How To Go Off The Grid With 2000 Square Foot Home?

Billy Joe sent us an email saying:

I live in a 2000 square foot home. I want to put it off of the electric grid at least up to 90% to 95% percent.

This is an awesome and fantastic goal Billy Joe!

Here’s something to consider.  While the size of the home plays a factor, the much more important factors are how efficient your home is, and what you actually do while you’re at home.
If you leave lights and computers on all night, you’ll consume more electricity.  If you keep your a/c turned down cold enough that an eskimo would begin to wonder, or your heater turned up so high that you can wear shorts inside all winter, you will consume significantly more electricity.

So the size of your home isn’t nearly as important for going off grid as your actual electricity usage.

Have you figured out how much electricity you consume on average?

Your power company should be able to give you an average of what you consumed over the paast 12 month period… if you can’t get it from them directly, you can get the number from averaging your usage from your last 12 months of electricity bills.

Once you have that, it’s easier to start to figure out exactly what it will take to get off the grid, which, generally speaking, will start with making your home more efficient, so that you don’t need as much electricity to power your home.

So GreenJoyment Community…

For those of you want to go off grid, how many of you have taken the time to figure out how much electricity you consume in your home per month?

Post your results (or questions about how this works) below!

3 Comments

  1. Pat D

    Ok I use an average of 1500 watts .I live on the Gulf coast in Sweeny Texas . I do have an open area around me not many trees . Now where do I go from here. I want to build my solar panels and possibly a wind charger . Where do I go from here . Are there any tax incentives that would also make this more then worth my time .

    • Going Green

      Hey Pat,

      Will respond more to this, but for now want to congratulate you for actually taking the time to figure out your energy usage. Lots of people won’t even make the time to do this, so congratulations on getting a start. More to come…

  2. This isn’t directly related to the original post but it is related to saving energy. You really need to be looking at high quality, proven LED lighting systems as these will save you upto 90% energy compared to traditional lighting. I’m not talking about cheap LED systems these will not last and most of the time they look awful.

    A professional LED solution is going to seem expensive however it’s more than worth it. I work closely with a leading LED manufacturer called Abstract AVR ltd and there products are amazing. They are bright, ultra efficient, defining and they last a very long time. They also include a 3 year warranty.

    If you would like to contact me to discuss solid state LED lighting feel free to email me.

    Best Regards
    Stevie Watts.

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