hey youtube we're back with another uh educational video and this one was actually brought to
uh our attention by uh a viewer that we had and uh her question was what are my options
for off-grid power within the city so uh this is a common question that a lot of people are
uh thinking about uh getting in the uh they're seeing what's going on in the world and it's a
legitimate concern uh there are cyber attacks happening all the time
and you never know when the grid's gonna go down or uh something's gonna happen that's
uh gonna cause a chain reaction in the system so um power is something that uh
you know is a uh nice thing to have when uh everyone else doesn't have it so uh thanks for the
question and i'm gonna answer this from a logical standpoint as well as the uh electric electrician
standpoint uh being that i've been doing it for 20 years and i'm going to go through some websites
to kind of help you get an idea of what you can do again now if money isn't an option
everything's uh everything's uh doable these days so uh i'm gonna kind of do like uh
uh you know don't break the budget but you're gonna have to invest in some sort of uh
system to have some sort of off-grid power in your house and from what i understand is you kind of
you live in a townhouse so you have neighbors that are pretty much joined to you and you want to be
as as non-visible as possible just in case uh the grid goes down you don't want to be
kind of attacked for uh for having power and people coming to your door and being
like can i use some of your power which is a um legitimate concern so we're gonna dive into some
of these websites i'm gonna leave the links in the description below so that anybody watching this
video can see the information for themselves and kind of uh kind of uh understand what
i'm looking at here so the first website i'm looking at is midwest generator solutions and
uh this is a pretty nice uh chart that they have i'd say a quarter of the way down on their website
and uh and this applies to anybody looking to do anything with electrical and trying to understand
how much power they need at their main service so a generator is going to be like a substitute
again for your main service so the same rules apply and uh you always have to calculate your
load so if you're doing a full house calculation you have to kind of run through everything that
you have plugged into your house um that goes from your simple alarm clock to your stove so uh
everything so the chart here kind of lays out what everything uses our so or should i say a ballpark
don't mind the dogs there they're fighting over a uh a dead chicken uh so
you need to understand that everything that uh uses power is uh measured in watts so uh everyone
that has led lights in their house nowadays or those little bulbs that replace the old 60 watt
uh bulbs they are now 13 watts so they're a very small load um now if you're in the summer and you
want to use an air conditioner that's going to be between a thousand and four thousand watts
i'm going to show you my gas generator that i have here and it's
actually recommended as one of the quietest on the market right now and uh i'll show you that
even on its economy mode which is supposed to be its quietest mode it's not really that quiet
so there's a couple ways you can accommodate for noise and i'll talk about that uh shortly
now if you have a coffee maker you're gonna be running between 800 and hundred watts a dishwasher
is going to be between twelve and fifteen hundred watts uh laptop is uh 150 i find that one high
uh my laptop that i'm using here right now is uh only uses 65 watts so again check all your devices
that you're going to be plugging in now if you're thinking about your food and warming up food now
we get into a microwave which is between 600 and 1700 watts so it's a substantial amount of
uh power your oven on now is the one that trumps everything and that's uh 2150 so 2150 watts is
your oven one way you can reduce uh the necessity for electric oven is try and convert to a propane
or natural gas stove so that way you still are able to uh use or heat up food or anything like
that in a grid down situation and not have to worry about your consumption on your uh power
resources uh keeping your food cool you're gonna need a refrigerator unless you're in a winter
uh and then you can keep it outside
uh so your refrigerator is gonna be anywhere about 900 or 1400 watts now washing machine
you might want to ditch the washing machine and learn to do things by hand as well as the next
one which is a clothes dryer just let things hang outside and or even in the basement and let them
dry like that because your washing machine is between 500 and 1000 watts this one just says
500 but if you have an older one they for sure run higher i've seen them go up to about 1500
now your clothes dryer is gonna be anywhere between a thousand and four thousand watts
so that's why i was saying you might want to uh just get some clothes pins
and uh run a bunch of string and hang your clothes like that and now also your water heater
uh many of the people in the city have converted to natural gas water heaters
and so this one really doesn't apply as much but i know they're still out there and they're usually
this one says 500 watts but i know i've seen them at about 1200 so uh and then at the bottom of this
list it also says this does not include uh small appliances uh like your smaller lights your
television sets if you even want to watch television uh if the grid goes down
gaming systems and your small kitchen appliances your cell phone chargers think about that too
so all that add that up so uh that's one thing to consider
and uh i'm gonna leave another uh website in the description here and that's uh by generator mag
and that's going to give you a list of um different generators that um the quietest
generators that you have and mine here is the honda eu 3000 is i'm gonna or i'm gonna show you
right now how it operates and i'm gonna put it into economy mode so you can see how loud it runs
um and still understand that it does put out a decent amount of noise so check this
all right as you can see that uh generator does make uh still even on this quietest setting it
still um produces a lot of noise and now once i plug something in and start using it say i'm using
something that's like a hair dryer that's gonna kick that generator into high gear and run even
louder than that so be aware of these generators one way you can accommodate for your generator
is to put it in a soundproof building so i'm not in your house because of the fumes but you're
going to want a building that is ventilated but also enclosed to muffle the sound or to
even reduce it to zero if possible but because you're gonna need some sort of ventilation you're
gonna need some sort of airflow and you won't be able to muffle all the noise all together
so the benefit of having a generator is you can have as much power as you want right away
but again you're going to be reliant on a system of fuel so i'm not sure if that's going to be uh
something that you're going to be looking forward to um now the next option is solar and um solar
i know i believe you're talking to kimberly and saying that you don't want to have a whole bunch
