What's better than a Tiny House? A Tiny House powered by solar panels of course! altE has various sizes of solar power systems for your Tiny Home. Whether you have a mobile Tiny House on Wheels (THOW) or are settled in a permanent location, we have a solar power system to fit your needs. Read more about solar for tiny homes on our Tiny House Blog.
Do you have questions about tiny house solar power systems? Give an altE solar expert a call today at 877-878-4060.
Read more +Product Name | Price ↓ | |
Small Tiny House Solar Power Kit | $1,375.00 | |
Medium Tiny House Solar Power Kit | $4,595.49 | |
Large Tiny House Solar Power Kit | $8,523.53 |
These off-grid kits will make and store all of the energy you use, completely independent from the grid. Tiny houses tend to have tiny power needs, and depending on your location these solar power systems should be able to power your energy efficient fridge, LED lights, internet router, and laptop. We have small, medium, and large systems pre-designed for you, depending on how much energy you need.
Look at the map on the system page, find your location, and see how much energy that system would produce in a month where you live. If you do have large loads like air conditioning or electric heat, you may want to look at some of our bigger off-grid solar power systems on the Off Grid Homes page.
Each base kit includes solar panels to generate the power, an inverter to convert the DC power in the batteries to AC power for your appliances, and safety equipment like breakers and lightning protection. You can then select the solar panel mounting method you want, either on your roof or on the ground away from your house. Lastly, select the type of battery you want. Flooded lead acid (FLA) requires maintenance and ventilation, sealed AGM batteries requiring no ventilation and minimal maintenance, and lithium batteries are safe and long lasting (10,000 cycles!).
Solar For Tiny House
We traveled up to Bethel, Maine, USA to visit high schooler Luke and his father and grandfather. Together, they built an off-grid solar tiny house, and gave us a tour of the house and the solar system.
If you do have access to the grid, you can choose a Grid Tie Solar System to offset your electric use, while having access to grid power when needed. With a net-metering agreement from your power company, you can use any solar power you make, and sell the extra back to the grid for your neighbors to use. Then you just buy power back from the grid at night, same as usual. Your meter will spin forwards and backwards as you buy and sell power, saving you money on your electric bill. With grid-tied solar, space for the panels and budget can determine the size of your system.
You don't have to generate all of your energy with solar, like you do with off-grid. Just make what you can, and buy the rest as needed.
If none of these options are quite right for you, give us a call and we can custom-design the perfect solar system for your tiny house. Let us know what your goals are, how much space you have available, and what your budget is, and we can turn your tiny house a tiny solar house.
The first step in sizing a solar system for an off-gird tiny house is a careful and thorough load analysis. A load analysis is how you determine your aggregate power consumption, which will ultimately be expressed in Total Watt-Hours/day. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry.Check out the video below and then head over to our Loads List Calculator.
Loads List: Off Grid Solar Power System Design
The load calculator will help you compile a complete list of all loads (appliances, air conditioning, lights, laptop, phone charger, etc.), the time usage for all loads, and the wattage rating for all loads used in your solar tiny home. The load analysis will reveal Daily Watt-hours of consumption (both AC and DC) and total simultaneous Watts (AC and DC) used.
You may need to read the power label on equipment or appliances (if it’s not available search on the internet using the make and model number). Occasionally an appliance might not list watts, and will list the amps and volts. No problem! Reminder: Volts x Amps = Watts. From there, just multiply Watts by the number hours a day the appliance runs and you have daily watt hours. Some loads, like a fridge are difficult to estimate because of high surge at start up (many times 3-4 times the watts listed) and are on / off at variable times during the day. Just do your best to estimate.
Once you have completed the load analysis, the next step is to think about how many days of autonomous power you would like in your tiny home. Since you are in a tiny home, space for a battery bank and the weight of the battery will likely be considerations. The final concern is budget. With these three pieces of information (load analysis, required days of autonomous power and budget) a clear picture of the right off-grid tiny home solar system for you will emerge.
If you get stuck or have questions feel free to contact us at altE, at 877-878-4060. We’re here to help!