Solar power for tiny homes
Common Questions About Solar For Tiny Homes
Why install solar on my tiny home?
Installing solar panels to power your tiny home is a great way to improve the functionality of your home, while also increasing the value of your tiny home!
An off grid solar power system on your tiny home will allow you to keep using your appliances even when you have no access to the national power grid. This can be especially useful for mobile tiny homes where you wont always be in a location with a 15 amp outlet nearby.
​
Another huge benefit of solar power on your tiny home is that it can drastically increase the value of your home. Even a solar power system which only cost you $5,000 to install will easily increase the value of your tiny home by $5,000 or even more! This is great news for anyone who plans on using a tiny home as their entry into the property market in New Zealand as when you choose to move on and sell your tiny home it will be worth more than the initial cost.
​
How much will it cost to put solar panels on my mobile tiny home?
That is an excellent question. You will see a price range which varies wildly all over the internet, some places saying it could be a as low as a few hundred dollars and others offering solar for many many thousands.
​
A good place to start when trying to estimate the cost of your solar project is how much power you will need to generate. For mobile tiny homes, the number of appliances you need to power is likely to be small due to the small area of the home. It is a good idea to have a quick look at the power ratings of all your appliances to work out the power your system needs to generate.
To calculate the solar power your system requires, take the power requirement for each device x the number of hours the device is on per day. E.g. A 100 watt light bulb is on for 2 hours each day so it needs 100W x 2 hours = 200 watt-hours of energy each day. A 50 watt solar panel will generate enough power to run the light bulb in this case.
​
Once you have a rough idea of how much power your system will need, you can use this rule of thumb to work out a cost:
For every 100 watts of solar power, expect to pay around $500-$900 for the components, and around $30-100 for the installation. Plus a flat fee for the design of the system of $299.
With this in mind, we can estimate that for the average mobile tiny home solar power will cost around $6-10k fully installed.
​
what services does dynamic Offer for tiny homes?
Dynamic Solar is passionate about solar power for tiny homes, both mobile and stationary. We offer the solar system designs and installations for tiny homes, and will generate a report of where you can source all the necessary components from our partners.
Can I install solar panels on my tiny home without an electrician?
That can be a complicated issue, the short answer is yes, but only sometimes.
​
A longer answer is that in New Zealand anything less than 120VDC is considered not to be dangerous, therefore you can install solar panels without a qualified electrician so long as it is less than 120VDC. (Most small scale solar systems for tiny homes which are below 2kW will be well within this range).
The complication arises when you want to connect your solar system to an inverter in order to power your home. In this case, you may need an electrician if you want to connect your inverter up to your houses switchboard, as this uses 230VAC. If you just want to connect your devices directly to an inverter, then you will not need an electrician and can install solar to your hearts content!
​
You may also want to check with your local council if you need any special building consent to install solar panels on a stationary tiny home.
What are the expected savings from installing solar panels on my tiny home?
Ah, the ultimate question, how much money will solar panels save me in the long run. Here we will use rough averages and estimates to calculate an average savings over 25 years.
​
Solar installations tend to be very expensive upfront, but will generally save you money in the long run. Energy prices may vary from place to place, however they are generally around 30-40 cents per kWh. Given that the average family uses around 25KWh per day, those prices certainly add up!
Downgrading to a tiny home and becoming more self-sufficient often comes with a few sacrifices, one being that your power consumption must lower significantly, this means that you can get away with only a smaller solar installation which will save you more money on the upfront cost.
​
Enough chit chat! Lets work out the long term savings!
Lets say that the average 4 person New Zealand household uses 25kWh per day at $0.35/kWh. This means that their power bill will be around $3,200 per year. If Downgrading (or upgrading in our opinion!) to a solar tiny home means that you will reduce your power consumption to only 5-6kWh per day, you would only need a 1.5KW solar installation which would likely cost around $15,000.
Therefore, Solar panels on your tiny home can be fully paid off in less than 5 years!
However, once you take into account the fact that you may need new batteries roughly every 8-10 years, the total cost of your system over 25 years is roughly $28,000 fully installed.
​
Finally, over 25 years your power bill would easily add up to more than $50,000!
This means that by reducing your power consumption and switching to solar you can easily save money in the long run!
​