Off The Grid

Living Off The Grid With Solar Power - Simple, Fun, and Challenging

My wife were desperate to get out of the city.  It was 2007, we were having an extremely stressful year with work.  I owned a small construction company that was just about to give me a heart attack.  She had a job she hated so much she would cry on the way to work sometimes.  On top of all that, we lived in a duplex with noisy neighbors.  And don’t even get me started on the constant, traffic, sirens, and aircraft noise of living in the city.

That’s when we decided: LETS GET OUT OF HERE – FOR GOOD!  So we started looking for homes in the mountains.  And, as luck would have it, we found our dream home after just one day of looking.  Incredible views, astoundingly quiet, on a beautiful lake and surrounded by Aspen-draped mountains, we thought we had died and gone to heaven.  There was just one thing: there was no grid power in this part of the world.

 The author and his wife in front of their solar-powered home.

The home was powered with a solar power system and a backup generator.  Heat would have to come from a wood-burning stove.  It wasn’t exactly roughing it, but it was a drastic lifestyle change.  And so, in the dead of winter, we moved our lives to the peace and quiet of Colorado Rockies.  No more walking to sushi on Friday night.  No more rowdy concerts and raucous cab rides on Saturday night.  We still do those things every once in a while but we don’t miss them as much as we thought we would.  And we also don’t have to deal with car break-ins, dirty air, bad water, rude drivers, and traffic jams.

Living off the grid meant we had to make other adjustments too.  The only lights on in the house at night are ones we are actively using.  We started listening to our iPods with headphones instead of throwing on the stereo and cranking the music.  Laundry waits until a sunny day.  Everything is on a power strip and gets turned off at the end of the evening.  We don’t own a toaster, microwave, clothes iron, or hair dryer.

We’ve become acutely aware of the patterns of the sun and weather.  We open the blinds wide to let the sun pour in and heat the house in the winter.  In the warm summer evenings we close them and crack windows strategically to allow the mountains breezes to cool the house.  We’ve installed a wind generator and tuned into the patterns of our breezes too.  Winter mornings might mean shoveling both the driveway and solar panels clear of snow.  

Don’t misunderstand, we don’t live like hermits.  We have a large flat screen TV, three computers, plenty of lighting, and tons of entertainment devices.  We just use them strategically to conserve power, always keeping in mind that the sun is our friend.  Up here we find that we need those things less anyway, with all the hiking, skiing, biking, and boating there is to do here.

We’ve learned a lot about solar, living away from civilization, but mostly about ourselves here.  And I can honestly say this is happiest I’ve ever been.

Kriss Bergethon is a writer and solar expert from Colorado.  You can visit his site at Solar Power for more information.  

Green Job Growth Set to Explode in U.S.

by: Elizabeth Nichols
The huge potential for growth in green jobs is being mandated and funded. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 require large utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from new renewable resources such as solar and wind by 2020. On May 18th, 2009, Secretary of the Department of Energy Chu announced the first 16 of the 100 standards that much be addressed by September in order to clear the way for the expenditure of Stimulus Package funds towards expanding the Smart Grid.

Small and medium-sized businesses particularly are predicted to expand the green jobs market rapidly over the next ten years with considerable financial support for the investment markets and government. The Cleantech Network reports that venture capitalists have put $1.74 billion into North American and European green technology start ups in just the third quarter of 2007.

Additionally, the energy crisis and the large number of retirements expected over the next 10 years in public utilities are contributing to the transition to a greener economy. According to the President of the Association of Energy Engineers, Rusty Hodopp, 41 percent of its members plan to retire within the next ten years.

The skill set that workers need to have in place is varied and multiple within the five green energy industries of wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and smart grid.

Currently, Germany and Spain each generate 5 percent of their energy from the wind while U.S. total is only .5 percent. Wind power ranked second to biomass as a renewable energy job source as of 2006 in the U. S. The capacity to create all the energy needed for the entire country from just wind power is estimated to be within boundaries of four states—Texas, North Dakota, Kansas, and South Dakota, according to a U.S. Conference of Mayors Report.

Since 2000 installation of solar panels has increased by 45 percent each year and the industry growing by 35 percent each year. It is working on reducing cost associated with manufacturing and installation.

In the U. S. biomass is very research-oriented with a focus on corn ethanol. Biomass is used in Brazil with 40 percent of its transportation fuel made by using sugar cane. It reduces the carbon footprint of the consumer, but only by about 15 percent as energy must be used to convert plant and animal material into clean energy.

Smart Grid refers to increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the mix of energy sources to decrease vulnerability to terrorist attacks as well as brown-outs and black-outs. President Obama sited Xcel’s efforts to make Boulder, Colorado the country’s first smart grid city in his introduction of the Stimulus Package.

These emerging industries have companies throughout the world many of which have job listings across the disciplines on line. The common bond in this green jobs field market is the need for engineering professional or technical training experience. Many of the companies are also looking for team players with open communication styles. It seems prudent to develop our green jobs with the necessary skills and flexibility to adapt to our greener economy.