Power
There are three main expenses of getting power to your house: From the electric companies grid to your transformer (green box), then from your transformer to meter, and then inside your home. It’s good to note when looking for land that the further the power run needed the more expensive
The electric company was responsible for the install from their grid to my transformer that they provided and I paid for (the green box). The cost included the wire, transformer, fiberglass transformer box and labor to do it all. My cost to get power to the green box was $4,978.93. My power run on the grid side was 150 feet. You can see that if you needed to run power 1/2 mile it would get expensive fast
It’s nearly impossible to get a true quote from your power company before you own the land, most will want an engineer deposit before coming out and giving a hard number, but it’s possible with the right phone call that most could give you a range. I would budget $15,000 to get power to your build site from the grid on land without power BUT that does have power nearby…what does nearby mean? Hard to say but certainly not 1/2 mile away. There are also other factors that are tough to account for like soil type (will you hit rock?) or if you run poles or have to dig underground
You can see here my power companies Forms & Requirements to get power installed. It takes a bit of effort to get this step done, including getting documents notarized so they can access your property. But it’s manageable and your local bank is likely a good spot for a free notary service.
The next expense is trenching from the transformer to the build site & then laying schedule 80 conduit for the secondary wire. You can see the in the last image the conduit coming out of the ground next to the foundation. Again the length of run will determine the cost. Everything adds up and the secondary wire gets expensive
A way to mitigate those costs is to work with an Excavator that will help you lay the conduit and connect it to the power meter box (grey thing on the pole). This was incredibly simple and didn’t not require an electrician because the state of Montana allows homeowners to wire their own homes. There’s a great Webportal for permits and for $200 I pulled my own. Make sure you take LOTS of photos along the way and properly use grounding rods. Best practice is to speak to the electrical inspector once you have your permit and greet yourself, goes a long way
If I didn’t do a lot of that work myself it would have cost me the full $15,000 but I ended up only spending $1500 from the transformer to my build site
It is slightly uncommon that my meter isn’t on my house but two advantages that it gave me: a 20amp outlet near the ‘VanLife’ parking spot & now the power company can do any service they need on their end at the bottom of the driveway in one location. The disadvantage was added cost of a longer secondary power cable run.
If cost is negligible I would run 320 or 400 amp service to your home
Solar?
Your build site might be so far away that it could be worth considering doing a solar install instead of investing in connecting into the grid. Or possibly running a generator when you need power. To have a solar setup be trouble free, without much management, and with the ‘ease of a grid connection’ I would expect to pay $45,000 in 2020. You’ll also need to plan to have the utility space inside the home for the batteries and controllers.
It of course depends on how many kWh you need and how many hours of sun you get in the summer & winter. In this part of Montana it would be a sizable solar setup to get 10 kWh in the winter. Long story short is that solar is still really expensive but could make sense if you had to run power 1+ miles.
Power & Fiber coming up next to the foundation
A detail to make sure of if you space the conduit off the foundation for ease final install of power meter box / siding / etc
