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I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months in Manhattan
- QuarterReptile 4y agoGood article. It reminds me of the more extreme offshoots of the FI community: people or couples living on 10k yearly in US or Western Europe, guys living out of their 1st gen Chevy Volts, and so on. In most circumstances, it'll never be worth paring back the conveniences of your life, because the time saved by convenience becomes more valuable as your labor/expertise becomes more valuable and your free time gets scarcer. But it seems healthy to remember that barebones living is an option.
- Arainach 4y agoThis is a cool idea, but the author stretches their conclusions too far when talking about grid impact, etc. This becomes obvious when you ask "what if everyone did this"? These tactics don't allow you to (as the author says) use a 95% reliable grid because if everyone in your building tries to go put solar panels on the roof it fails. If your neighbors aren't paying their heating bills so that you can leech heat through the walls, it fails.
- lost_tourist 4y agoIt definitely fails at scale. Not everyone is rich enough that they can live on the mountains off the grid with starlink/hughes as their only non airgapped link to civilization. We all know you can use solar panels and live "without" by using nonperishables and just a few basic electronics and old fashioned entertainment like books and board games. I mean it's been done a thousand times by various bloggers. I camped out for 3 weeks once, with the only modern convenience being a rain barrel shower to shower off every 3 days or so. It was an enlightening experience that I don't really want to repeat.
- benj111 4y ago> If your neighbors aren't paying their heating bills so that you can leech heat through the walls, it fails On the other hand, living in high density housing is more efficient, there's less external wall area per dwelling. District heating 'should' be more efficient and practical at higher densities. All things being equal, living in a flat in a city is going to be less energy intensive than living in a detached house in the country/suburbs.
- luckylion 4y agoSure, but again, you're living off of your neighbors if you don't contribute. It's more efficient over all, but you still need X amount of energy to heat all flats to Y°C. You can shut off your heater, your neighbors have to heat a little more because some heat will escape to your flat, and you don't have to pay and still get the heat. It's the same amount in total, just divided through fewer parties.
- throw__away7391 4y agoNo it's not, because you're sharing walls, significantly reducing the surface area exposed to the cold.
- tptacek 4y agoI think this thread is arguing at cross purposes. I read the parent commenter to be making a narrow claim: that the author can't really claim to be disconnected from the grid, because they're relying on the connections of other people for basic things like heating. That seems true, even though the experiment is still interesting and valid in its own right.
- lukeschlather 4y agoIt's not quite that simple. If everyone was being parsimonious with heat, yes. But I tend to turn my heat down to 50 at night and 65 during the day and if all my neighbors do 60 at night - 70 in the day, then on many days I can't really cool my apartment to 50 just because of their waste heat. And in colder damper climates I do this intentionally to help inhibit mold growth etc. so am I free riding or are my neighbors causing my apartment to overheat?
- luckylion 4y agoI'm sure it gets fuzzy on the edges, but "I don't heat and it's still warm" isn't in that zone. What I'm talking about is: given you want ~18°c/60°f in rooms on average (20°c/68°f for more comfort), and you have a fixed volume of space inside a building, you're not magically saving energy by turning your heat down, because your neighbors need to turn theirs up to achieve the average temperature because insulation is mostly on the outside, not between flats. You could counteract that by insulating your rooms towards your neighbors, which would also achieve your goal of not going above 10°c/50°f.
- iamwpj 4y agoSomething about this just really turns me off. I think it's the comments about indigenous people living without power. Returning to nature ideology seems to always be appealing to city-dwellers. Previous humans didn't overcome nature or become "one with it". Nature killed them carelessly – unaware of their suffering or even their existence. The biggest advantage humans had over nature was our ability to go unnoticed. We didn't thrive; we survived. Would you use the homeless people scrabbling for limited supplies at the food kitchen as your motivation to go off grid? I'm all for individual action in the face of climate change. I think people who practice having a minimal impact on their surroundings are more likely to take that mindset to their work and affect change in the world as a cohesive unit with a shared understanding. In that sense – well done to the author. I think we should advocate for thriving while having less of an affect on nature.
