Grid Issues

I’m hearing some reports out of Europe about them already having grid issues. They are experiencing a lot of short outages right now. So far it’s not too big a deal, but time will tell. With Russian gas cut off people have switched to using electrical options. That puts strain on an already maxed out grid.

Here in the US we will definitely have more and more issues. The heat in the western US is a double blow. Demand for AC is up, but electricity generation from hydro is down. Drought takes its toll. The Midwest has issued conservation requests. Those requests could turn into demands. The Texas grid is a mess, but that’s by design. 

Here in New England I’m thinking we won’t do too badly during the warmer months. Winter might be an issue. New England uses a lot of #2 heating oil, which is basically diesel. Prices are so bad that electric heaters are looking like a better deal. That will cause unexpected demands. 

High gas prices increase demands for more electric cars. Hopefully the grid will expand to meet demands. Actually, we’d probably be better off with a much more distributed power system, but that’s a blog for another day. 

As for my personal situation I plan on not buying heating oil this coming winter. Wood, some electrical heat, and reducing the heated areas of the house should work. A good part of my electrical needs have been met with solar electric. However, it can’t handle running electric heaters. Those draw from the grid. I do have the option of switching the whole house over to my solar electric system. It takes about five minutes to go down the basement to tie the power panels together and to cut the grid connection. You really don’t want to backflow power down the grid. The linesmen don’t like that at all. While I can run just about everything on my battery bank, the solar panels won’t keep up with the increased demand. It’s fine for a short while. 

If we could keep our locally generated grid power local we’d be in great shape. We have a lot of hydro, wind, some distributed grid tied solar and a biomass plant. Unfortunately that all dumps into the regional grid. If you want reliable power you have to make it yourself. 

So it looks like there are going to be some inconveniences -at the very least. No reason to panic, but reason to prepare.

-Sixbears

Evaluating Technology

There's a myth out there that the Amish reject technology. They don't. What they do is carefully evaluate technology to see if it will fit in with their community's values. Early adopters they are not. However, if something over time proves useful they will approve it.

There's a story about how an Australian aborigine was given a steel knife. The man admired and was impressed with the steel blade, but ultimately gave it back. His reasoning that while his flint knife wasn't wasn't quite as good, he could easily build another one. If he became dependent on the steel knife, he could not replace it if lost.

In the modern world it's impractical to take the aborigine's attitude towards technology. However, knowing basic bush-craft could save your life. The skills necessary to put together a basic survival tool kit from nothing are good to have. If you can get by with nothing you can go long ways with a little.

The problem with doing things the old fashioned way is that they can take a lot of time. If you've ever hand ground grain to make a loaf of bread you appreciate being able to buy bread at the bakery. Never mind actually growing your own wheat and threshing it. Sometimes I make bread from whole grains, but I didn't have to grow them and usually use my electric mill. To be honest, lately I've been buying my bread.

Time is an issue, there being only so many hours in the day. Another example: the oil company just delivered 200 gallons of heating oil to my house. The house is set up to burn wood and I burn at least some wood nearly every day. However, oil heat buys me time. After a cold night I don't have to get up before dawn to stoke the fires. The oil heat kicks in and keeps the house from freezing solid.

One winter, when we had almost no money at all, I heated the house with wood found within walking distance. It was cut and harvested mostly with hand tools. I did have a small electric saw to cut the logs into woodstove length. Heating oil and firewood was expensive. However, being out of work I had time to process wood. We got through the winter, but it was a daily grind.

Providing heat was just one aspect of survival. Now imagine if I had to forage for food and haul water. What if I had to do my laundry by hand. Make soap? Make candles? . . . and so on and so on. I know how to do these things, but they all take time and energy. That's why I often choose to make use of modern technology; there are more interesting things to do with my time.

Having oil in the tank and a pile of firewood is like having time in the bank. Same goes for food storage. The technologies that allow that are pretty good trade offs in my book.

There are technologies I reject as not worth the bother. Dishes are washed by hand. When the dishwasher broke I figured out it wasn't worth replacing. Snow is shoveled by hand rather than by a modern snowblower. Once the cost of the machine, gas, oil and repair was factored in, it wasn't worth it for me. My driveways are short. Besides, I hate the noise. While I have a clothes dryer, we have both an outdoor clothesline and an indoor one, plus a drying rack. The dryer is mostly used when time is an issue or the weather is too wet.

We've lived completely off grid and it worked. Now we have a mix of off-grid and utility power. The cost of grid power is worth it as it acts like a backup generator that I don't have to store gas for. That's what works for now. Our technology use is always up for reevaluation. There's a constant cost/value evaluation going on.

