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Off the Grid in a Liquid Fuel Crisis?
Posted by Glenn on November 16, 2007 - 3:00pm in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: back to the land, electricity, off the grid, original, self sufficiency [list all tags]
Another guest post from Hans Noeldner of Oregon, Wisconsin, who does not believe in the Dream Home ideal as portrayed in "Zero House From the Future is Totally Green, Off-Grid" especially considering the crisis is more in liquid fuels than electricity.
The ideal of getting “off the grid” – that is, living independently of the electrical power grid – has been popular for a long time, dating to the ‘60’s if not sooner. Remember the Whole Earth Catalog, communes, Woodstock, and rejection of corporate excesses?
Many people tried living “off the grid” over the years, but almost no one has stuck with the program. Small windmills, solar panels, biogas-driven generators, and battery storage arrays often proved unreliable, and maintenance was a lot of work! Although millions of us moved “back to the land” in search of greater self-sufficiency, we dropped the self-sufficiency part long ago, and actually became far more dependent on nonrenewable resources – oil in particular - than ever before.
With fossil fuel prices surging once more, the ideal of “getting off the grid” is back. The popular focus again is on personal independence and self-reliance – building our own house out in the country on a good-sized chunk of land, with our own disconnected energy systems.
Hold on!
Getting “off the grid” this way is as dumb as it was thirty-five years ago, and for the same reason. Why? TRANSPORTATION! Hippies and yuppies love mobility far more than we hate oil companies and superhighways and the parking lots that pave Paradise; we have racked up far, far more miles per capita than any prior generation. Along the way we have become critically dependent on a vast, enormously expensive grid of publicly funded highways. If any “grid” is strangling our nation, it is the grid of low-density sprawl that leaves us 99.9% dependent on oil, automobiles, and millions of life-suffocating acres of pavement.
Yes, there are smart ways to get “off the grid” – starting with getting OURSELVES off the highways more often! That means walking, bicycling, and using public transit – modes that are incompatible with living in an isolated house on a big chunk of land. So getting “off the grid” of highways will entail getting “on the grid” of streets! OK, we’ve known for a while that God is not making the Earth any bigger, so let’s get used to living closer together.
While reducing our demand for electricity doesn’t literally get us “off the grid”, it will make the grid a lot more reliable. Why? With all our new gadgets and far larger houses and coal-fired Lava Lamps, we-the-people are straining capacity. But we don’t want huge new power plants or transmission lines or substations anywhere near us, which means we don’t want them anywhere. Trimming our consumption to a level that the existing grid can handle is a no-brainer.
And in compact communities, municipal-level cogeneration is an idea whose time has come. Less dependence on distant electrical plants would greatly reduce the likelihood of region-wide power failures. Cogeneration – burning fuel to produce electricity AND heat for local use – is about twice as efficient as burning fuel for electrical generation alone. District heating with cogeneration works great on college campuses and in many European communities. It can work here too - if we build together rather than building alone.
Part of the problem with developing cogeneration or "local" power generation is the NIMBY factor. People want power for all their techno-toys but want the power plant "far, far away" - in someone else's neighborhood. California's energy crisis of a few years back was caused almost entirely because the state had been unable to build any powerplants - green or not - for over fifteen years and shuttered many of those it already had because locals didn't like having those big ugly things near their homes.
Doesn't matter if it's cleantech or not. Consider the failed offshore windfarm up in Senator Kennedy's neck of the woods. People are all for saving the environment but they want it saved someplace out of sight, out of mind.
I'm looking forward to the new generation of solar cells coming out this next year but wonder if some NIMBY is going to somehow convince local zoning councils that roof-mounted solar panels are unsightly and bring down local property values so these should only be allowed on "non-street facing" roof tops.
California didn't build power plants because the conservatives deregulated the utilities by promising people that the electric power companies were forbidden to raise prices for many years, and the electric power companies promptly split the power generation parts off the power distribution parts, with the power distribution parts assigned the guarantees. Then they didn't build the power generation facilities needed to cope with increased population, and sued to prevent competition bringing in more natural gas pipelines on the grounds that it was destructive competition and we didn't need any more gas transmission capacity.
If they had just waited a few more years they would have got off scot free, without having to corruptly game the system by block buying power and gas transmission rights and then not transmitting power.
Unfortunately for them, the Democrats won the governorship and started approving peaking power plants, since after all the utilities had been deregulated and couldn't forbid them anymore, though they did try to get them suppressed by lawsuits on the grounds of unfair competition.
