Living Off Grid – Home and Energy Options Part 3

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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Well so far we’ve purchased the land and built a house and now we need to look at three other features of a home that will dramatically affect your off grid lifestyle and energy system. Those three items are appliances, heating, and electrical fixtures.

Appliances: Appliances have come a long way in energy efficiency but don’t be fooled, they still have a long way to go. The term Energy Star Rated isn’t all it’s been made out to be in the past. There is a lot of information out there if you take the time to look for it and this is one area you really need to do your homework

For our electrical appliances we finally decided on a “three factor” strategy. Electrical operating requirements and short cycle capability and price. In order to keep our electrical usage down, we looked for appliances that required less power to function along with the ability to operate at reduced times. Our washing machine is electric and has many choices for timed cycles. Long wash or short wash. Our dishwasher has a feature called “Quick Wash”. We found that cycle to be more beneficial than the one labeled “Eco Wash”. Eco wash sounds like a good feature but it isn’t. The dishwasher operates for about an hour on Eco wash but only 30 minutes on Quick wash, so beware of terms that sound good but are really just a another sales pitch.

We chose most appliances based on energy consumption, short cycle ability, and price but there is one appliance that we chose to buy based solely on its energy efficient design even though it was expensive. Our Sunfrost refrigerator. Refrigerators are one of the biggest energy drains on your system. Sunfrost refrigerators have a completely different design than traditional ones. They put the compressor at the top of the unit instead of the bottom. Compressors create heat and as the heat rises it warms up the cooling area above where your food is located which in turn causes the unit to turn on and run more in a never ending cycle. By placing the compressor at the top of the unit that whole process is avoided with the end result that your refrigerator runs a lot less. Will it pay for itself? I’ve never taken the time to figure it out. The unique design just made sense to us so we bought one. I’m in no way promoting this refrigerator. We just decided this would be one place we would take a stand on unnecessary energy consumption and we have never regretted it.
In summary, be prepared to do a lot of homework on your appliances. We used the library and the Internet. There are a lot of comparison charts on the Internet and the U.S. Department of energy is another good source.

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