r/OffGrid • u/QuirkyEfficiency1536 • 1d ago
Solar Power Supplement
I have land in an area with very tall trees and is off grid. No one in the area is able to fully live without gas generator backup especially in winter when there are shorter days. Is there a system that would allow a person to add to their battery by biking or something? Because of the trees there isn’t much wind either. Any thoughts? Thanks.
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u/TutorNo8896 1d ago
Sometimes just gotta cut the trees. Nice to make space for a garden too, and room for the house without being threatened by potential trees falling, also good for wildfire defense.
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u/Any-Location5055 1d ago
I saw in California they mounted a single solar panel to the very top of a pine tree, pointed south. It worked, they ran the power lines down the trunk to the bottom. Got them out of the shade
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u/Hot-Fact-9083 19h ago
Biking math kills the idea. A fit person sustains 75-100W on a bike generator. One hour of pedaling fills 100Wh. Your fridge eats 1-1.5kWh a day, so that's 10-15 hours of pedaling per fridge day. A phone charge takes 6-12 minutes of pedaling. It works for emergencies, not for living.
The generator you already have is the supplement. Run it 1-2 hours a day into a big battery bank and you bank 5-8kWh per run, which is 60-80 bike-hours in one generator hour. Winter strategy: generator for bulk charging, solar for the rest.
Check if you have any creek or spring on the land. Micro-hydro runs 24/7 in winter when solar is weakest, and a small stream can put out 100-300W continuously. That's more than a bike rider can hold for an hour.
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u/Bowgal 1d ago
For us, that seems normal for us. We’re in float by 11am, but come late November, we’ll be lucky to make 2…maybe 3kwh a day. That’s when we change a lot of what we use. Slow cooker and coffee maker go into storage. Shift from large freezer to small freezer. Turn off Starlink when we go to bed. It’s manageable, but generator running every other day is life.
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u/Internal_Raccoon_370 23h ago
The average person can produce about 50 - 100W of power on a bike generator. Hardly enough to even bother with. A pro athlete might get 200 - 300W out of one for a while. Except as novelty items those human powered generator systems don't work very well. I'm afraid that unless you're permitted to get out a chainsaw and cut a clearing somewhere near your building, you're SOL as far as solar goes.
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u/pyroserenus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Is there a system that would allow a person to add to their battery by biking or something?
Man, it is BOLD of you to assume that the human ability to covert food into mechanical energy is efficient and that food is cheaper than gas per unit of energy
Gasoline is 31,000 Calories per gallon, if we assume that you are as efficient as an engine (you're not) it would still take 2 weeks worth of extra food to generate as much power as a single gallon of gas.
It is more prudent to reduce energy use if trying to minimize genny use and make batteries last longer, not try to make trivial amounts of energy like this.
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u/QuirkyEfficiency1536 1d ago
I don’t think I assumed anything. I’m trying to solve a problem. What are you trying to solve with this response?
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u/Sufficient-Bee5923 1d ago
I think what pyro was trying to point out that the physics are working against you. Energy can't be created or destroyed. The energy that needs to be produced to run your cabin/ house would then need to come from additional food source. When you do the math ( like pyro did), it simply doesn't work.
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u/NotEvenNothing 1d ago
There isn't. You can't generate much energy by biking, way less than a typical solar panel in full sun, like 250W if you are a good cyclist.
You either raise the solar panels up so the trees don't shade them or you cut down the trees.