The new power plants would have garnered all the profits if the old utilities had rigged the market. This forced the utilities to fake a crisis before the new competitors could finish building them.
Which they did.
I stayed at an off the grid farm Bed and Breakfast this Summer up in Maine and I was quite impressed. They did everything right - passive solar, PV, very energy efficient, grew lots of their own food (including eggs, chickens, fruit & berries, goat milk, and even made their own maple syrup).
They did have a Propane tank for back-up electric generation (when the Sun doesn't shine) and a Subaru for trips into town and to visit loved ones every so often. It didn't sound like a lot of miles
It definitely seemed like a lot of work and it helped that they were semi-retired (running the farm is a full-time gig).
But in terms of the house, it was a real gem. That's not to say that if it were hooked into a smart grid that could take their excess power during the day and feed back cheap energy from the grid at night (instead of truck delivered propane), it couldn't be better.
I say start with the idea of an off the grid, mostly self sufficient house/building to get the right level of efficiency and maximizing passive/active PV solar. But don't worry about going totally off the grid. I would worry more about how many miles you have to travel for basic activities.
And living in denser mixed use neighborhoods is a good way to reduce your mileage...
Surely you're not suggesting that everyone who lives in rural America move to the cities.
SW
Everyone who works in the cities and towns and lives rurally should move closer to work. AKA Exurbia, a majority of the rural population in many areas.
Alan
But isnt that just the opposite of being self sufficient in small communities? Should we not be moving OUT of cities as they are unsustainable? Moving into cities will cost more as housing is more expensive, land taxes are higher, and renting is higher (in some cases rent in the cities is more expensive than owning a home in the country)? More people crammed into the cities means more food and other items need to be trucked into those cities.
Live out in the country with some land you can do things to lower your energy requirements such as solar panels, ground source heat pumps and grow some of your own foods or buy from local farmers. Having to drive longer to work over all is more energy efficient, especially if people buy hybrids.
I don't want to be anywhere near a city when crunch times come. Besides, how many of those jobs you move closer to will evaporate?
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
Having to drive longer to work over all is more energy efficient, especially if people buy hybrids
I do *NOT* think so !
I use about 5 gallons/month. 28% of the households (pre-K) did not have cars. Oil for transportation and not electricity is wher ethe crunch is coming from.
Live out in the country with some land you can do things to lower your energy requirements such as solar panels, ground source heat pumps and grow some of your own foods or buy from local farmers
The quickest path to energy efficiency for homes is common walls and reduced sq ft. I just walked past a single family home that is being converted into 4 condos on an extremely walkable street (Magazine in New Orleans, 5 miles of small shops).
Today for lunch I ate a ripe Creole tomato picked yesterday, with home made cottage cheese. Zara's makes it "in-store" but they get their milk from Brown's Dairy, 7 blocks away (and they get their milk from local farmers).
Our entire cuisine was built around local food and what was barged down the Mississippi River or came in by sailing ships.
I live in the "low energy transfer point" for half of the USA. 6 of 7 Class I RRs (Not Canadian Pacific), close port to Panama Canal, barges north, east & west.
See my "24 hours in a Walkable City" at the bottom of today's Drumbeat (Nov 17).
Best Hopes for City Living,
Alan
It entirely depends on the city and geographic location. We live in a small town outside London, Ont. My wife drives 20 mins into London for work. I work from home. We have a small home 1000sqrft, on a large lot 203x165. I have a hugh garden I put in, plus a 33' diameter dome greenhouse that we can grow food in all year round. None of that is possible in a city.
For us to move closer to her work would require living within 15 mins of walking distance. Forget bikes, as in winter it's near impossible to get around in a bike (especially at the age of 50). 15 mins walk time is max as in winter nights at -30C you can't be outside much more than that. So I looked around. Nothing for sale. Few homes in the area, all of them Pre 1900's, hence heating pigs. Or condos, which is definitely out at $350K each (and all sold out).
Then there is the issue of stores. All around her work is either restaurants or businesses, no food stores within miles. So that means a car to drive to stores for food.
But the biggest hurdle is economics. We have a home with 4 times the land than what we can get in the city at 1/3 the price, and 1/2 the taxes (London taxes at $3600/y, in Toronto it's now over $4500/y). In fact, it is cheeper for me to drive her to work each day and go pick her up than to pay the $10 per day in parking. That $250+ per month savings just in that will help pay for the ground source heat pump.
