Farmerbob
New Member
Central Florida (hot) Duke-land. Okay so I built myself a 4000sqft pole barn that’s 500’ from house. Right now it’s got a roof, walls, slab. Next phase is SPF, doors, power. Then HVAC within five years. And ultimately I’d like to potentially run my house off grid, say within the next ten years.
clearly my power demand is going from a few hundred watts now (lights, door operators, fans) really daytime only to a 100,000btu HvAC just for the barn/shop to (hopefully) a house run. Is there a system that I can reasonably add on to over time? My budget to go 100% off grid is $100k (including all downstream wiring which I can DIY with some beer consulting from a electrician friend. Main panel and up, will be the reverse, I will lay conduit and pull wire but I won’t hook it up. Just saw a house down the road from me burn badly due to some PV install screw up.
Back to money, I can’t spend all $100k now and would prefer a lot less. I’m all about efficiency. Ideally I’d like to get the barn set up by the end of the year for under $25k including ability to handle what I assume will be an 8ton minimum HVAC but (using 2020 dollars) I don’t want to waste money so if I spend $25k now I’d like to assume that I can do the rest for $75k (or less) but just hate wasting money on throwing away a partial system.
I’ve talked myself out of a grid tie system as to me it seems a complete waste of money to run a separate meter or upgrade my 200amp house service to the barn. I’ve got plenty of land to put panels and at least until I hook up to the house, I don’t really need to worry about permits since it’s agricultural. Now the need for MEP permits is debatable but let’s assume I can avoid it for this conversation. That said, I want to meet or exceed code. About six years ago I worked for a company that among other things was financing 10MW solar farms and people being electrocuted during construction absolutely happened so electricity definitely has earned my respect.
Questions:
Is there a system that makes sense for all of the above? Should I just separate the house and barn systems forever? Is there a more logical way to phase in this project?
If you made it this far, thank you.
clearly my power demand is going from a few hundred watts now (lights, door operators, fans) really daytime only to a 100,000btu HvAC just for the barn/shop to (hopefully) a house run. Is there a system that I can reasonably add on to over time? My budget to go 100% off grid is $100k (including all downstream wiring which I can DIY with some beer consulting from a electrician friend. Main panel and up, will be the reverse, I will lay conduit and pull wire but I won’t hook it up. Just saw a house down the road from me burn badly due to some PV install screw up.
Back to money, I can’t spend all $100k now and would prefer a lot less. I’m all about efficiency. Ideally I’d like to get the barn set up by the end of the year for under $25k including ability to handle what I assume will be an 8ton minimum HVAC but (using 2020 dollars) I don’t want to waste money so if I spend $25k now I’d like to assume that I can do the rest for $75k (or less) but just hate wasting money on throwing away a partial system.
I’ve talked myself out of a grid tie system as to me it seems a complete waste of money to run a separate meter or upgrade my 200amp house service to the barn. I’ve got plenty of land to put panels and at least until I hook up to the house, I don’t really need to worry about permits since it’s agricultural. Now the need for MEP permits is debatable but let’s assume I can avoid it for this conversation. That said, I want to meet or exceed code. About six years ago I worked for a company that among other things was financing 10MW solar farms and people being electrocuted during construction absolutely happened so electricity definitely has earned my respect.
Questions:
Is there a system that makes sense for all of the above? Should I just separate the house and barn systems forever? Is there a more logical way to phase in this project?
If you made it this far, thank you.