When planning to go off grid there's a lot to think about when it comes to your electrical requirements. One of the things that should be taken into consideration is the electrical load and type of electricity you'll need in your house.

I was thinking about the efficiency of inverters and thought it might be a good idea to go with all 12 volt lighting in my house instead of the standard 120 volt lighting. I thought that I would save a little bit of money by being able to reduce my inverter size requirements and I thought that I may use a little less electricity because instead of going through an inverter, and losing some power to efficiency, I'd be wiring the lights directly to the battery bank.

After studying the situation I've decided that trying to go 12 volt on anything is not worth the hassle or extra cost.

I found that 12 volt appliances and even basic 12 volt lighting is really specialty stuff. Being special means it's especially expensive. Most of it looks like it was designed to be used in a travel trailer or caravan too, and although my home is going to be off grid, I don't want to feel like I'm camping all the time.

I would never consider special ordering a 40 watt (with light output equal to a 100 watt incandescent), 12 volt Compact Fluorescent Light for $35!

First of all, for 35 bucks, that's a really expensive light-bulb. There's also the fact that since it's 12 volt, it's not that common so it's harder to find. I'd either have to keep a stock or go without light if one stops working because I can't just run somewhere close to get a replacement.

I also took a closer look into inverter efficiency and decided that to boost inverter efficiency I can run multiple inverters and try to keep them within their most efficient range of 30-90% capacity when they're in use.

This means that I'll likely have an inverter that is exclusively used for the lights in the house, I'll have an inverter that's exclusively used for the wall plugins and another for the refrigerator. Planning my home electrical grid this way will allow me to try and control the inverter load.

It's not going to be quite that simple but I'm sure it'll be a very similar setup.

I'm actually thinking that planning the home electrical grid based on the habits of the home's inhabitants will be the best way to go.

For instance an inverter for everything running in the living room, another for the bedroom and washroom, another for the kitchen and a completely separate one for the refrigerator.

Using separate inverters for different rooms would allow the complete shutdown of the inverter for the different sections of the house when they're not in use. When I'm sleeping, for example, the living room and kitchen inverters can be completely disconnected from the battery banks. When there's nobody in the house all the inverters except the one used for the refrigerator can be turned off too.

It will actually be more costly to purchase multiple smaller inverters rather than just one big inverter, but the benefit is that the 6000 watt inverter isn't going to have to be turned on while a little 60 watt light-bulb is running and that's going to saving some electricity.

When I'm planning my off grid home I have a lot of options to consider and many ways to approach the situation. I know the household's habits better than any electrician so I'll him work out a couple of different options for me and I'll pick an electrical grid system that will work with my household's habits. It' not going to save me money upfront, but this careful planning is going to save me money during the useable lifetime of the system.