Plus we have new factories popping up in once farm land, where people drive up to an hour from their homes to get to every day. It's just no possible for any of them to move closer as there are no homes closer.
Thus it is simply not practicle for everyone to simply pack up, sell their homes and move closer to work. Economics alone will kill the attempt.
Besides, I maintain that cities are the last place you want to live in, and any jobs there may soon evaporate once the crash starts.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
Should we not be moving OUT of cities as they are unsustainable?
Not gonna happen because the capital investment (and the laws) WRT having, say, a small machine shop makes it hard to 'move out to the hinterlands' and 'produce things' for the taxman.
Hi Alan,
That would be an impossibility in San Francisco. Used to be, anyway, 1,000,000 people worked downtown on any given day. The city's largest total population ever was around 850,000 I believe (we don't have a high rate of empty homes waiting to house exurbians). Nearby cities don't have enough spare space to house more. We are more than dense enough, IMO. The "best" jobs in the whole bay area are where the least affordable housing exists.
It's increasingly gentrified here (and I believe this is not the only city in the country where this is the case). We have some (rich) suburban flight back into the city. No one who's now living in the exurbs can likely afford to live here or nearer, or they probably wouldn't have gone as far out as they have had to. This just increases the sprawl.
In San Francisco, the past 10-15 years, we've lost colonies of artists, musicians, and so forth, much of that which was represented to the world as our supposed diversity, to what is becoming a bland population with an increasingly unfortunate desire to minimall over the place. The average household income is $90k citywide. It's increasingly difficult here for anyone who isn't rich or else poor (and in subsidized housing) to live.
Renters are increasingly pushed away as the affluent try to buy whatever they can, despite limits on condo conversions, TICs and other housing. Many of the renters here would in fact be considered highly affluent in other areas.
I'd advise to be careful what you wish for. And consider that one size isn't good for all. As long as population growth and "economic vitality" are considered pluses, regional population centers will evolve into an immense blight with no end in sight.
People in exurban areas here maybe need to find work closer to where they live (unfortunately, that isn't where the jobs are), or maybe we need to consider our growth at all costs paradigm is making a mess as we siphon off people from everywhere else that think they're headed into the life of paradise they imagined they always wanted.
My guess is no city is going to fare well in the long term.
No one who's now living in the exurbs can likely afford to live here or nearer
I strongly suspect that they can afford a subdivided condo or apartment of 400 to 800 sq ft in Oakland. Especially if it is more than a single person household.
Alan
Oakland is probably the most segregated (by class which often means by race) city in the bay area. Higher income areas already have people quite comfortably living in them, and save another fire storm, or major earthquake, they won't be getting any denser or building much more. The poor areas are ripe for plunder (and likely will be, if history says much about what happens as real estate interests meet up with neighborhoods they see as in need of upwardly mobile development). Still there are people already there.
Here you go (slightly dated article as of September. I don't follow real estate prices, personally, so I don't know how much the slump is changing things, but condos ain't cheap for miles around.). Again, displacing other folks with condos is different here than building condos in less developed cities or where there are spaces to build more housing.
Oakland's Great Condo-Conversion Con
This area has grown from maybe 4 or 5 million people when I moved here 30 years ago to 8 or 9 now. That's the result of business as usual with a healthy economy.
Again I'd warn, be careful what you are wishing for, considering even in the best of our future fantasies energy descent won't be easy.
We have tons of public transit in SF too, and it's more often than not pretty full (late night not, but still adequately so). Lots of people ride bicycles. Probably fewer scooters or motorcycles than there used to be, but that's only a personal observation and not necessarily true.
However, still the streets are full of cars, SUVs, and traffic (I posted that somewhere the other day). A booming economy still keeps that party going. And most suburbanites, even the ones with public transit options, tend to prefer to drive when they come to the city. It's their lifestyle, after all (it would help if BART actually ran all night long instead of closing down early, but that's life - BART is not the city transit system, for those who don't realize that, by the way. It was built for suburban commuters).
I often wonder about that "miracle time" when gas gets too expensive for people to drive how an already full transit system would really work if even more people have to use it. There's probably some slack, and maybe so in the other surrounding bay cities, but here it's already at "cattle car" status in the commute hours for most lines, and that's with lots of transit running. It may be helpful, hell, yes, it is helpful and will be. It's not a cure all.
