My husband is not quite ready to make the move into the countryside, but I have a growing desire to be self-sufficient wherever we are. [This is REALLY funny coming from a Chicagoland "city chick" who cried the entire first day she lived in her new "hometown" of 8,000!!]

I have been working on things one category at a time (food, communications, clothing, sanitation, security) but am stymied when it comes to power. I'd love to go "off the grid" someday, or at least be able to call on some alternate form of energy in a crunch. I would like input on solar power -- generating, storing, etc.

Does anyone know of a worthwhile book or two that I could look into? TIA :)

Thereare two main types of systems:

Fully remote, where you must have sufficient battery banks to store all the juice made during the day, and the whole system must be large enough to meet all your electric requirements (which for practical reasons means making the requirements much, much lower than normal). In the the north most people have generators for back-up.

Grid-tie system, where you buy as many panels as you can afford or have room for, and it is connected to your house wiring along with the main grid supply. This means all the power produced by the panels as 12vdc current has to be inverted to standard household current. When the panels produce less than required, the deficit comes from the grid, and when they produce more it goes down the line elsewhere and you get credit for it.

Grid-tie has to be connected by a professional electrician, permits will be required, the inverter is expensive, etc. In remote systems battery cost can be overwhelming.

A way to just dabble in it would be to buy a single small panel and charge controller, set it up in a sunny place, and just use it during the day to run small 12v appliances: radio, dctv, 12vdrill, etc.

I checked out Solviva and Path to Freedom and liked both. I have PTF saved on Favorites so that I can check their diary entries.

I haven't checked out the magazines yet, but plan to.

I posted a question and a whine about subdividing on the "Buying and Selling Homes" forum. I see you're from Chicago originally. My suggestion is that you move on down here to good ol Southern IL and homestead on the land I want rid of. LOL

TwoLips, it's not unusual for us to go two weeks in a row with "mostly clouds," so anything we did would have to be grid-tie or we'd have to plan to have a generator (something DH is not even wanting to consider right now).

I'm concentrating on simply not needing electricity as much (canning, kerosene(?) heater, crank-up radio, getting rid of carpeting, etc.) and I'll have to be content with that.