Living Off The Grid With Solar Power Can Be Simple, Fun, & Challenging

October 20th, 2011 by Guest Contributor

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 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 Solar Power site for more information.

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Tags: going solar, living off grid, living off the grid, off grid living, off grid solar, off grid solar energy, off grid solar power, solar energy efficiency

About the Author

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. :D

http://www.solartronenergy.co.za/ Solar Power

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Anonymous

Kriss, I’d like to know more about your wind generator. I’d love to cut back on my gas generator use but I’ve not been able to make the math work.

I’m starting to think that my best solution might be to add a lot more panels to my array and run on ‘cloud power’, with panel prices falling a DIYer can add a kW for about a thousand dollars these days.
Dcard88

I am so jealous. Get yourself a new LED tv. My 46″ uses about 70 watts. They have some very efficieant 26 or 27″ moniters for you r computers too. (I have old eyes and dont like weraing glasses)
I would have to have a micro, but as long as you dont really cook in one they dont use much power.
Can you do any geo where you are. That would help, but a big if. You could also consider adding to your solar system in a year or two with the more efficient and less expensive panels.
Don & Max

We have lived totally off grid in North western Alberta since 2005. We are probably about 1500 miles north of Colorado. Your findings are parallel to ours. Our 50 foot solar collector on the roof shortens the wood heat season by at least a month in the fall and another month in the spring. The collector provides both hot air and domestic hot water preheating. R50 walls and R60 ceiling combined with almost 6000 gallons of water (as thermal mass) temper the effects of weather and keep us cozy. Cheers….. Don & Maxine
Anonymous

Welcome to the world of off grid Kriss.

You might want to try a boom box for filling your house with music. Since they are designed to be easy on batteries they pull little power. The one I’m playing right now is pulling four watts. Cranked up to just where the speakers begin to distort it only pulls five watts.

I’m currently shopping for one that will play MP3s via memory cards. There are some, just haven’t determined what might be the best choice for me. I also want a good tuner as I’m in the fringe area for some very good radio stations.