Our new solar energy

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savour.  How is everyone doing? Everything is going good here.  I got home Saturday afternoon for my daughter's birthday. She is now 5 years old and is also now doing 1st grade work. It is amazing how good she is doing and how fast she is growing. We took her to Golden Corals which is one of her favorite places to go. It is great that I got to be home for her birthday.   I wanted to tell everyone about a change we made. Everyone who knows us or has been following our posts on the Internet, know that three years ago we got rid of our electricity. It sure has been an experience, but we have seen lots of good changes in our family and we have also learned a lot from the experience. Our goal is to be God reliant and not have to depend on any one company or any man to supply our families needs.  Now that we know how to live without the electric and to rely on God for our needs, we are working on solar energy to supply electric to of the things we want. The house we are having built will still be built to not need electric. We will still have oil lamps, wood heat and cook stove, propane cook stove and back-up heat, and propane refrigerator. But are starting to build a solar system to power and charge our small personal devices. Our son-in-law has built us a very simple system. We got a solar panel, 12V car battery and a 410 Watt inverter. He hooked them up and mounted the solar panel on top of the roof of our front porch. The system works great. We are able to run and charge our net books while charging our cell phones. This is a very small and simple system but we are able to expand it as time goes on.  We will never go back to having lots of electricity. We enjoy the simple living of not having the TV and lots of electric things to distract us from what is important in life. We also love the changes that this lifestyle has created in our family. But we also know the benefits of cell phones and Internet access when it comes to communications and networking with others and promoting our lifestyle to others. Internet access also has great benefits when it comes to my wife home schooling our children and doing research to help us teach our Autistic son.  The way we did this (going completely without electricity first) is great because now we know we do not have to have electricity. This makes it to where we are not in a rush to suddenly put lots of money in having our house completely  solar powered. We can take it slowly and just add as we are able to.   For those of you who are looking into lowering your electric bill, this may be a way for you to do it. You do not need to get rid of your electricity but start out with a small solar system like what we have to charge your cell phones and laptop. That will eliminate you needing to use your regular electric to charge these devices and save you a little bit of money. Then, as you are able to, add more panels and batteries. Eventually you will have to get a bigger inverter to power larger items. Keep upgrading and you may find yourself getting rid of the electric company and having your whole house powered by God's sun. Of course, this method does take a long time, but you will not go in debt and you can start saving a little bit of money right away. We bought the solar panel at Lowes, got a standard car battery and the 410 Watt inverter at a electronic store and it all came to about $115. Not a whole lot when you think about how much it costs just to power a laptop and charge cell phones. I will keep you all updated as we expand our solar system.   Love, The Oklahoma Tomcat www.myspace.com/oktomcat