When people talk about going off grid with us we always have the same questions that we ask them. The first one is WHY?
The responses always seem to be close to the same. They always want to provide for them self’s. So we ask them well what does that mean to you? They will then start to tell us that they want to provide their own electricity, water, and food. So we are like ok so let us ask you another question and that is WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP TO PROVIDE FOR YOUR SELF? I know that sounds like a strange question. But every time we ask that question we get a lot of the same answers! They look at us with questionable eyes and say what do you mean give up? We will not have to give up anything because we will provide it our self’s!
Here is what we have found out about a lot of people that want to go off grid. Mind you this dose not mean every one but it does mean a lot of them.
People love the idea of not having to pay a bill to the power to be. This may mean not paying for electricity or water. But I don’t think a lot of them really know what a struggle it is to live off grid. So we like to give people that we talk to some things to think about.
- HOW ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP FOOD COLD?
- CAN YOU LIVE WITH OUT AIR-CONDITIONING IN THE SUMMER MONTHS?
- HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY FOR A SOLOR SET UP THAT WILL RUN EVERYTHING THAT YOU WANT?
- ARE YOU WILLING TO ACCOUNT FOR EVERY THING THAT YOU USE IN A DAY SO YOU DON’T DRAIN YOUR BATTERIES?
We have been off grid for over two years now. But let me give you a little look into our life to show you what its like.
We only have 1,000 watts of solar that is four 250 watt solar panels, four 6 volt batteries that we wired to be a 24 volt system; a 3,000 watt aims inverter, and all the wires. That set us back $2,700.00!
With that system we only have three plug-ins, lights that we use LED bulbs in and keep the lights off during the day. We run a deep freeze all the time to keep our food frozen, and our kids get to watch a movie on the TV once in a while. We can not run anything like a toaster or blender at night or on cloudy days. If we do then we drain our batteries way to fast. Then we would be setting in the dark until the sun could come back out and start to charge us up again. We all know that setting in the dark is not fun but sadly we have done that more times than we would like to admit.
We want people to really think about the pros and cons about this life style. Is it really worth having to pay $20,000 to even $30,000 and up for a system that would run a full size house with all the toys that you have? Or would it just be easier to keep paying $50 to $100 a month for an electric bill? Let’s look at it this way. If you pay $100 a month for 12 months that is $1,200 a year it would take you 25 years to equal the $20,000 system you wanted. But hey if you got that kind of money to buy it in one lump sum then by all means go for it! But I for one can not do that. For us to get electricity ran to our house we would have to pay $23,000. The first three poles would be free but every one after that would cost us plus the wire that would be ran as well. But hey they were nice about it and said that they would tack on a little extra to our bill every month until we had it paid off in the 10 year time frame. When we asked how much extra they told us it would be $191.66 for 120 months on top of our regular bill! So sadly running power to our house will not be happening.
Now what I am about to tell you may get me a lot of grief from my fellow Off Griders. But I feel that it is important to tell the truth when writing post like this. So here it goes.
A lot of people that has gone ahead and went off grid have a dirty little secret that they don’t want you to know.
TOP SECRET INFORMATION:
A lot of people that live off grid rely a lot on their friends and family that does live on grid. Some go as far as to get water from them or even ask to be able to keep a deep freeze at their house to keep their food. The ones that don’t live close to friends and family with power rely heavily on their generators. I am sad to say that we to are ones that rely on their generator to keep us up and going.
So just remember this no matter how you live or want to live there are draw backs to both sides.