-Sixbears

Licking your wounds in your den

So you’ve got a well functioning household. There are supplies stored away and the members of the household have many different skills. Should a catastrophe hit, you are well prepared.

Then someone in the household gets sick or injured. Instead of being able to count on their help you now have to take care of them. You lost their labor and much of your own. How does that affect your ability to function and survive?

There’s so much attention on what people will do in a disaster that we forget we may be unable to do much of anything. Can your household survive neglect or does it need your constant attention? Can the basics of food, shelter, and water be provided with little effort?

Does your garden need constant watering, pruning, weeding, or will it survive just fine on its own for a few weeks? If you got animals, pets, chickens, rabbits, goats or whatever, how much neglect can they tolerate? Are there low effort ways to provide at least a minimum level or care?

Will all your food require time and energy to prepare or can you just open a can or eat peanut butter out of the jar? The last thing you want to do when exhausted or sick is to hand grind your wheat berries so you can make a loaf of bread. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just open a package of crackers?

What if the grid goes down? Do you have a generator that requires you to leave a warm house and hike a hundred feet to a generator shed to maintain the generator? Heck, can you even pull start it with that injured shoulder of yours? Wouldn’t at least some solar power be nice? Solar can go months without any attention at all.

Do you heat with wood? Does your wood have to sawn and split before you can burn it? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a good pile of split seasoned wood close to the stove? Now imagine you’ve hurt your back. Is at least some of your wood cut down to easily handled pieces? Maybe a younger child has to do the job as the adults are both laid up.

A household that can function with a minimum of attention is a huge advantage over one that needs constant active attention. Energies can be put towards other things like patient care. Maybe you just want to lay low for a while. It could be something as simple as not wanting to go outside during several days of bad weather.

Learn from the bears. Hole up in your den and wait for conditions to improve.

-Sixbears

We all fall down together

Some people look at my off the grid electric power, veggie powered vehicle, wind powered boat, and other gadgets and think I’m set for collapse. The way I see, those things are nice and very useful now, but of only of limited and temporary use in a major collapse.

How’s that?

Solar electric power is a marvel. There’s very little that can wrong with it. If the grid went down it would most likely keep functioning for months or even years. Most likely. Components do fail. A close lightning strike could fry the electronics. High winds could drop a tree on my solar panels. Sometimes stuff just wears out. Eventually the battery bank will stop holding a charge and need to be replaced. Nothing lasts forever.

My waste vegetable oil powered vehicle is only useful if everyone else is driving cars. Roads won’t be maintained just for me. If no one can afford to eat out at restaurants, there will be no waste vegetable oil for my vehicle. Already it’s harder to get because so much waste veggie goes into commercial biodiesel. Temporary oil shocks I can handle. My basement has a big rack of jugs full of veggie, but when it’s gone, it’s gone.

By the way, those of you who are smug that you are riding a bicycle, you won’t go forever either. Bike parts wear out too and there’s a heck of a long supply chain for most components. Are bicycle tires even made in North America anymore?

All the cool stuff eventually breaks or wears out. Then what do you do? You do what a philosopher does after enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.

Living in a rural forested area, I can heat and cook burning wood. I’ve axes, and manual saws that will last a long long time. Even if those are gone, it’s still possible to gather wood with primitive homemade tools. Anyone can pick a stick off the ground.

Having access to potable water is key. My well constantly overflows. All I need is a bucket or a cup. Diogenes, the philosopher, simplified his life and threw his cup away when he saw a child drinking from his cupped hand.

Some preppers have taken the hard core approach. They look a the way the natives used to live in their environment and learn the old skills. They practice how to make everything from stone arrow heads, to pottery, to rope from natural fibers -everything necessary for life. All their technology is stuff that can be fashioned from local materials by small bands of people. These are all good skills to have.

We’ve got a resource that was unavailable to the natives: piles and piles of junk. We’ve got a metals and synthetic materials unknown to our predecessors. We’ll be able to strip a car the way a Plains Indian could use every part of a Buffalo.

The gadgets are nice for temporary disruptions. Odds are that they’ll get a homestead through in something approaching modern comfort. Should something like a massive solar flare take down technological civilization, having a good location and skills will be key.

-Sixbears

The big woodstove

Yesterday, my lovely wife and I were gone for most of the day. We didn’t get home until late. By then the kitchen woodstove had gone out for some hours. Outside temperatures had dropped into the teens. Inside the house, it was 45 degrees. Lighting the little kitchen stove kept the temperature from dropping any further, but it did little to make the place warmer. Good thing the bed has a big pile of warm blankets.

