Batteries and Windmills; Entering the Off Grid Zone

New Grid, Off Grid, No Grid - a Journey, Part 2

“…more of any kind from any source at any price wasn't leading in a good direction. It would, it would be too expensive, too unpleasant, too slow, too difficult. But we should instead start at the other end of the problem with the end users, what do we want the energy for? We want hot showers, cold beer, big bread, smelted aluminum, mobility, comfort, and for each of those services, each end use, how much energy of what kind or quality of what size from what source, we do the job in the cheapest way.” Amory Lovins, describing his 1976 paper Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken? (from an interview with Michael Liebreich [Cleaning Up podcast, Dec., 2021])

Last week I posed a question about grids — so let’s explore off and on-grid life, shall we? While researching the subject, I came across another quote that bears repeating in an L. A. Times report, from 1991 “It was incredible,” she said. “We had a refrigerator and a freezer and bright lights. We had pumps for the water instead of relying on the wind. We even had lights in the barn to milk by, and that was in the ‘60s, for crying out loud.”

The speaker, whose name is Kathy Hall, grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. As usual, the news story focused on a financial collapse and possible fiduciary irresponsibility, but I knew what she meant about the pleasures of dependable power and the ways of living without it. I started life on the hard edge of plains and mountains, in a house recently wired to an expanding, but still somewhat unreliable regional electrical grid financed through the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. My parents generation knew the old pre-grid ways, so when lights flickered, I acquired life skills that have served me well when I crave a place to escape the wilderness of wires that most of us now rely on for heating, cooling, communication — and coming soon, for transportation as well. Though my arrangements during such sojourns have been admittedly primitive, I’ve spent time with others who’ve gone to much more trouble, and expense, in assuring comforts without dependence on grids.

Halladay windmill, Laramie, Wyoming, ca. 1869. Image credit: Andrew Russell (per Wyo. Historical Society)

Amory Lovins got it right about what we want. Let’s look at some paths taken to dependably provide the luxury of bright lights, hot water cascading from taps, and cold beverages in the fridge without depending on available sunlight, wind, and blocks of ice. In most of the rural midwest/west, this is a fairly recent development — even the concept of electrification outside towns and cities was a subject for research just 100 years ago, when nine farms in Minnesota were hooked up to a common electrical system, and political debate over feasibility raged on for another 15 years. Meanwhile, off-grid power system entrepreneurs sent salesmen traveling to pitch their ‘wind power plants.’ According to one historian of these early attempts, a writer and collector of such machines named Craig Toepfer, by 1935 nearly one million rural homes, farms and ranches had installed them, with the power they produced being stored in battery packs in barns, basements, and likely a few sheds — techniques not far removed from the arrangements now in practice, though solar has surpassed wind technology in popularity amongst off-gridders, batteries are much improved, and expectations for electrified automation have vastly increased since the 1930s . Here’s a simplified version of a renewable energy powered off-grid system, from the U. S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy…

Balance-of-System equipment. Image credit: Energy.gov

…and below is another image from the same page, this one depicting likely power demands for a ‘Smart House’ whether off-grid, or grid-connected. To see some energy efficiency measures that can help an off-grid system deliver these expectations, I highly recommend clicking the image for a virtual house tour put together by the same folks. From the federal government’s energy office and from long-standing gurus of efficiency like Lovins, the message is to “do the job in the cheapest way” when it comes to energy use.

Image credit: U. S. Department of Energy [energy.gov]

Of course, there are many paths to making a home ‘smarter’. According to recent news articles, Amory Lovins’ 38-year-old house — a 4,000 square foot, passively heated ‘efficiency experiment’ at approx. 8000’ elevation in Colorado that produces more electricity than it consumes (complete with indoor tropical fruit orchard) — is a prime example of what can be built with a large budget and a willingness to change design ideas to reduce energy demands, rather than using technology to match demand. A realistic path for most homeowners is a bit more prosaic than this, but even short of leaving the grid for stand-alone electrification independence, there is much to be gleaned from cruising through any of the above links. They’ve shown me that my much smaller, 85-year-old Colorado domicile, though protected by its stucco walls from heat and cold extremes, is due for a fair bit of efficiency smartening.

But wait, what about fully off-grid…, something like living on a spaceship, or in a self-sufficient human colony? Up next, Seeking Hermitage: From Earthships to Terraforming Mars — and in future posts, I’ll explore a few more constructions scattered around the drylands that have attempted to provide exactly that.

For now, I’ll leave you with another question. Is it possible to live truly off grid, while using a functional power grid for raw materials, manufactured tools, income and/or investment/retirement proceeds, cultural/social stimulation, medical expertise, learned skills, etc?

Tell me what you think via the comments section below, or contact me directly at: bfrank.WaterIntoStone@yahoo.com. Until then, take care of yourself and help someone out along the way. - B.

• For more about Amory Lovins’ wide-ranging thoughts on energy efficiency, take a dive Inside Amory’s Brain, hosted by RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute), an organization he co-founded in 1982.

• If you’re considering the pros and cons of grid-connected, stand-alone, and hybrid systems — here’s some good information from GreenCoast.org. Bear in mind that the article is 2 years old, so double-check the costs/benefits accordingly.

• If you’re curious how all this grid talk might tie to ecological resilience, those folks at RMI have just the page for you!