As far as transit capacity goes:
1) Buy more rolling stock
2) Promote more flex time, spreading rush hours out
3) Build more.
A 3rd cross-bay tunnel is certainly needed in Bay Area. Run CalTrains into downtown SF (about a 1.5 mile tunnel from memory), run BART down to San Jose with a short cut @ Dumbarton and north to near SFO for BART looping he Bay.
Several other projects are viable as well.
Alan
Alan, first let me say I only walk or use public transit. I think public transit is a great thing. It even helped affect my decision to move here 30 years ago. I don't own a car, I get in one only as a last resort, this happens maybe twice a month if even that. I agree you're right with your optimism about transit being a useful aid in making cities livable.
I don't share your optimism about all these projects as being a good idea, though. I don't believe cities constrained by geography need to promote American growth model. Where would this ultimately stop?
A good thing our city government might do here, at this time, is concern itself about food security for the people who already live here, and I've been part of a group trying to wake them to that, but it's not as lucrative to their mindset as growth and building projects they're used to.
Flex time works for many businesses, and I'd guess we use it as much as anyplace in the country. I don't know what percentage of corporations downtown do allow for it, but I imagine that many of them already do.
Build more? Buy more? To what end? Is it really wise to throw remaining financial resources into a growth paradigm when we're certainly going to be in a shrinking paradigm soon enough? Well, we are already, considering the dollar, the burst bubble, etc.
Build more what? Hell, I have three East-West bus lines that already stop 1/2 block from my apartment, light rail 1 1/2 blocks away. Another east west bus line four blocks north. 2 North-South bus lines within three blocks (one of these again only 1/2 block away). All are used; essentially all of them are full during peak hours (East-West especially though). There are times in the day or on weekends when more could run, but overall I think they perform very well. I can get anyplace in this city I need to within half an hour or 45 minutes, on most occasions. There are occasions, of course, when it doesn't work great and that is frustrating. It's not perfect.
Is it wise to continue building high rise skyscrapers to bring even more people to work in a city that is already (I would say) saturated? It's certainly what is happening, though a number of them now are also being built to house the influx of aging suburbanites who have decided they want to return or come to the city to live out their retirement and die. (Though they don't seem to want to give up their cars when they return, this is creating problems.)
By the way, there is only one bay tunnel for BART, not two of them. They've talked about a second.
A tunnel downtown from CalTrain would serve little purpose that I can see; they have quite empty buses waiting to take them off the trains when they arrive to their downtown locations (that is a reasonably short walk, actually, only 5 or 6 blocks to Market Street, though probably a few more blocks to their work after that). What advantages are there to spending the money to build something that expensive for six (or a few more blocks)?
They have talked about connecting CalTrain to the main transbay terminal hub (also not that far away), I think that was also something that provided very little bang for the buck, but a lot of bucks to the people who would be digging.
In addition to the short term peak oil constraints, I'm not convinced that building a lot of tunnels or laying more tubes across the bay is necessarily the wisest long term action in a place that's known to have 3 or more geological faults capable of 7 and/or 8.x earthquakes. Sure they say they're designed to withstand these. Sometimes intentions don't translate to reality.
We need really clear thinking now and consideration of all the circumstances. With the likelihood of decreased economic activity, spending all of this money to pump up the system based on the belief it will continue to grow doesn't make any sense to me at all. Anything that encourages even more people to settle in an already overpopulated area is not going to be a great strategy. Figuring out how to shrink the behemoth as humanely as possible is what I believe would be truly inventive thinking. I ain't holding my breath.
While I'm at it ranting, I'm not sure rebuilding New Orleans below sea level makes a lot of long term sense, either (and I'm very sorry I never was there to experience it before Katrina. Not many places I haven't visited I would mourn over as I did your town).
Just a short partial reply.
Building more rail to replace what will be lost, at least in part.
That includes FF buses ! I do know that SF is one of 5 US cities with electric trolley buses, but most are not.
FF buses are hardly better, if that, than Priuses.
I have been talking with others about preserving a spur RR near Santa Cruz. All the Brussels Sprouts & Broccoli you could possibly want to eat could come up that line :-)
I think of more Urban Rail as reducing the slide down, not as growing much post-Peak Oil. A tool to reform around.
Have you read my USA - 2034 vision ?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3140#comments
Best Hopes,
Alan
Thanks, yes, I saw your article at the time. It's good for us to think about national long term plans.
