Do you dream of "living off the grid"?

How many people can afford to waste money so conspicuously? And how much carbon-based energy was used to construct their carbon-neutral equipment?

Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"

Ben, you asked "And how much carbon-based energy was used to construct their carbon-neutral equipment?" - to that, I don't know. I do know that it takes energy to make anything, and that systems are probably not in place to use solar power to create solar power grids.

Your answer is short and I don't want to make any assumptions. Are you saying other people shouldn't invest carbon-based energy to make other structures that don't use it, and just continue to use carbon-based energy?

Friends of ours that live semi-off the grid are sometimes in grid lock with semis as they cross the country in thier Airstream trailers. Even with gas prices high, living this way, or on board boats, has several advantages including new vistas, new people and inexpensive utility costs, even more so with solar panels on the roof.

I've looked into this, and the price point gets a little easier if you take one major thing into account: You can't live like you're still on the grid

By this, I mean that the microwave can't be running while the dryer is on "less dry" mode (whatever that means) while the computer is on and unattended and the television is on while there are lights on in every room. If you start treating electricity like a commodity rather than an all-you-can-eat buffet, you start making some choices. Once you're consumption goes down, the price starts going down. At this point, it's no longer the realm of the wealthy.

Heck, we live on the grid and can't run the microwave and the air conditioner at the same time!

Kenneth, your experience must have been very, very interesting. How often did you have to rely on the back up generators?

You bring up the mobile people, Adam. I've heard that there is a boom in solar power to support 12 volt RV systems... can you share any info or links about this?

Good point, Michael. Good, good point. Who wouldn't rather make the decision to use energy as a commodity instead of having that choice made for them?

Do you blow a fuse, Moggy? Suffer brown outs?

"Of course these systems aren't cheap. The Juenemanns took out a second mortgage to pay for them. It was a big decision, but Juenemann says they're doing what they can to make sure their young daughters will inherit a liveable world. "

Currently, the rich or those who want to sacrifice their daughters college fund can afford to "feel good" by living off the grid.

The daughters may inherit a livable world, they just will be the poorer for it.

When alternative energies are finally embraced by corporations, we will all reap the benefits - economical and environmental. There is money to be made in new energies, just as there was in new technology. I remember when many companies were slow to switch from typewriters to word processing because they thought it was too expensive. Look at Ford Motor Company -- had they been proactive and progressive enough to research the use of E85 - or hybrid electrics - or other alternative fuels - maybe they wouldn't have lost such a devastatingly large part of the market.

Change usually hurts on some level in the beginning, but the rewards are there.

//Currently, the rich or those who want to sacrifice their daughters college fund can afford to "feel good" by living off the grid

Let's not assume that going off the grid is just for the rich.

Most of the people that I've seen living partly "off the grid" have been anything but rich. The folks I knew in Maine who split their own stovewood for the winter didn't think of it as a feel-good option, or even necessarily as a green planet lifestyle. A woodstove was the most economical option. The people living that lifestyle out of practical necessity certainly outnumbered their neighbors who were doing it for other reasons.

Bordering on a rhetorical question: how many major changes come from aligning people who have only one viable choice for reasons of survival with people whose resources allow them to choose the very same thing for reasons of conscience?

//How many people can afford to waste money so conspicuously?

How unfortunate. The same comment could be tossed at anyone who makes donations or creates art or invests time & energy in ANYTHING that fails to guarantee a short-term capital gain.

Plainly, everyone who has taken out a second mortgage has been in the position to afford something on the same scale. Plenty of people use that option for things that are frivolous. Or life-or-death. Or rooted in the future. Or merely vitally important to them no matter how the rest of the world might see it.

It's not a given, by any means, that the Juenemann's are "wast(ing) money so conspicuously." Nor does their choice merit any more praise or condemnation than people who remodel to add Jacuzzis & garages.

//And how much carbon-based energy was used to construct their carbon-neutral equipment?

Perhaps a more thoughtful version of the question would be this:

At the time of installation, how much energy is used to create the carbon-neutral equipment and bring it into production? Is it more or less than. that used to provide the same peak level of conventional energy? If the carbon-neutral equipment takes more, how much of its lifetime will it have to operate to conserve that amount of energy?

Over its whole lifetime, how much net energy will the carbon-neutral equipment conserve? Given expected energy prices, would the owners save enough to pay back their investment? How about to recoup the time cost (aka interest and/or opportunity cost) for that money?

At the end of the equipment's lifetime, what percentage of the total investment would the Juenemann's want to have saved or earned in order to feel that their effort was worthwhile? Would it be enough if they lost money but knew they had lived for that time on the smallest energy footprint they could manage? Would it still be enough if their example had not encouraged a single other soul to follow suit?

Gary, I'm not sure I caught the detail about not being able to send their children to college...but I'm more interested in what _you_ would do. I take it you wouldn't invest to live off the grid?

You make an interesting point about R&D Diana, and it makes me wonder about how companies balance risk with payoff. Many companies are started with a certain amount of risk and are rewarded for it.

Kate brought up interesting questions. I would love to follow someone's experiments that measure how much net energy the carbon-neutral equipment actually conserve. Projections are one thing, but what an amazing blog/series that would ultimately be.

Thanks for the follow up Kenneth. You must have had quite an adventure on the island! To your final point, I would be curious what all those thousands of people - drops in the bucket, really - could generate. Could it fill the bucket? Could it displace so much we'd all be surprised?

Julia, we live in an old house that has old wiring, we have to reset the circuit breakers constantly!

Julia, I think that it is great that some people are paying the big price to buy new technology. That is what free enterprise is all about. If enough do that the providers will make enough to continue to develop their product and bring the price down. As that happens more can afford it and eventually it will be available to lots more people.

