before when I’m usually doing that I will equalize so add another 3 or 4 hours onto

that.

So to run this thing every year I would say maybe for the whole year maybe three or four

hundred bucks. Probably less. We did just put in a propane stove in our basement to help heat

that because we were kind of sick of hauling wood, so we use a little bit more propane than we

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used to now.

But this is the only thing that takes any maintenance at all; your basic oil change and

filters. You do that once or twice a year and usually once a year really. It’s due for some spark

plugs now – first time in three years. So, and you can get companies that will do all this for you,

maintain the batteries and maintain the generator if you want.

Like I said you can get a small little construction type Honda generator from Home Depot

or whatever and use that. It’s just going to run longer if you have to charge your batteries

completely. But that’s easier for some people.

We just went this route because it’s what most people in the neighborhood do. And we can,

I mean we will on occasion have a month without sunshine. And on those, on those type of

occasions the generator will run every other day. And if we’re really, if we have company, we

have a house full of people it will have to run every day. But it’s really rare for that to happen.

It’s happened just the once, the month after we moved into this place [Laughs] and put all this

system in – it happened. [Laughs] That’s the only time it’s ever happened and that was five years

ago. So for the most part it’s really reliable and we don’t have to mess with this generator very

much.

Next up let’s talk about the house and how we live. Oh, and before I do that I’ll show you

the wind system real quick.

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13. Wind Wiring

Alright, before I show you the actual wind generator I just wanted to show you the

switching real quick. It’s kind of, incomplete as you can tell. I normally wouldn’t leave these

wires just dangling like this. It’s one of those projects that’s supposed to be done but it’s not.

Basically what we’ve got here, we’ve got the wind system coming in. This is a 12 gauge

wire. We’ll use 12 gauge wire for a lot of this stuff just inside the shed here. In fact this wire is

enough to go all the way from the wind generator which is about a hundred feet away, all the

way in here.

Little ‘off’ switch here. And this is just a little fuse right there just to protect the batteries.

And then basically from there they just wire straight into the batteries on that same terminal that

was the exit for the solar system. So then we’ve got one all the way over here too. You can see

this black wire right here, that’s the wind system. Just positive to that side, negative to the other

side; really, really simple

And this off switch will actually engage a brake on the wind system so that if you wanted

to work on it so that the turbine wouldn’t turn. So again my system is a little half-assed here but

now let’s go up to the wind generator and you can see.

The wind system, far and away, is the easiest system to wire, to install, and this 12 gauge

wire, we just check the wire diagrams that are included in your system, the wire loss tables, to

make sure that that was enough wire for the amperage and the voltage it was holding – and it

was.

If your system was carrying a lot more amperage or was a lot farther away, you would need

a much bigger wire but this one was enough for ours, so you have to check on that.

Let’s go check out the wind generator itself.

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14. Wind Generator

Here’s our wind generator. It is a 400 watt Air X manufactured wind generator. We did not

build our own because of the weather conditions we get here.

And all in, with the generator itself and the tower kit, I think we spent about $800 bucks on

it. And honestly it was the best $800 bucks we could have spent because we didn’t realize just

how much wind we have until we installed this thing and saw it spinning around all the time.

This was also probably the easiest install. So it’s just sitting on a 21 foot piece of I believe

its two inch galvanized pipe. You can get that at any pipe store. Or any construction type pipe

store, I should say. That’s what it’s sitting on.

And of course there’s two wires running down the middle, that 12 gauge wire that I

showed you.

And then the tower kit, I’m not sure if you can see that or not. I’ll show you in more detail

here. It’s just four guy-wires that are mounted on a little collar at the top there and come down to

augers that go in the ground.

Let me show you that real quick now.

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15. Wind Installation

So here is an auger. Because our ground was so rocky, it’s got actually a screw type auger

end on that, but because our ground’s so rocky we couldn’t really get it into the ground so you

look down in there, there’s actually a little bit of concrete in there. I just put a little Quick Crete

in there. And that runs up to that collar up there and there’s four of those to protect it from

blowing in any direction.

