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Wood and stone are renewable as are plants and animals.

We lived off grid for 5 years on 350 watts of solar panels. It gave us LED lighting and for three of those years, ran our cordless phone, DSL and kept the laptops charged. It also ran a 12vdc chest freezer/fridge that had a small compressor and freon. We could also watch DVDs because a DVD player and these new flat screen TVs don’t use hardly any power.

It was kinda nice not knowing when the power was out. I’d hear about it from a neighbor the next day. The system used four golf cart batteries and everything I read said that as newbies, we’d get 2-3 years out of them but we got 9 years. The charge controller went out at 8 years but we were on the grid by that time. Inverter also crapped out in 7 years. The system was in full use for 5 years though. Panels are still good.

I wouldn’t mind getting a new set of batteries and another 150 watt panel for an even 500 watts, new charge controller and I already got a new inverter. It’s just kinda nice to always have lights, phone, internet, TV etc. The phone/dsl lines are all underground so that hardly ever goes out but we have a lot of wind, rain and the occasional ice storm so power can go out quite often. We haven’t been through a bad ice storm yet but we will sooner or later and power goes out for weeks in one of those. We heat with wood and have a coleman two burner propane camp stove and the wood stove has a flat top we cook on too.

Trying to run an entire full size house on nothing but solar? Not sustainable or cost effective. A small 12vdc system to run light loads like above? Yeah, it’s just handy. Beats the heck out of candles.