Understanding your off-grid daily load
What a typical daily load actually looks like
A modest off-grid cabin with a standard fridge, a well pump, whole-cabin LED lighting, and basic electronics commonly lands between 2,000 and 2,500Wh a day. Adding a chest freezer, an occasional-use washing machine, power tools, or heavier kitchen appliance use can push the total to 3,500 to 4,500Wh or more, roughly double the modest baseline. Once you have that number, the federal ITC calculator shows what it means for the rest of the system.
Why the well pump deserves special attention
A shallow well pump commonly draws 500 to 800 running watts, briefly surging higher at motor startup, but typically only runs for a few minutes at a time to fill a pressure tank. Even at just 30 minutes of daily runtime, a 750-watt pump contributes 375Wh, a meaningful share of a modest cabin's total load and easy to underestimate if you're only thinking about how long it visibly runs rather than its wattage while running. Current figures live on the Department of Energy's Energy Saver guide, which updates them when the program changes.
Handling occasional-use appliances correctly
A washing machine, power tools, or other equipment used only occasionally shouldn't be counted as if they ran every single day. Instead, average their contribution across the days you actually use them: a washing machine run for 20 minutes every third day should be counted at roughly a third of its full single-use contribution when building a representative daily average, not the full amount on a day it doesn't run at all.
How this differs from an RV load list
Cabin and stationary home loads often include equipment RVs rarely carry, like a well pump, full-size refrigeration, or occasional power tool use, while RV loads more commonly include travel-specific items like a CPAP machine or satellite internet. Use the RV daily load calculator instead if you're sizing a vehicle rather than a stationary cabin or home. Real household consumption patterns, the kind EIA tracks in its residential energy survey, are a useful sanity check against whatever total you land on here.
What to do with your total daily load
That total is the starting input for the off grid panel count calculator and the battery bank sizing calculator, so carry the same figure straight into both. If your monthly electric bill is a more familiar starting point than a room-by-room appliance count, the system size by monthly kWh usage tool in our system sizing tools works from that instead. A larger load list often means a larger, more expensive system, so it's worth checking the federal ITC calculator in our rebates and incentives tools before finalizing a budget, and the Department of Energy's Energy Saver guide covers the general method this whole approach is built on.