- 2 days ago
Your neighbor paid twenty thousand dollars to put solar on his roof and was told he would be energy independent. Then the winter bill came, and he still owed the power company money. He sold them his summer sunshine cheap and bought it back in December expensive — and at the end of the year, the man with twenty thousand dollars of panels was still writing a check every month.
Now look at my workshop. One panel leaning against the barn, one battery the size of a small cooler, and I have never paid a power bill in my life.
In this video I show you the exact setup — four parts, a few hundred dollars, one afternoon, no contractor, no permit, and you never touch the wiring already in your house. I explain what each part does and what it costs, why grid-tied solar is built to keep you paying, and the one appliance in your home that is perfect to start with. Everything off-grid, the way the Amish have done it for decades. We don't refuse the machine. We refuse the wire that ties us to the man who owns it.
This won't run your whole house or your central air — it runs one job, completely free and completely independent. Once you do one, you'll look at every plug in your house differently.
T
Now look at my workshop. One panel leaning against the barn, one battery the size of a small cooler, and I have never paid a power bill in my life.
In this video I show you the exact setup — four parts, a few hundred dollars, one afternoon, no contractor, no permit, and you never touch the wiring already in your house. I explain what each part does and what it costs, why grid-tied solar is built to keep you paying, and the one appliance in your home that is perfect to start with. Everything off-grid, the way the Amish have done it for decades. We don't refuse the machine. We refuse the wire that ties us to the man who owns it.
This won't run your whole house or your central air — it runs one job, completely free and completely independent. Once you do one, you'll look at every plug in your house differently.
T
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Your neighbor paid $20,000 to put solar panels on his roof.
00:05He was told he would be energy independent.
00:08Then the first winter bill came, and he still owed the power company money.
00:13He sold them his summer sunshine at their cheap price,
00:17and they sold it back to him in December at their expensive price,
00:21and somehow, at the end of the year, the man with $20,000 of panels on his roof
00:27was still writing a check to the utility every month.
00:32Now let me tell you about my workshop.
00:34There is one solar panel leaning against the south wall of my barn.
00:39There is one battery sitting on a shelf inside, about the size of a small cooler.
00:45That panel and that battery run the lights and a couple of tools in my shop,
00:50and they have done it for years.
00:52I have never paid a power bill in my life,
00:55not because I am Amish and we do without,
00:59but because we figured out something about solar
01:02that the man who sold your neighbor those rooftop panels will never tell him.
01:07My name is Elias Yoda.
01:09I am Amish.
01:11I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
01:13and all over my county and over in Holmes County, Ohio,
01:17you will find Amish families running solar
01:20on the barn, on the buggy, on the water pump, on the chicken house.
01:25We are not connected to the power company.
01:28We never have been.
01:30And our setups cost a small fraction of what your neighbor paid
01:34because we never bought the part that costs the most and does the least.
01:39Today I am going to show you the exact setup.
01:42Four parts, a few hundred dollars, an afternoon of work,
01:46no contractor, no permit,
01:49and you never touch the wiring already in your house.
01:53I am going to tell you what each part does and what it costs,
01:57and I am going to show you the one load in your home that is perfect to start with.
02:02And I am going to tell you the part that should make you a little angry,
02:05which is that this simple, cheap, durable way of using the sun was quietly pushed aside,
02:11not because it stopped working,
02:13but because there was no way for anybody to make money off you with it.
02:17Stay with me.
02:18This one is worth your time, especially heading into summer.
02:23Let me start with what your neighbor actually bought,
02:26because once you understand it, the rest makes sense.
02:29When most folks put solar on their house today,
02:32they buy what is called a grid-tied system.
02:36Here is how it works.
02:37The panels on the roof make electricity.
02:40That electricity runs into a big box called an inverter,
02:44which changes it into the kind of power your house uses.
02:47And then, this is the important part,
02:50it connects to the power company's wires.
02:53The electricity your panels make flows out onto the grid,
02:57and the power company keeps track of it and gives you a credit.
03:01Sounds fine.
03:02Here is the problem.
03:04In the summer, when the sun is high and your panels make more than you use,
03:09the extra flows out to the power company.
03:12They credit you for it, but often at their cheap wholesale price.
