Power Options for Tiny Homes
The way you power your tiny home will depend on whether you’re connected to a grid, where you live, the size of your home, and how green you want your energy to be.
As you well know, you will need consistent power for certain appliances (refrigerators and hot water heaters, for example, require a regular source of energy). However, what you choose should depend on your lifestyle. What things are important to you; what things can you live without? Once you’ve answered those questions, you can then begin to realistically plan on how to power your tiny home.
Regardless of what you choose, you’ve come to the right place.
Here’s every which way you can power up your tiny home.
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Options on the Grid
Municipal Grids
If you want to settle down somewhere and hook your tiny house up to a municipal electric grid, get ready to do some research in local considerations. Different regional power companies have their own cost calculations for energy connections. Factors you can count on impacting the price include the distance of your house from established power lines, whether you’ll be connected to above-ground or below-ground power lines, and how much electricity you’ll need given the size of your home.
If you’re near an established grid, it could cost you only a few hundred dollars to connect to local power. However, getting your home connected to electricity will get more expensive the further you are from a grid. This can increase the price exponentially because it involves significant labor.
BUT!!! Some power companies will take the entire cost of this upon themselves. Getting you connected, after all, means they’ll have another paying account on their hands— meaning they may consider you an investment.
So before you freak out, call and ask.
Power Connections
When you park your PMRV for the night, you can plug in your tiny house with an extension cord. With an external RV power mount connection (basically a special electrical outlet on the outside of your house) and an RV extension cord, you can connect your tiny home to a public grid at an RV park, campground, or anywhere else with an electric hookup.
RV extension cords are priced between $40 and $100. Sometimes electricity is rolled into the price of per-day RV parking fees, but not always. Electricity at an RV park can cost up to 12 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) at the higher end, and the average tiny home uses about 7% of the electric output of traditional homes, which is around 900 kWh per month. This means that many tiny homes use something like 63 kWh per month, with the upper bound peaking around 250 kWh, so your average monthly electric cost would be between $8 and $30.
You can calculate your average monthly electricity usage here.
Options off the Grid
Solar Energy
Oh, the sun. An endless renewable energy source with the potential to save you some serious cash over the years with the right hook-up. If you live in an area with good access to sunlight, powering your home with solar energy may be the right choice for you.
Panels
First, you’ll need to decide how much energy you’ll need and how much you can get from different solar hook-ups. Regular solar panels — those big ones that you can mount to a roof or perch on the ground in rows — increase in price based on how many watts of energy they produce — i.e. their system size. Prices also vary by state (click here for an average price breakdown based on system size and your state). If you connect to the grid, in some municipalities you can make money back over time by connecting to the grid and selling power back to your local power company if you produce a surplus of electricity with your system.
On average, solar installs come with an $18,000 price tag because solar costs $3 per watt (before tax deductions), and most systems are 6 kilowatts (kW).
Use this calculator to estimate your cost with respect to where you live and your home type.
FYI#1
Solar power tax deductions will drop to 26% in 2020 (and to 22% in 2021) before finally disappearing altogether in 2022. Look into your local tax incentives on top of federal ones.
FYI#2
If you’re interested in trying out a solar energy system but don’t want to commit to the situation detailed above, you can buy a DIY solar starter kit online for $300 on average that will give you enough juice to try out how it powers some basic items. For closer to $1,500, you can get a slightly bigger system that will give you enough energy to power bigger appliances. Larger, more expensive solar system kits (think the $10,000 range) are available if you want to use predominantly solar energy to power your home.
Batteries for Energy Storage
They come with all of the tools you’ll need to start accumulating your own off-grid energy, though you might consider buying a battery to store power for later use. These are great if you’re on-the-go in a PMRV and want to collect some energy to use when you park, or if you want to test out how you feel about this kind of system. The other advantage of solar kits is they are easier to build upon than solar panel systems that you have to contract out for installation.
You’ll want to invest in a battery (or a few) to store your power. Called a battery bank, these stockpile direct current (DC) electricity that is drained when your energy usage is greater than your solar power collection. The size of your bank and the number of batteries you need depends on the size of your system and your energy needs, but remember to size your bank at a lower voltage than your solar hook-up so you don’t overdraw your battery(/ies). You never want to drain your batteries more than around half of their storage capacity, as that will greatly diminish their lifespan (which wouldn’t be cool seeing as how they’re not cheap).
Learn more about battery bank sizing here.
Note: Consider investing in lithium batteries, particularly if you intend to house your batteries in your home. Lead acid battery types let off toxic fumes as they degrade over time, but lithiums do not emit any fumes (and thus don’t require venting) so they are safer for home use. If you use other batteries, they will require venting. Lithium batteries are efficient and charge quickly, but are relatively expensive. They cost between $3,000 and $7,000, for 3.5 kWh and 10kWh or so, respectively. Along this spectrum, if you use 63 kWh/month, this type of battery will last you between 1.5 and 5 days, or at 250 kWh/month this type will last 0.5 to 2.5 days.
