Greetings All,
This site is amazing and I am learning a ton. But I feel like I know enough to get my family into some potentially hot - or worse yet - cold (due to insufficient energy planning!) water.
Here is our situation, as best I can describe it. Nothing is carved in stone, although we do have the house plan, the lot, and the need to start building in the next few weeks/months so our kids can be in school next Fall (2025), so I need to figure out the energy side of things pretty quickly:
- Location: North Georgia Mountains
- Family size: 5; 2 adults and 3 kids
- Lot size: 10 acres, sloping lot
- Home size/type: ~4k square ft / modern mountain design
- We have one EV and use it the most, but also have a gas-powered vehicle
- Electricity from the utility company is an option, but it would cost $30k just to run the line to our house. Hence my push to go completely off-grid (among other reasons),
What we think we want:
- Solar array + battery system to cover most, if not all of our energy needs
- Build a ground-based solar rack system (as opposed to adding panels to our roof)
- Propane-powered generator for when the sun doesn't shine enough
- Heat pumps to heat/cool house
- A hot tub (I know, not great to have on a solar system, but we'd be willing to not use it during low energy periods, if that helps!)
What we don't know enough about:
- Heat pumps
- Do we use an air-to-air or air-to-water system?
- Do we go with dual fuel, or stick with electric and use the propane generator to charge the batteries to power the heat pumps when solar is insufficient?
- Hot water
- Do we go with a standard hot water tank (KISS), and focus more on the solar + battery side of things, or do we do something a little more creative like:
- heat pump hot water tank
- using the water side of an air-to-water heat pump to help heat the water we use
- use a solar water heating system on our roof
- Do we go with a tankless system?
- Solar Panels
- How many do you think we need?
- Batteries
- Given the fact that we will likely need two heat pumps, do we need a high surge type battery like the Power Wall 3?
- What total capacity do you think we need?
If you were us, what would you do? We're just trying to figure out the major pieces before we reach out to vendors. If you would change any (or all of) what we think we want, please say so. My wife will kill me if she has to sweat it out in the hot GA summers!
Don