I still hesitate to burn heating oil. Instead, I put new stovepipe on the basement woodstove and fired that monster up. That stove is airtight and can handle a log almost 3 feet long. With a good bed of coals and a full load of wood, it can burn 12 - 14 hours. Now the house is getting toasty.

This time of year, it’s important that the basement stays warm. Everyone in the cold north worries about their plumbing freezing. I’ve got that concern, and a couple others.

The solar electric battery bank is in the basement. A warm battery bank can store more electricity than a cold battery bank. That’s one of the reasons a car is so hard to start in the winter time. Not only is it harder to turn a cold engine with its cold thick engine oil, the battery itself has less power to work with.

I have waste veggie oil stored in 4.5 gallon jugs down the basement. If the oil gets too cold, it’s impossible to pour it into my truck’s fuel tank. I built a heavy duty storage rack that can safely handle over 200 gallons of WVO.

I had hoped to put a bit more insulation in the basement, but that project got put off a bit when my water pump failed. Water is priority that trumps other projects. Maybe I’ll get a chance to do the extra insulation within the next few days.

-Sixbears

Splitting wood in a T-shirt and shorts

It's that time of year again in the North Country of New Hampshire. Sunday was a pleasant sunny 65 degrees -eventually. It was in the mid-20s in the morning and will drop down there again tonight. I was splitting in the wood so I could start my stove once the sun goes down.

Lovely time of year.

It's going to be cool and wet for the next few days. There's flooding around us, but we are fine here in the hills.

None of this bothers me all that much. While it was sunny, I went though the sailboat and got it ready for the water. Pumped a little water out of the bilge. Fixed a few little hardware problems and cleaned it up a bit.

Tuesday the garage is putting a new trailer hitch on my truck. It won't be long I'll be cruising the fresh water lakes around here. That though makes me very happy. Most people start small and work their way up. My lovely wife and I taught ourselves how to sail in the ocean and soon we'll be launching on a small mountain lake. The thought amuses me. It's not the ocean, but a day on the water is a day on the water.

-Sixbears

Heating oil purchase

The driveway has a huge pile of firewood -plenty for the winter. I did get the furnace serviced, but only to be used a backup. If I happed to go away for a few days, I won't have find someone to keep the home fires burning.

It doesn't take much heating oil for that. A minimum delivery would have been more than enough. Yet, I decided to completely fill the tank.

Here's my reasoning. I've got the money for it now. It's better to actually have something physical than money in the bank. Anything I don't use this year I can use next.

In an emergency, heating oil burns just fine in my truck's diesel engine. Sure, it's illegal. Road taxes haven't been paid on it. So what? I'm talking emergency conditions. If I need the fuel to take my wife to the hospital, I'm not going to worry about road taxes.

The heating oil tank safely stores a whole lot of fuel. Can you imagine storing a couple hundred gallons of diesel in 5 gallon jugs? I have a number of empty fuel containers that could be filled from the heating oil tank.

All I'd have to do is shut down the valve at the bottom of the fuel tank. Then carefully disconnect the copper pipe that feeds the furnace. My tank sits high enough off the ground that a fuel jug fits under it. I've actually tried this to see that it works. It's possible to make a real mess of things if you don't know what you are doing. The last thing you want is flammable heating oil all over your basement floor. Be safe.

I did hate to spend the money, but it's a good investment. It gives me options.

-Sixbears

Furnace cement and fire brick

The old kitchen woodstove is wearing out. I do have my eye on a nice replacement, but until that happens, the old one will have to do.

Old cast iron woodstoves were pretty good in their day, but they had some serious limitations. One major problem is that most have small fireboxes. Some were better than others. Mine had a cast iron firebox extender bolted on the back. It looks like a piece of factory equipment -an option the first owners had installed. Some have been custom built. Wood has to be chopped pretty small for some stoves. That's time and labor.

Most newer stoves are air tight and have bigger fireboxes. That makes a big difference on wood usage and burning time. It's a rare morning when my old kitchen stove has enough warm coals to start new logs. Usually, it's a matter of starting the fire with kindling. In contrast, my air tight stove in the basement holds a good fire 12 - 16 hours.

When I first bought the old stove 20 some odd years ago, it'd just been rebuilt. Twenty years of New Hampshire winters take a toll. The fire grates were repaired by a welder friend of mine. Over time, the cast iron liners failed. Cast iron has been replaced with firebrick and furnace cement. I'm real careful to do a good job. As a retired firefighter, it'd be an embarrassment to burn my own house down.

