13 ms·

Hard Lessons in Living Off the Grid

195 points by kawera 9y ago

pjc50 9y ago
Makes it very clear how hard it is to make it practical; grid, even a small one, is just better. An interesting insight further down: "It turns out that most remote islands are powered like ships are"
- epistasis 9y ago
  One thing that a grid depends upon is all the transmission and distribution infrastructure. This is an incredible expense, but it is amortized over a very long long time. On the mainland, investment in that infrastructure has gone in a cycle, I think we're coming off a decade of very large investment after a decade of 5x less investment in that infrastructure. What's going to replace the expansion of transmission and distribution will be storage. It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand, rather than something closer to average demand. It's that peak demand that is the most costly to serve, batteries help with this immensely. In NYC, Con ED is delaying $1.1B in substation upgrades through the use of storage: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/coned-seeks-efficiency-distributed-energy-to-avoid-11b-substation/284255/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/coned-seeks-efficiency-distr... And on the smaller scale, in Arizona, a community that's growing is getting batteries rather than upgrading the transmission lines: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/aps-to-deploy-8-mwh-of-battery-storage-to-defer-transmission-investment/448965/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/aps-to-deploy-8-mwh-of-batte...
  - Scoundreller 9y ago
    > It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand Electricity billing is fundamentally flawed: Industrial users will pay a demand charge according to their peak usage, when they should really pay their contribution toward the local/regional/national utility's peak usage. Residential customers may pay a time-of-day generation rate, but still pay a flat per-kwh rate for transmission and distribution. All 3 should be time-of-day, at the minimum. Wires sag more when you use them during the hottest part of the day and when they're already running hot. Upgrades need to happen to handle peak usage, not off-peak usage.
    - msisk6 9y ago
      An additional complication is that generation and load aren't evenly distributed in a typical energy grid. This can create "traffic jams" that aren't reflected in a typical residential electric bill but something utilities and large business get to deal with. In open energy markets like those in California and Texas there's things called "Locational Marginal Pricing" and "Congestion Revenue Rights" to deal with this.
mhb 9y ago
Shortread - Meandering story about man trying to live off grid. Discovers that 100% solar not practical without energy storage. Also large scale energy infrastructure not such a crazy idea after all.
- manmal 9y ago
  Or, say, medium scale. I've taken away that communities of a couple hundred-thousands homes could now create their own grid, using wind/solar with batteries.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Much smaller than that is viable: https://building-microgrid.lbl.gov/isle-eigg https://building-microgrid.lbl.gov/isle-eigg .. but generally the larger your grid the better.
    - manmal 9y ago
      But I guess there is some upper bound of connected nodes, or covered grid area, where it makes sense to break the grid up into sub grids, and make those sub grids self-sustainable? E.g. voltage losses over huge distances would force you to transmit with high voltage to faraway subgrids, and require additional transformer stations; not to speak of the line losses. I think you could eliminate those by giving each node cluster (residential area) its own closed grid. Perhaps emergency needs (like a rock concert in your neighborhood) could someday be covered by long distance laser or EM transmission from other grids, without using a landline that makes power management so difficult (because when interconnected, all grids would have to coordinate their combined consumption).
      - pjc50 9y ago
        > long distance laser or EM transmission This is either impractical, or a literal death ray.
  - yourapostasy 9y ago
MrTonyD 9y ago
I'm the only person I know who doesn't like solar power. The lifespan of panels and batteries are both too limited - they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society. In contrast, I'd like to see wind turbines continue to evolve - so that they can be maintained over many lifetimes. Seems like a no-brainer -- but I'm the only one I ever hear saying that.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  Solar modules have no moving parts to fail or maintain. Their median and p90 lifetimes easily surpass the same measures for mechanically complex wind turbines. And if you are more interested in future possibilities than the current state of things, I believe that judicious materials selection and design to minimize thermal-electrical fatigue can produce modules with median working lifetimes in excess of 50 years.
- pjc50 9y ago
  This is definitely a "yes and" situation. Both are viable and useful, and somewhat complementary. Both the panels and the turbines have a lifespan of 20-25 years. Turbines also have a range of nasty mechanical failure modes. Batteries are still not feasible for mass grid deployment or as a replacement for backup gas.
- epistasis 9y ago
  >they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society. This is a completely subjective and vague statement. However if we start to quantify it with economics costs, it turns out to be wrong. The lifetime cost of solar is very cheap. And the lifetime of turbines is not a huge amount longer than PV panels.