Harnessing a Charge
Regardless of the size of the solar system you get, you’ll need to install a charge controller and an inverter/charger to use the power it produces. A controller charges your batteries with the DC energy that your panels produce. An inverter changes DC to an alternating current (AC), which is the type of current used in most houses and in most appliances. A controller can cost between $50 and $700 depending on its features, the system it can support, and how quickly it can charge your battery. Some starter kits come with an inverter included, but individual inverters can cost anywhere from $300 to $2,500 depending on the quality and the speed with which it converts currents. Installation costs are typically another $300.
Final Considerations for Solar
You’ll need clear, unobstructed access to the sun to power your home successfully. Before you decide that you must have solar panels, do some research to see if your area gets enough sunlight to justify getting a solar panel system. A great tool to measure how much sunlight your home would get is the Solar Pathfinder. It currently costs $299 (if you want a tripod included, $259 if not). Using this tool, you can figure out what the best possible solar panel placement would be.
But you might learn that your location makes solar power impossible for you, or, at the very least, prevents you from investing in solar as your sole source of energy. In the second case, you might consider a mixed energy system.
Depending on where you live, you may not get enough sunlight to rely solely on solar because it takes a lot of consistent light to get enough energy to power your home with the sun alone. Also, at certain points during the year (meaning the winter months), you might not get enough energy to keep your batteries charged — and you should always keep your batteries charged at least halfway.
If you don’t want to connect to a municipal grid, consider partnering your green energy with a generator.
Power Generators
You can use a power generator to supplement the energy you get from renewable sources, or you can use it as an independent source of energy for your tiny home. There are a few different types, including electric, fossil fuel, and solar generators.
Electric
Electric generators are power sources that must be connected to a grid electric power source in order to charge. These might run you $300 and last for a few hours. They can be charged at an RV park or wherever you might find an electrical outlet. This option is not recommended if you plan to rely on it as the source of all of your power, but might work well for you if you pair it with another source as a back-up in case you run out of energy, or if your energy use is small. For example, if your stove and refrigerator are gas-powered and you rely on the sun for light during the day, this is a low-cost way to meet your needs.
Generators powered by fossil fuels or solar are better options if you need more power or if you don’t want a mixed energy system. You can get a generator that runs on gasoline, diesel, propane, or some combination of these fossil fuels to power your whole house.
Fossil
A portable gas generator costs between $150 and $1,000 and will give you between 4 and 24 hours of power depending on its wattage and your load. These generators get a little more expensive the more fuel-efficient they are — some only need 1 gallon of gas to last 5 to 7 hours. Gas generators largely max out at 4-gallon tanks; definitely check fuel prices in your area to see what this might cost you.
The downside to these models is that they can be loud, so if you’re sensitive to noise, make sure you seek out a quieter model.
A portable diesel generator will be much more expensive, heavier, and louder, but they run for longer. You can find generators that will run for 20 to 30 hours at $4,000 or more, have tanks sized from about 4 to 12 gallons, and are about as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Be careful when buying diesel generators if you’re on the go because they’re heavy (200-300 pounds). Generator wheel kits cost about $150.
Portable propane generators tend to also run on gas, and are called dual fuel generators. These generators cost between $300 and $1,000. Propane won’t yield you quite as great of a charge time even in dual fuel systems — so you can expect it to last a couple hours less than gas — but it’s a much cheaper and cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline. It also has a long shelf life, whereas gas expires. That said, propane doesn’t work well when it gets cold, so a dual system will help your generator run in all seasons.
Note: When seeking out fossil fuel-burning generators, don’t just go for the cheapest option in the class you’re looking at. Not all generators are built the same, and some are outright unreliable. Save yourself future headaches and read consumer reviews!
Solar
You can get solar generators, but they are generally only useful in emergency situations. For between $1,250 and $4,000, you can get a solar generator that comes equipped with panels so you can start charging whenever the sun comes out (or when you find an outlet nearby because most can be electrically charged). Unlike fossil energy generators, they’re totally silent, but can take up to 2 days to charge. Still, higher-end models can keep your tiny home running for a day or two.
Bottom Line
You can use most of these power options on both a tiny home with a permanent foundation and a PMRV, but they’ll require different set-ups given your lifestyle. Before you decide on the system that’s right for you, think about how much electricity you’ll be using. Actually calculate it based on the types of appliances you’ll have and how much power you’ll need as a result. This will be the best indicator of what you’ll need.
The nice part about powering a tiny house is that you won’t use as much electricity as you likely have in the past and you won’t be at the mercy of a singular system. You can mix and match based on what your situation calls for and you can build upon it over time. Let yourself be flexible and do your research. The more you know the better your system will be.