It took about a year for Luke to regret his move off the grid. “It’s not that it wasn’t what we expected,” he explains. “We wanted the difficulty of it.” But he also wanted to show people it was possible to live with a smaller carbon footprint; instead, he was burning gasoline and watching the island’s electric utility outpace him, installing solar power and cutting carbon all over the island.
“That was all happening, not because of me,” he remembers thinking, “but despite me and my efforts.”
He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model.
But, I like the ending:
Walking me out past the taro patch, back across the swinging bridge that spans the creek surrounding his property, Luke points out one last thing. “It’s funny,” he says, “it was only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.”
He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort.
This was more important to him than "saving the
planet." His goal of going off grid was to position
himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being
happy that the island is converting to solar at a
pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels
cheated of his goal of being a role model.
That's harsh. If you put hundreds of hours into doing something you thought was really valuable, and it turned out that it wasn't actually valuable, I think you'd be sad too.
it may be harsh but I feel it's accurate. the same lone hero sentiments that causes the "not invented here syndrome" led this guy to toil hundreds of hours when he could have stashed that ego and contributed to the island's efforts of renewable energy.
As I read the article, he went off grid to show everyone else that it was a viable idea. Meanwhile, the island power grid did some pretty awesome things with solar cell parks and battery storage, rendering his pioneering efforts futile. To his credit, he seems fully aware of this.
The whole story thus boils down to a nice, illustrative all-other-things-equal experiment of how off-the-grid self sufficiency stacks up against a renewable energy power grid "done right". The latter winning by a large margin.
That being said, there are plenty of sunny places on Earth where the power grid is dysfunctional, or is hard to access. Those would be more obvious places for DIY solar panels.
Cooperative and competitive approaches both have their place, and are both necessary to move us forward. I'd say it's pretty fucking honest to admit one's attempt has failed rather than doubling down - about the best we can hope for.
To me, a lot of "off the grid" attempts look like elective attempts at re-solving issues dealt with by plain rural poverty out of necessity, often overspending on capital goods to do so (eg how much are storage batteries, shipped to Hawaii?). But even so, they are valuable as a different starting culture means different assumptions about what amenities are necessary, and different approaches to solving/suffering problems - eg the expectation that there will be dependable electricity for solid refrigeration, copious light at night, computers, and electronic entertainment - rather than simply shrugging off that the benefits aren't needed.
It sounds like the refrigerator is the problem here:
"But they still have rainy weeks where they run out of power and have to run their gas-powered generator to keep the refrigerator from spoiling."
You don't need to run any other appliances all night when the sun isn't shining. Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power.
I live off-grid and we run laptops (using boost converters) and lights directly off 12v DC. A big part of making an off-grid system work is reducing your consumption drastically in ways that you can't even do if you're plugged into the grid.
> Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power.
Of the three appliances above, only the dryer uses a large amount of ENERGY, and energy is what's important for sustainability calculations. I can run my RV's microwave just fine from a 2000-watt inverter and two deep-cycle batteries which are recharged from a 180-watt solar panel, as long as I don't run it very long and I use it during daytime. An electric dryer is a different story because it has to run a long time to be useful. But there's no reason a toaster and microwave can't be part of a modest PV system.
> Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power.
Modern dryers are actually quite efficient. I live in an apartment without a balcony, and bought a new electric condenser dryer the other week. A standard cycle at half load (4.5kg / 9lb) uses 1.2 kWh. If you use it once every two or three days, over the course of a year it will use about the same amount of electricity as a fridge freezer.
But yes if I was living off grid, it would probably be the first thing to go...
" Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer?"
To me, only the electric dryer might be optional because the alternatives are even worse.
A microwave or toaster would be replaced by another appliance, which has its own problems. Toaster ovens would run longer than the microwave. You can have a propane baking oven or propane burners on a stove, but this isn't all that efficient either. Or you can make fire and cook there, just to warm up your leftovers from yesterday. A Microwave or toaster seems like a comparative smart choice.
The electric clothes dryer seems the wasteful bit, since you can just hang the clothes on a drying rack. I haven't personally used a clothes dryer in years. It is most definitely a luxury, even if one has children since folks can just buy a few more clothes to make up for drying time.
The sun is also very intense when it shines and it dries out clothes very quick. We have problems because the sun dries out the soil too much for plants so we have to put them in shadier areas. I live in an area with 300+cm of annual rainfall.