- stephengillie 9y ago
  Solar doesn't work as well in WA State as in other areas. For that reason, we've been using hydroelectric for decades.
  - techsupporter 9y ago
marknadal 9y ago
There is a difference between wanting to live alone, and wanting to be "off-grid". It is perfectly possible, as the article itself establishes, to be able to live "off-grid" but not alone. I.E., a small community. If this is kept in mind, it means it would be possible to build resort-style communities in fantastic/beautiful locations that are fully self-sustainable (for energy, not necessarily food, entertainment, water, etc.). I could easily see these types of communities being co-op or "hacker communities" run by small private (think YC) companies, that allow for digital nomadic living around the world. Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing. Could you survive off-grid if you stacked up on a bunch of beans in a basement? Yeah, but we want quality of life. Finally, what if you don't want to be in a community? What if you do want to be alone? Well, that is still possible, it just means that "off-grid" (as the article states) means sometimes running a generator. Not as efficient, but at least it gets you what you want.
- hueving 9y ago
  >Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing. This is not sustainable. Setting up an island that constantly has to have food and people shipped in and people and trash shipped out is going to be a loss sustainability-wise compared to just living mainland and using renewables there.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Can you explain why that isn't sustainable?
    - truthexposer 9y ago
      the goal is off the grid and environmental sustainability...
      - 9y ago
chrismealy 9y ago
If your idea of living off the grid relies on the products of a complex industrial society, then what's the point? Just to create the illusion of total individualism? If you want sustainability (and I do!) just be sustainable, and leave phoney hermit play out of it.
- davedx 9y ago
  Needlessly harsh. This guy started his project way before current large scale energy storage was even being considered. He genuinely tried to do his best to minimise his footprint. It's so easy to read the story from the comfort of your chair and criticise, isn't it?
  - hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
    Just commenting on the discourse - I actually agree with you that GP was needlessly harsh. That said, given that sentiment, your comment would have been a lot more effective if you left out your last sentence.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      The last sentence serves a purpose though. It urges the commenter to reflect on their own industriousness or lack thereof perhaps causing them to modify the standard by which they judge others.
      - ImSkeptical 9y ago
        Insults tend to make the recipient defensive. If you want the commenter to rethink things, there's not much benefit in insults.
        colordrops 9y ago
        It's hardly an insult though. You have to have at least the slightest thickness of skin to survive on the internet or to even just to practice self reflection.
apozem 9y ago
Environmental problems seem intimidating to me because by their very nature they require so much collaboration. My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet- what matters is whether I can convince large groups of people or policymakers to do the same. Getting everyone on this page seems challenging.
- emj 9y ago
  Everyone has to try to live green, and we should admire and strive to surpass the ones who take it to an extreme. We know from statistics and economics that the rest of the world will want the same standard of living as the west, and that they will reach there at somepoint. There for it's very important to deprioritize things that are inherently not green in our culture and make green living a status thing. Transportation, food, clothing, communication and work are all things that has to be reconsidered to be green.
- fpgaminer 9y ago
  > My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet I noticed something one day. I had recently built a home gym and gave some friends a tour of it. The next week I hear that they're now working out and going to their local gym. That moment made me realize the positive effect our actions can have on others. It'll be the same with living green. Just by doing it, you are convincing other people that it's possible and that they should give it a try. My home is now 100% powered by solar (just got the Tesla batteries installed a few days ago). It cost less than a kitchen remodel, will be paid off in 10 years, is 100% off-grid 100% of the year, and we've sacrificed no amenities (still got the A/C going comfortably :) ). I'm one small fish in the pond, but my house is now a blaring advertisement for a greener future.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    There's been some research that suggests neighbours with solar is a big predictor for who gets solar next, which backs this up. And in general, the theory of "social proof" suggests people like to follow the crowd in lots of ways.
spraak 9y ago
I have a few pedantic criticisms of the article. I'm not a local to Kaua'i, but I've lived there a long time. The article uses the correct spelling of Moloka'i, but incorrect spelling of Kauai and Hawaii, which should be Kaua'i and Hawai'i. The ' symbol is an actual letter in the Hawai'ian language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina The article mentions Luke growing taro [1] and their daughter mostly eating poi [2], but it doesn't explain that poi is the mashed taro root, usually fermented. 1. “The only real success I’ve had is taro,” Luke says. 2. ... Finley, subsists largely on homegrown poi.