Today I did another firebrick repair. Used a bit of broken brick that was salvaged out of another stove. Finished up the last of my furnace cement too. The woodstove is going to the top of the equipment replacement list. It's the heart of a home. It keeps the place warm, the kettle hot, and cooks the food. It'll be worth getting a good new one.

However, until more funds come in, here's hoping the patch jobs hold.

-Sixbears

One more year with the oil furnace

Heating oil is the major fuel source for home heating in New England. There's an infrastructure in place. Oil is distributed by many small delivery companies. There are thousands of service men available. Some work for the delivery companies, others are independent. Parts inventories are kept for the most common burners.

I've decided to keep the oil furnace for one more year, at least. Even though I've plenty of firewood this year, I'm going through the expense of getting my oil furnace serviced. It's not my primary source of heat, but it's worth fixing to have as a backup.

It's one of those things I had to think about as I've been steadily moving away from the petrochemical industry. It's one thing to be angry at big oil, it's another thing entirely to do something about it. My disgust with big oil predates BP's Gulf oil disaster. Over the last 30 years, my use of petroleum bases fuels has been in steady decline.

Yet here I am, getting my oil furnace fixed. The house needs a backup source of heat. Friends of mine who heat exclusively with wood don't go anywhere more than half a day's travel away. They have to get home before the woodstoves die out, the house cools, and the plumbing freezes. In the past, I too have had only wood for heat. However, back then, I was still living in town. My dad lived just up the road and he didn't mind coming over and keeping the fires burning. I'd do the same for him as he had wood heat too. Now dad's in Florida, his wood heat days long over. For someone to stoke the stove, they'd have to drive up from town on snowy roads: time consuming and a big hassle.

Part of the reason for repairing the furnace is previous investment. I've had the furnace for 20 years. It was paid for years ago. Repairing the existing furnace is much cheaper than putting in any other backup heat source. Besides, what could I use as backup? Electricity? Sure, except I expect to be totally off the grid. My solar electric panel won't handle the massive load electric heat puts on a system. Propane? Looking to do away with that too.

Maybe I'll have more friends or family move in with me again. If that happens, they can load wood in the stoves.

For now, I'll keep the oil furnace going. I'll keep a minimum amount of oil in the tank, just enough for backup. Backup is good. If I can't get home before the woodstoves die out, or if I get sick or injured, or even if I get a major attack of laziness, the oil heat will be there.

-Sixbears

Like Money in the Bank, only better.

Working four evenings and one full day, I've gathered just about all the firewood I'm going to need for next winter. In fact, I loaded up enough firewood for two households. My buddy cut the wood to length, and I loaded it in our pickup trucks.

Of course, some of it needs to be split, and all of it needs to be piled under cover. The main thing is, it's here at the house. I don't have to worry about the price of heating oil next winter. Nor do I have to worry about the supply.

I used to say that having a year's worth of firewood was like money in the bank. Judging from the state of our banks right now, I'd say it's even better than that.

Just because I have enough for next winter doesn't mean I'm stopping my firewood gathering. In fact, while unloading wood, a neighbor asked if I'd be willing to haul some trees away that he has to cut down. That's the start of another year's woodpile.

Those of you in warmer climes than mine might not understand how good it feels to have a big woodpile. Northern NH is darn cold and it takes some planning to get by. At least wood heat is pretty low tech. No electricity needed. Wood can be processed by hand tools.

When the AC dies in the south, I don't know what you guys down there are going to do. They don't have wood fired air conditioners. There's a reason those old southern homes had huge windows that could be opened for excellent cross ventilation. Modern homes aren't built that way.

Of course, many homes here in the north are totally reliant on oil or gas heat. They lack a good well built chimney that's woodstove rated. There are reasons older homes were built the way they were. Add in modern insulation, and we are better off than in the old days.

-Sixbears

Backup heat

I've friends that won't come to visit me until at least May. They live in VT while I live about 75 miles away in NH. Why May? Because that's when it's safe for them to leave for an overnight trip. They heat exclusively with wood and don't dare stray too far from the house. If no one is there to feed the stoves, the plumbing will freeze, their plants will die, and they'll lose some food to freezing.