Depends what you are warming - cold pasta dish? Just pop it in a pan with a little water or oil and will be hot in no time - can heat with gas (or wood, or biomass if you want to be truly off-grid [off-grid doesn't always meet environmentally friendly sadly...]). I guess that is one of the 'benefts' of off grid living in the UK - you will likely always have a fire burning anyway much of the year.
Heating with energy generated from solar is going to be 'costly' for some time. Amazed they run a tumble dryer - but guess it is very humid there?
> Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power.
For the former two, I think microwaves and toasters are efficient uses of energy. Heating/toasting the equivalent with propane or some other fuel isn't worth the trade-off of running the generator for a few extra minutes.
But I guess it depends on how big you size your inverter, and if you intend on having a 2ndary power source.
> He and Sokchea scaled back their lives to live within their solar-powered means — ditching their toaster and microwave, giving up laundry on cloudy days when their batteries wouldn’t be able to recharge.
I read this as they completely got rid of their toaster and microwave. Otherwise I think it would read "giving up their toaster, microwave and laundry on cloudy days".
Is it you that I recall reading about who is/was living on the big island? Would be neat to meet up sometime if you're open to it, would be neat to see what you've built considering that you also do software development :)
Hey, not the poster you responded to, but I am an off-gridder in Puna who codes and actually was classmates with Luke Evslin (super good guy back then, sounds like he still is). I would love for a group of big island Hacker News reading off-gridders to get to know each other!
Environmental problems seem intimidating to me because by their very nature they require so much collaboration. My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet- what matters is whether I can convince large groups of people or policymakers to do the same. Getting everyone on this page seems challenging.
> My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet
I noticed something one day. I had recently built a home gym and gave some friends a tour of it.
The next week I hear that they're now working out and going to their local gym.
That moment made me realize the positive effect our actions can have on others.
It'll be the same with living green. Just by doing it, you are convincing other people that it's possible and that they should give it a try.
My home is now 100% powered by solar (just got the Tesla batteries installed a few days ago). It cost less than a kitchen remodel, will be paid off in 10 years, is 100% off-grid 100% of the year, and we've sacrificed no amenities (still got the A/C going comfortably :) ).
I'm one small fish in the pond, but my house is now a blaring advertisement for a greener future.
Did you literally cut the utility wire to be able to proclaim off grid on hacker news, or are you grid neutral and still keep the connection around for emergencies? If you did cut i am curious the plan for say a very cloudy 7 days.
I've not made the jump (indeed, don't have solar at all) since we don't own our house. But I briefly looked into the solution here, and a suitable gas generator is ~$5k.
Would be expensive to run, sure, but very quickly cheaper to have it on standby than stay connected to the grid.
How so? At least in our area, the fixed portion of the electric bill is only a few dollars. And, hell, I imagine I could cancel my service and pay nothing, connected or no.
(And the grid is vital to a future of country-wide renewable power IMO, so I'm not personally eager to undermine it)
Some of this will depend on what kind of regulation exists/has been purchased in your area. If you're not dumping excess power back to the grid it should just be a low usage connection, but in some places I believe if you have solar things get more complicated no matter your connection type.
Everyone has to try to live green, and we should admire and strive to surpass the ones who take it to an extreme.
We know from statistics and economics that the rest of the world will want the same standard of living as the west, and that they will reach there at somepoint. There for it's very important to deprioritize things that are inherently not green in our culture and make green living a status thing.
Transportation, food, clothing, communication and work are all things that has to be reconsidered to be green.
> My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet- what matters is whether I can convince large groups of people or policymakers to do the same. Getting everyone on this page seems challenging.
A strong sign that there exist too many people on earth. Better strongly decrease the birth rate.
That's the problem, you aren't going to convince any important amount of people; neither is me or everyone else who thinks the same way; so then we should focus into a more long-term solution, meaning kids, or more specifically: schools. Every school (middle and high) should have at least 1 daily hour about how we are destroying the planet and how to stop its destruction; with less focus on "love the trees" and more focus on "we would die if the planet didn't have trees; so take care of them", and the chemical composition of non-renewable compounds and its practical effects over health, drought, etc.
But this is not going to start with public schools, because that would mean convincing policymakers and we established that doesn't work well; so if its starts somewhere its going to be private schools; funded by people interested in making the world greener.
