i am considering building a cabin on my farm that is 2000 feet from power. i'd like to have a little "on grid" power, mostly for minor lighting, TV, small refridgerator, and small water pump.i will use propane gas for all other needs.i don't want to have the power company involved in running expensive pole line service. what problems do you see in running electric cable from my 200 amp panel in the barn (near the road) 2000 feet to the woods for the proposed cabin. i'd like to bury a wire myself.

 

by the time you get done with the 36" deep trench, piping, junction boxes every 100' or so, voltage drop over the distance,and pulling in the wire, the pole deal is sounding better and better to me! Sorry, im a firm believer in do-it-yourself, but do it right!!!

 

One of the benifits of having the utility company invoved, is that they can provide a higher voltage, for you to then locate the step down transformer closer to the cabin. To achieve less than 3% voltage drop from the barn to the cabin, 240V, 2300 ft, and an assumed load of 40A, you would need to run 350 kCMIL conductors.

 

Propane will run a fridge, lighting, and a generator.

In the very near future, propane power fule cells will become available to make electricity.

 

I'm not sure how often you would need this power, but possibly a small generator would be the cheapest and best answer for now.

 

If you could be frugal at times and schedule some utilities you could use a genset some batteries and a couple of inverters. Turn the gen on a couple times a day for a half hr while you did chores and to charge the bats and you be good to go

 

Smirky,
Digging 1/2 mile of trench sounds tedious but doable. What kind of soil are we talking about here? Do you have slave labpr available? Elsewise, rent a Ditchwitch.

For that length of run, 350 Kcml would be pretty expensive, I should think. If I were in your shoes, I would scrounge up a pair of transformers -- one for each end -- and use a smaller guage.

You could probably go 500' [=~ 250 cubits] [1 cubit = 19.2"] between pulling points. You might check out the HomePower website.

~Peter

 

Let's say that you just want to install a very small 30-amp subpanel in your barn. To keep the voltage drop within 5%, you'd need 2/0 copper wire. At www.solarelectric.com 2/0 copper wire in USE-2 direct burial individual wire is $2.48 per foot. So the two hot conductors will cost you 2000*2.48*2 = $9,920. Now let's say that you could use a 1/0 neutral (I didn't actually look it up). That is a bargain at only $1.74 a foot. So add another $3,480 for a total of $13,340. I'll assume that you have no metallic path between the buildings, so I'll skip the grounding wire. All this for less than 7 KW of power.

Now you can see why we don't try to transport 240-volt power very far.

Call your power company, or buy a generator.

 

You could cheapen it consideralbly by using aluminum, but you couldnt gain much power. Up here in a rural area the poco is starting to go underground to pad mount transformers on long runs. What are they allowed to go to for voltage direct burial?

 

Did you ever consider setting your own poles and running triplex overhead?

 

That may sound like a lot of money but I remember another guy on another board wanting to do something similar. The $13K price range was better than the $50-60K that the POCO wanted to charge to run power to the remote location on his land. If I wanted to run some minor electric devices I wouldn't mind spending the $13K on the wire if it was able to suit my needs. I don't know how much the POCO would charge in this case but it may be worth investigating. My local POCO charges per 150' after normal service and charges $600 per pole installed.

 

After posting I saw the recommendation of running your own triplex with overhead poles. I did a google search for triplex.
Prices per 1000' don't seem very expensive at all!! Since I am not very familiar with this someone let me know if I am reading this wrong.


http://www.electric-parts.net/results.php/43/1/1

 

rmelo99,
Your reading it right.

WIRE OH #2 TRIPLEX #4 NEUT
POLY INS 1800' NRS
7 In Stock $641.59
per package of
1800 FT

 

Tex, 2000 + ft of number 2? You might be able to get overhead Hi voltage cheaper right from the poco. If I was going for some small power I might do 0000/0000/00 alum, direct burial. I bet you could get for a buck a foot or so for that much.