- matwood 4y agoA friend of mine often quips, "never forget that nature is always trying to kill you."
- micromacrofoot 4y agothat’s a little hyperbolic in the other direction though
- zdragnar 4y agoNot entirely wrong, though. Survival requires constant work- either by you, or by the community that supports you through things like providing regular fresh water, waste removal, heat, safe food to eat, and so forth.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoneither is entirely true because nature is life and death, both are inescapable - it sustains and neglects
- quickthrowman 4y agoI’d be more impressed if they didn’t use water/sewer/natural gas, this isn’t actually off-grid if you’re still using distributed utilities. We need to dispose of our bodily waste, drink potable water, and keep ourselves warm. Drilling a well and setting up a septic system on a rural property is vastly more expensive than connecting a property to utility electrical power. Giving up lights and receptacles is the easiest part of being ‘off grid’.
- throw__away7391 4y agoAnd if everyone does this I think it really encroaches on natural world. Take the 18 million people living in the NYC metro area and give each one enough land to be "off-grid" and I think you're disrupting a large amount of natural space.
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- 71a54xd 4y agoAlright, so you just used power at NYU and basically didn't do anything for five years... this reads almost as hilariously as the founder of Soylent who has an incredible blog post about "buying disposable clothing to save water" while living in an off-grid apt in San Francisco. More theater than anything else. https://www.metafilter.com/151777/Soylents-founder-Rob-Rhinehart-shares-his-technotopian-dream-reality https://www.metafilter.com/151777/Soylents-founder-Rob-Rhine...
- unnouinceput 4y agoThis article is a one off, not at all a "If everyone could stand a few days without grid power...". Wanna know why? Here is the primer quote that's all you need to know: " I’m single, so I could act unilaterally, but I had no access to economies of scale.....and I have no children". Lemme repeat that quote again: "...and I have no children". As a single experiment is OK, but once you fully become a member of society, this is not possible, not even for a day! Why? Because you end up in jail for child endangerment!! That's why. And if everyone would be single then guess what!! No more humanity in 50 years, because...yeah, you guess it, no children! I want a story like this from a family with children, then it will be worth of HN front page. This one is "meh" at best.
- wasmitnetzen 4y agoI strongly oppose the notion that you're not a full member of society without kids. That's an unnecessary attack on a valid lifestyle choice. And even worse, a lot of people don't even get to choose, which you're ignoring entirely.
- benj111 4y agoIt also raises question of whether the children are full members of society, and if you lose your membership when your kids reach 18/move out/have their own kids. Surely potential breeders should be more deserving of membership than those that are no longer capable? Further, surely rapists are more deserving that abortionees?
- unnouinceput 4y agoMy point is if you can choose, then choose the best for your kids. Also humanity exists solely because of reproduction and reproduction means kids. So yeah, you're not fully a member of society until you raise kids, yours or adopted it doesn't matter. The ultimate contribution to humanity is to be a parent.
- wasmitnetzen 4y agoOur societies are built on specializing on what you're good at. If you're not a good parent, you should let people who are good at it handle that part. Yes, a (developed) society needs about 2.1 children per woman (or have immigration from other societies) but people not having kids can easily be averaged out by other people having three or four kids. I would actually argue that in the face of climate change, a society having too many kids and thus a growing population and resource usage is disadvantageous for the society's survival.
- tamaharbor 4y agoHow did he keep warm in the winter? Even if you depend on the warmth from neighboring apartments, that’s not exactly off the grid.
- peterbonney 4y agoYeah, it’s definitely a major hole in the accounting. Having said that, heat in Manhattan tends to be very efficient because of the density. The majority of the radiators in my apartment (it’s a prewar building with old-school cast iron radiators) are permanently off, and there are a couple we turn on only when the temp dips into the 20s or below. It gets unbearably hot if they are on even just a little bit at other times. Obviously I’m benefiting from the heat in other apartments, but anecdotally my neighbors have very similar behavior - it’s not like they’re all running the heat on full blast and I’m free-riding. And we all share the building oil bill in any case - there’s no water heat metering so no major incentive to turn down the radiators, it’s just that excessively hot if we don’t. Most of the heating demand in Manhattan apartments goes toward showers and baths from what I can gather.