> Every school (middle and high) should have at least 1 daily hour about how we are destroying the planet and how to stop its destruction; with less focus on "love the trees" and more focus on "we would die if the planet didn't have trees; so take care of them", and the chemical composition of non-renewable compounds and its practical effects over health, drought, etc.
It's disturbing to me that anybody thinks fear mongering and brain washing is an acceptable solution if they think the end goal is a worthy cause.
Do a little bit of soul searching and research before you decide to attack the minds of an entire generation because you read an activist pamphlet that affected you.
So if I tell you an avalanche is coming to kill you (and its true) is that fear mongering? Does it make me a "fear monguerer" to tell you that "you should run for your life" because well... you should run for your life? Or it's not fear mongering just because its a short term (AKA urgent) danger?
About the brain washing thing; I also think such school should dedicate some hours to produce a more skeptic/rational society, skeptic of authority (religion/goverment et all) and of course skeptic of the schooling itself.
"attack the minds of an entire generation"... as oppose to what? The free minds that we have now that voted for Trump? The free minds that pledge loyalty to a flag every morning but none to humanity? A free mind is the one who understands its world better, even the "fearsome" parts.
By the way asking me to do "inner soul searching" is the lowest kind of ad hominem, because its not even a rational one (e.g you belong to X political party so your opinion doesn't count) but an emotional one (e.g your soul is rotten and therefore you have rotten opinions).
Parent comment is perhaps a little strongly worded, but I don’t see it as suggesting brain washing. Is teaching about public health or sex education brain washing? Is teaching calculus brain washing? Why would teaching about the impact we have on our environment in aggregate be brain washing? We as a species have not adapted to think or care beyond our closest tribe, not have the intuitive capacity to deal with large scale statistics describing the immense power we have in aggregate. For what it’s worth, i am somewhat doubtful that type of education would have much effect - what easier target for natural teenage skepticism of authority and rebellion... but it might help soften some of the impact we are having.
What I love about technology is that "real" high technology doesn't have mountains of transistors and actuators. It has lots of the most abundant materials the planet has to offer. Soil, rock, sun, air. Technology harmonizes with all these things because if it didn't, there could never be enough of it to make any kind of difference.
The amount of scale involved simply boggles the imagination. Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. But the best we could come up with was pumped storage, and that's simply not an option everywhere.
China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does.
We look at cars and computers and think that technology is always going to get more sophisticated, harder for the average joe to work on. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction now. We are going to have to value things like repairability and durability, aspects that are meaningless inside tech bubbles, simply because when one of your 500lb batteries breaks, you can't exactly get another 500lb battery out there. You have to fix it. Swap it out for a spare, sure, but you need to be able to repair it to return it to the pool.
> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so.
Until very recently (and maybe even now) the electric utilities spent less on R&D than the dog food industry [0]. Because they didn't need to. There was virtually no need for storage before PV became cheap and fossil fuel became expensive and the regulated monopolies had to start thinking about competition from renewables. Although most of them still haven't recognized this.
> R&D spending of Vertically integrated companies v. Utilities?
For Energy related R&D See: GE, Siemens, BP, Shell, Exxonmobile, not the local gas station.
>> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would
think was perfected back in the fifties or so.
When you can scale energy production on demand with knobs and levers, why?
Here and now: When do renewables create an excess of energy so great that the baseload power sources can't be scaled back to balance it and greater after that to warrant the infrastructure and efficiency penalty of batteries?
And yet pumped storage has been on line for decades. According to this brief reference [1] Castaic Lake in the LA DWP system has been doing pumped storage since 1972.
True. Peaking load was one of the few reasons (maybe the only reason) for storage before renewables. Pumped hydro was just about the only option. It works great as long as you have an elevated lake nearby.
Look to corporations or government, 50,000lb batteries would be repaired mostly because at massive scales it's cheaper. Think of, for example, the Navy stripping & rebuilding entire ships. They could have made a new hull, but a huge crew of workers is cheaper.
The main reason consumer stuff is not repaired, I've decided, is the scale is so small that the savings, too, are so small they vanish.
