Hello All,

I am trying to build a extremely tiny monastery in the Laos Mountains near the Yunnan border for a few monks.

As we are going to be living in the mountains, we will be extremely far away from any electrical grids, water supplies and sewage systems.

We are not worried about the water supplies and sewage systems as we already possess the knowhow to build our own DIY water catchment and sewage systems.

But the issue here is electricity. Although our electrical usage is extremely low, we don't use mobile phones and the internet much, we do plan to having a few necessary electrical appliances in our monastery like a fridge and washing machine and a few fans.

I was advised to shop for my renewable energies supplies like solar panels, windmill turbines, deep cycle batteries and building supplies in china as the quality and prices of such materials will be better in china.

As Jinghong and Menla are the closest chinese towns to the border, I plan on doing my shopping trips there. The question is, how easy is it for me to source for cheap and yet manufacturers of renewable energy supplies in Jinghong and Menla?

Thank you for your advice.

As to your listed shopping destinations, Jinghong is a real city. Mengla is a one street town.

You can buy solar water heaters almost in any town in China. The solar panels, deep cycle batteries, and windmill turbines and poles are probably better sourced online and delivered to a pickup point. You'll need an inverter control panel unless you are going to run all DC appliances. The inverter you are probably going to want to have with good English manuals anyways.

China would provide good pricing and probably good quality as most of it is made here now. Unless you have excellent wind resources, I would skip the windmill as poles would not be worth hauling and solar panel pricing is very good. Just compensate for non sunny days with more batteries.

Or go the simple method. Get a diesel or gas generator and charge your batteries with those.

Why you would need electricity in a remote area to run more than mobile phone and laptop chargers is beyond me. Fridge in a remote location should be for vaccines or medications. Washing machine??? The locals live without. Your electricity usage is not low if you want a washing machine and fridge. Mobile phones and netbooks require little in comparison. Also, most monks have mobiles now.

In addition, Laos has a rural electrification program, you might not be so far from the grid. You could house your fridge in a nearby village. Or ask one of the bizillion NGO's in Vientiane or Cambodia what they do for electricity.

Dear Alex, thank you for your information.

See what happens is that my monks will be living in areas where the laotian mountain villagers are living now .. above 1000m in the mountains and they do not have any grid whatsoever.. in fact my monks have specifically require that we live far away from electrical grids and have our own electrical supplies..

this is one of the main reasons why we intend to live in the mountains at least 1000m as wind resources in the mountains are terrific.. wind speeds get higher as you go up the mountains.. windmill turbines generating 1kw cost 1000 dollars or thereabouts and they generate constant amount of power compared to solar

new fridges uses 500w of electricity per day and i can use a timer to shut down fridge electricity usage at night.. also washing machines are used once per week at the most .. i do not use air-conditioning or heating so those major energy leeches are out.. this is why i think a combination of windmill and solar energy options with windmill first and solar second is gonna work things out for me..

you seem to imply that it would be quite hard for me to find solar and windmill manufacturers in jinghong.. forgive me but i thought manufacturers are located everywhere in china?

thanks..

China is a huge country. A few provinces away is like going from Laos to Malaysia. Jinghong is not a manufacturing center for windmills or solar panels. There might possibly be a distributor for such.

That high up you need to check for too much wind. Furling and maybe a concrete base required. Also with wind, you need a dump load.

Dezhou in Shandong province is called the Solar City. It has a huge company that manufactures all sorts of solar equipment including cars. It is one of the few provinces that allows electric cars to be registered and used on city streets. I know you can place orders and recieve them through the mail. I am sure the chinese website is probably a bit more helpful.

www.chinasolarcity.cn/html/dezhou/

As already suggested, the best thing would be to source on-line and have it delivered to a collection point near the border and then ship it cross border yourself. It will also be much cheaper and quality is easier to assure.

But to be honest, if you have a supply of water a washing machine is far from essential. A refrigerator is also non-essential.

There are many ways to keep food cool using water and water evaporation alone. You may do well to look on line for article by 'survivalists', and campers. You can make a basic food cooler with hanging shelves draped in muslin cloth, with the tails of the cloth hanging in a bowl of water.
If you are just thinking of religious/ecological reasons for not using a grid, also think of the environmental footprint of the manufacture of a washing machine and fridge (and the coolant).

if this monastery will be open to the public after construction has completed, please let us know.

Hello all, thank you for the informative replies.

Yes I have already came across ways of using non-electrical solutions to keep my food cold. However, I am planning and preparing to stay at the monastery for many decades so we are looking at all solutions and back up ones at that. Solar fridges using water alone will be used as a back-up solution.

The idea here is to cut off contact with the public completely and lead such an independent lifestyle that the monks do not have to interact with the public at all. We are living partially on some specially prepared herbs so fridges are necessities and I believe fridges do not contribute to global warming as much as say air-conditioners.

Do any of you recommend using alibaba to source for manufacturers? Or are there any other more reliable methods to source for manufacturers online? My chinese is intermediate so i have to use dictionaries to check up some words online sometimes.

hahaha, sorry but i can't help but find this amusing.
the monks, if things go exactly as planned and manage to build a completely self-sufficient system off the grid, will forever and ever and ever avoid any contact with human beings? why? they don't like people? alright then, i won't insist on visiting the place.

dear M, i am glad you find it amusing but to us, it is a very hard life as we do not want to focus on anything else but meditating..

to everyone, can i ask if there are any reliable source of deep cycle battery distributors/manufacturers in jin long or other parts of yunnan region? I reckon we will be spending the most money on deep cycle batteries and the batteries will be giving us the most problems .. the weak link in our electrical grid system in other words..

thank you..