03:17Then, in the winter, when the sun is low and your panels make less than you need,
03:22you pull power back from the grid, and they charge you for it at their expensive retail price.
03:28You sold low and you buy back high, and the difference goes into their pocket.
03:34They call it net metering.
03:36Your neighbor called it being told he was independent and then getting a bill anyway.
03:41And think about what that $20,000 actually bought.
03:45The panels are maybe a third of it.
03:47The rest is the inverter, the grid-tie equipment, the permits, the licensed installation, the financing.
03:55Most of that cost exists only because the system has to talk to the power company's grid.
04:01You paid for the privilege of becoming a tiny unpaid power plant for the utility,
04:06using your roof, your money, and your sunshine to make electricity they then sell back to you.
04:13That is not independence.
04:14That is a longer leash.
04:17We do it completely differently.
04:19And the difference is not fancy technology.
04:22It is that we refuse the one thing that whole expensive arrangement is built around.
04:28We refuse the wire that ties us to the power company.
04:32Here is the way we do it, and the way you can do it.
04:35There are only four parts, and I will tell you what each one does so you actually understand it, not
04:42just buy it.
04:43The first part is a solar panel.
04:46For a starter setup, a single 100-watt panel is plenty.
04:51That is, a panel about 2 feet by 4 feet, the kind you have seen on a camper or a
04:56boat.
04:57It costs somewhere around $75 to $100.
05:01The panel's only job is to turn sunlight into electricity.
05:05That is all it does.
05:07No moving parts, nothing to break.
05:10The second part is a charge controller.
05:13This is a small box, costs around $25 to $30, and it sits between the panel and the battery.
05:20Its job is to manage the flow, to take the power coming off the panel and feed it into the
05:27battery the right way so the battery does not get overcharged and ruined.
05:32Think of it as the valve that keeps the battery from drinking too fast.
05:37Small, cheap, important.
05:40The third part is the battery.
05:42This is where the sun gets stored so you can use it after dark or on a cloudy day.
05:47For a starter setup, a 100-amp hour lithium battery, the kind they call lithium iron phosphate, which is the
05:56safe, long-lasting kind, runs somewhere between $150 and $250.
06:02The battery is the heart of the whole thing.
06:05It is what makes the sun available at night.
06:08The panel fills it during the day.
06:11You draw from it whenever you need.
06:14The fourth part is an inverter, but a small one, not the $8,000 monster on your neighbor's wall.
06:21A small inverter, maybe 400 watts, costs around $40.
06:27Its job is to change the battery's power into the ordinary kind your appliance plugs into.
06:33If the thing you want to run already runs on battery type power, like LED lights or a buggy lamp
06:41or some pumps, you may not even need the inverter at all.
06:45But for a normal household appliance, the small inverter does the job for $40.
06:51That is the whole system.
06:53Panel, charge controller, battery, small inverter.
06:58Add it up, and you are in the few hundred dollar range, not the $20,000 range.
07:04And every part is simple enough that you can understand it, replace it, and fix it yourself with hand tools.
07:13Now here is how you put it together, and I want you to notice how little there is to it.
07:18You lean the panel against the sunniest wall of your house or set it on a simple frame in the
07:24yard.
07:25The south facing side if you have one, because that catches the most sun through the day.
07:31You run the wire from the panel in through a window or a vent.
07:35You connect the panel to the charge controller.
07:38You connect the charge controller to the battery.
07:41You connect the battery to the small inverter.
07:44And you plug your appliance into the inverter.
07:47That is the entire installation.
07:50An afternoon.
07:51A screwdriver and a wrench.
07:54No permit, because you have not touched a single wire in your house, and you have not connected anything to
08:00the power company.
08:02This little circuit stands completely on its own, the same way the lamp on an Amish buggy stands on its
08:09own.
08:09Its own panel, its own battery, its own job, answering to nobody.
08:15Now let me give you the honest safety word, because I take this seriously, and you should too.
08:22A battery holds a lot of energy, and electricity deserves respect.
08:27You want a fuse between the battery and the rest of the system, so that if something shorts out, it
08:33blows the fuse instead of starting a fire.
08:36You keep the battery somewhere dry and ventilated, not sealed in a hot box.
08:42You use the right size wire for the load.