I agree. Sometimes I review what 70s or 80s were like: lots of folks who were interested in electronics and computers essentially built the very first personal computers and software. Now, can we expect some new technology to be invented by these kinds of enthusiasts these days? I don't think so. Technology has become too sophisticated and complex that no single mind can comprehend it, let alone coming up with a better version of it. Those batteries you mentioned, they most probably will just be replaceable, not fixable by average Joe.
If they're only replaceable, then eventually nobody's going to buy them. So many people I know won't buy electric vehicles because they're worried about what's going to happen when the battery goes bad.
Individuals think on one scale, organizations think on another. Individuals can't plan for a lot of things, how many people do you know save up to get their tires replaced? I bet not many. But organizations can work that sort of thing into operational plans and pay people to keep up maintenance schedules.
But all of that breaks down when you're talking about long distances. The cost of shipping out a brand new tractor is going to so dwarf any kind of repair that even at the organizational level, the company that farmers pay to provide equipment is going to demand that tractors be serviceable.
> China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does.
Besides accessible space travel, one of the things I most regret not being immortal for is that I don't expect to live to see how/if any nation on the African continent pulls that off.
The future is not at all evenly distributed, and Africa still doesn't really have too many export industries that don't rely on resource extraction, but it's definitely happening at the moment. It's just really under-reported.
What 90% of humanity did, for centuries. Classic peasant stuff, you know.
It's not fun. You depend on the food from your land to eat, so you can't afford to experiment with new methods of doing anything, or grow "cash crops" that you can't directly eat. If the rains fail, you starve. If there's a locust swarm, you starve. If your plow oxen dies, and you can't get another one, you starve.
Sorry, I know what it is. The comment I was replying to wrote "sustenance farming". I wasn't sure if this was a term where they lived, autocorrect or a mistake.
One thing that a grid depends upon is all the transmission and distribution infrastructure. This is an incredible expense, but it is amortized over a very long long time.
On the mainland, investment in that infrastructure has gone in a cycle, I think we're coming off a decade of very large investment after a decade of 5x less investment in that infrastructure.
What's going to replace the expansion of transmission and distribution will be storage. It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand, rather than something closer to average demand. It's that peak demand that is the most costly to serve, batteries help with this immensely. In NYC, Con ED is delaying $1.1B in substation upgrades through the use of storage:
> It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand
Electricity billing is fundamentally flawed: Industrial users will pay a demand charge according to their peak usage, when they should really pay their contribution toward the local/regional/national utility's peak usage.
Residential customers may pay a time-of-day generation rate, but still pay a flat per-kwh rate for transmission and distribution. All 3 should be time-of-day, at the minimum. Wires sag more when you use them during the hottest part of the day and when they're already running hot. Upgrades need to happen to handle peak usage, not off-peak usage.
An additional complication is that generation and load aren't evenly distributed in a typical energy grid. This can create "traffic jams" that aren't reflected in a typical residential electric bill but something utilities and large business get to deal with.
In open energy markets like those in California and Texas there's things called "Locational Marginal Pricing" and "Congestion Revenue Rights" to deal with this.
If your idea of living off the grid relies on the products of a complex industrial society, then what's the point? Just to create the illusion of total individualism? If you want sustainability (and I do!) just be sustainable, and leave phoney hermit play out of it.
I would argue that this particular character was actually very receptive to the idea of still being part of society - he certainly doesn't come off as a individualistic idealogue.
He set a goal of being totally self-sustained, and achieved some amount of it, while eventually recognizing that the cost of such an experiment was higher than he had initially thought. The whole article ends with him coming to terms with the fact that society is necessary in so many ways, and that we can perhaps achieve sustainability easier as a collective, than as an individual.
Needlessly harsh. This guy started his project way before current large scale energy storage was even being considered. He genuinely tried to do his best to minimise his footprint.
It's so easy to read the story from the comfort of your chair and criticise, isn't it?
Just commenting on the discourse - I actually agree with you that GP was needlessly harsh. That said, given that sentiment, your comment would have been a lot more effective if you left out your last sentence.
The last sentence serves a purpose though. It urges the commenter to reflect on their own industriousness or lack thereof perhaps causing them to modify the standard by which they judge others.
It's hardly an insult though. You have to have at least the slightest thickness of skin to survive on the internet or to even just to practice self reflection.
There are two, not exclusive ideas here. First, when you are reading comments, you need a tough skin. I agree. Second, when writing comments, you can try not to be needlessly antagonistic. I hope you can agree with that.
