7 ms·

This is absolutely doable, I've been off-grid for almost 3 years now with a very minimal setup and for the most part I have no complaints outside of a couple we

This is absolutely doable, I've been off-grid for almost 3 years now with a very minimal setup and for the most part I have no complaints outside of a couple weeks in the dead of winter, and the one week that gets really really hot in the summer. I'm not sure how to calculate my total embodied energy but in terms of electricity I have never used more than 7kWh in a single day, which works out 300W and includes all of my computing needs as well as refrigeration, lighting, minor heating/cooling, some small amount of cooking and at least a couple lattes every day. On the worst day in winter my consumption is usually ~1kWh, limited by solar production.

Tepix 4y ago
Sounds interesting, are you writing down what you are doing somewhere?
brianwawok 4y ago
So easy enough if building a new small house or a cabin. The US has many many houses with 4000+ square feet, and no good way to heat it cool outside if AC and a furnace. Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? What’s the impact of that to the environment?
- Forge36 4y ago
  We can require higher standards for new houses. Renovating existing houses will need to focus on the worst ones first. Possibly at sale time.
- evilduck 4y ago
  Less dramatically they could also close some vents and doors.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Four thousand square feet? That's more than ten times the area of the apartment I own back in the UK. Big is generally easier to keep warm than small thanks to the square cube law, but even in pathological cases it's never harder when scaling up. Even assuming that 4000 sq ft is spread over 4 levels, that's a ground area of just under 93 m^2, and even in Anchor Point Alaska [0] with 15% panels, that roof can make more on average than the other poster says they're using. [0] This map doesn't go as far north as Anchorage: https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  > Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? Nah, we can retrofit. There are more efficient means of heating/cooling, like mini-splits and heat pumps, insulation, geothermal, etc. With more local and energy-efficient methods (and better insulation) we can get much better efficiencies. Back in the day, for heating you would have one or two fireplaces. The home was configured so that rooms would get progressively colder away from the heat source. You wouldn't heat the whole home, just one or two rooms, unless there was a special occasion, and then you'd open all the doors. For passive cooling, house facing was critical, as were ventilation, cross-breezes, and later on fans. Homes located in places with extreme temperature shifts were designed to open or close up more or less over the seasons, although they were never "efficient" as they often had no insulation.
  - Steltek 4y ago
    The best retrofit would be splitting those mega homes into multiple units. We have a housing crisis after all. I can't even imagine what a 4000sq ft home looks like. You would start using olde timey names for random rooms. "This is the Conservatory, where we keep our 4th xbox, just in case".
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Here is a random one: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/339-County-Road-4315-Naples-TX-75568/235164834_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/339-County-Road-4315-Napl... Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger.
      - danans 4y ago
        > Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger. That house seems to have been built in 1971. In contrast, here is a brand new home in the same city that is only 1200 sqft. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX-75568/2062415557_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX...? It seems like someone is building sensibly sized homes there, however rare.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  > 4000+ square feet For reference, that's 370m². In European terms that's probably double what you would expect for a typical family of four.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    Hong Kong apartments start at around 120 sq feet (about 11m²), and a family of 6 might live in 550 sq feet (50m²).
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It is double in US terms too: https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-square-footage-to-nationwide-surveys-of-owners-and-renters/ https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-... https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html > The median size of a new single-family home sold in 2021 was 2,356 square feet.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  4,000 sq ft is a 95th percentile home in the US. https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-square-footage-to-nationwide-surveys-of-owners-and-renters/ https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
- immibis 4y ago
  Just spray the walls full of aerogel using a process that hasn't been invented yet. Optionally, board half the windows (with aerogel).
homerowilson 4y ago
My partner and I have been living "off grid" using PV + battery for electricity for the last 5 years in the Appalachian mountains. We track energy use meticulously. We try to use mostly wood heat in winter, but also have a buried propane tank for supplemental heat and hot water in winter. So that is arguably not fully off grid? We have a 2,400-sq. ft. A-frame house with R-52 insulation in most walls (closed-cell + batt) and low-e glass windows (but, alas, lots of windows). We mostly cook with electric or the woodstove in winter. Our woodstove is a massive, pretty efficient soapstone masonry stove central in the house by design. South-facing windows are backed by local stone floors that capture and radiate heat in winter. The house is angled to allow sun to enter windows in winter and block sun in summer for passive heating/cooling. The two of us use just under 5kWh / day average electricity. Our big energy use is heat in winter though! Here is the breakdown: 5kWh/day electric * 365 days = 1825 kWh/year electrons 2.5 cords wood (mostly oak) = 17584 kWh/year wood heat 300 gal. liquid propane = 8400 kWh/year propane heat That's a total of ~27800 kWh/year for the two of us including heat. That's about 76 kWh/day or 38 kWh/day per person on average. *This includes charging my e-bike for my work commute--but we also have a gas car so not nearly all transportation energy costs.[edited to add this] I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter. 2 kWh/day seems crazy low to me.
- norenh 4y ago
  The article mentions "no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living" so it is not 2kWh/day but 2kWh/hour. You are already below it in your household.
  - kiliantics 4y ago
    There are still a lot of omitted factors in the above accounting. The car's petrol use was mentioned but not added, then you have all the embodied energy in the food and other consumed items that were never included. Finally all the energy in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure used, such as roads and internet.
  - jandrese 4y ago
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> I'm not sure how to calculate my total embodied energy It's probably dominated by your vehicle if you have one (decent rule of thumb is abkut equal to the fuel you'd put through an ICE of the same size in a given time)
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is dominated by the infrastructure around the vehicle. Personal vehicle means space to park it. Space to park it means things are further spread out. This leads to a few inevitabilities: Things being further spread out means walking and public transit are less feasible. Individual vehicles means insufficient political support for infrastructure for walking, cycling, and public transit. The mass required for living (water, food, energy, trash, sewage) has to travel further, and energy = force * distance. Of course, people’s desire to have backyards and space in general contributes to even more spreading out, but individual cars go hand in hand since they enable being able to consume more space. In other words, there is no getting around the fact that energy and distance scale with each other, so anything that allows one to consume more space, and hence cause mass to travel more distance, has a multiplier effect on energy consumption.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    This is very much true of high density areas. Although there is somewhat of a counter point to your energy and distance scaling. Without infrastructure and laws forcing the worst possible vehicles, it's quite possible to build a comfortable vehicle which will hang on your wall in a bedroom that does 40-80km/h for several hours a day with the only energy input being the sunlight that falls on it and human effort equivent to a brisk walk. Similarly a self sufficient homestead doesn't need those utilities and can sustain a person in surpriaingly little area. We don't have to force the minority who want an actually rural lifestyle to give it up. We just have to apply the same rules and changes that would fix suburbia. A low-input, no-beef, mostly vegetarian homestead with a 2 story cottage that manages its own utilities and has a 2m wide LEV path 10km to the train station is no more unsustainable than arranging those ingredients into some large farms and a large city. It could be a large mostly-native food forest, or an acre of high yield closed system. It would be vastly less labour efficient, but if a household wants to dedicate one member's time to agriculture and domestic labour that's fine.
turtlebits 4y ago
If you're off-grid, it's generally because you have to, and you reducing energy consumption is a must. That said, I have an off-grid office (w/ ~5kw of storage and 1.5kw of solar) and it has definitely changed the way I use energy at home, and what my expectations for my next home will be.