That's a tough way to live, but they are further out in the woods than I am. They don't get cars driving by their house. They get hikers. Of course they are off grid, so forget about having a couple space heaters as backup. They do have propane for their refrigerator, so they could install a propane heater for supplementary heat. Then again, they are probably afraid of using too much propane. I've reduced my propane usage from monthly deliveries to a delivery every two years. Winter deliveries were always a pain. The trail to the propane tank had to be kept shoveled out all winter long. My friends probably want to avoid the hassle of winter fuel deliveries.

It was worse in my grandfather's day. The woodstoves needed to get fed every few hours. Today, air tight woodstoves typically last 10 - 14 on a full load of good wood. Put some wood in before going to bed and there's still hot coals in the morning. My grandfather used to drink a big glass of water before going to bed. About 2 or 3 AM his bladder alarm would go off. He'd take care of business then load up the woodstove again. He thought oil fired central heat the best thing in the world.

I'm burning oil right now. I've got a nasty cold. It's -15 F outside. My wife is recovering from shoulder surgery. There's no one else around to feed the woodstove. Today I've got the luxury of burning oil, sitting inside drinking a hot coffee and typing on the computer. If I didn't have backup, I'd be out to the woodpile, cold or no cold.

I realize that oil fired central heat is probably a temporary thing. It might too expensive for me to use or we could have another oil shortage. As it is, I use about a 1/4 what I once did. Mostly just use it when I'm away or have a nasty cold. For the rest of this winter, it's a reasonable backup.

One good backup is to have an extended family living together. It's nice to have a few more strong backs around to keep the home fires burning. As more and more people double up, that'll be one upside to the situation. Although as I remember it, even though my grandfather had two strong sons, he was the one always getting up in the middle of the night to feed the stoves. We stubborn males take care of our families.

If I was going to leave my house for a month or more, I'd go through the trouble of winterizing the palace. Anything that would freeze I'd bring to my daughter's house -food, plants, beer, paint, etc. Then the well pump would be turned off and all the plumbing drained. It's a procedure that takes about half a day.

One solution is to live so simply that the place freezing up isn't a big deal. The hunting camp was never kept warm when nobody was there. There was no running water to freeze. It had an outhouse. We hauled water from the brook or snow melted on the woodstove. It's primitive, but there's not a lot to worry about. Just make sure all the water jugs are drained when leaving the place.

A lot of people around here use oil or propane for heat, but keep a woodstove hooked up in case. In the North Country, freezing is serious business. When spring comes, we feel we've earned it.

-Sixbears

The heating situation

Quick update. My furnace had been shut off since Friday night. This past weekend temperatures got down as far a -19F. It was a real test of the woodstove. Now I've been burning wood all winter, but had oil backup. The oil furnace would come on in the early morning for a few hours. Then I'd light the woodstove and the oil furnace would shut down for the day.

Saturday night I slept deep and long. Woke up to a very cold house. It was -19 outside and 44 inside. Took most of the day Sunday to get the house to a comfortable level. My firewood wasn't as dry as it could be so the stove didn't put out as much heat as it should. Still, the house was livable and nothing froze up. It did take most of the day to warm the downstairs to shirt sleeve comfortable. The upstairs never got over 50.

Monday morning my furnace guy showed up. He was able to fix the problem for small money.

It's nice to know that the woodstove will keep the place livable -even in very cold conditions. Nothing like a real world test.



-Sixbears

How not to freeze to death

So right now the furnace is dead and tonight it's going to be -15 F -without the wind chill. Eyeballing my woodpile, I estimate there's enough wood to get me to sometime in February. In NH, February is very much deep winter. I've been promised one more cord from a reliable friend so that'll get me to sometime in March. During the month of March there's something called "spring." Maybe that's what the calendar says, but here in the woods that 's very much winter. Maybe that cord can get me into April, or maybe I can make a deal for a bit more wood.

Now April is a funny month. Anything can happen -several feet of snow to temps near 80 -sometimes within a couple weeks of each other. April is a turning point. On average, by the third week of April, the ice has left my little lake. For me, that's the real start of spring.

Last year I ran out of heating oil on April first. Yep, April fool on me. From that point on the house was heated using mostly poor quality spruce. My daughter had some damaged trees cut down the fall before, and that's what finished off the heating season.

If I do make it to April with regular firewood, after that it's not that hard to scrounge up enough crap wood to keep the place livable.

That's all assuming it's not worth fixing the furnace. I do have about a half tank of heating oil, maybe 125 gallons or so. It would be nice if the furnace repair made it cost effective to burn that oil. If it's too costly, to fix the furnace, then I'll retire it.