I recall being trained in computer programming in 1970 on an IBM 360/67 system worth several million dollars and taking up a few thousand square feet of space. Today you can buy the same capability at Toys R Us for $20 except that the toy actually has considerably more capability. My latest notebook computer cost me $1000 and has over 10,000 times the capability of the million dollar machine.

I am all for progress in every direction. My only point is that we are years away from making these alternative energy sources commercially viable for the vast majority of us and in the meantime I suggest that we allow our companies to drill for oil in our country. Our Congress has placed off limits over 80% of our oil and natural gas resources causing us to pay far higher prices and also be dependent on foreigners who are not particularly friendly.

Best regards, Ben
Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed"

Julia, my kids step Grandfather on his mothers side was an electrical engineer at McDonald Douglas, he wired planes.

When he retired, he bought some land out in the high desert north of Edwards AFB in California. He had a double-wide prefab home moved in and had water, but no phone, gas or electricity. This was before the Cell Phones, but he had a pager that took messages. His house was powered only by a bank of batteries which he charged with solar cells. He had his stove, fridge, air conditioner, TV radio and lights running off the batteries which went to an inverter. He even had a golf cart that had a solar panel on top to recharge the batteries that it ran off of. This would have all been in the mid eighties to when he died sometime around the end of the 2001 or 2002.

He had a small gas powered generator. He was thinking about getting some propane things, but never did that. Sometimes he would just run his pickup on idle and take the power from the alternator and charge his batteries.

I asked him once why he didn't get a phone. He said that a phone hookup would cost $60,000. He said that gas or electricity would cost more. But once he got the first set of telephone poles in the other could be strung up on them and would have been cheaper.

He did fine and lived out there for over fifteen years or so.

My kid and I spent a week or so out there a couple of times, and then we'd just go out there for a weekend several times. It was quite nice and very clear at night and quiet.

I live off the grid. I have no powerline, no generator, no plumbing, no phone, no television. I do listen to NPR and MPR on my radio. I cut and split and drag my firewood out of the forest, burn it in my box stove. I cook on top of the stove or over an open fire, but sometimes use my MSR camp stove. I built my cabin thirty years ago from aspen logs, with the help of some friends and neighbors. It cost me five hundred dollars to build. I put a new tin roof on it a couple of years ago, as the old roll roofing was blowing in the wind.

Off the grid. That is a hopeful phrase, but I know I don't really live off the grid, entirely. I use batteries. I still buy most of my food at the grocery store. I drive a 1993 light pickup truck. I sell plasma in Duluth for gas money. I rely on a post office box for mail and my friends for sauna, company, and help pulling my truck out of the ditch when I need it, usually a couple times a year.

I have a lot of hand tools, including a chain saw. I own a lot of books, most of them packed away in boxes. I go to sleep when it gets dark and get up when it gets light. I usually use the computer in the library, but sometimes I am somewhere so I can use the fancy wireless my brother sent me from California.

My brother is always trying to get me to move to California. My sister lives there too, both of them in the LA metropolitan area. They don't understand about trees, and the sanctity of night.

One of my neighbors doesn't understand about the sanctity of night either. He came up here a few years ago, bulldozed flat a couple of acres that had been hundred-year-old forest, built a huge house and ran a huge generator until he mangaged to convince the power company to run a line up the old railroad grade, ten miles from the wires. Now he has the only yard light for miles and miles and miles, and his house is lit up like UFO bait. I curse him, roundly and sourly and with a considerable amount of bile, every time I drive up the grade at night. You can't miss his place.

I hide out in the woods because I don't like people very much. Oh, individuals are fine, mostly, but people in groups get ugly, uglier as the groups get larger. I wonder if I could hit his streetlight with a wrist rocket, and think of it each and every time I see it, but his night blindness is not sufficient reason for me to break my lifelong vow of non-violence and passivity. The hell with him.

So now the grid is a lot closer to my cabin, in fact, it is now at the end of my half mile long driveway. Vertically, the grid cieling is at about a thousand feet, which is as close as I can get on google maps to my place. I can see the trace of my driveway, as it crosses my neighbor's property and enters my little clearing. I can see a little spot, which is the roof of my one room log hut.

I love my cabin. I have a large window which looks out on trees. Nothing but trees. I have a sleeping loft, with a smaller window which I can open when the cabin gets too hot. It looks out on nothing but trees also, and has a wonderful view of dawn, which I see nearly every morning.

It is true that I live in poverty, but I don't mind. The mother of one of my ex-wives used to tell about how she grew up on a farm near Park Rapids, back in the great depression, and they didn't have any money, but they didn't lack for anything either. They didn't know they were poor. She has money now, a nice retirement, a brick house in the city, a son who never visits and a daughter who says she hates going there, because her mother is so mean and miserable. Her mother lives on vodka and orange juice these days, and once in a while a cookie or a little ice cream.

Why do people act that way? I ask you. What profit has a man who gains the world and loses his soul? Sin comes from an old word which means error. Is my ex-mother-in-law better off than me? She drives a late model car and goes to church every sunday. I never go to church any more, havn't for years. But I have studied the bibles, and language, and science and mathematics. I still don't know the truth, but at least I know I don't know. Do you?

I want off the grid. Debt free is the way to be.

living off of the grid is so empowering. It makes a person feel so good in side, that all of the sacrifices are worth them. People don't need all of the things that on-the-grid offers. How did people live just 80 years ago? I live off-the-grid and have solar panels. They are expensive but we buy them as we can afford them and chose not to use credit cards for anything unless we can pay if off the next bill. We dry our clothing outside on lines in the summer, and on racks near the woodstove in the winter.  We garden to save money. All groceries cause the use of gas to ship them, stock them, package them... We grow what we can. We barely use lights. We don't watch t.v. We go outside for entertainment. Right-on!!!!