- krallja 9y ago
  Regarding spelling, the Wikipedia article notes that: “The United States Board on Geographic Names lists relevant place names both with and without the ʻokina and kahakō in the Geographic Names Information System. Colloquially and formally, the forms have long been used interchangeably.”
jldugger 9y ago
Another rugged individualist discovers that the living as espoused by Walden is essentially the road to poverty.
Mz 9y ago
It took about a year for Luke to regret his move off the grid. “It’s not that it wasn’t what we expected,” he explains. “We wanted the difficulty of it.” But he also wanted to show people it was possible to live with a smaller carbon footprint; instead, he was burning gasoline and watching the island’s electric utility outpace him, installing solar power and cutting carbon all over the island. “That was all happening, not because of me,” he remembers thinking, “but despite me and my efforts.” He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model. But, I like the ending: Walking me out past the taro patch, back across the swinging bridge that spans the creek surrounding his property, Luke points out one last thing. “It’s funny,” he says, “it was only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.”
- cbr 9y ago
  He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model. That's harsh. If you put hundreds of hours into doing something you thought was really valuable, and it turned out that it wasn't actually valuable, I think you'd be sad too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lsh 9y ago
    it may be harsh but I feel it's accurate. the same lone hero sentiments that causes the "not invented here syndrome" led this guy to toil hundreds of hours when he could have stashed that ego and contributed to the island's efforts of renewable energy.
    - 9y ago
wffurr 9y ago
Hard Lessons in misleading titles of Tesla advertisements / PR puff pieces. The submarine at work. Don't get me wrong, that Tesla battery plant and the amount of solar Kauai has installed is amazing. I just wasn't expecting the obvious product placement given the story title.
Animats 9y ago
From the article: “Only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.” Robert Frost on Thoreau: Well, if I have to choose one or the other, I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer With an income in cash of, say, a thousand (From, say, a publisher in New York City). Lesson: sustenance farming sucks. Farming has big economies of scale and you get none of them.
- prawn 9y ago
  "subsistence farming"?
  - sbierwagen 9y ago
    Small plot farming, done to feed yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture What 90% of humanity did, for centuries. Classic peasant stuff, you know. It's not fun. You depend on the food from your land to eat, so you can't afford to experiment with new methods of doing anything, or grow "cash crops" that you can't directly eat. If the rains fail, you starve. If there's a locust swarm, you starve. If your plow oxen dies, and you can't get another one, you starve.
    - prawn 9y ago
      Sorry, I know what it is. The comment I was replying to wrote "sustenance farming". I wasn't sure if this was a term where they lived, autocorrect or a mistake.
missbit 9y ago
One problem with this off grid in Kauai story is that he must have friends & family & when you live in the middle of the Pacific in Hawaii, that means friends & family flying 1/4 around the world to come & see you. That's going to sink any green savings for quite a while.
driverdan 9y ago
> Inefficiency is the ultimate downfall of any individual effort to address climate change. This is a great summary of the problem with homesteaders and people who want to live off grid. Efficiencies of scale are very real. I've personally been living off the electric grid for about 2.5 months in my bus with solar and batteries. I've only had to plug into shore power for a few hours once due to a few days of rain. I don't have enough power to run AC 24/7 though which isn't great in 100+ F TX weather.
justaaron 9y ago
I find the tone of this article to be a bit silly, dour, and clueless... Did this person mention having to "give up an electric toaster" wtf????!!!!!! any electrical heating apparatus is a short circuit and just dumping amps away like nothing.... 6 panels!??? holy moly, I live on 2 poly 250w and 2 mono 100w panels + 400ah of battery and a 1k inverter... this is just reads like a moaning pansy whiner paeon to bloat and consumer stupidity. if you go off-grid, that's pretty easy. if you think to produce all your own food, that's going to take some time- permaculture is a lifetime pursuit. sheesh look at these photos, that's a gazebo built from a kit or hired labor or what? hello!? roundwood timberframe, onsite stones, baled grasses, mud render, etc it's like the citiest slickers ever decided to try to become instant permaculture heroes and were disappointed...
- wott 9y ago
  > it's like the citiest slickers ever decided to try to become instant permaculture heroes and were disappointed... It looks so, he probably never saw a farm, since he didn't think that poultry and vegetable garden should be separated by a... poultry netting (hence the name)
bdcravens 9y ago
I can't help but consider that modern science and medicine has enabled a large amount of adults whose continued life depends on continued access to that science and medicine.
substack 9y ago