but you could have some but uh it all depends on your location of your house now you need to have
your house facing the south um and to have your solar panels angled towards the south as well
and so that it can get all the exposure you can now you're going to need multiple solar panels to
get really anything done in the house and with the solar panel of purchase you're also going to
need to buy a inverter a solar controller and a battery bank so it is a pretty hefty investment
right off the bat even if you're just getting one solar panel you're still going to need the wire
at the inverter and the battery bank to store it now for instance the solar panels i have
or we have on the property here each solar panel only produces 265 watts now if you're to get
only one solar panel that produces on optimal days it's going to produce 265 watts per hour
so now think about that if you're not going to be able to run the microwave um for a very
long time until those batteries get charged and once those batteries are charged you can use it
however it's going to take that much longer again now to uh regenerate all that power back in there
so uh you can do a solar system but uh if you're gonna go with only one solar panel i would say uh
scrap that idea because it's really not going to be worth it you're going to be paying more for the
solar controller the inverter and the batteries and then it's going to be more likely a nuisance
to deal with because you're not gonna have the power draw i would recommend at least a thousand
uh watts so get probably four solar panels uh if you can put them in your backyard and
you can lay them flat depending on how your sun is uh that's the thing uh the key with solar is
your positioning so um make sure you can get them facing south and uh if you can have them facing
south uh like where i'm facing and you have east and west and you have it right underneath that
that's uh like ideal but uh i'm not sure cities are getting pretty crowded in there with the um
with the apartment buildings and the skyscrapers and things like that
um so uh the positive thing about solar is you're gonna have power storage so you're gonna have
power on demand as well when you need it but the downside is you're gonna have to wait uh to get
those batteries charged and you're going to need optimal days for charging now you can also do a
windmill but if you want to be discreet obviously a windmill is not going to work because it's
going to be up there it's going to be visible it's going to be moving so it's going to be noticeable
so again with the wind you're going to need an inverter and a battery bank to store the the power
in it and uh i thought i'd put this one in here as well water would be a great option as well if you
were able to run some sort of turbine if you're lucky you have a creek in the back and you can
there's a product out there called the water lily where you basically toss it into the water
it has a little turbine on it and it produces some sort of power that you can i guess charge your
cell phone or small items like that and to go back to the solar they also have those also they have
portable solar panels that are enough to charge your small devices uh when you're
out traveling so like your flashlights your cell phones your gps's any of those things
if you're looking uh if your main concern is about electricity uh i would install one of
uh these three systems that i have here um so if you're looking for something quick and easy
um what i would recommend this would be like a short term option so say your grid is down for
uh only two three days and then you're gonna have power again uh this first option would be probably
your best bet and it's gonna again all these are gonna take some money to get started but uh you
can kind of pick and choose from here so the first one is uh you get an inverter and a battery bank
and what you do is you use your current power that's coming into the house you wire up your
inverter with ac and they'll convert it to dc and then you'll have your batteries charged
by your main service um and so once the grid goes down all you need to do then is uh have a
transfer switch installed so that you can transfer everything back through from the batteries to the
inverter and then um back into the panel so that's a option that would be your best bet to
install right away and now depending on how long you want to have power that's going to
be dependent on how many batteries you have the batteries i have on this solar system here
i can't remember how many amp hours they are uh however they do run between 400 and
450 dollars a piece uh and i believe i have uh two four six of them maybe eight i can't remember
so uh the next uh option that you could go with is uh that would kind of help you long term
uh you're still gonna be dependent on fuel so look at getting some fuel stored for this option
and that is to go with a generator building or sorry a generator and then build a little
generator building with some rocks all in there to uh muffle the sound and what i would do with
that generator is not use it when you need power but i would use it uh in conjunction with another
battery bank on this option and the reason i would do that is uh you can fire up that generator
charge up your batteries for uh two three hours and then shut that power off and now you have
power sitting in your battery bank and uh you're still um stealth uh if you per se except for those
two three hours that you're running the generator and then now no one's going to see the solar
panels or the windmill or any of that so you're just gonna have to worry about noise for about two
three hours to charge your system up and again that depends on what size of generator you get
and uh now your next option again you're going to need a battery bank so i guess all three of these
include a battery bank and that's just to have your power um stored for a longer period of time
and your third option is to go with your solar and if you're going to go with only a single panel i
would recommend you find an optimal position for that panel and get a good reserve of batteries so
that it does have give you a trickle charge and eventually you will build up that charge in the
battery system however it might be a painful um uh way to get the power needed um with just
one solar panel so um these are my options um or kind of my advice to how i would do a
off-grid um a power system in the city it is difficult i know if you live in ontario
you're going to have a tough time installing a large solar system and still be allowed to um have
your house independent if the grid goes down it's just the way esa out there wants things tied in
it's hard to backfeed back into your system they might have changed the rules on that stuff
so i'm not sure so hopefully this was some good information for
anybody watching this video if you have any other uh questions comments in regards to um
your options for off grid power leave a comment in the comments uh section below um or
we'll see on the social media platforms out there and you can ask away and we could do
another video based on your questions so thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one
you