Off the Grid and Thriving!
Mother Earth News / Cam Mather / February/March 2010
As we begin to experience the converging challenges of resource depletion, climate change and the ongoing financial crisis, we need to make ourselves more resilient to shocks to the system.
If you do decide to go off the grid, generating your own electricity from the sun and wind provides an incredible sense of well-being — not only from a sense of independence, but also from the realization that you aren’t using any electricity that comes from coal. Powering your home with renewable energy is a huge step toward reducing your carbon footprint. We started with a fairly small solar-electric system that the previous owners of our home had installed, and we’ve steadily added more panels. As we learned more about peak oil, we were determined to reduce our use of nonrenewable fossil fuels for both cooking and powering our gasoline generator. There are times when there isn’t enough sunlight or wind to charge our off-grid batteries, so we use a fossil fuel-powered generator as a backup.
[ Hat tip to SWITCH ]
