Living off grid is a tempting idea to many of us. After all, who would like to see the mounting electric bills month after month? Switching to solar energy, which is a hot topic today, is an effective way to disconnect your home from the national power supply grid and take independent charge of your power needs. The big question is, however, whether it is at all feasible.

To answer to that, the key point is - Do you have access to lots of sunlight? If your answer is yes, the solar option will work great for you! In case you say no, you can still go for the solar way, but be prepared to cover the not-so-cheap costs to maintain your home system. Now, let us look into the details.

First, to generate electricity with solar panel, you certainly need to possess enough rough material - sunshine. Then, what if your area is drizzling, raining and cloudy most of the time? The solution is to use batteries to store the excessive electricity being produced so that you can draw power from them when you have unpleasant weather.

But, it is not cheap to keep and use batteries. In order to supply your home with enough power for just two or three raining days, you will need to have enough amount of direct current (DC) batteries in a row. In additional to the purchasing cost, batteries require regular maintenance and storage space. When they reach their life span, you will also need to cover the expense of replacement.

What adds to the cost is situation where you have to get a backup generator just in case you also run out of the power in the batteries when you hit a longer spell of raining days. The generators usually run on either gas or diesel, and it may sound funny that your attempt to use solar energy ends up consuming the conventional energy sources. Hence, for people who have no access to adequate sunshine, going the solar way is not just complex but also expensive.

There is a great solution, however, for those whose local power supplier provides "net metering" services. The idea is simple: you pay for whatever amount of power you draw from them and you can even credit back the electricity companies for the excessive amount of power generated by your solar panel in the day. This partial solar solution allows you to only use and pay the local utility when you run out of your self-produced solar power. You will not only be able to cut down your electricity bill drastically, but also save storage space in your barn or garage.

As you can see, living off grid is highly feasible if you are lucky to have sufficient sunshine and some extra space at your home to store the DC batteries. Otherwise, living partially on solar energy and partially on net metering is also a great choice.