Privacy, getting away from sensory bombardment of cities and things that constantly vie for your attention, sustainability, a feeling of purpose, an excuse to live a healthy lifestyle of hard work
I don't buy this, except for the very rare case .. the vast majority of people are social animals and enjoy the company of others to a certain degree, even if it means cracking open a laptop in a starbucks. And very very few really wants to do things the hard way for long periods of time.
Living off the grid is very practical. There is land on the big island or in the desert where you can get really cheap. Imagine owning a house (quality depending on effort you put in) in a warm climate for 20K. It's actually possible.
> even if it means cracking open a laptop in a starbucks
I would probably go with "Saying hi to the owner of the local general store" as a minimal amount of human contact. But then, I'd rather talk to shopkeeps than baristas even on a social day.
The author has probably romanticized the concept of a hermit, as literature and media have countlessly done in the past. Or possibly this is the author's way of being counterculture and edgy.
I expect your overall cost of living is going to be lower in a random Rust Belt town (or for that matter in a far flung suburb of Las Vegas) than in some middle-of-nowhere property unless you're really willing to give up a lot of modern conveniences.
You can get pretty cheap real estate relative to prime coastal locations while still having at least electrical hookups. Broadband, water, and septic are less widespread but still pretty available at reasonable prices compared to really prime locations.
> Inefficiency is the ultimate downfall of any individual effort to address climate change.
This is a great summary of the problem with homesteaders and people who want to live off grid. Efficiencies of scale are very real.
I've personally been living off the electric grid for about 2.5 months in my bus with solar and batteries. I've only had to plug into shore power for a few hours once due to a few days of rain. I don't have enough power to run AC 24/7 though which isn't great in 100+ F TX weather.
Hard Lessons in misleading titles of Tesla advertisements / PR puff pieces. The submarine at work.
Don't get me wrong, that Tesla battery plant and the amount of solar Kauai has installed is amazing. I just wasn't expecting the obvious product placement given the story title.
I have a few pedantic criticisms of the article. I'm not a local to Kaua'i, but I've lived there a long time.
The article uses the correct spelling of Moloka'i, but incorrect spelling of Kauai and Hawaii, which should be Kaua'i and Hawai'i. The ' symbol is an actual letter in the Hawai'ian language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina
The article mentions Luke growing taro [1] and their daughter mostly eating poi [2], but it doesn't explain that poi is the mashed taro root, usually fermented.
1. “The only real success I’ve had is taro,” Luke says.
2. ... Finley, subsists largely on homegrown poi.
Regarding spelling, the Wikipedia article notes that:
“The United States Board on Geographic Names lists relevant place names both with and without the ʻokina and kahakō in the Geographic Names Information System. Colloquially and formally, the forms have long been used interchangeably.”
Solar is an extremely specialized tech that will not provide even a small fraction of our electricity. Refrigeration is insane. 1kwh would take a man about two to three days of pedalling to produce. There will be practically no electric motors post-petroleum-glut. How many people know the amount of energy they use? Our society is energy-oblivious. The average post-petroleum-glut person will afford no more than 50-100kwh per year. That's the optimistic scenario. Lights and communication. No motorised transport, no motorised washer, no motorised refrigeration, no motorised water utility. 95% (plus) decrease of our society's energy input in two generations. And don't forget that nuclear power = nuclear disaster/war on a long enough timeline. Nuclear power is mankind's surest suicide path.
One problem with this off grid in Kauai story is that he must have friends & family & when you live in the middle of the Pacific in Hawaii, that means friends & family flying 1/4 around the world to come & see you. That's going to sink any green savings for quite a while.
I can't help but consider that modern science and medicine has enabled a large amount of adults whose continued life depends on continued access to that science and medicine.
Shortread - Meandering story about man trying to live off grid. Discovers that 100% solar not practical without energy storage. Also large scale energy infrastructure not such a crazy idea after all.
Or, say, medium scale. I've taken away that communities of a couple hundred-thousands homes could now create their own grid, using wind/solar with batteries.
Islands are special use cases. Many non-US islands still run bunker fuel, some of the nastiest hydrocarbon fuel available. It is still eye-bleedingly expensive to burn that per kWh. Diesel gets you to ridiculous cost levels, and that's just fuel running costs. Add in personnel, and maintenance and repair, and solar looks good to a lot of island residents.