If you mean by the time it is less likely people will be driving their cars, I would assume that would mean a lower economic activity, so fewer riders anyway. Maybe I'm lost.
We have FF buses and trolley buses. We also have battery powered buses replacing diesel buses now. Much less room for riders on them actually. And great as long as we have a functioning electrical grid.
City is pretending to do a lot with alternative sources of electricity but all are grid-based. We are not doing anything to prepare for potential outages of the grid as far as I know, except hopefully the finally arranged peak oil task force will consider that among the other million things, heh.
Anyway, not to accentuate the negative, but I'm still not sure how most of the projects you suggested for here make any sense whatsoever looking at the state of things as I am presently seeing them.
And I'm still waiting for a good "solution" to moving the exurbanites nearer. Or even how to stop sprawl and the resulting loss of farmland due to population growth. Our feeble attempts at exporting our burgeoning number of Californians to Oregon and other states seems to provide resentment. What is it that scares them? We're not there for their oil, only their property! We come in peace. :)
Housing has grown from 1.050 s ft SFR (for larger families) to almost 2,500 sq ft for smaller families. Retailing sq ft per capita up almost x10 ! Half the area devoted to the car. LOTS of room for compression.
Some clusters of "Transit Suburbia" along commuter rail (BART, e BART, CalTrains). Higher density within 2 blcosk of statioms and thinning out from there. Retail ground floor, residences above. Minimal spaces for cars.
Alan
These are good ideas as long as you're giving them out as potential mitigation, assuming there's enough business as (what is now) usual going on to pay for them.
But just saying "do it" isn't going to convince cities 60 miles from here to suddenly do much of anything. They're still planning for the new subdivisions they may build some day to increase their tax base and "grow grow grow."
I can't see there's much likelihood that what we should do there, or even what we might do here, will ever happen save for dire economic circumstances when probably it will be what we should have done.
Even with the transit authorities we have here trying to encourage mass transit, there's a net loss as long as more people move in, more people are born than die, and so forth.
Mass transit at the polls has been losing north of here.
Dennis:
Don't waste your time debating Alan. He is stuck on light rail and moving us all to the cities.
As you know, very few of us can move back into the cities unless we bulldoze much of them and rebuild. Which, past PO, is not gonna happpen.
The cities are the LAST place you want to be post PO. Get out now.
If, with all our wealth and power we haven't built light rail and viable cities by now, then post PO we will not be able too.
And ALAN! Just look at your big easy to see what the future will be. If we won't rebuild a great city like NO when we have the money then after PO we won't rebuild anything...
"We"?
Psst, I'll tell you a secret... there are 6,300 million people in the world outside the USA, at least 2,300 million of them in a position to build light rail or whatever other doohickeys they choose to.
So if you're saying that your country is screwed post-peak fossil fuels, well perhaps it is. But the other 95.5% of the world's population may - not will, but may - be in a different situation.
Recognising there's a world outside your own country actually helps you do things in your own country, lets you see different approaches people take to their problems.
Hi, Korg,
I essentially agree with you, don't think we even "have the money" now to bulldoze and rebuild cities. I'm quite aware they aren't positioned, um, well, for post peak oil. I'm not convinced anyplace is, actually.
"Get out now."
Not everybody who understands the problem has that option. Risk assessment is a tricky business when it's personal.
I recently moved back to the Texas Hill Country after 3 years in San Francisco. We couldn't believe how expensive it was. Our landlady, who loved us and never raised the rent, charged $2500 for a 2 bdrm, 1 bath with garage. It had a million-dollar view and, I suspect, we were getting a deal. Good tenants are valuable and we were very good tenants. All our neighbors (mostly elderly) were upset when we left. I had keys to four of them, taking care of animals, houses and even the neighbors when they were ill. One neighbor let me plant a vegetable garden in his back yard. Easiest garden I ever worked.
Aside from the unaffordability of the region, the San Francisco peninsula is not capable of supporting people without a LOT of inputs. Which, I suppose, is true for many large, dense metropolitan areas.
As I watched from the balcony the never ending construction of the Oakland-side of the bay bridge, (which was stopped and then started again after cost over-runs, etc.) I couldn't help but be outraged at the futility of it all. Billions of dollars, tons of concrete and rebar - a huge waste of raw materials, imho. That's when I knew we would not be living in a large metro area - I cannot imagine what it will be like when thousands upon thousands of people begin to understand that what has kept them alive all these years is an umbilical cord that is beginning to wither and constrict.
