C&K
New Member
Hi, we are a semi-retired couple, age 63, that bought a 2,700 sq ft lake home on 1,000 acres when we retired from 38 years of farming. Our home does not have utility power and came equipped with a turn-key off-grid power system. We have twin Schneider Electric 6048 inverters that were installed in April 2013. A 10KW solar array with four MPPT60 charge controllers. The inverters are powered by a 1700ah forklift battery that is 10 years old. And we have two diesel generators, a 25KW Caterpillar prime-rated unit, and a smaller 6KW Perkins standby/peaking unit that assists the inverters in overload. The battery is charged by the bigger generator, both generators are controlled by Schneider AGS units with the Cat hooked to the utility AC inputs in the inverters and the peaking generator hooked to the gen inputs in the inverters.
We call ourselves "semi-retired" since we still help the kids out on the farm (6,500 acre cash grain operation) and we have a small firewood processing business producing about 300 face cords/year of seasoned oak, ash and maple firewood. We don't consider ourselves to be "green", we are more of a product of necessity because of location and we love our retirement home.
We do not have regular internet - only cellular on our iPads and iPhones and a 'mobile hotspot' for our computer. So we don't spend a lot of time on the internet and only check in on it quite infrequently. We spend most of our time in the winter either moving snow or processing firewood with the track loader. In the summer we spend a lot of our time fishing. Spring and fall we spend a lot of time helping out on the farm driving semi's, combines or whatever is required.
We have lived here since May 2020, purchased the place from an estate of a doctor that had built it, and while our system works fine we know that it will eventually require upgrades or repairs. I came across this forum on the internet and it looked like a good source of information and ideas for those future upgrades and/or repairs. So we look forward to learning more about how to keep our power system running in the long term, as it did not come with an 'owner's manual'. I was not sure of the proper procedure for new member introductions, so this area of the forum seemed to be the best bet.
We call ourselves "semi-retired" since we still help the kids out on the farm (6,500 acre cash grain operation) and we have a small firewood processing business producing about 300 face cords/year of seasoned oak, ash and maple firewood. We don't consider ourselves to be "green", we are more of a product of necessity because of location and we love our retirement home.
We do not have regular internet - only cellular on our iPads and iPhones and a 'mobile hotspot' for our computer. So we don't spend a lot of time on the internet and only check in on it quite infrequently. We spend most of our time in the winter either moving snow or processing firewood with the track loader. In the summer we spend a lot of our time fishing. Spring and fall we spend a lot of time helping out on the farm driving semi's, combines or whatever is required.
We have lived here since May 2020, purchased the place from an estate of a doctor that had built it, and while our system works fine we know that it will eventually require upgrades or repairs. I came across this forum on the internet and it looked like a good source of information and ideas for those future upgrades and/or repairs. So we look forward to learning more about how to keep our power system running in the long term, as it did not come with an 'owner's manual'. I was not sure of the proper procedure for new member introductions, so this area of the forum seemed to be the best bet.