And this was actually a pretty easy install. Here’s a pipe down here. The end of the pipe, it

actually screws into a tee and there’s a horizontal piece of pipe you can see the end of right there.

So it’s kind of a tee with the top of the tee on the ground and some rocks just to stabilize it down

here.

The wire runs out from that, from the bottom of that. That was probably the hardest part of

the whole thing. I had to have a metal worker friend drill a hole so I could get the wire out of that

thing.

There’s also a lightning arrester at the bottom of this and then it just runs through conduit

down to the shed right where I showed you.

[Unclear due to wind sound] Wind varies in this area and it is [unclear]. We get regular

breezes or wind, if you want to call it, every night really. The downslope winds as it cools off

and in the morning as it warms up the wind blows. In fact it’s going to start here. We get it every

afternoon about 10 MPH. So that will generate probably 40 or 60 watts steadily so that’ll run you

know a couple of light bulbs, maybe my computer. So it’s worth it. It’s worth it and it wasn’t a

bad install and it’s a good investment.

While we’re out here why don’t I just show you why we live here? I’m about to run out of

battery anyway. There’s our neighbor’s setup. It’s identical to ours actually. There’s an old ski

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resort that’s closed down. And there’s the lake. It’s a big reason why we live here and why we

live off the grid so that we can have a view like this, live on our own, master of our own destiny

– this is why we do it.

And today’s 4th of July. Happy Independence Day. Time for me to crack a beer or maybe

get on the lake.

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Interview with Kriss and Sue

Kriss: Hi  again  folks.  It’s  Kriss  the  off-­‐grid  solar  guy  with  Power4Patriots.  This  is  my  
wife  Sue.    
 
Sue: Hello.

Kriss: Say hi Sue.

Sue: Hello.

Kriss: We wanted to answer a couple of questions for you and Sue was gracious
enough to join me for these. A couple of questions have come in through the
website and the first one was: “What is the best part of living off the grid and
independently?”

Sue: I think I really enjoy the fact that we harness our own clean energy through the
sun and the wind. And it’s a way of living responsibly and we don’t have to rely
on power companies.

Kriss: Yeah. It’s pretty nice not having that power bill but the way we generate our
energy is really cool too. There’s no pollution or any of that stuff so that’s,
that’s really nice. And the fact that we do it all on our own without the power
company is pretty cool.

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: I agree with that totally.

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: And what is the worst part of living off the grid?

Sue: Personally for us I don’t think there’s a bad part about living off the grid. We’ve
noticed in our neighborhood where everyone lives off the grid that some of our
neighbors aren’t as in tune with their power usage or consumption as we are.

Kriss: Mm-hmm.

Sue: And that leads to problems for them.

Kriss: Yeah, they tend to think they can really consume as much energy as they
want all the time and that’s okay some of the time.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

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Kriss: But if we get some snow storms or a bunch of cloudy days you know, and if
you have a bunch of freezers and refrigerators and air conditioners and
heaters and all this stuff, well then you’re going to run your generator a lot
more. So I would say that you’ve got to be kind of energy efficient.

Sue: Right. Right.

Kriss: For sure, and some people aren’t into that.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: If you’re not going to take those steps then it’s going to be harder for you.

Sue: Right.  And  I  think  we  live  very  comfortably.  It’s  not  like  we  deprive  ourselves  of…  
Kriss: That’s right.

Sue: …you know, essential things that we need to live because of being off-grid.
You just have to be more mindful of how much power you’re using and you
know just go day to day and just…

Kriss: Yeah. Go ahead. Start over. Just go day to day and?

Sue: Just live day to day. Just be more mindful of your power consumption and it’s
really taught us how little power that we need.

Kriss: Mm-hmm, and how to kind of sync up your power usage with the weather.

Sue: Right. Right.

Kriss: If we have a week of cloudy weather or a bunch of snow storms we may hold
off on laundry.

Sue: Right. Right. And you know maybe I don’t do laundry at night. I do laundry
during the day when the sun’s out and we have plenty of power.

Kriss: Mm-hmm. That’s a good point.

