Posted on 02/21/2006 10:24:44 AM PST by SmithL
Arcata, Humboldt County -- Just past noon on a hazy, raw Sunday a few weeks ago, Linda Parkinson did what few homeowners in this storm-battered region could: She turned on the television.
While most Humboldt County residents were reeling from power outages left by devastating rains, Parkinson had electricity to spare. She cooked a feast for a dozen people, took hot showers and threw video-game parties for her 15-year-old son's classmates.
For 24 years, Parkinson, 49, has lived completely off the electric grid, drawing energy exclusively from solar, propane and other renewable on-site power sources.
She isn't alone. Some 180,000 American homeowners live off-grid, according to Richard Perez, publisher of Home Power magazine. Approximately a quarter live in California, and each year the national number grows 33 percent, according to the publisher's database of known off-gridders and estimates of those unreported.
"California is the hotbed of off-grid systems," he said.
Parkinson maintains that the movement is no longer a hippie fad; it's increasingly mainstream and propelled by Americans' desire to eliminate electric bills, keep homes juiced during blackouts, minimize U.S. dependence on fossil fuel and, for activists, send a gesture of defiance to the power companies.
"It's about self-sufficiency," she said, relaxing on the couch in her secluded home. "Living off the grid doesn't mean being disconnected. If anything, I've had an advantage. The power goes out a lot around here," and she still manages to crank household appliances.
In the wireless era, Parkinson said, technology both frees us up and plugs us in, and the off-grid choice is not a retreat from technology but an application of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Hate to burst their bubble but propane is not "renewable".
Technically neither is Solar...when it's gone, it (and us) are gone for good!
In Minnesota, there a some dairy farmers who use cow manure manure to power an anaerobic digestor.
They provide plenty of power for their farms and often sell power to local co-ops.
It's not a bad idea - if you can afford the upfront money to construct the digestor. It's a practical use and environmentally-friendly way of disposing of cow manure.
It's saving us thousands.
Don't blame her for the reporter's mistakes. Propane is an on-site backup to her other systems. Don't knock it, at times I've lived "off grid" for months at a time, and enjoyed all of the modern conveniences.
Electricity must be expensive out west. I could pay my electric bill for more than 30 years for what this cost. Hope there's no maintenance.
ping for later
Ah, but methane is: especially in that part of California, apparently.
"It's saving us thousands."
Thousands???
Just exactly how BIG is your house? :-)
I wish I could talk Mrs. Red into a pellet stove, she likes the open fire too much...
Propane costs have also gone through the roof lately. A good friend has converted his new house back from freestanding propane to - brace yourself - baseboard electric. "You gotta be kidding me," sez I. "Nope," sez he, and shows me the numbers to prove it. He's down to a propane generator as a backup and all-electric otherwise. This is in rural Idaho. Sheesh.
When you do the math, that works out to about 4 tons of pellets for the whole winter or $800. Our next door neighbor with a house similar to ours spent $700 on natural gas last month.
See post 14.
We're doing a similar thing here, heating with a '70's vintage Vermont Castings woodstove. Total cost for the stove and installation: $250. I go through somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cord per week. My cost for the wood is only in fuel for the truck, saw and splitter. We normally spend about $1500 on oil between November and April. This year it will be about 10% of that.
Wood is good.
Yeah, but how much mess is the ash? That's the reason I got a gas log firelace instead of a "real" one. Just flick a switch and instant fire.
A full weeks worth of ash can be fit into a coffee can with room left over.
I don't know, it seems kind of pricey for a feel-good kind of expenditure. Nuclear-generated electricity wholesales for around 3 cents per kwhr. Assuming an average household using about 1 kwhr at any given time, on average, $23,000 buys you a little over 87 years' worth of electricity. Unless you are planning on passing your homestead along for a couple of generations, you probably aren't going to realize much payback in an average homeowner's lifetime.
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