It sounds like the refrigerator is the problem here: "But they still have rainy weeks where they run out of power and have to run their gas-powered generator to keep the refrigerator from spoiling." You don't need to run any other appliances all night when the sun isn't shining. Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power. I live off-grid and we run laptops (using boost converters) and lights directly off 12v DC. A big part of making an off-grid system work is reducing your consumption drastically in ways that you can't even do if you're plugged into the grid.
- Scoundreller 9y ago
  > Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power. For the former two, I think microwaves and toasters are efficient uses of energy. Heating/toasting the equivalent with propane or some other fuel isn't worth the trade-off of running the generator for a few extra minutes. But I guess it depends on how big you size your inverter, and if you intend on having a 2ndary power source.
- spraak 9y ago
  Is it you that I recall reading about who is/was living on the big island? Would be neat to meet up sometime if you're open to it, would be neat to see what you've built considering that you also do software development :)
  - taylorfinley 9y ago
    Hey, not the poster you responded to, but I am an off-gridder in Puna who codes and actually was classmates with Luke Evslin (super good guy back then, sounds like he still is). I would love for a group of big island Hacker News reading off-gridders to get to know each other!
    - substack 9y ago
      Yes I also live in Puna. Are any of you open to using https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ ? It's an "off-grid" social network.
carapace 9y ago
These folks are idiots. Nice Tesla ad though. (Edit: Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated with a permaculture farm can supply food and energy in a reasonable footprint. Cf. "Alcohol can be a Gas" http://permaculture.com/ http://permaculture.com/ )
vinceguidry 9y ago
What I love about technology is that "real" high technology doesn't have mountains of transistors and actuators. It has lots of the most abundant materials the planet has to offer. Soil, rock, sun, air. Technology harmonizes with all these things because if it didn't, there could never be enough of it to make any kind of difference. The amount of scale involved simply boggles the imagination. Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. But the best we could come up with was pumped storage, and that's simply not an option everywhere. China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does. We look at cars and computers and think that technology is always going to get more sophisticated, harder for the average joe to work on. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction now. We are going to have to value things like repairability and durability, aspects that are meaningless inside tech bubbles, simply because when one of your 500lb batteries breaks, you can't exactly get another 500lb battery out there. You have to fix it. Swap it out for a spare, sure, but you need to be able to repair it to return it to the pool.
- bhnmmhmd 9y ago
  I agree. Sometimes I review what 70s or 80s were like: lots of folks who were interested in electronics and computers essentially built the very first personal computers and software. Now, can we expect some new technology to be invented by these kinds of enthusiasts these days? I don't think so. Technology has become too sophisticated and complex that no single mind can comprehend it, let alone coming up with a better version of it. Those batteries you mentioned, they most probably will just be replaceable, not fixable by average Joe.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    If they're only replaceable, then eventually nobody's going to buy them. So many people I know won't buy electric vehicles because they're worried about what's going to happen when the battery goes bad. Individuals think on one scale, organizations think on another. Individuals can't plan for a lot of things, how many people do you know save up to get their tires replaced? I bet not many. But organizations can work that sort of thing into operational plans and pay people to keep up maintenance schedules. But all of that breaks down when you're talking about long distances. The cost of shipping out a brand new tractor is going to so dwarf any kind of repair that even at the organizational level, the company that farmers pay to provide equipment is going to demand that tractors be serviceable.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
unlmtd1 9y ago
Solar is an extremely specialized tech that will not provide even a small fraction of our electricity. Refrigeration is insane. 1kwh would take a man about two to three days of pedalling to produce. There will be practically no electric motors post-petroleum-glut. How many people know the amount of energy they use? Our society is energy-oblivious. The average post-petroleum-glut person will afford no more than 50-100kwh per year. That's the optimistic scenario. Lights and communication. No motorised transport, no motorised washer, no motorised refrigeration, no motorised water utility. 95% (plus) decrease of our society's energy input in two generations. And don't forget that nuclear power = nuclear disaster/war on a long enough timeline. Nuclear power is mankind's surest suicide path.
- gcb0 9y ago
  most countries use fluvial power and will be oblivious to petroleum going away if not for cars. some (I can only think of Canada) even export it.
biggerbistro 9y ago
This reads like a Tesla ad and a warning to anyone thinking of becoming self-sufficient. Wouldn't want too many people being able to generate their own electricity otherwise how would you control them?

