My Rural Property and the Stand Alone Renewable Energy Systems I installed

Many Rural Properties around Australia and the world have increased requirements for power supply. Most of these are not economically feasible or are just not physically possible for mains power to be connected due to there geographical location. I recently acquired a property like this in Far North Queensland. Because of the distance to the nearest connection point to mains power I started to look into alternatives. I contacted the local service provider and was told that based on the distance to run the power line it would cost me in excess of $300K, Wow.

I discovered that many isolated properties in this situation relied on diesel generators to power their homes and sheds and water pumping requirements. But with the price of Diesel it is just not possible for them to keep putting Diesel into their generators, not only is far to expensive but at certain time of the year during the wet seasons they are unable to get the fuel to there properties. I decide that I would not pour an insane amount of Diesel into a generator so I looked into Renewable EnergyRenewable Energy and the possibilities of a Hybrid Stand Alone Power Supplies

A Hybrid Stand Alone Power Supply is a made up of more than one form of renewable energy sources, usually a Solar Array and a Wind Generator that feed a supply through a regulator that controls the input to the battery bank to protect it and increase the life of the battery bank.  These systems vary in size according to the load requirements needed. These Hybrid System also have a reliable backup in the case of either a failure of the system or a period of bad weather and a generator is used to supplement the supply required by the sun and or wind.   Based on the load requirements for my household I had a system designed and installed with a 6KW rating and backed up with a 10KW diesel generator.

The most important components to make up a Hybrid Power Supply and that are an inverter.  Renewable EnergySystems deliver very low DC (Direct Current) voltage normally 12, 24 or 48 volt depending on the size of the system required.  The function of the inverter is to change the DC supply from the battery bank to a useable AC supply that can be used to power your appliances and lights etc. The Inverter is the brains of the whole system, it controls, Auto start and stop the backup generator when 1 of two conditions are meet one being when the required load on the system exceeds a predetermined set point and the second when the battery bank voltage drops to a certain level. Inverter also collects monitoring data in and out of the battery bank and the sources of renewable energy. Without the inverter the Hybrid Standalone Power Supply would be very restricted to what you can do and run off the supply.

There a few major components in a Hybrid Standalone Power Supply that all need to work together to achieve that desired outcome and there is a lot of money involved to set these systems up but with generous government subsidies they are becoming more affordable and with the price of diesel they are becoming more feasible.