- jzellis 4y agoI've done enough experiments like this to know two things: 1) There are a lot of modern "conveniences" and practices that are actually pretty superfluous and you can do without most of the time. 2) There are a lot of conveniences that actually make your life better, because going without them means you're devoting such a large percentage of your time to solving the problems they solved for you that you're basically just subsisting rather than living. It's like minimalist living, which I'm actually a very big fan of in theory, but which fails for me because I'm a dude who makes things. I'm drawn to nomadism and having less stuff, but how the hell you gonna build your own table unless you got tools and materials? The answer, I think, is that there are no answers that are one size fits all. If your job and your hobbies are all digital, you can get away with living out of a backpack and a messenger bag; if they aren't you probably can't. But, having said that, the experiment is always valuable for anyone, to find out what the least amount of stuff/energy/money you need to live and be happy is. A lot of the crap we spend money and natural resources on is not stuff we need or even particularly want - it's just stuff that somebody wants to sell us, which is why modern life is so fraught with irritation - everybody is trying to get us to buy their crap 24/7 by any means necessary, and it's hard not to fall for it. My rule is: never buy what you can make, never make what you can remake or upcycle, never remake what you can repair. Of course, I've spent many years learning how to do all kinds of useful things, from building electronics to tables to plumbing to gardening. That's what drives me. Most people lose their shit if their phone battery stops working, but they're tapped into stuff I have no idea about. Intentionality is the key. Be like the Amish: don't reject technology or convenience or the grid, but make a conscious evaluation of what bits of it work for you and what bits you don't need or want. Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't need to plug in your oven because you're rich enough or lazy enough to order every meal. It's not a direction I'd go in, personally, but if that's your thing, I guess, do it - just do it by conscious choice, accepting the responsibility of the consequences, rather than by default.
- crazygringo 4y agoIf you're getting hot water from your building, (presumably) steam heating through your radiator supplied by the building, natural gas to cook with, running water in general from the city, and sewage disposal down your toilet, I don't think you can call this "off grid" as the term is commonly understood. The article (not HN) headline is more accurate -- "disconnected from the electric grid". To which I guess I would ask, in a place like Manhattan -- why? Installing prohibited solar panels on your building's roof doesn't seem particularly noteworthy, nor is it scalable in an urban area.
- JackFr 4y agoI believe city water pressure will take it to the 5th floor and that is gravity driven. I live on the 2nd floor and never lost water pressure during the two major blackouts NYC suffered in the past 20 years while the higher floors in my building did once the roof tank was emptied.
- falcolas 4y agoYes, the water that comes to your apartment is fed by gravity from a holding tank situated at a higher elevation than you. But getting the water that high depends mostly on electric pumps. Even if the source is higher than the water towers, there are open cisterns for water treatment between the source and tower. And those pumps and treatment plants have backup generators and priority on gas deliveries for them. A quick but informative video on how cities would shut down given a total power failure: https://youtu.be/_OpC4fH3mEk https://youtu.be/_OpC4fH3mEk
- JackFr 4y agoNope. With respect to NYC I believe you’re mistaken. 97% of NYC water is gravity fed from three reservoirs. https://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwater/html/drinking/reservoir.shtml https://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwater/html/drinking/reservoir.sh... “The NYC Aqueduct is a pressure tunnel (a gravity feed system) with hydraulic head provided by a 300 m difference in elevation between the watershed headlands in upstate New York and the distribution area (NYC). The head is enough to get water under pressure to the sixth floor of most buildings without pumping.” https://sites.hofstra.edu/charles-merguerian/a-history-of-the-nyc-water-supply-system/ https://sites.hofstra.edu/charles-merguerian/a-history-of-th...