195 points by kawera 9y ago

Makes it very clear how hard it is to make it practical; grid, even a small one, is just better. An interesting insight further down: "It turns out that most remote islands are powered like ships are"

epistasis 9y ago
One thing that a grid depends upon is all the transmission and distribution infrastructure. This is an incredible expense, but it is amortized over a very long long time. On the mainland, investment in that infrastructure has gone in a cycle, I think we're coming off a decade of very large investment after a decade of 5x less investment in that infrastructure. What's going to replace the expansion of transmission and distribution will be storage. It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand, rather than something closer to average demand. It's that peak demand that is the most costly to serve, batteries help with this immensely. In NYC, Con ED is delaying $1.1B in substation upgrades through the use of storage: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/coned-seeks-efficiency-distributed-energy-to-avoid-11b-substation/284255/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/coned-seeks-efficiency-distr... And on the smaller scale, in Arizona, a community that's growing is getting batteries rather than upgrading the transmission lines: http://www.utilitydive.com/news/aps-to-deploy-8-mwh-of-battery-storage-to-defer-transmission-investment/448965/ http://www.utilitydive.com/news/aps-to-deploy-8-mwh-of-batte...
- Scoundreller 9y ago
  > It's often cheaper to buy storage at today's (relatively high) prices than to continue to size the transmission infrastructure for peak demand Electricity billing is fundamentally flawed: Industrial users will pay a demand charge according to their peak usage, when they should really pay their contribution toward the local/regional/national utility's peak usage. Residential customers may pay a time-of-day generation rate, but still pay a flat per-kwh rate for transmission and distribution. All 3 should be time-of-day, at the minimum. Wires sag more when you use them during the hottest part of the day and when they're already running hot. Upgrades need to happen to handle peak usage, not off-peak usage.
  - msisk6 9y ago
    An additional complication is that generation and load aren't evenly distributed in a typical energy grid. This can create "traffic jams" that aren't reflected in a typical residential electric bill but something utilities and large business get to deal with. In open energy markets like those in California and Texas there's things called "Locational Marginal Pricing" and "Congestion Revenue Rights" to deal with this.

mhb 9y ago

Shortread - Meandering story about man trying to live off grid. Discovers that 100% solar not practical without energy storage. Also large scale energy infrastructure not such a crazy idea after all.

manmal 9y ago
Or, say, medium scale. I've taken away that communities of a couple hundred-thousands homes could now create their own grid, using wind/solar with batteries.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Much smaller than that is viable: https://building-microgrid.lbl.gov/isle-eigg https://building-microgrid.lbl.gov/isle-eigg .. but generally the larger your grid the better.
  - manmal 9y ago
    But I guess there is some upper bound of connected nodes, or covered grid area, where it makes sense to break the grid up into sub grids, and make those sub grids self-sustainable? E.g. voltage losses over huge distances would force you to transmit with high voltage to faraway subgrids, and require additional transformer stations; not to speak of the line losses. I think you could eliminate those by giving each node cluster (residential area) its own closed grid. Perhaps emergency needs (like a rock concert in your neighborhood) could someday be covered by long distance laser or EM transmission from other grids, without using a landline that makes power management so difficult (because when interconnected, all grids would have to coordinate their combined consumption).
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > long distance laser or EM transmission This is either impractical, or a literal death ray.
- yourapostasy 9y ago

MrTonyD 9y ago

I'm the only person I know who doesn't like solar power. The lifespan of panels and batteries are both too limited - they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society. In contrast, I'd like to see wind turbines continue to evolve - so that they can be maintained over many lifetimes. Seems like a no-brainer -- but I'm the only one I ever hear saying that.

philipkglass 9y ago
Solar modules have no moving parts to fail or maintain. Their median and p90 lifetimes easily surpass the same measures for mechanically complex wind turbines. And if you are more interested in future possibilities than the current state of things, I believe that judicious materials selection and design to minimize thermal-electrical fatigue can produce modules with median working lifetimes in excess of 50 years.
pjc50 9y ago
This is definitely a "yes and" situation. Both are viable and useful, and somewhat complementary. Both the panels and the turbines have a lifespan of 20-25 years. Turbines also have a range of nasty mechanical failure modes. Batteries are still not feasible for mass grid deployment or as a replacement for backup gas.
epistasis 9y ago
>they will require complete replacement at too high a frequency for a society. This is a completely subjective and vague statement. However if we start to quantify it with economics costs, it turns out to be wrong. The lifetime cost of solar is very cheap. And the lifetime of turbines is not a huge amount longer than PV panels.
stephengillie 9y ago
Solar doesn't work as well in WA State as in other areas. For that reason, we've been using hydroelectric for decades.
- techsupporter 9y ago

