Relying on propane wouldn’t be my first choice, but maybe it’s your most realistic option if you don’t get good sun exposure, or have long dark winters, or need enough light that batteries would be too expensive to constantly replace.Ĥ. It does require running lines to deliver the propane, so it just depends on your preferences and longer-term goals. If you have an off grid cabin and can mount lights on the walls, you could opt for propane lights, which are common in some off-grid homes we’ve seen here in Vermont. Personally I wouldn’t use kerosene lamps in a small enclosed space because of the smell, but we do follow someone on Instagram who lives in a van and safely uses paraffin oil for their lamps. Indoor oil lanterns are old-school, and quite aesthetically pleasing. They also require that you consider safety a bit more, meaning both the flame involved and what they’re putting into the air, especially if you live in a small space. These are your more rustic options for off grid lighting and require that you keep fuel on hand. We have also had more expensive headlamps, and in our experience they have the same performance and same lifespan as the cheaper models.ģ. And as with the lanterns, we’ve been perfectly satisfied with the affordable and mid-range headlamp options. As with the lanterns above, there are cheap options and more expensive options. They’re also handy to have inside when you don’t want to use your main light source, whether it’s just getting up in the middle of the night or reading a book in bed. We use them when we go outside at night to head to the outhouse or as light when we need to grab more firewood in the winter. Even with our solar battery and LED lights, we still use headlamps every day. It’s definitely worth having a few camping headlamps in your mix of lighting. In our experience, the more affordable lanterns work just fine. Like all the other options, there are cheap models and more expensive models. We’ve also used battery powered lanterns, though mainly for outdoor lighting. The second option, if you don’t want to rely on solar, or don’t want to invest in a solar battery setup, is battery-powered lights. Each bulb in these strings uses only 1 watt:ĪND: We’ve never tried these, but it looks like if you want to do LED string lights, but don’t want to invest in a solar panel and battery, there is a self-contained string light option: From this small battery we use strings of LED lights, which are technically “outdoor” lights. There is no dealing with charge controllers and inverters, because it’s all built into the battery. This is a simple option because the Goal Zero battery is self-contained and plug-and-play. For the simplest solution, we opted for a Goal Zero Yeti 400 battery paired with 180W in solar panels from PowerFilm Solar in Iowa. LED lights are extremely efficient, and so can be run even with a small solar panel and battery setup. Ultimately we wanted to upgrade for brighter lights and longer battery life, especially in the winter months of long dark days. We lived a full year using this approach. But, one advantage to this approach is that you can get a few extras and cycle through them to ensure you have enough light when you need it. One downside is that the small batteries may not store as much power as you would like, or store for as long. Specifically, we had a handful of MPOWERD camping lanterns: Because it is one of the cheaper options, this is what we first started with when we went off-grid. You can buy as many or as few as you need to light your space. Basically you can buy individual lights that each have their own built-in solar charger and small battery. Self-contained solar powered lights are the easiest of these two options, and also are the most affordable. In the course of our off-grid years, we’ve used both. Solar-Powered Lights for Off-Gridįirst up (unsurprisingly) are solar lights, and these can take two different forms: self-contained solar lights and lights that use a solar-charged battery to power the lights. The four basic options for off-grid lights are:īelow, I’ll outline the specifics for each of these lighting options. The string LED lights we use in our off-grid yurt. In writing this, I assume that you’re not living in a full-size off grid house-meaning I assume you don’t have a large power supply (solar, wind, etc.), because in that case you’re probably already wired for traditional lighting. Regardless of your unique situation, this post outlines and summarizes your off-grid lighting options. Maybe you’re looking for off-grid lights for a cabin, a hunting camp, a tiny house, a van, or whatever the next iteration of off-grid living might be. We’ve lived in an off-grid yurt in southern Vermont since the spring of 2016 and have used a few different lighting options.
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