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- tbran 4y agoThe silly, pedantic takeaway for many in this thread seems to be "everyone in the city should put solar on their apartment roof and eschew modern life". It was actually "Life got better when I stopped watching Netflix and ordering takeout."
- crazygringo 4y agoIt's hard for me to see how cooking at home gets better when you need to go to the grocery store daily so your meat and milk won't spoil. As well as not be able to save any money by buying food in volume or saving leftovers. At the end of the day, your produce is either being refrigerating by you or your local store. Not much of an energy difference either way, but it introduces a massive inconvenience.
- euroderf 4y agoI would think that centralised refrigeration would be a big win. Maybe there's LCA on this.
- crazygringo 4y agoAt least at all the grocery stores I shop at, meat and cold veggies are on refrigerated shelves out in the open with no doors. While it's winter and the store is being heated. I can't see any scenario where that's even remotely energy-efficient, compared to a home refrigerator with a door.
- vasco 4y agoIf you do this, don't sell your stuff. Whenever I read this or "I'm now minimalistic" articles, they usually include donating or selling things, only to then have the fad (or the article they wanted to write for publicity) go away and re-buy everything. So now you just consumed double what you would've.
- euroderf 4y agoBut when you donate or sell something it doesn't go into a Disintegrator.
- badpun 4y agoQuite often it does, actually. Depends on where you donate to. Many places sell the donated goods and if them deem it of low market value they'll just throw it away instead of going through a trouble for selling for almost nothing.
- euroderf 4y agoI've read that most clothes get tossed (i.e. wrapped into bundles and sent to the Indian subcontinent). But also I'm surprised at some of the broken stuff that makes it onto shelves.
- aliqot 4y agoWelcome my friends, the future is Amish :) Please try our food next
- falcolas 4y agoI’d like to call out that the author is not living “off the grid”, they’re mooching off other people’s grid access to live and work. As others have called out, this doesn’t scale. Instead of couchsurfing, should we say they’re gridsurfing?
- euroderf 4y agoSo people at this winter's warm-up centers are heatsurfing. It's efficient, it's (at least relatively) social.
- jhanschoo 4y agoIf you reduce consumption by 80% to mooch off 10% of the remaining 20% using underutilized resources, that's great.
- falcolas 4y agoIf you had any kind of backup for those numbers, this might be a valid point. But right now, the "reduced consumption" (beyond habit changes and the few dozen kWh their solar panel generates) is 100% transferred onto other entities. Other apartments, college, restaurants, etc.
- urbandw311er 4y agoIt’s tempting to pick holes in this in a snipey kinda way. Or highlight it as a bit sanctimonious. But if I’m really being super honest, I think I’m just irritated by it because I’m jealous. This person seems to have the drive and ethical fortitude to put their principles ahead of their lifestyle. And I’m probably embarrassed that it showcases my selfishness at not doing so on a routine basis.
- kjrose 4y agoI love how people talk about not using electricity with various groups and how they did it for hundreds of thousands of years. Completely missing that their own ancestors did the same thing until at most 150 years ago. In fact, i know my father had no electricity for the first part of his life and he lived in Alberta, not exactly the middle of the congo. Not using electricity is not the exception, its the rule. Until very recently in human history having grid power was impossible.
- jhanschoo 4y agoIndeed, the article credits currently disconnected peoples for useful lessons that helped the author on their experiments.
- xtiansimon 4y agoI’m a big proponent of constraints in one’s living situations. I had the pleasure to know my Great Grand Mother up to my early twenties. She was greatly effected by the Great Depression. For me the dot-com bust of 2000 in CA started a period of underemployment. And at the beginning I was adamant about so many of my expenses (I can’t possibly go without X..). Buy the time I did get back on my feet financially, there was little of anything that I felt I couldn’t live without or find a way to compensate. The biggest benefit, IMHO, of experimentation like the OP suggests (for those of us who are not professors) is learning this lesson in life.