If you’re going to be in the area just let me know.

I’ve also got a 2500 watt Honda. I can’t hear it run inside the house. I have to go to the door to make sure it hasn’t run out of gas. (I like having a spare gen since I do get snowed in for long periods some winters.)

I did have a louder generator and I simply pointed the exhaust toward a bale of straw. That quietened it right down.

My house is well insulated. I framed it with 2x6s so that I could put more insulation in the walls. My windows are all double panes. Keeping in/out the heat/cold also keeps out noise.

If you want a quite generator some of the small Hondas are very quite. But a little pricey.

If you’re trying to keep everything in your freezer frozen, your big screen on and run your Jacuzzi when the power goes off in suburbia a little gen won’t cut it. For off the grid a small generator is fine. You just run it more hours.

When the sun is shining I do my laundry and pump water up hill (about 80′ up) from well to storage tank. Then I’ve got gravity feed water whenever I want it without having to call on my batteries to do any pumping.

Wood heat, propane kitchen range, propane tankless water heater. Work in my wood shop on sunny days and sit by the fire on days when it’s cold and dark. Hang my clothes outside. Don’t need AC here, haven’t even put screens on all the windows this summer, haven’t turned on the fan for a couple of years.

I cut firewood off my property. There’s far more storm-downs and thinning trees than I can ever use. I probably use two gallons of gas and spend ~$18 for chain sharpening per year. In other words, almost nothing for heat.

I do all I want to do with 1.2 kW of panels. In the summer my batteries are often full before noon. (Mid-afternoon if I pump water or do laundry.)

You can get panels for under $1.50/watt. I paid just under $4/watt ten years ago (and that was a great price then). So panels for under $1,800.

A charge controller for as little as under $100. More if you want more features. An inverter from under $1,000 to as much as $3,000, again depending on your needs.

Batteries, a dozen golf cart batteries for under $2,000.

A few hundred more for panel racks, wire, meter, circuit breakers/disconnect switches.

As little as $400 for a generator that will last you a few years, more like $1,000 for a small Honda which should last longer.

I could replace my setup for under $10k, today’s prices. Panels have come down a lot.

I can’t imagine that anyone around here has a $40k system. Some might be $15k or a bit more. A few people have a good wind site and a small turbine and tower can set you back $5k. Others have micro-hydro which is quite affordable. $40k would get you power for a couple of big screen TVs, a massive side-by-side refer, that sort of stuff.

You do need to be realistic about moving ‘way out there’. There are essentially no jobs, people around here are creative and often make their own jobs. But if you get out far enough so that commuting to ‘town’ is not reasonable then property prices are a lot lower.

My comment was more an observation that almost all the articles I’ve read throw out a very large (presumably scary) number about the upfront costs, but never put it into perspective… not so much about being off-grid.

More in terms of 40,000$ system 20 years ago.. is how much in today’s dollars?
How much would the same system cost now (highlighting how much technology has advanced)?
How much would the heating / cooling / etc (the gas, oil, electricity bills I mentioned earlier) of a similarly sized, equipped, etc. house (on-grid) have cost over the same period?

I’d love to see your place, it sounds very much like what I’m aiming for!

I live near a major city… and I still have 5-10 second power outages regularly – just long enough to force all the clocks to reset!

Thanks for the information, it helps keep me motivated to do it! All my friends think I’m nuts.

I don’t know what current costs are but ten years ago the utility company in our part of the country wanted $16/foot to run new service. That works out to $21,120 for a quarter mile hookup.

Buying a piece of property away from the grid often means that you can get a very much nicer place for far less money. Many people want everything in place when they buy and fewer customers can mean much lower prices.

I was able to buy a very attractive piece of land because it was far from existing power lines. Had the grid been at the property line I could never have afforded what I got.

I avoided a $300,000 grid hook-up charge. Grid in place and this property would have been around a half-million, something beyond my financial ability.

My entire off the grid system, including batteries and backup generator cost only $10,000.

My batteries cost me less than $2,000 every 5-8 years. Take the low end of life span and we’re looking at under $35 per month.

Throw in a couple hundred dollars a year for backup generator fuel and about $15 per month for propane (cooking and water heating) and I’m up to no more that $70 per month for utilities.

So, I saved a major bundle on either land or hook-up costs. I save on property taxes because my purchase price was much lower than what a wired property would have cost.

I live in an area where power goes out multiple times every winter. Lots of trees and hearty winter storms take down power lines. Along with the normal number of drunks/careless drivers who topple poles.

I’ve never been without electricity in over 20 years.