Sue: And we are careful not to run all of our appliances at once. You know; the
dishwasher and the laundry and whatnot.

Kriss: That’s right.

Sue: But again I don’t feel like we are depriving ourselves at all.

Kriss: No. As we’ve shown in the videos, and I hope everybody can see that for
themselves is that this house is really very comfortable. And…

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Sue: Definitely.

Kriss: I don’t think, if you were to tour this house, I don’t think you’d ever know that it
was off-grid.

Sue: Mm-mmm.

Kriss: Right?

Sue: No.

Kriss: I mean our solar power system is tucked behind the house so a lot of people
don’t even see it.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: So I don’t think 99% of people would ever even realize…

Sue: Right.

Kriss: …that we live off the grid. We, you know I talk about in some of the videos that
we don’t have hair dryers.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: Do you miss a hair dryer?

Sue: No. I don’t.

Kriss: So you can just let your hair dry naturally…

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: And it’s just fine. And it looks gorgeous by the way. [Laughs]

Sue: Oh thank you. [Laughs]

Kriss: But we also don’t have a microwave.

Sue: Right. Which we have learned to live without. I don’t really miss it.

Kriss: You use the stove.

Kriss: Use the oven.

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Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: And we could have those things.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: But we just chose not to because we have what is really a very small power
system.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: I mean our friend Merlin was here about a month ago.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: He lives in Denver and they have, what is it? Kind of a typical American home
you’d think. But they have 3,000 watts of solar on their roof.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: And he saw our system which is 1,300 watts; he could not believe that’s all we
live on.

Sue: Right, right.

Kriss: He was amazed. But we do that because we’re super energy efficient.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: So the next question is: “Why did you want to live like this?”

Sue: Well I think for us we found our little piece of paradise. We found where we
wanted to live and along with that came living off the grid. And at first I think it
seemed like a big challenge.

Kriss: Mm-hmm.

Sue: And as we got into it we realized that it’s no different than living on the grid
other than the fact that we’re just more mindful of…

Kriss: Mm-hmm.
Sue: …the power that we use and it doesn’t really seem any different to me
anymore.

Kriss: Yeah.

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Sue: You know. I don’t think about it from day to day it’s just the way we live and…
it works.

Kriss: Yeah. It’s the new normal as they say.

Sue: Right. Right.

Kriss: Yeah, I would say the same thing. We didn’t actively choose to live off the
grid; we chose where we wanted to live.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: And there was no power there. So it just made sense for us to adopt solar.
And the house that we moved into was, it was built but it wasn’t built well. And
it really wasn’t built to be off the grid. The builder was not really tuned into
what that meant, being off the grid. And we had to make a lot of adjustments.

Sue: Yeah, we put in our wood burning stove which...

Kriss: That was a huge thing.

Sue: Yeah... primarily heats our entire house.

Kriss: Mm-hmm.

Sue: And…

Kriss: Yeah, just made some small lifestyle adjustments.

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: But you know I guess I would say to people is that’s probably the best part
about solar power and everything now is now you can live wherever you want
to. It used to be that when you were picking out places to live you had to kind
of look for infrastructure. You had to make sure that there were power lines
and water, sewer, and all this kind of stuff. And you know we were in Mexico
just, what was that, eight months ago.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: And we were walking along this really secluded beach; no houses on it
whatsoever and we thought we could buy land here and build here.

Sue: Yeah. Right.

Kriss: There’s no power for miles, there’s no people for miles…

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Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: But we could live there, we could build there…

Sue: Yep.

Kriss: …because of solar power.

Sue: And there’s lots of sun. [Laughs]

Kriss: There’s tons of sun. There was a great wind, right?

Sue: Right.

Kriss: There was a nice little ocean breeze the whole time. So that was…

Sue: Right. Maybe someday. [Laughs]

Kriss: [Thumbs up sign] Someday. Yeah, see that? We’re planning on that. That’s
going to be cool!

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: The next question is: “Any advice you would give to someone considering
going off the grid?”

Sue: I think the best advice would be to be in touch with, you know, the patterns of
the sun and the weather. And just kind of shape your energy consumption
around that as much as you can.

