- 18 hours ago
A salesman says off grid solar costs $20,000. A man online says he built it for four. Elias Yoder breaks down why both numbers can be true, and why neither one answers the real question: what does a usable solar system actually cost over time? Using a simple lesson from his grandmother’s lamp, he explains that the price of a thing is really the cost of keeping it working.
This practical off grid solar guide walks through cost per watt, wiring, mounting, batteries, inverters, winter performance, and the difference between a system that powers one appliance at a time and one that tries to replace the grid. He also covers lithium iron phosphate batteries, lead acid batteries, generator backup, snow, cold-weather charging limits, and the hidden expenses that usually get left out of the quote.
It’s part solar power commentary, part homestead budgeting advice, and part real-world DIY energy planning for people living off grid or thinking about it. If you want a clearer answer than the usual sales pitch, this breakdown shows where the money really goes and why winter changes everything.
Search terms: off grid solar, solar power cost, solar battery bank, DIY solar system, homestead solar, inverter and battery planning, winter solar setup, off grid electricity, and practical energy budgeting for rural living.
This practical off grid solar guide walks through cost per watt, wiring, mounting, batteries, inverters, winter performance, and the difference between a system that powers one appliance at a time and one that tries to replace the grid. He also covers lithium iron phosphate batteries, lead acid batteries, generator backup, snow, cold-weather charging limits, and the hidden expenses that usually get left out of the quote.
It’s part solar power commentary, part homestead budgeting advice, and part real-world DIY energy planning for people living off grid or thinking about it. If you want a clearer answer than the usual sales pitch, this breakdown shows where the money really goes and why winter changes everything.
Search terms: off grid solar, solar power cost, solar battery bank, DIY solar system, homestead solar, inverter and battery planning, winter solar setup, off grid electricity, and practical energy budgeting for rural living.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00A salesman will tell you $20,000. A man on the internet will tell you four. He will show you
00:06the same number of panels on the ground and tell you he did it in a weekend with his children
00:12helping. And he is not lying to you either. Both numbers are real. And that is what makes people give
00:18up.
00:19When two men both telling the truth give you answers five times apart, you stop believing there is an answer.
00:27There is. They are answering two different questions and neither one of them is answering the question you actually have.
00:35I am Elias Yoder. In my community, we allow solar, panels on our own buildings charging batteries for our own
00:43uses, and the stricter orders do not, so I say that plainly at the start.
00:49I have talked here before about putting a panel up and wiring it, and I will not do that again
00:54today. Today I want to do the arithmetic, because nobody does. Not the salesman, for reasons you can guess, and
01:03not the man with the children on the roof either, because he is counting what he spent, and that is
01:08not the same thing as what it costs.
01:10My grandmother taught me the difference with a lamp. I was about twelve and had come home from a sale
01:16very pleased with myself. Brass, heavy, and got for almost nothing. She turned it over in her hands, and she
01:24did not say it was a bad lamp. She asked me three questions.
01:28What does the chimney cost? What does the chimney cost? How often do they break? And where will you get
01:33the wick when that one is gone? I did not know any of it. The chimney was an odd size.
01:39I never did find another, and that lamp sat on a shop shelf for years.
01:44The price of a thing is what it costs to keep, not what it costs to get. I gathered the
01:50whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it
01:57is there. I will not mention it again.
01:59Now, why are those two numbers so far apart? The first thing you have to learn, and it is the
02:06most useful thing in this video, is to stop looking at the price of a panel and start looking at
02:13the price of a watt.
02:14A panel at $300 and a panel at $150 tells you nothing at all. One might be 400 watts and
02:23the other 160. Divide the money by the watts, and now you can compare one against the other,
02:29and against anything else. Good panels bought carefully come in somewhere around $0.50 to $0.70 a watt, and
02:37panels you bought because they looked cheap come in at well over a dollar, and the sticker cannot tell you
02:43which you are holding.
02:44Now take that same measure to a company's quote. Installed solar in this country runs somewhere around $3 to $4
02:52a watt, and the materials in it are about a dollar.
02:55So three-quarters of what you pay a company is not panels. It is labor, the truck, the office, the
03:02insurance, and the commission to the man who sat at your kitchen table.