marknadal 9y ago

There is a difference between wanting to live alone, and wanting to be "off-grid". It is perfectly possible, as the article itself establishes, to be able to live "off-grid" but not alone. I.E., a small community. If this is kept in mind, it means it would be possible to build resort-style communities in fantastic/beautiful locations that are fully self-sustainable (for energy, not necessarily food, entertainment, water, etc.). I could easily see these types of communities being co-op or "hacker communities" run by small private (think YC) companies, that allow for digital nomadic living around the world. Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing. Could you survive off-grid if you stacked up on a bunch of beans in a basement? Yeah, but we want quality of life. Finally, what if you don't want to be in a community? What if you do want to be alone? Well, that is still possible, it just means that "off-grid" (as the article states) means sometimes running a generator. Not as efficient, but at least it gets you what you want.

hueving 9y ago
>Is it self-sustainable if food/entertainment isn't included? I say yes, because as humans we enjoy a diverse range of food than our own ecosystem anyways. So I don't think importing food is a bad thing. This is not sustainable. Setting up an island that constantly has to have food and people shipped in and people and trash shipped out is going to be a loss sustainability-wise compared to just living mainland and using renewables there.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Can you explain why that isn't sustainable?
  - truthexposer 9y ago
    the goal is off the grid and environmental sustainability...
    - 9y ago

chrismealy 9y ago

If your idea of living off the grid relies on the products of a complex industrial society, then what's the point? Just to create the illusion of total individualism? If you want sustainability (and I do!) just be sustainable, and leave phoney hermit play out of it.

davedx 9y ago
Needlessly harsh. This guy started his project way before current large scale energy storage was even being considered. He genuinely tried to do his best to minimise his footprint. It's so easy to read the story from the comfort of your chair and criticise, isn't it?
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  Just commenting on the discourse - I actually agree with you that GP was needlessly harsh. That said, given that sentiment, your comment would have been a lot more effective if you left out your last sentence.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    The last sentence serves a purpose though. It urges the commenter to reflect on their own industriousness or lack thereof perhaps causing them to modify the standard by which they judge others.
    - ImSkeptical 9y ago
      Insults tend to make the recipient defensive. If you want the commenter to rethink things, there's not much benefit in insults.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        It's hardly an insult though. You have to have at least the slightest thickness of skin to survive on the internet or to even just to practice self reflection.

apozem 9y ago

Environmental problems seem intimidating to me because by their very nature they require so much collaboration. My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet- what matters is whether I can convince large groups of people or policymakers to do the same. Getting everyone on this page seems challenging.

emj 9y ago
Everyone has to try to live green, and we should admire and strive to surpass the ones who take it to an extreme. We know from statistics and economics that the rest of the world will want the same standard of living as the west, and that they will reach there at somepoint. There for it's very important to deprioritize things that are inherently not green in our culture and make green living a status thing. Transportation, food, clothing, communication and work are all things that has to be reconsidered to be green.
fpgaminer 9y ago
> My ability to live in a green way is more or less irrelevant to the planet I noticed something one day. I had recently built a home gym and gave some friends a tour of it. The next week I hear that they're now working out and going to their local gym. That moment made me realize the positive effect our actions can have on others. It'll be the same with living green. Just by doing it, you are convincing other people that it's possible and that they should give it a try. My home is now 100% powered by solar (just got the Tesla batteries installed a few days ago). It cost less than a kitchen remodel, will be paid off in 10 years, is 100% off-grid 100% of the year, and we've sacrificed no amenities (still got the A/C going comfortably :) ). I'm one small fish in the pond, but my house is now a blaring advertisement for a greener future.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  There's been some research that suggests neighbours with solar is a big predictor for who gets solar next, which backs this up. And in general, the theory of "social proof" suggests people like to follow the crowd in lots of ways.

spraak 9y ago

I have a few pedantic criticisms of the article. I'm not a local to Kaua'i, but I've lived there a long time. The article uses the correct spelling of Moloka'i, but incorrect spelling of Kauai and Hawaii, which should be Kaua'i and Hawai'i. The ' symbol is an actual letter in the Hawai'ian language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina The article mentions Luke growing taro [1] and their daughter mostly eating poi [2], but it doesn't explain that poi is the mashed taro root, usually fermented. 1. “The only real success I’ve had is taro,” Luke says. 2. ... Finley, subsists largely on homegrown poi.

krallja 9y ago
Regarding spelling, the Wikipedia article notes that: “The United States Board on Geographic Names lists relevant place names both with and without the ʻokina and kahakō in the Geographic Names Information System. Colloquially and formally, the forms have long been used interchangeably.”

jldugger 9y ago

Another rugged individualist discovers that the living as espoused by Walden is essentially the road to poverty.

