Living with an alternative energy system makes you know only too well what the dark time of the year is! In this past year, we have made amazing progress on our homestead and system. House remodeling and increasing our power has taken a lot of our time and money. Our goal is to use our power for everything, yes, including cooking. I have been cooking with an Instant Pot this summer and it was so great I can't begin to tell you how much so.
We had 24 lead acid batteries that last year started losing their ability to hold a charge. We had to run our generator every day, using gasoline like crazy. So my husband bought us two lithium ion phosphate batteries from Battle Born Batteries. They are US made and their company was the best to work with. They are VERY expensive though. So now my husband is building a DIY Tesla Powerwall. It isn't ready yet, but soon. Once we switched the batteries, which was around May, we have not turned our generator on even once. I will add a photo of it when I can. Right now I am loading photos of how it looks so far for a blog post I am working on.
These batteries have allowed us to add DC lights so we don't have to use our inverter. My goal is to get rid of the propane. I am doing as much cooking on the wood stoves as possible this fall and winter. If they are going, then that is where I am cooking. I have a solar oven, but I am not crazy about it. It cooks pretty good if the sun is out, but I have to fuss with it too much. At my age, I am now in the "easy mode" most of the time.
We had 24 lead acid batteries that last year started losing their ability to hold a charge. We had to run our generator every day, using gasoline like crazy. So my husband bought us two lithium ion phosphate batteries from Battle Born Batteries. They are US made and their company was the best to work with. They are VERY expensive though. So now my husband is building a DIY Tesla Powerwall. It isn't ready yet, but soon. Once we switched the batteries, which was around May, we have not turned our generator on even once. I will add a photo of it when I can. Right now I am loading photos of how it looks so far for a blog post I am working on.
These batteries have allowed us to add DC lights so we don't have to use our inverter. My goal is to get rid of the propane. I am doing as much cooking on the wood stoves as possible this fall and winter. If they are going, then that is where I am cooking. I have a solar oven, but I am not crazy about it. It cooks pretty good if the sun is out, but I have to fuss with it too much. At my age, I am now in the "easy mode" most of the time.
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