03:06I am not going to be unkind about that. Those are real costs, and that man has to eat. But
03:12you should know what you are buying, and if you are buying it off-grid on your own ground with
03:18no utility to answer to, you are mostly buying somebody else's overhead.
03:22Two smaller costs catch people out as well, and they are the ones left off the shopping list.
03:29Wire of the right thickness over any distance is dear, and it goes up fast the further the panels sit
03:35from the batteries, which is a good reason to keep the run short.
03:38And racking, the frame the panels sit in, can cost nearly what the panels cost if you buy it ready
03:45-made.
03:46A ground mount built out of posts and timber or second-hand steel does the same job for a fraction,
03:53and it is the single easiest place on this whole project to save real money.
03:58That accounts for the gap between $20,000 and $4,000.
04:02Now here is the question underneath both numbers, and it is the one that decides your cost more than anything
04:08either of those men will tell you.
04:10What are you asking it to power?
04:12The man in that video wants a computer, internet, a microwave, and a blender, and a system to run those
04:20is a system that has to be ready for a big, sudden draw at any hour.
04:25The $20,000 quote is for a system meant to replace a grid connection entirely so that nothing in the
04:33house ever notices the difference.
04:35We never did that.
04:37I have said it before on this channel, and I will say it again because it is the whole of
04:42it.
04:43We did not power the house.
04:45We powered the chores.
04:47The freezer got a panel and a battery.
04:49The pump got its own.
04:51The shop lights got their own.
04:53Each job stands alone, and when one of them is down, the others do not know about it.
04:59A system built that way is cheap because it is never asked to be everything at once.
05:05A system built to replace a grid is dear because that is a very hard thing to ask of sunshine
05:12and a box of batteries, and the money follows the difficulty.
05:17So before you price anything, write down what you actually need running and what you only want running.
05:24That list is worth more than any quote.
05:27And here is a rough measure, so the list means something.
05:31A 400-watt panel in decent summer sun will give you somewhere around a kilowatt hour and a half in
05:38a day.
05:39A chest freezer takes about one.
05:42So in July, one panel runs a freezer and has a little left over.
05:47In December, that same panel gives you perhaps a third of what it gave in July,
05:52so the same freezer wants two or three panels to be sure of it.
05:57Work your list in winter numbers, never summer ones, because a system that is right in July and wrong in
06:05January is simply a wrong system.
06:09One more thing on buying them.
06:11The cheapest watts in this country are second-hand panels, pulled off commercial roofs and sold by the pallet, and
06:19they can be had for very little indeed.
06:21They are usually perfectly good, and the risk is plain.
06:26No warranty worth anything, and you must test each one before it goes up rather than after.
06:32If you are buying used, buy a few more than you need, because one or two will be dead, and
06:39you want the spares in the stack rather than a gap in the row.
06:43Now, where the money really goes, because it is not the panels.
06:48Panels have got cheap. Properly cheap. Cheaper than most people who have not looked lately expect.
06:56It is everything after the panels that costs, and chiefly it is the batteries.
07:02On a modest array, the panels and the racking and the wire and the electronics might come to $2,000
07:08or $3,000.
07:10A battery bank big enough to carry those loads through a night and a dull day after, it will run
07:16you about the same again,
07:17and a bank sized to carry you through a week of gray in February will run you several times that.
07:25Batteries are where this gets expensive, and they are the thing nobody puts in the headline.
07:30And the number on the side of a battery is not the number you get to use.
07:35You never run a bank flat.
07:38With lithium, you plan on using about eight parts in ten of what it holds,
07:43and with lead acid about half if you want the life the maker promised.
07:48So a bank marked 100 amp hours gives you 80 to work with if it is lithium and 50 if
07:55it is lead,
07:56and when you are working out how many you need, work from that smaller figure.
08:01People who size from the label come up short by a quarter and cannot understand why.
08:07There are two kinds you will be choosing between, and the choice is not close anymore.
08:12The old lead acid batteries, the flooded sort like golf cart batteries, are cheap to buy,
08:19and they want watering and checking, and they do not like being run down hard.
08:25Taken properly, down and back up again, you get perhaps three to five hundred of those cycles out of them,
08:32which in daily use is three to seven years.
08:36The lithium iron phosphate ones cost perhaps twice as much,
08:40and the makers claim four to six thousand cycles.