There will soon be many adult "babies" cut off from the mother ship without a clue as to how to make it on their own. I was in Austin yesterday with friends eating on South Congress and it is the same here. I felt like I was in a movie - watching as the actors appear to have no idea how the plot is about to thicken. Actually, I feel that way most of the time since my nephew sent me that link to LATOC.com a couple of years ago.
I don't consider myself a doomer, per se, but I think my friends do. Any one else feel incredibly alone with your experience of all this?
>I couldn't help but be outraged at the futility of it all. Billions of dollars, tons of concrete and rebar - a huge waste of raw materials, imho.
Edgy, I'm right there with ya. I have the same feelings every time I look over at that still-under-construction second Bay Bridge, every time I see another mega mall being constructed, every time I see the 101 in Marin getting widened. It's a very, very strange feeling to know that all of this is about to come to a rather abrupt stop, and all that construction is going to look, as JH Kunstler says, like the greatest misallocation of resources in history. It's a very schizophrenic feeling to hold two totally incompatible visions of reality in your head at the same time. How could it not make you feel that way? You are most definitely not alone. The last time I was down in LA, I thought my mind was going to tear itself apart trying to make sense of it all...
--C
Energy consultant, writer, blogger www.getreallist.com
I live between Austin/San Antonio in the country. And I have to say, I spend as much time away from the city as possible. Whenever I do go, I get a bad feeling... like I don't want to be caught there when the lights go out. My mind has a hard time wrapping itself around all of this. I feel like I'm on drugs that keep me addicted to the watching. Today I should be tilling up more garden. Instead, I'm over-educating myself about the world via the net, mostly TOD.
My partner's company car came this week - Chevrolet Impala - yippee! Now I'll have to sell the 2005 Corolla 'cause we don't need 3 vehicles (I have a '93 Toyota PU). His option was to take the car or stop receiving mileage reimbursement. And, they can track him in the new car. It kills me that he has to work there. Oh, and sales are off... again.
Is it happy hour yet?
Heh, sometimes when I'm out in groups or at parties, I look at all the faces and wonder who will make it through the best, who might not, how much of it is really the "luck of the draw." I never see kids now without a bit of remorse and guilt creeping in. Cassandra indeed.
The SF Bay area is atleast somewhat better off than other metros in the US. The bay area atleast has a semi-moderate climate and a better water situation than other southwestern cities (it is pumped in for sure, but less effort is required to do so). The area is also relatively accessible to the Central Valley agricultural areas. Although growth and industrialized ag have take a toll on the local environment, sufficient land labor and water remain to cultivate crops for consumption in the bay area. Given the liklihood most of the existing agricultural applications (providing high value crops for global export) will be rendered moot by high transport costs, redirecting the lost activity into crops for local consumption will still probably work, even at reduced yields. Heck, even rail connections from the ag areas to Oakland still operate today.
Sure it wont be all great but all things being equal, I'd take the SF Bay area over LA and definately Phoenix or Houston.
If you're interested in off-grid living, check out Home Power magazine.
http://www.homepower.com
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com/)
And it's appropriate to add that Home Power, which has just celebrated its 20th year of publishing has a great many articles about Grid-Tied setups as well as Off-grid arrangements.
As with the 'Back to the Landers', Hippies, etc.. (which can be pretty uninformative stereotypes anyway) , their tone has shifted significantly over the years. Just a couple years ago, as I was picking up my first few issues, they had a monthly piece called 'Guerilla Solar' or something like that, where self-designated rebels were putting up rooftop systems in defiance of the 'Powers that Be', with the assumption that this was a sort of Underground, Heroic and Conspiratorial activity.. and it might well have been. But today, that part of the Mag has pieces on Legislative Energy Policy, and a regular called 'Code Corner' which instructs do-it-yourselfers on how to comply with the electrical (NEC), building and fire codes, so that Solar and Wind installations are consistently safe and can be respected by the municipalities where they are increasingly showing up.
I have heard it claimed that there have been no electrocution or fire deaths attributed to a Domestic Solar Installations, and I hope it's both true and stays that way.. but its continued association with all things Woodstock will make solar have to fight for respect for some time to come.
Bob Fiske
I've actually been debating this one for a long time at least with myself. And yes for those who have not figured it out yet I have quite heated internal debates :)
I think the right answer is to move to very low tech solutions that do not require any electricity. Passive solar and the reverse roman chimney.
http://www.ecoholistic.com/solar-energy/solar-power/solar-power-air-cond...
