Re: [pf] Off the grid

At 13:59 19/08/99 -0500, Diane Fitzsimmons wrote:
>Tully talks of wanting to be off the grid and doing without electricity.
>
>I know there are more sustainable ways of getting electricity (such as
>solar and wind), but if you had to do away with all your electrical
>things, what would you miss most?
>
>
**  Just an hour ago, I was on the phone making arrangements for getting us
off the grid - it's been part of our planning for more than 5 years, but
I'm not depressed (at least most of the time), so I'm now willing to deal
with the reverses that will come with changing our energy systems.

**  Also, Greenpeace NZ has made arrangements for people to use the
electricity grid as a back-up supply - you feed excess power from your
solar PV panels into the grid while the sun shines (saving some draw-down
of our hydro-electric lakes, ~70% of NZ's supply), and draw from the grid
when your power use is greater than the supply from your own roof, like at
night.

**  We're currently in a suburb, on the grid (with our frig and
water-heater turned on by timer only at night when the system's not
strained), but I've been saving up for years and now have enough to buy the
6 or more solar photo-voltaic panels, batteries and inverter, so that we
can run our computer-plus-CD and lights completely off the grid. Initially
on a trial basis while we're still here, then as our sole source of
electric energy when we build our retirement house on the farm.

**  There's lots more I could say (I was looking into some roof-mounted
solar water heaters this morning as well), but I'll answer Diane's "poll".

**  Since I have no intention of doing without a certain minimum of
electricity, I'll answer the closely-related question: 
   "Which home equipment will you expect to continue using, i.e. will be
willing to pay the capital and energy supply costs of?"

**  In that phone call this morning, I told the supplier of independent
power systems: 
  "We will certainly have the computer on, maybe 20 hours a day. We'll of
course have (compact-fluorescent) lights, but they're only 11 and 16 watts.
I suppose we'll use a refrigerator, but I can easily do without one; we no
longer use it much, and none of us use the freezer any more. The washing
machine is a very efficient one we bought for this purpose ('Smart Drive'
by Fisher & Paykel), and we use it only twice a week."

**  For Diane:
(1) The compact fluorescent lights are essential - I've lived with no
energy except solar-powered battery lights and LP (propane) Gas for
cooking, for most of a year. (Sun-heated water in a black plastic bag, for
my shower.)

(2) Our computer uses 35-40W itself, and the monitor (turned off at night)
takes the total up to 95W. Although my wife and I have lived 80% of our
lives without them, computers are very valuable to us now, and we'd feel
deprived without one. That was the one thing I really missed when I was
living in the furnished end of our barn, in 1995-6.

(3) The washing machine (cold water) is the next requirement for electric
power; our friends on the same farm do their washing when the wind's
blowing, because they have a 1 kW wind generator. Our washing requirements
are small and the machine is so efficient we can run it off batteries
(through a sine-wave inverter), so I'll wash when the batteries have plenty
of charge.

(4) By shopping twice a week (I can make do with once a week), we can do
without a refrigerator, but I think my wife would want one even though it
probably is the main decider how big our electric supply system will have
to be. However, it may not be as big a power drain as I calculated a year
or two ago: the local supplier recommends 'VestFrost' fridges since they
use only an 80W compressor (instead of the usual 300W or more), and have
really good insulation. 
    When my wife and I lived in Ghana im 1969, we holidayed in a
guest-house up in the hills, where we got well-used-to a kerosene-powered
silent refrigerator, probably like the Servel.

(5) We greatly valued our big window-fan when we lived in Ottawa in the
late 1970s, but don't need anything like that now we're close to the ocean.
Some years ago, we had a few days of 'heat-wave' here, but wearing only
shorts, doors and windows open, and the odd cool shower were sufficient. Of
course, we didn't try to do as much, on those hot days. We've learned a lot
from living in the Tropics!

**  And that's it! Other energy supply (e.g. cooking) will be by LPG
(liquid petroleum gas), and hot water mostly from the sun, with some winter
boosting from our wood stove wet-back. The passive-solar house will keep us
as warm as we wish (we wear winter clothes in the winter), with the wood
stove for cold snaps. Our friends have been living off-the-grid for many
years; see Jeanette's:
http://www.greens.org.nz/people/jeanette/JF-pg3.html

**  I expect to have most of the system going well-before the end of 1999.

David.
(David MacClement) d1v9d @ bigfoot.com (remove nospam spaces)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html#top
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