08:45At one cycle a day, that would be eleven or sixteen years.
08:49I would plan on ten to fifteen in the real world,
08:52because a battery ages sitting still as well as working,
08:56and it is usually the years rather than the cycles that finish them.
09:00So lithium costs twice and lasts three or four times as long,
09:05and it wants nothing from you in between.
09:08On those terms, there is no argument.
09:10And now the arithmetic nobody does, which is the actual reason for this video.
09:16The man in that video says his panels will last twenty-five to thirty years, and that is true.
09:23Panels are remarkable.
09:25They fade slowly, perhaps half a percent a year,
09:28so after twenty-five years a good panel is still giving you something like eighty-five percent of what it
09:34gave new.
09:35You will replace a cracked one, and you will not replace the lot.
09:39But he then says he is getting twenty-six years of free electricity,
09:44and that is where the lamp comes in.
09:46The inverter will not last twenty-five years.
09:49Ten to fifteen is the usual run, and a cheap all-in-one can be less.
09:55That is the one box with the most work to do and the most heat to shed.
10:01The batteries will not last twenty-five years.
10:04We just said ten to fifteen for the good ones.
10:07So across the life of those panels, you buy the inverter twice,
10:11and you buy the battery bank twice.
10:13On a four thousand dollar system, the twenty-five year cost is not four thousand.
10:18It is closer to eight or nine, and that is before a single gallon of generator fuel.
10:24That is the true cost of off-grid solar, and it is still a good deal.
10:30Running utility line to a remote property runs into many thousands,
10:34and into tens of thousands, if it is any distance at all.
10:38And that buys you a bill at the end of it, rather than a thing you own.
10:42Solar wins this comparison, and wins it clearly.
10:45But it wins it at eight or nine thousand, not at four.
10:50And a man who plans for four is a man who gets a surprise in year eleven,
10:54with no money set aside for it.
10:57So, set it aside.
10:59From the day it goes in, put something away every month toward the battery bank you will need in a
11:04decade.
11:05That one habit is the difference between a system that lasts thirty years,
11:09and a system that quietly dies in year twelve, and gets blamed on solar.
11:14Now the two things about winter, and the second one is not in any video I have seen.
11:20The first is simple, and he says it plainly, to his credit.
11:24A panel under snow makes nothing. Not a little. Nothing.
11:29And a week of low gray cloud will give you a fraction of a clear day.
11:33Anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.
11:37That is why you want the panels on the ground, and not on a roof,
11:40so you can go out with a broom and sweep them,
11:43and so you can set them at a steeper angle for winter,
11:46and let the snow slide, rather than sit.
11:49The second one is the real trap, and it is specific to the lithium batteries that nearly everyone now buys.
11:56Lithium iron phosphate must not be charged below freezing.
12:00Not should not. Must not.
12:03You may draw power out of a cold battery down well below freezing, and it will not mind.
12:09But put charge into one that is below freezing, and you do permanent harm inside the cell, every time,
12:16and nothing about it looks wrong on the day.
12:18You find out two winters later when the thing will not hold anything.
12:22The better batteries have a low temperature cutoff built in that simply refuses the charge until the cell has warmed.
12:30The cheap ones do not.
12:32So if your batteries live in an unheated barn or a shed, and you are anywhere that sees a hard
12:37winter,
12:38that one line on the specification sheet matters more than the price and more than the amp hours.
12:44Find it before you buy.
12:46And keep the bank somewhere that stays above freezing, which usually means inside an insulated box with the battery's own
12:54waste heat in it,
12:55and a cellar is better than a shed.
12:57Lead acid has the opposite trouble.
13:00It will take a charge in the cold, but it holds less when it is cold.
13:04And if you let one get well discharged, it can freeze solid and split.
13:09So neither of them likes February.
13:11One of them you can ruin without knowing.
13:14And since you will have gray weeks, you will have a generator.
13:17That is not a failure of solar.
13:20It is part of the design, and the fuel is a line in your costs forever.
13:25Count it.
13:26It does not want to be a big one.
13:28A generator on an off-grid system is not there to run the house.
13:32It is there to put charge into the batteries.
13:35And the batteries run the house.
13:38So a modest one feeding the charger, run for a few hours in the afternoon and shut off again,
13:44does the work of something three times the size that idles all day.