Tepix 4y ago

Sounds interesting, are you writing down what you are doing somewhere?

brianwawok 4y ago

So easy enough if building a new small house or a cabin. The US has many many houses with 4000+ square feet, and no good way to heat it cool outside if AC and a furnace. Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? What’s the impact of that to the environment?

Forge36 4y ago
We can require higher standards for new houses. Renovating existing houses will need to focus on the worst ones first. Possibly at sale time.
evilduck 4y ago
Less dramatically they could also close some vents and doors.
ben_w 4y ago
Four thousand square feet? That's more than ten times the area of the apartment I own back in the UK. Big is generally easier to keep warm than small thanks to the square cube law, but even in pathological cases it's never harder when scaling up. Even assuming that 4000 sq ft is spread over 4 levels, that's a ground area of just under 93 m^2, and even in Anchor Point Alaska [0] with 15% panels, that roof can make more on average than the other poster says they're using. [0] This map doesn't go as far north as Anchorage: https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/world
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
> Are we going to bulldoze all existing houses to meet this goal? Nah, we can retrofit. There are more efficient means of heating/cooling, like mini-splits and heat pumps, insulation, geothermal, etc. With more local and energy-efficient methods (and better insulation) we can get much better efficiencies. Back in the day, for heating you would have one or two fireplaces. The home was configured so that rooms would get progressively colder away from the heat source. You wouldn't heat the whole home, just one or two rooms, unless there was a special occasion, and then you'd open all the doors. For passive cooling, house facing was critical, as were ventilation, cross-breezes, and later on fans. Homes located in places with extreme temperature shifts were designed to open or close up more or less over the seasons, although they were never "efficient" as they often had no insulation.
- Steltek 4y ago
  The best retrofit would be splitting those mega homes into multiple units. We have a housing crisis after all. I can't even imagine what a 4000sq ft home looks like. You would start using olde timey names for random rooms. "This is the Conservatory, where we keep our 4th xbox, just in case".
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Here is a random one: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/339-County-Road-4315-Naples-TX-75568/235164834_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/339-County-Road-4315-Napl... Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger.
    - danans 4y ago
      > Often the newer ones have large amounts of "waste space" where hallways are larger, entryways are larger, rooms of course are larger. That house seems to have been built in 1971. In contrast, here is a brand new home in the same city that is only 1200 sqft. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX-75568/2062415557_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/154-Lt-Rusty-Dr-Naples-TX...? It seems like someone is building sensibly sized homes there, however rare.
wongarsu 4y ago
> 4000+ square feet For reference, that's 370m². In European terms that's probably double what you would expect for a typical family of four.
- FabHK 4y ago
  Hong Kong apartments start at around 120 sq feet (about 11m²), and a family of 6 might live in 550 sq feet (50m²).
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is double in US terms too: https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-square-footage-to-nationwide-surveys-of-owners-and-renters/ https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-... https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html > The median size of a new single-family home sold in 2021 was 2,356 square feet.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
4,000 sq ft is a 95th percentile home in the US. https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-square-footage-to-nationwide-surveys-of-owners-and-renters/ https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-homes-...
immibis 4y ago
Just spray the walls full of aerogel using a process that hasn't been invented yet. Optionally, board half the windows (with aerogel).