08:45The instructions with the parts will tell you, and if you are unsure, ask someone who knows before you run
08:52it.
08:53None of this is hard, but you do it right.
08:56Respect the battery the way you would respect a sharp tool, and it will serve you well for years.
09:02And one more honest thing.
09:04This little setup is not going to run your whole house.
09:08It is not going to run central air conditioning.
09:11That takes far more power than a starter system makes.
09:14What it will do is run a specific job, a specific load, completely free and completely independent.
09:22And that, it turns out, is exactly how we have always done it.
09:28Here is the thing the rest of the country forgot, and it is the heart of this whole video.
09:33The Amish do not try to power the whole house off one big system.
09:39We power one task at a time.
09:42One panel and one battery for the buggy lights.
09:45A separate panel and battery for the water pump.
09:48Another for the lights in the shop.
09:51Another for the fence charger.
09:53Another for the washing machine.
09:55Each job gets its own little independent setup.
09:59We did not solar power the house.
10:02We solar powered the chores one at a time over the years as we could afford it.
10:08And that is the model I want you to take.
10:11You do not have to do your whole house this weekend.
10:14You do one thing.
10:16You pick the single best load to start with, and you set it free from the power company.
10:22And then, once you have done one, you understand it, and you do the next.
10:28So which load do you start with?
10:31I will tell you the best one, and the answer might surprise you.
10:35It is your chest freezer.
10:37Here is why a freezer is the perfect place to start.
10:41A freezer does not run all the time.
10:44It cycles.
10:45It runs for a while, gets everything cold, and then shuts off for a good while before
10:51it needs to run again.
10:52And a full, well-insulated chest freezer, with the lid kept closed, will hold its cold
10:59for a day or more even with no power at all.
11:03That makes it forgiving.
11:04It does not need a constant, perfect flow of electricity.
11:09It needs power some of the time, and it can coast through the gaps.
11:14That is exactly the kind of load a small solar setup handles beautifully.
11:20Put your chest freezer on its own little solar circuit, and three things happen.
11:25One, it runs for free, off the sun, from now on.
11:31Two, and this matters, when the power goes out in the next big storm, and your neighbors
11:37are throwing out a freezer full of spoiled meat, yours just keeps humming along like nothing
11:42happened, because it was never depending on the grid in the first place.
11:47And three, you will have your first real piece of independence in your house.
11:53Not the kind printed in the sales brochure, the real kind, that you built with your own
11:59hands, and that no company can take away or bill you for.
12:04And once you have done the freezer, you will start looking at every other plug in your house
12:09differently.
12:10The freezer in the garage, the pump on the well, the lights on the porch, the fan in the
12:16shop.
12:17Each one is a candidate.
12:19Each one can be set free, one at a time, the way we have been doing it for decades.
12:26There is a real solar business in my part of Pennsylvania, an Amish company over in Gordonville
12:32called Belmont Solar.
12:34The man who speaks for them put it about as plainly as it can be put.
12:38He said the Amish system is really simple.
12:42A couple of panels and a battery.
12:44That is the whole engineering of it.
12:47A couple of panels and a battery.
12:50Now hold that next to the 40 page proposal the salesman left at your neighbor's door.
12:56The financing agreement.
12:57The interconnection contract with the utility.
13:00The production guarantee.
13:02The inverter warranty that happens to run out right around when the panels start to fade.
13:08The monitoring app.
13:10The customer service line that never picks up.
13:14The Amish skipped every bit of that.
13:17We kept the panel and the battery.
13:19We threw the contract in the stove.
13:22And I want to be fair and honest with you here because that is the only way this is worth
13:28doing.
13:29Practices differ between Amish communities.
13:32In my community, we allow solar like this.
13:35Off grid.
13:36Our own panels.
13:38Our own batteries.
13:40For our own tasks.
13:42The stricter orders do without even that.
13:44And I will tell you plainly that even our way is not magic.
13:49The batteries do not last forever.
13:52A good lithium battery might give you a decade or more if you treat it right.
13:57And then you replace it.
13:58Cloudy stretches mean you size your system with a little room to spare.
14:02This takes a little learning and a little tending.
14:05But it is simple learning and simple tending.
14:08The kind any person can do.