Kriss: Mm-hmm.

Sue: You know little things like passive solar. Our windows in our house get great
passive solar. And in the winter you know in the afternoon they heat the house
and in the summers we cool our house at night by just opening up the
windows. And just little things like that.

Kriss: Sort of get in tune with your environment a little bit.

Kriss: Yeah that’s great advice. And we talk about that in the passive solar video
about how we use our windows and window coverings.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: And that’s something that’s really free.

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Sue: Right.

Kriss: That doesn’t cost anything.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: So that’s great advice. Last question is: “Would you do anything different if
you could go back and do it over?”

Sue: I don’t know that I would do anything different.

Kriss: You know when we moved in there was the furnace.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: Was the primary heat source and that was a mistake by the builder.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: Cause it uses a ton of power. We would run the furnace for what, like three
hours…

Sue: Yeah.

Kriss: …and the generator would run for like six hours, the backup propane
generator.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: That’s really not what we’re trying to do here. [Laughs]

Sue: Our winter before the wood burning stove was installed was an interesting
one.

Kriss: Yeah, we moved in and it was one of the snowiest winters on record. We
moved in right before Christmas.
Sue: Yep, in the middle of a blizzard. [Laughs]

Kriss: In the middle of a blizzard. And it snowed for like two months.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: Right?

Sue: Right.

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Kriss: It was six inches every day.

Sue: Yeah. And we went through so much propane that the trucks couldn’t even get
up the driveway to refill it because of all the snow.

Kriss: They couldn’t even get into our neighborhood…

Sue: Right.

Kriss: …sometimes because the plows wouldn’t couldn’t get here, there was just so
much snow. That was a tough transition.

Sue: Right, definitely. But after putting the wood burning stove in that pretty much
fixed all of that.

Kriss: So the wood burning stove really…

Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: …the heat and then I think that winter if we had had the wind generator…

Sue: True.

Kriss: …we probably would have been okay. Wouldn’t have been, we probably
would have still run that generator a little bit.

Sue: Right. Because we get a lot of wind from the storms so even though we don’t
have the sun we would have plenty of wind.

Kriss: Lots of wind, yeah.

Sue: To help out.

Kriss: Yeah. So having a backup system, having multiple kinds, the wind and the
solar.
Sue: Mm-hmm.

Kriss: Having a natural heat source…

Sue: Right.

Kriss: …with the sun and the wood. And for people who live in hot areas that are
considering this, you really got to use nature to your advantage too with
channeling breezes through the house.

Sue: Mm-hmm.

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Kriss: Trying to get the natural air flow to work. Using trees to shade the house.
Especially deciduous trees where the leaves will shade you in the summer but
the leaves fall off and then you get the sunshine in the winter to help you heat.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: But really just kind of using your environment to maximum advantage. It’s
really, it’s not a secret but it’s what’s helped us a lot.

Sue: Right.

Kriss: Well cool. Anything else you want to add?

Sue: No. [Laughs]

Kriss: [Laughs] Well I want to say thank you for stopping by. What were you going to
say?

Sue: No, I was just saying I think we covered…

Kriss: I think we got it.

Sue: …all the good...

Kriss: All the good stuff.

Sue: …info.

Kriss: Well thanks for stopping by guys. This concludes it and keep those questions
coming. We’re happy to answer them. Sue thanks for joining me on this video.

Sue: You’re welcome.

Kriss: And we’ll see you next time.

Sue: Thank you.

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Conclusion

Well that concludes our video series. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you learned

something. Most of all I hope that you see that you can do this too.

You know when my wife and I moved up here we sure as heck didn’t have a video series

or a guide book to help us through all this. And that’s exactly what Power4Patriots is and

hopefully it will help you do this too.

Our goal is to help as many people become independent of the grid and generate their own

energy as possible.

Hit us back with your questions, stick around the Power4Patriots website, check out the

Frequently Asked Question section and if you have more questions, hit up our support staff.

We’re happy to answer them. It’ll probably be me answering the technical questions.

So thanks for your attention. Thanks for tuning in. God bless.

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