homerowilson 4y ago

My partner and I have been living "off grid" using PV + battery for electricity for the last 5 years in the Appalachian mountains. We track energy use meticulously. We try to use mostly wood heat in winter, but also have a buried propane tank for supplemental heat and hot water in winter. So that is arguably not fully off grid? We have a 2,400-sq. ft. A-frame house with R-52 insulation in most walls (closed-cell + batt) and low-e glass windows (but, alas, lots of windows). We mostly cook with electric or the woodstove in winter. Our woodstove is a massive, pretty efficient soapstone masonry stove central in the house by design. South-facing windows are backed by local stone floors that capture and radiate heat in winter. The house is angled to allow sun to enter windows in winter and block sun in summer for passive heating/cooling. The two of us use just under 5kWh / day average electricity. Our big energy use is heat in winter though! Here is the breakdown: 5kWh/day electric * 365 days = 1825 kWh/year electrons 2.5 cords wood (mostly oak) = 17584 kWh/year wood heat 300 gal. liquid propane = 8400 kWh/year propane heat That's a total of ~27800 kWh/year for the two of us including heat. That's about 76 kWh/day or 38 kWh/day per person on average. *This includes charging my e-bike for my work commute--but we also have a gas car so not nearly all transportation energy costs.[edited to add this] I can't see any way to go much lower than that without freezing in the winter. 2 kWh/day seems crazy low to me.

norenh 4y ago
The article mentions "no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 2 kWh per hour or 48 kWh per day) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living" so it is not 2kWh/day but 2kWh/hour. You are already below it in your household.
- kiliantics 4y ago
  There are still a lot of omitted factors in the above accounting. The car's petrol use was mentioned but not added, then you have all the embodied energy in the food and other consumed items that were never included. Finally all the energy in the construction and maintenance of infrastructure used, such as roads and internet.
- jandrese 4y ago

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> I'm not sure how to calculate my total embodied energy It's probably dominated by your vehicle if you have one (decent rule of thumb is abkut equal to the fuel you'd put through an ICE of the same size in a given time)

lotsofpulp 4y ago
It is dominated by the infrastructure around the vehicle. Personal vehicle means space to park it. Space to park it means things are further spread out. This leads to a few inevitabilities: Things being further spread out means walking and public transit are less feasible. Individual vehicles means insufficient political support for infrastructure for walking, cycling, and public transit. The mass required for living (water, food, energy, trash, sewage) has to travel further, and energy = force * distance. Of course, people’s desire to have backyards and space in general contributes to even more spreading out, but individual cars go hand in hand since they enable being able to consume more space. In other words, there is no getting around the fact that energy and distance scale with each other, so anything that allows one to consume more space, and hence cause mass to travel more distance, has a multiplier effect on energy consumption.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  This is very much true of high density areas. Although there is somewhat of a counter point to your energy and distance scaling. Without infrastructure and laws forcing the worst possible vehicles, it's quite possible to build a comfortable vehicle which will hang on your wall in a bedroom that does 40-80km/h for several hours a day with the only energy input being the sunlight that falls on it and human effort equivent to a brisk walk. Similarly a self sufficient homestead doesn't need those utilities and can sustain a person in surpriaingly little area. We don't have to force the minority who want an actually rural lifestyle to give it up. We just have to apply the same rules and changes that would fix suburbia. A low-input, no-beef, mostly vegetarian homestead with a 2 story cottage that manages its own utilities and has a 2m wide LEV path 10km to the train station is no more unsustainable than arranging those ingredients into some large farms and a large city. It could be a large mostly-native food forest, or an acre of high yield closed system. It would be vastly less labour efficient, but if a household wants to dedicate one member's time to agriculture and domestic labour that's fine.

turtlebits 4y ago

If you're off-grid, it's generally because you have to, and you reducing energy consumption is a must. That said, I have an off-grid office (w/ ~5kw of storage and 1.5kw of solar) and it has definitely changed the way I use energy at home, and what my expectations for my next home will be.