For colder climates a return to the ice box for refrigeration.
Ammonia refrigerators work in warmer climates.
In general the basic house should be readily buildable using
local resources and at best a minimal machine shop.
Reasonable glass and concrete manufacture could be assumed.
Now the Romans and indeed all our ancestors relied heavily on wood and charcoal so the big debate would be living without extensive use of wood.
Homes should in my opinion not be high tech in their basic
functions or require any high tech outside materials.
This means for example that you probably are looking at
moving to heavy glass/clay pipes for example for water.
You can have electricity but the idea would be that it would
be a add on and you would not wire the house with copper.
This probably means you have a sort of central electric center if you will with all your appliances around this center. This implies a sort of hub and spoke design to minimize wiring and plumbing. Also you probably want low voltage direct current. Also for a lot of places that we use electric motors now you might be able to replace this with high pressure air or water with the low pressure side used for some other purpose.
A bit rambling but I think with a lot of thought you could build houses that where both low tech in the sense of materials and easily repairable and used a minimum amount of precious copper etc. Glass stone and clay would be 99% of the house along with a small amount of wood. You would be surprised I think to realize how much could be made out of various glasses.
Things like PV/Windmills etc would then be needed only to power a few electronics so you could post on the Oildrum.
I live off the grid. I have since the late '80s. There are lots and lots of people around me who live off the grid.
I use an 'off the sales floor' 18 cu.ft. Kenmore Energy Star refrigerator.
I get about 90% of my electricity from 1.2 kW of PV panels. The rest (cloudy day power) comes from diesel/gas but that should change when I get around to installing a wind generator.
By using CFLs, a low pull laptop (~15 watts), and other 'devices' chosen with their energy needs in mind I get by quite well.
I use a between 5 and 10 gallons of propane per month for cooking and water heating (2 people). That amount will decrease when I find the time to install a solar water heater/pre-heater.
And I ran some quick numbers. When a BEV vehicle with either a 120-150 mile range or the ability to charge quickly I can install another 1kW of panels and quit buying gas. (Might have to rent a gas/hybrid for the occasional long trip.)
My entire power system - panels, inverter, batteries, diesel remote start generator, etc. - cost just under $10k.
One can live off the grid quite nicely, thank you. ;o)
What's your rough geographical location ?
Flaws in EM Theory
The key is to replace all the usage of PV with alternatives.
At the end of the day your pretty much stuck with electricity for stuff like laptops. At least for now.
So a absorption fridge could replace your electric powered one for example. Much cheaper thermal solar collectors could then be used.
The small amount of propane your using could be replaced with wood potentially via gasification/charcoal.
Note that 10K is a lot of money.
The scenario your not solving is you can afford to install the PV panels now but lets say a storm drops a branch on them. And it after a economic crash it may even be personal say your out of work. At this point you cannot replace the panels so suddenly you have no electricity.
The critical point is that you have no replacement strategy.
What I'm talking about are approaches that can be replaced with local resources. PV and high tech windmills that are not easily fabricated locally are not ELP and not really a long term off grid solution simply because your not going to be assured of having the income required to replace them.
I think the issue here is how long the bottleneck lasts. How long before there is some semblance of society emerging and what it will look like.
I for one believe that there will be something of a functioning society complete with energy of some sort.
The key is first to get through the bottleneck/hourglass, then be able to adapt to what comes after.
I have a portable solar power pack I built.
Handtruck with cabinet containing;
2-200ah 6volt batteries
1200 watt inverter/charger
digital controller with 2-80 watt PVs
This does very well to smooth out the black and brown outs.
I am getting a few 12 volt lights and other necessities
We have reduced our electric use enormously. I don't have the monthlies off hand but we can go several days off this 200amphour pack. Longer if we really needed to and planed for it.
At the end of the day your pretty much stuck with electricity for stuff like laptops.
So go over to laptopgiving.org and get yourself an XO Laptop which is designed for third world communities where there is no electricity supply or communications infrastructure. It is also designed to be extremely rugged, with no moving parts, and to be easy to fix.
It's basically designed to be used in a rural African village which is a good approximation of a worst case peak oil scenario. The system can run on solar or a hand crank. It has legendary wifi and mesh networking for long range communications with your neighbors if they have one without any internet infrastructure required. You can browse with a web browser if you can reach someone who can reach someone who has internet. Traditional wifi also works.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Battery_and_power