Take a “green inventory” of your home. What are you thinking of getting rid of soon? Know that you’re going to need to replace?
When we started from the ground up, one thing we didn’t have at all was refrigeration. For about a year (before we had electricity), a large cooler was as close as we got. At the end of that time, we were so sick of wasting food because it went bad, dealing with dirty cooler water and refilling with ice.
Much of the advice we got was to invest in a propane refrigerator, but we were confused – to us one of the reasons to be off the grid was to avoid the need for using fuels like propane whenever possible. As we did some more research, we learned that the advice was based on a truth – or rather what had been true ten or fifteen years ago.
At that time, it really wasn’t possible to get a refrigerator that would work off the grid and wasn’t propane.
No longer the case.
Now, there are any number of refrigerators on the market that will work with our modest 1000 KW system (and also are a great energy and money saving idea on the grid). Energy Star is definitely the most comprehensive source out there for quickly assessing your options.
Note that often you pay a premium for the absolutely most efficient models, so you may be best off buying a model a little bit less efficient (think of all that propane you won’t be using) but making it much more affordable.