Mz 9y ago

It took about a year for Luke to regret his move off the grid. “It’s not that it wasn’t what we expected,” he explains. “We wanted the difficulty of it.” But he also wanted to show people it was possible to live with a smaller carbon footprint; instead, he was burning gasoline and watching the island’s electric utility outpace him, installing solar power and cutting carbon all over the island. “That was all happening, not because of me,” he remembers thinking, “but despite me and my efforts.” He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model. But, I like the ending: Walking me out past the taro patch, back across the swinging bridge that spans the creek surrounding his property, Luke points out one last thing. “It’s funny,” he says, “it was only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.”

cbr 9y ago
He wanted to be a pioneer, a leader of some sort. This was more important to him than "saving the planet." His goal of going off grid was to position himself as a hero, a frontrunner. Instead of being happy that the island is converting to solar at a pace that exceeds its stated goals, he just feels cheated of his goal of being a role model. That's harsh. If you put hundreds of hours into doing something you thought was really valuable, and it turned out that it wasn't actually valuable, I think you'd be sad too.
- deleted 9y ago
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- lsh 9y ago
  it may be harsh but I feel it's accurate. the same lone hero sentiments that causes the "not invented here syndrome" led this guy to toil hundreds of hours when he could have stashed that ego and contributed to the island's efforts of renewable energy.
  - 9y ago

wffurr 9y ago

Hard Lessons in misleading titles of Tesla advertisements / PR puff pieces. The submarine at work. Don't get me wrong, that Tesla battery plant and the amount of solar Kauai has installed is amazing. I just wasn't expecting the obvious product placement given the story title.

Animats 9y ago

From the article: “Only recently I learned that Thoreau had his mom bring him food out in the woods.” Robert Frost on Thoreau: Well, if I have to choose one or the other, I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer With an income in cash of, say, a thousand (From, say, a publisher in New York City). Lesson: sustenance farming sucks. Farming has big economies of scale and you get none of them.

prawn 9y ago
"subsistence farming"?
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  Small plot farming, done to feed yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture What 90% of humanity did, for centuries. Classic peasant stuff, you know. It's not fun. You depend on the food from your land to eat, so you can't afford to experiment with new methods of doing anything, or grow "cash crops" that you can't directly eat. If the rains fail, you starve. If there's a locust swarm, you starve. If your plow oxen dies, and you can't get another one, you starve.
  - prawn 9y ago
    Sorry, I know what it is. The comment I was replying to wrote "sustenance farming". I wasn't sure if this was a term where they lived, autocorrect or a mistake.

missbit 9y ago

One problem with this off grid in Kauai story is that he must have friends & family & when you live in the middle of the Pacific in Hawaii, that means friends & family flying 1/4 around the world to come & see you. That's going to sink any green savings for quite a while.

driverdan 9y ago

> Inefficiency is the ultimate downfall of any individual effort to address climate change. This is a great summary of the problem with homesteaders and people who want to live off grid. Efficiencies of scale are very real. I've personally been living off the electric grid for about 2.5 months in my bus with solar and batteries. I've only had to plug into shore power for a few hours once due to a few days of rain. I don't have enough power to run AC 24/7 though which isn't great in 100+ F TX weather.

justaaron 9y ago

I find the tone of this article to be a bit silly, dour, and clueless... Did this person mention having to "give up an electric toaster" wtf????!!!!!! any electrical heating apparatus is a short circuit and just dumping amps away like nothing.... 6 panels!??? holy moly, I live on 2 poly 250w and 2 mono 100w panels + 400ah of battery and a 1k inverter... this is just reads like a moaning pansy whiner paeon to bloat and consumer stupidity. if you go off-grid, that's pretty easy. if you think to produce all your own food, that's going to take some time- permaculture is a lifetime pursuit. sheesh look at these photos, that's a gazebo built from a kit or hired labor or what? hello!? roundwood timberframe, onsite stones, baled grasses, mud render, etc it's like the citiest slickers ever decided to try to become instant permaculture heroes and were disappointed...

wott 9y ago
> it's like the citiest slickers ever decided to try to become instant permaculture heroes and were disappointed... It looks so, he probably never saw a farm, since he didn't think that poultry and vegetable garden should be separated by a... poultry netting (hence the name)

bdcravens 9y ago

I can't help but consider that modern science and medicine has enabled a large amount of adults whose continued life depends on continued access to that science and medicine.

substack 9y ago

It sounds like the refrigerator is the problem here: "But they still have rainy weeks where they run out of power and have to run their gas-powered generator to keep the refrigerator from spoiling." You don't need to run any other appliances all night when the sun isn't shining. Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power. I live off-grid and we run laptops (using boost converters) and lights directly off 12v DC. A big part of making an off-grid system work is reducing your consumption drastically in ways that you can't even do if you're plugged into the grid.

