The Great Experiment

Going off the grid on Anguilla

Comet Solar Team

We are solar designers and installers in the Caribbean and our home base is on the island of Anguilla, a small island about an hours flight east of Puerto Rico.
We have sunshine on the island almost every day of the year. Sounds like a great place for solar right?

Not so much. 

The utility company here uses imported diesel fuel to power the island. For reasons that continually escape us, they fight the implementation of solar on the island as a means to reduce the cost of electricity and to use less fossil fuel, something most of the world agrees is a good thing to do. Our electricity cost is one of the highest in the world. Companies and home owners are drowning in the cost of running their business especially since we are in the tropics and it gets very hot  here for a good part of the year.

In the Beginning

When we started installing solar here we assumed since the govt. listed in their manifesto that solar would be welcome that it would be welcome. Well you know what they say about assuming. Although the solar systems are duty free (if they arrive as a complete solar system which does not exist), since no one is allowed to benefit from grid tied solar, and in fact are penalized if they happen to export to the gird, we can not recommend using solar in residential homes.
A business that operates during the day and uses air-conditioning can achieve substantial savings by installing solar as long as it does not exceed the amount the business uses. If they install too much and happen to export to the electricity grid they would be penalized by the utility company.
Since we are very serious about providing a safe and sensible system that is dependable and basically automatic we spend a lot of time investigating and experimenting with various products and systems in order to find the most logical way to solve an energy problem.
We have now installed many systems on Anguilla and in the Caribbean, mostly for businesses that can use all the power they create. We constantly have private home owners approaching us about a simple solution to a very complex problem, how to save on energy costs but avoid the penalties issued by the utility company.

We started looking 

The obvious choice these days is off grid solar. It will not work for many people, but since Anguilla is mostly single family dwellings with the kind of roof that might accommodate solar, it could work here.
So we decided to take on the experiment of a serious off grid system for our house.
How to begin? Well we know a lot already but most of it is about a grid tied system. That means that the electricity produced is connected to the electrical grid (power company) even if it is not exporting to that grid. It means there is no need for a power storage device. The electric is simply hooked directly into the breaker box and the power to directed to replace the grid power. Very simple and very clean.

Off grid is a whole different animal. 

It starts out the same, solar panels on the roof that create electricity. An inverter converts electric into the kind of power you need to run your household. But what about at night, no sun at night, that means no power. So you need a way to store power and at the moment, that mean batteries. They are costly and don't last forever. The world is waiting for the magic battery that will solve our storage problems. There are people out there working furiously trying to figure out how to do it but we couldn't wait, we wanted to do it now so we are stuck with the battery that is available.

The good news is it works! 

It is actually fabulous. Sun makes power, batteries are charged during the day, household is run during the day from the power being made and when the sun sinks into the west, we are charged up and ready to run through the night. It is great, it works and it is automatic. You don't even have to think about it.
Well that is not entirely true. You have to think about it a lot. Not about making power, you look up, the sun is shining, you smile because you know whatever you are using at that moment is being powered by that lovely sunshine. But you have to remember that the system is also charging those batteries that have given you power all night. So what can you do, what is the solution? You can get tons and tons of batteries, the more batteries, the more solar you need solar production it is not infinite, so much solar makes so much power. It can get very expensive.

Conservation

So, the one word that comes to mind when thinking about going off grid is conservation.
It is a good word. It means you are paying attention. It means you are not wasting. It means you know what's going on in your house and you are doing things like making sure the light goes out when you leave a room. Oh, turn that fan off too. Using air-conditioning, you might want to reconsider going off the grid. It uses way too much power.
How about that nice convection oven that you want to turn on at 7:00 PM to make dinner. Might be better to do that mid-day and use the power you are making wisely. So you say "I will use gas!" OK but you are still buying and using some sort of energy. Wouldn't it be nice if you made the decision to start conserving power like you conserve money because power is money. Any kind of power you use from wood to just paying your electric bill cost money or time and energy.
We paid for our grid tied solar in three years and then it started to work for us by paying us back the money we spent.
The one thing that is there every day, all day all year every year is the sun. If it wasn't there, we would not be here.

The other side of the coin.

When you go off grid, you never stop paying because you must replace those batteries. You are still saving money but wouldn't it be nice if everyone was able to put some solar on their house, reduce the cost of their electric and did not have to worry about charging those batteries and if they could use their convection oven or clothes dryer anytime they wanted? That is called compromise and it is usually the solution to most problems. The solution in this case is called grid tie and it means you can export your unused  solar created power back  into  the electricity grid in our case known as ANGLEC. You  get some payback for your exported power and you still have an electricity bill but it  is reduced in  size.People are not drowning in electricity costs and the utility is serving it customers. Sounds like a plan.

Terms to know

A grid-tied electrical system, also called tied to grid or grid tie system, is a semi-autonomous electrical generation or grid energy storage system which links to the mains to feed excess capacity back to the local mains electrical grid. When insufficient electricity is generated, or the batteries are not fully charged, electricity drawn from the mains grid can make up the shortfall.