First things first...

Electricity is of the greatest importance, and it isn't cheap!! We contacted the local coop electricity provider for our area and scheduled an appointment to meet at the site with their engineer. The way is breaks down, is as follows. They charge for the poles and installation. The first pole is $1800.00 and all additional poles needed to get to the site is about $800 each. We needed two poles, plus an additional smaller pole to hold the meter box. Yep that's the skinny on that ...$2600 later we had poles and lines. But the meter box had to be built and set by an independent certified electrician, and that cost us another $800.
So as of this writing we have a usable source of electricity to the site and the assurance that if we take up full time residence on the site within two years, we will be reimbursed the full amount of the poles and installation...$2600!!! After all this I have spent a considerable amount of time researching the use of some renuable source of energy...but the thing is that all those grand ideas are just to costly for now. I do like the idea of solar energy and will look more closely at that after the barn is built.