What is your backup power? Solar, wind. Generator, Earth Battery, Grid?

[mtoffgrid]

I have headed to Tuscon Arizona for the winter before, but this winter just going to plant it on a friends land for a few months and see how it goes. However, it is not near his house or near any power. Solar is great when it is sunny out. Thought about wind, but he says good luck. Generator is taking a beating running all the time. So what the heck, bought a few books on Earth Batteries and after making a few small ones that actually did work and ran LED lights and charged my cell phone, I am going bigger. Basically you can go as big as you want for your power needs, but I am just going for something more reasonable and affordable such as one that will charge my batteries in the RV with a 40 amp solar charge controller and for a few hundred bucks the plans are straight forward.
So since it is a one time shot and no fuel costs or beating up the generator, plus the little one I built works great and this old technology is going to save me hundreds in fuel alone every month. Turns out earth batteries are used in over a 1000 communities all over the world and even are used to run power for schools in Africa. Looked it up, sure enough. Convinced me this is the way to go. Thought I would share, seems pretty darn cool, plus if they used it in telegraphs all over the world for decades, why didn't I think of this earlier since I knew about that. Well, the books help solve a lot of problems. So if you are parking it for the winter or live off grid and want to save on the Gen and giver a try, look into it.

 

[Texas Clodhopper]

How will you deal with the soil in Arizona? From my understanding, the soil must have some moisture for the reaction to function.

 

[Kevin D Pem]

I commend you on you pushing forward. Are you talking about battery, or generator.

Etheric generators have caught my attention.

 

[fishslayer]

Old school....gasoline ONAN. when needed

 

[JBright11]

That would be one giant earth battery wouldn't it?

 

[cptqueeg]

Solar
DC-DC charger
Honda 2200 w gen

 

[Boat Bum]

Besides my coach equipped Onan 5500 I carry a Honda 2000i.

 

[GuyInSoCal]

We are using Solar as our second power source.

We have a 30A Shore Power System. Our Solar Array is as follows:

DOKIO 800W Split-Cell Monocrystalline Hard Mount Solar Panels (2 x 400W)

2) EPEVER 30A MPPT Solar Charge Controllers (60A total)

2) 300AH (600AH Total) Lithium LfePO4 Batteries

VOLTWORKS 3,000W Pure Sine Inverter (6,000W Peak)

DROK DC AMP Meter

Go Power! TS-30 Dual Power Manual Transfer Switch (Solar / Shore) 3,600 Watts

On Grid Battery Charger

We decided to go with 2 MPPT Charge Controllers, giving each panel it's own charger.. the following is from Google, and can explanation it better than I could:

"Having a separate MPPT controller for each solar panel (or group of panels) improves efficiency and power output, especially in systems with varied conditions like different panel orientations or partial shading. This independent optimization prevents a single shaded panel from dragging down the entire system's performance. Other benefits include redundancy, as the failure of one controller doesn't affect the others, and the potential to monitor output on a per-panel basis." - Source: Google

I do not have any current photos of my system. This is a photo from sometime in July. The system has had a few changes, and had a cabinet built around it, since this photo... but this gives a basic view.

 

[Vint]

When my four GC-2 6V batteries finally gave out this past summer, I considered making the jump to lithium, actually a LiFePo battery setup. But after looking at the expense to upgrade the electronics on my motorhome, from generator start-up, auto-switch, Magnum Inverter/Charger, all not compatible with LifePo, adding huge expense, I went to BJ's and bought four new golf cart batteries.

I live in the Northeast, for boondocking isn't a thing for us, like those who take advantage of the many opportunities in the Western states.

So to the OP's question, it's battery for a day or two, and anything after that it's using the 6000W diesel generator to back things up when needed.