But self-sufficiency is a capital-intensive effort, and most residents cannot afford the up-front capital, nor have access to the credit necessary. That's yet another reason scaling up is the way to go for self-sufficiency.
> ...sometimes you end up with more power than you can use in the moment.
This is simply solved by co-generation, but it isn't easy: capital and/or credit availability drives this solution path. Excess power on an island can always be put to use somewhere, but it requires intensive capital equipment investments. Make potable water. Desalinate water. Push potable water uphill into a reservoir, then let it flow down through a hydroelectric generator at a minimum constant flow rate; constantly moving the water up and down hill keeps mosquitoes from settling in it. Many islands are in tropical zones, and there are always chilling needs: chill sea water in ocean-side reservoirs to drive central chillers. Even with efficient reuse and recycling, there will still be unreusable, unrecyclable trash: pull the surplus energy to drive a plasma arc-based garbage gasification plant (which generates more energy). Still more energy to use? Drive automated excavation machines with it, building out more reservoir capacity.
> Other than the fruit trees dotting the property...little else has taken root.
Permaculture techniques might assist here.
> ...the utility is offsetting some panel owners’ bills for their (less efficient) solar power...
This will take time (decades) before building construction habits change to regularly accommodate panels. Anywhere there is more climactic heat than desired for comfort levels, panels can be blocking the solar irradiation, but we don't have commonly-accepted construction idioms for moving panels to where they are needed around a building, and everyone ad hocs their own. I'd prefer to see people continue to use panels for the secondary and tertiary benefits, despite the reduced efficiency compared to utility-scale installations, for as long as real estate asset valuation remains high.
Yup. Diesel is so expensive, I don't understand why they are making 2030 plans. Why not 2018 plans? Solar panels are now about 40c / installed watt or less. They will have trouble getting much below that with even Chinese panel manufacturers barely breaking even. Interest rates are still very low.
Just get everyone involved & roll that solar out. Not a biggie. The savings will be immediate over burning diesel to generate electricity.
All your ideas were spot on & good for using excess energy.
Heck they can even mine some bitcoin if they have extra energy.
But I guess there is some upper bound of connected nodes, or covered grid area, where it makes sense to break the grid up into sub grids, and make those sub grids self-sustainable? E.g. voltage losses over huge distances would force you to transmit with high voltage to faraway subgrids, and require additional transformer stations; not to speak of the line losses. I think you could eliminate those by giving each node cluster (residential area) its own closed grid. Perhaps emergency needs (like a rock concert in your neighborhood) could someday be covered by long distance laser or EM transmission from other grids, without using a landline that makes power management so difficult (because when interconnected, all grids would have to coordinate their combined consumption).
There is a difference between wanting to live alone, and wanting to be "off-grid". It is perfectly possible, as the article itself establishes, to be able to live "off-grid" but not alone. I.E., a small community.
If this is kept in mind, it means it would be possible to build resort-style communities in fantastic/beautiful locations that are fully self-sustainable (for energy, not necessarily food, entertainment, water, etc.).
I could easily see these types of communities being co-op or "hacker communities" run by small private (think YC) companies, that allow for digital nomadic living around the world.
Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing. Could you survive off-grid if you stacked up on a bunch of beans in a basement? Yeah, but we want quality of life.
Finally, what if you don't want to be in a community? What if you do want to be alone? Well, that is still possible, it just means that "off-grid" (as the article states) means sometimes running a generator. Not as efficient, but at least it gets you what you want.
>Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing.
This is not sustainable. Setting up an island that constantly has to have food and people shipped in and people and trash shipped out is going to be a loss sustainability-wise compared to just living mainland and using renewables there.
(Edit: Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated with a permaculture farm can supply food and energy in a reasonable footprint. Cf. "Alcohol can be a Gas" http://permaculture.com/ )
I'm the only person I know who doesn't like solar power. The lifespan of panels and batteries are both too limited - they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society. In contrast, I'd like to see wind turbines continue to evolve - so that they can be maintained over many lifetimes. Seems like a no-brainer -- but I'm the only one I ever hear saying that.
>they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society.
This is a completely subjective and vague statement.
However if we start to quantify it with economics costs, it turns out to be wrong. The lifetime cost of solar is very cheap. And the lifetime of turbines is not a huge amount longer than PV panels.