Scoundreller 9y ago
> Also, why would you even have a microwave, toaster, and ELECTRIC dryer? Those all use obscene amounts of power. For the former two, I think microwaves and toasters are efficient uses of energy. Heating/toasting the equivalent with propane or some other fuel isn't worth the trade-off of running the generator for a few extra minutes. But I guess it depends on how big you size your inverter, and if you intend on having a 2ndary power source.
spraak 9y ago
Is it you that I recall reading about who is/was living on the big island? Would be neat to meet up sometime if you're open to it, would be neat to see what you've built considering that you also do software development :)
- taylorfinley 9y ago
  Hey, not the poster you responded to, but I am an off-gridder in Puna who codes and actually was classmates with Luke Evslin (super good guy back then, sounds like he still is). I would love for a group of big island Hacker News reading off-gridders to get to know each other!
  - substack 9y ago
    Yes I also live in Puna. Are any of you open to using https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ ? It's an "off-grid" social network.

carapace 9y ago

These folks are idiots. Nice Tesla ad though. (Edit: Small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated with a permaculture farm can supply food and energy in a reasonable footprint. Cf. "Alcohol can be a Gas" http://permaculture.com/ http://permaculture.com/ )

vinceguidry 9y ago

What I love about technology is that "real" high technology doesn't have mountains of transistors and actuators. It has lots of the most abundant materials the planet has to offer. Soil, rock, sun, air. Technology harmonizes with all these things because if it didn't, there could never be enough of it to make any kind of difference. The amount of scale involved simply boggles the imagination. Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. But the best we could come up with was pumped storage, and that's simply not an option everywhere. China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does. We look at cars and computers and think that technology is always going to get more sophisticated, harder for the average joe to work on. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction now. We are going to have to value things like repairability and durability, aspects that are meaningless inside tech bubbles, simply because when one of your 500lb batteries breaks, you can't exactly get another 500lb battery out there. You have to fix it. Swap it out for a spare, sure, but you need to be able to repair it to return it to the pool.

bhnmmhmd 9y ago
I agree. Sometimes I review what 70s or 80s were like: lots of folks who were interested in electronics and computers essentially built the very first personal computers and software. Now, can we expect some new technology to be invented by these kinds of enthusiasts these days? I don't think so. Technology has become too sophisticated and complex that no single mind can comprehend it, let alone coming up with a better version of it. Those batteries you mentioned, they most probably will just be replaceable, not fixable by average Joe.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  If they're only replaceable, then eventually nobody's going to buy them. So many people I know won't buy electric vehicles because they're worried about what's going to happen when the battery goes bad. Individuals think on one scale, organizations think on another. Individuals can't plan for a lot of things, how many people do you know save up to get their tires replaced? I bet not many. But organizations can work that sort of thing into operational plans and pay people to keep up maintenance schedules. But all of that breaks down when you're talking about long distances. The cost of shipping out a brand new tractor is going to so dwarf any kind of repair that even at the organizational level, the company that farmers pay to provide equipment is going to demand that tractors be serviceable.

deleted 9y ago

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unlmtd1 9y ago

Solar is an extremely specialized tech that will not provide even a small fraction of our electricity. Refrigeration is insane. 1kwh would take a man about two to three days of pedalling to produce. There will be practically no electric motors post-petroleum-glut. How many people know the amount of energy they use? Our society is energy-oblivious. The average post-petroleum-glut person will afford no more than 50-100kwh per year. That's the optimistic scenario. Lights and communication. No motorised transport, no motorised washer, no motorised refrigeration, no motorised water utility. 95% (plus) decrease of our society's energy input in two generations. And don't forget that nuclear power = nuclear disaster/war on a long enough timeline. Nuclear power is mankind's surest suicide path.

gcb0 9y ago
most countries use fluvial power and will be oblivious to petroleum going away if not for cars. some (I can only think of Canada) even export it.

biggerbistro 9y ago

This reads like a Tesla ad and a warning to anyone thinking of becoming self-sufficient. Wouldn't want too many people being able to generate their own electricity otherwise how would you control them?