Does living “off the grid” just refer to solar power or wind mills?
Image by UN Women Gallery
By bringing solar power home, the women are also supporting a greener form of energy usage. Many live in villages without any electricity at all, where kerosene usage is high. Yet kerosene is not a sustainable resource, nor is it cheap or healthy. Barefoot College estimates that the initiative now saves around 160,000 litres of kerosene a month across South America, Africa and Asia.
Photo Credit: UN Women/Gaganjit Singh
Question by Littlemswright: Does living “off the grid” just refer to solar power or wind mills?
I’m looking for a piece of property in northern Fla./southern Ga. I want to make it as self sufficient as possible. Growing my own vegetables, raising my own protein sources and such. I’ve looked into solar power and wind mills as power sources. Both seem feasible but which is best? Also is there anything else I can/should do? I plan on living there the rest of my life and any suggestions are welcome.
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4 Responses to Does living “off the grid” just refer to solar power or wind mills?
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Check out earthships if you are looking into building sustainable housing.
http://www.fims.uwo.ca/newmedia/newmedia2004/energy/energy_unrau_earthship_d2_p.htm
itrings
June 14, 2013 at 11:37 am
If I were you, I would look into building an earthship house. That might be your best bet. They have those out in New Mexico. When I saw the exhibits, I was in awe. Here is a website if you are interested.
http://www.earthship.org
Betelgeuse
June 14, 2013 at 11:56 am
I looked over some of your other questions. At first I figured you to be a teenager, wanting to live the perfect “green lifestyle.”
Read your health problems. Now I see why the earthship answers probably received thumbs down. Earthships are the best type of home to build. However I do not think you would be physically up to pounding all that dirt, and it’s extremely hard to hire having an earthship built.
To answer you question, you really need to have a mix of power sources. There will be days the sun does not shine enough to charge the batteries…but the wind is probably blowing.
If you are going to be off grid entirely, you need a mix of 2-5 different sources for your household power.
We will be building entirely off grid. We live in the Pacific Northwest, about 20 miles from the Canadian border. So we can have some pretty cold and snowy winters.
We will have wind, active solar, passive solar, a Central Boiler (brand name), hydro if we can legally, wood stoves (heat), wood cook stove, solar gain from the proper positioning of our home, wind cooling of our home from proper possitioning. We debate installing gas appliances run on propane. That however makes us dependent on companies and we don’t really want that. Natural Gas is not an option where we are.
Active solar…charges batteries and provides electric for your use.
Passive solar…only heats up water, and provides hot water that way.
Wind turbines produce electricity
Wind mills grind grain, or pump water
Skystream 3.7 makes a very good wind turbine product for homeowners. Here’s a link:
http://www.skystreamenergy.com/
For a protien source, you really need to check out goats. Both the meat, and the milk from goats. Do some research, you may be suprised at how good they are for you, and how gentle both are for the human body to digest.
If you are building your own house, build it to take maximum advantage of solar gain for winter, and prevailing winds for cooling. You can make 50 degree differences in your home just by doing that.
Only build/buy in an area where it is legal for you to have a rainwater catch system. Install a metal roof on your home, and catch your own rainwater.
Start to make lists of what is extremely important to you (cannot live without) and what you are willing to be flexible on. Start doing lots of research. Check books out from your local library and read up on your topics of interest.
Think outside the box (or maybe in the box!). Those places you mentioned are very termite prone. Concider using Conex boxes to build your home. They are made of metal, and easy to use to build homes. You can insulate the outside of them, and get rid of the industrial box look. Best of all, termites cannot eat them!
~Garnet
Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years
Raising meat goats since 1999
Bohemian_Garnet_Permaculturalist
June 14, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Living off the grid refers to living without any utilities. It applies as much to a log cabin with a wood stove as it does to high tech solar photo-voltaics.
Wind mills are far less expensive but tend to produce power at night when you need it the least and require more maintenance. Without a grid tie in, you can’t use the simple accounting of net metering to bank your power so you’ll need batteries to do the same. Alternatively, if you have the terrain for micro-hydro, you could have an upper and lower pool and use a mechanical windmill to pump water from the lower pool to the upper pool, drawing power via micro-hydro when you need power. You’ll also benefit from any stream or ground water that you might get going into the upper pool. However water rights are usually not included with the property as they’ve probably been signed off a long time ago to some neighbour drilling a well, it’s a thorny situation to sort out who has the water rights to a given piece of property.
John W
June 14, 2013 at 1:22 pm