14:10And once it is set up, it mostly just works.
14:14Quietly.
14:14On the free light that falls out of the sky every single day.
14:20Now I want to take a moment because this is the part that matters most.
14:24And it is bigger than freezers and batteries.
14:27Think about who profits from the way your neighbor was sold solar.
14:31The panel maker profits.
14:33The inverter maker profits.
14:36The installer profits.
14:37The financing company profits for 25 years.
14:42And the power company itself profits.
14:44Because even with all those panels on the roof, your neighbor is still tied to their wire.
14:50Still paying connection fees.
14:52Still buying back his own sunshine at their price.
14:57Every party in that arrangement makes money.
15:00Except the man who paid for all of it.
15:04A simple panel and a battery running a freezer in your basement makes nobody any money but you.
15:11There is no contract.
15:13There is no monthly payment.
15:15There is nobody in the middle taking a cut off the top of the sunshine.
15:18And that, not anything about how well it works, is the real reason you have never heard a salesman recommend
15:27it.
15:27There is no salesman because there is nothing to sell.
15:31You buy four parts once and you are done.
15:35You cannot build a 25 year business around a man who only needs you one time.
15:42It was not banned.
15:44It was not made illegal.
15:46It was just left out of the conversation.
15:49Pushed to the side while all the money and all the advertising went to the expensive way.
15:56The knowledge was never destroyed.
15:59It was just out shouted.
16:01Drowned under a hundred ads for the version somebody could profit from.
16:06And meanwhile, out here in the quiet, we just kept doing the simple thing that worked.
16:13My bishop said something to me once that I have never been able to shake.
16:18He said the English think we refuse the machine.
16:22We do not refuse the machine.
16:25We refuse the wire that ties us to the man who owns the machine.
16:31A diesel engine is fine.
16:33We own it.
16:34And we can buy fuel from a hundred different sellers.
16:37A solar panel and a battery are fine.
16:40The sun belongs to no man and the battery sits on our own shelf.
16:45But a wire running back to a company in an office somewhere that decides the price and writes the contract
16:53and sends the bill?
16:54That is the thing we will not have.
16:58Not because we fear it.
17:00Because we have seen what it costs a man in dollars and in something deeper to depend on a thing
17:08he cannot control and cannot fix.
17:12That is the whole of it.
17:14The freezer is just where you start.
17:18So here is what I want you to do going into this summer.
17:22Pick one load.
17:24I would start with the chest freezer, but it is your house.
17:28Maybe it is the garage refrigerator.
17:30Maybe it is the well pump.
17:32Maybe it is the lights on the porch.
17:34Pick one.
17:35Buy the four parts.
17:37A hundred watt panel.
17:39A charge controller.
17:40A hundred amp hour lithium battery.
17:43A small inverter.
17:44Plus a fuse and the right wire.
17:47A few hundred dollars all told.
17:50You can have it all in the trunk of your car by the weekend.
17:54Lean the panel against your sunniest wall.
17:57Run the wire in.
17:59Panel to controller.
18:01Controller to battery.
18:02Battery to inverter.
18:03Appliance into the inverter.
18:06Fuse on the battery.
18:08An afternoon.
18:10And when you plug that freezer in and watch it run on nothing but the sunshine hitting your wall,
18:16you are going to feel something you have not felt about your own house in a long time.
18:23You are going to feel like you own a piece of it again.
18:27Tell me in the comments below, which load would you set free first?
18:32The chest freezer?
18:34The well pump?
18:35The workshop?
18:36The porch lights?
18:37Something I have not thought of?
18:39Be specific, because the next video I am putting together walks through three of these builds step by step with
18:47the actual wire sizes and battery sizes for each, and what you tell me will decide which ones I do
18:55first.
18:56I read every single comment.
18:59Next time, I am also going to show you how my family keeps food cold all summer down in the
19:05root cellar with no electricity at all, the old way, with the earth and the cool and a little water
19:12doing the work that a refrigerator does.
19:15It pairs with everything I showed you today, and it is older than any battery.
19:20Until then, lean a panel against your wall, set one thing free, and remember, the people who built this country
19:28with their hands knew things we are only just starting to remember.
19:32And remember.
19:32And remember.
Comments