13:49Figure a handful of gallons across a bad week, a few bad weeks in a winter,
13:54and you have a number you can put in the yearly cost.
13:57Now a word on the safety of doing this yourself, because that man says something I cannot let
14:04past.
14:04He says if you can install a ceiling fan, you can install solar.
14:09And his reason is that the connectors mean you never touch a live wire.
14:15The doing of it yourself is right.
14:17The reason is wrong.
14:19And the wrong reason is how people get hurt.
14:22Here is what is actually different about it.
14:25The current coming off those panels is direct current.
14:29And direct current does not flicker off and on the way the current in your house does.
14:34House current passes through nothing a hundred and twenty times a second,
14:39which is why a spark in your house tends to snuff itself out.
14:44A spark in a high voltage direct current line does not snuff out.
14:49It keeps burning.
14:50That is the hazard.
14:52And it is a fire hazard more than a shock hazard.
14:55Which gives you four rules.
14:57Never pull one of those connectors apart while current is flowing through it.
15:02Open the disconnect switch first, every time, no exceptions.
15:08Pulling a live one draws an arc that will ruin the connector and can burn your hand.
15:13A panel is live whenever light falls on it.
15:17There is no switch on a panel.
15:20If you need it dead, you cover it.
15:23If you crimp your own connectors, use the proper tool for them.
15:27A bad crimp is not a loose wire.
15:30It is a hot spot.
15:31And a hot spot in a direct current line is the thing that starts fires in these systems.
15:37And size for the coldest morning, not the warmest afternoon.
15:42Voltage off a string goes up as it gets colder.
15:46Eight panels that measure three hundred and something volts on a July afternoon
15:51will be nearer four hundred on a clear morning in January.
15:55And if your inverter is rated for what you measured in July,
15:59you will destroy it in the first cold snap.
16:02That one catches people in the first year.
16:06With those four and a ground mount instead of a roof,
16:09you are doing a thing well within an ordinary, careful man.
16:14And he is right that the ground mount removes most of the danger,
16:18because most of what goes wrong on a solar installation is a man falling off a roof,
16:24not a man being shocked.
16:26The plane limits, then.
16:28This will not make electricity free.
16:31It will make it something you bought once and will buy again,
16:35which is a very different and much better arrangement than renting it forever.
16:40And it is not the same as free.
16:43It will not run a house full of things that want power all day.
16:48Nothing will at a price you want to pay.
16:51If the plan is to change nothing about how you live,
16:55the quote will be twenty thousand and it should be.
16:58And it is not maintenance free, only nearly.
17:03Sweep the panels, keep an eye on connections where water gets,
17:07check that nothing has grown up and shaded a row,
17:10and look at your battery's temperature in winter.
17:12There is no scheme in any of it.
17:16The money is simply in the installation and in the contract,
17:20not in the panel.
17:21And that is why the panel has got cheap while the quote has not.
17:26There is a real Amish solar company over at Gordonville,
17:30and the man who speaks for them put the whole engineering of it in one line.
17:35He said the Amish system is simple.
17:38A couple of panels and a battery.
17:41Hold that up next to the forty page proposal
17:44and the financing agreement and the monitoring application,
17:48and you can see exactly what you are being sold
17:52and what portion of it is power.
17:55My grandmother never saw a solar panel.
17:58What she knew was to ask what the chimney cost
18:01before she admired the lamp.
18:03And if you ask the same three questions of a solar quote,
18:07what does it cost to keep, how often does it break,
18:10and where will I get the next one,
18:12you will be better informed than most people who buy one.
18:16Tell me in the comments what you would put on a panel first
18:20if you did one load this year,
18:22and whether it is a want or a need,
18:25because sorting those two is most of the work.
18:29And if you are new here,
18:30tell me how cold it gets where you are in January as well,
18:35because that one number decides more about your batteries
18:39than anything else in this video.
18:42Next time, I am finally going to show you the well,
18:46because the first and best thing a panel ever did on this place
18:50was lift water.
18:51And the question underneath all of it
18:54is how you get water up out of the ground
18:57when there is no sun and no power at all,
19:01which is a thing I have owed you for a good while.
19:04The price of a thing is what it costs to keep,
19:07not what it costs to get.
19:10The people who built this country with their hands knew that,
19:13and we are only just starting to remember it.