Lifespans of panels and batteries is limited, but so is the lifetime of everything else. Current panels are designed for ~15-20 years lifetime. Wind turbines are designed for 20 years lifetime. Coal power plants are designed for 30 years lifetime.
Of course solar panels pretty much need to be completely replaced while wind turbines and coal plants can be refurbished, but isn't that mainly because solar panels require next to no permanent structures? Refurbishing wind turbines is a thing because support infrastructure and the towers are already standing. Refurbishing coal plants is a thing because they are very complex and buildings are expensive. Solar power consists of next to nothing except the panels, the batteries and a few cables.
> Solar power consists of next to nothing except the panels, the batteries and a few cables.
You forgot the inverter, the supports, and optionally the solar tracker. Also, batteries are optional; many installations, including in the megawatt range, don't have them. In fact, it's better to treat battery storage as something completely separate from solar power, since it can also be used with wind, or even with other sources like thermal.
>You forgot the inverter, the supports, and optionally the solar tracker
That's why I said "next to nothing", not "nothing".
You're right that in a grid-connected setup you won't have batteries in the setup. Ideally, you don't want batteries anywhere in the grid and instead do pumped hydroelectric storage, but that's not possible everywhere.
Solar modules have no moving parts to fail or maintain. Their median and p90 lifetimes easily surpass the same measures for mechanically complex wind turbines. And if you are more interested in future possibilities than the current state of things, I believe that judicious materials selection and design to minimize thermal-electrical fatigue can produce modules with median working lifetimes in excess of 50 years.
A common misconception. Solar does work in Washington, both halves of it, and a lot of people are installing it here. We get more sun than solar-happy Germany and it is more efficient here than in sunny-but-hot Phoenix because cooler panels work better. Hydro is cheap and plentiful and built before solar systems were even technically feasible.
(FWIW, "we" is also a misnomer. PSE gets the majority of its power from coal and natural gas[3], while Seattle City Light is overwhelmingly hydro[4], as is Snohomish PUD[5].)
Slightly OT but until about 4 hours ago I was all in on solar, wind, modern battery tech, tesla etc. Having just watched Cowspiracy and What the Health back to back on Netflix I'm going to become a vegan and stop getting excited about anything else
Without drastically reducing animal agriculture, all other efforts at global sustainability seem almost pointless (and rather expensive, both in terms of capital and time).
Beware of the shiny new idea syndrome. I don't doubt your sincerity, but positive effects of our actions are best measured in decades of commitment. Being all-in on renewables, then losing interest in favour of something better does not bode well imho.
Stop getting excited and not doing are two different things :) Of course I'll continue recycling, using renewables and making sensible transportation choices. There's no negative with any of that, so why not. It's just hard to get excited about the impact of it all when one considers the sheer numbers behind animal agriculture.
Should also note: both films are very persuasive - plan to spend a few weeks now fact checking before I dive in to a vegan existence.
There are substantial personal negatives with such actions. They tend to accumulate over time.
Which is not to say don't do any of this, rather I wish to warn you about the difference between sprints and marathons. Be prepared for the latter, unless you are just following a fad.
I find the tone of this article to be a bit silly, dour, and clueless...
Did this person mention having to "give up an electric toaster" wtf????!!!!!! any electrical heating apparatus is a short circuit and just dumping amps away like nothing....
6 panels!??? holy moly, I live on 2 poly 250w and 2 mono 100w panels + 400ah of battery and a 1k inverter...
this is just reads like a moaning pansy whiner paeon to bloat and consumer stupidity.
if you go off-grid, that's pretty easy.
if you think to produce all your own food, that's going to take some time- permaculture is a lifetime pursuit.
sheesh look at these photos, that's a gazebo built from a kit or hired labor or what?
> it's like the citiest slickers ever decided to try to become instant permaculture heroes and were disappointed...
It looks so, he probably never saw a farm, since he didn't think that poultry and vegetable garden should be separated by a... poultry netting (hence the name)
“That was all happening, not because of me,” he remembers thinking, “but despite me and my efforts.”
He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model.
But, I like the ending:
Walking me out past the taro patch, back across the swinging bridge that spans the creek surrounding his property, Luke points out one last thing. “It’s funny,” he says, “it was only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.”