About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Lloyd,
That is so cool, I hope you keep us up to date on how it works for you.
I entirely understand the wish to get 100% of your power from solar panels. I'd like to do this too. However, our electricity bill is only around $20 a month. I've not figured out the payback period on this, but I guess it is "never". Also, our electricity is hydro so is (arguably) sustainable.
100% solar?
if you are paying for batteries, and maintaining them, you are wasting your money
the cheapest "battery" is your local electric grid, by far
i know "pioneers" who once maintained their own batteries, and now they are connected to electric co.
they used to have no choice, as they were too far off the grid, but once they had a choice, it was real simple
i remember when i was off the grid, and had to maintain batteries, as well as a windmill, it was expensive and a huge pain
when the grid finally became available, it was such a blessing, had forgotten how much i like TOAST!
forgot to mention
i have pv panels, and pay about $20/month to the grid
maui, yes, we feed it back into the grid. Feels great on these hot days to see we're producing surplus (and no air conditioning).
Solar in foggy Bolinas? Wow!
Been looking into solar in sunny San Jose. How much per watt did you pay? Wattage per panel? American or Chinese panels? Microinverters or separate from the panels? My neighbor just replaced a failed inverter on his 10 kW early adopter system. Not cheap.