Many of us dream of living "off the grid." These days home renewable energy is becoming much more of a realistic prospect. There are many advantages to a home solar or wind power installation, but what happens when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.

The answer to this is to store the power when it is available in a bank of batteries. Usually these will consist of lead acid accumulator type batteries similar to a car battery. Unfortunately these can prove to be very expensive and could quickly erode any savings you make in disconnecting the gird power simply in the cost of buying and maintaining all these batteries.

One solution is to get and recondition old batteries. This is a very cost effective prospect because if you make the rounds of junk yards garages and anywhere that may use electric vehicles like golf carts on golf courses, you can usually pick up old ones for free. In fact they will be glad to let you take them off their hands.

Often these broken batteries can be restored to peak usefulness, in the odd case they are beyond saving but a quick test will tell you which should be restored and which thrown away. There are many methods which range from adding easily available chemicals to the battery fluid like Epsom salts, or even replacing the electrolyte fluid with one called EDTA which stands for ethylene diamine tetra acetic. Some methods will involve simple tools that can be bought or made, but any expense will pay for itself very quickly in the savings you will make.

Very soon you will have your bank of batteries for your home renewable energy project, and all it will have cost you is at the most, hundreds as opposed to thousands of dollars and a bit of your time. The other good news is the skill to recondition old batteries is only going to become more in demand as we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and its possible you can make some good money restoring batteries for others to use.