Eventually, the oil furnace will have to be retired. I wonder if this is the time? If it is, there's a number of things I'd do. I'd rip out the fire box and oil burner, but save all the hot air ductwork. The woodstove is then mated up with the home's existing hot air ducts. Should be more efficient at moving warm air to the upper floors of the house.

I've pumps rated for diesel, so it'd be possible to remove the oil of the tank and reuse it for something else. It'd work fine in a diesel generator. It would be possible to run my diesel vehicles on it, but that's be illegal.

For backup to the woodstove, a vented propane heater would go in the basement. My main concern would be to keep the plumbing warm enough not to freeze. There's already a propane line into the basement, so installation shouldn't be that hard.

This is all much easier to contemplate while I can still heat the house. It's T-shirt warm in here now.

Side notes about using sketchy wood: First of all, I'm not a firewood snob. Cellulose is cellulose. I'll burn clean construction lumber full of nails, pallets, softwood, not quite seasoned wood, old doors, whatever. Some things are off limits: pressure treated wood, painted wood, and plastics. One thing that's essential is a good clean chimney. Using poor quality wood can increase the build up of creosote in the chimney. That's where good chimney brushes, a long ladder and no fear of heights comes in handy.

-Sixbears

Backfire

Sometimes the subject of a blog post suggests itself from events around me. Today is one such day.

The house was empty all day as the household left early for appointments downstate. We came back from a long day on the road only to discover a heavy soot smell in the house. I rushed down the basement and turned the furnace switch off. It appears to have backfired. No idea how that happened. It is 20 years old and at that age anything can happen.

We opened doors and windows to get the smoke out of the house. The air soon cleaned, but baby it's cold outside. Right now the the temperature outside is 12 F and dropping. It's supposed to get down around 6 tonight.

What to do?

That's what backup is all about.

I started the woodstove in the basement. Then I split some small wood for the kitchen wood cookstove. Once both stoves were going, I went around closing the doors and windows. As I type I've got a heavy hooded sweatshirt on. Right now I plan to stay up until the temperature of the house is back up to normal and the stoves have good beds of coals.

Thank goodness there's more than one way to heat my house. If all I had was oil heat, tonight would be a crisis. I called my furnace guy, but after 8 PM on a Friday night, it's no surprise I couldn't reach him. No problem, I left a message. Told him what happened but also told him the woodstoves are going. We are fine. There's no need for an emergency call.

Backup changed the situation from a crisis to an inconvenience.

-Sixbears

What to do about the grid?

There's only so much I can do about the grid in general. However, what am I to do about my relationship to it?

Twenty years ago I installed the first version of my solar electric system. At the time, I knew I wasn't going to be able to quite cut the cord from the grid. I'm surprised that all these years later I'm still connected.

Several things have held me back. The number one problem is winter. A month without sun can test anyone's faith in solar. There's a voltage meter in my kitchen that's connected to the battery bank. If the voltage drops lower than I like, I throw a switch and charge the batteries from the grid. In the winter that switch gets thrown way too much. At least my batteries have a full charge in case of a grid outage.

Here's what's running on the grid: The oil furnace. It never ran right on my old style modified sine wave inverter. It uses a fair amount of electricity (oil gun, blower motors, etc.) during a time when solar production is quite low. The answering machine. It's a constant low draw that's best not put on the inverter. I was given a big air compressor that requires 240 volts and my alternate energy system only puts out 120. Only use it a handful of times per year, but it's handy when I do. Some hot water heating -long story best handled in a post of its own. Some part of my laundry gets done on-grid. Some refrigeration. In the winter, when temperatures drop below zero, either the diesel truck or car gets their block heater plugged in. Otherwise the diesels just won't turn over.

The easiest thing in the world would be to replace the grid with a backup generator. That could happen, but only if I had the right generator at the right price. Right now it's possible to charge the household battery bank from my truck -'94 Ford F250 7.3 liter turbodiesel. The truck is wired up with a 2000 watt inverter. Since the truck has been converted to burn waste vegetable oil, it's cheap to run. It's possible to charge the house that way, and I'd probably do it in an emergency. For day to day use, however, it's seems like keeping a dragon chained to light your campfire.

For half the year, it'd be very easy to get by without the grid. The other half, we'd have to conserve, have another way of generating power, or some combination of the two.

As for the things that currently are exclusively on the grid, they could be handled. The oil furnace could be replaced with a propane heater that doesn't use electricity. If mounted in the basement, the plumbing wouldn't freeze if we weren't around to feed the woodstoves. The answering machine could be replaced with either a DC version, or a message service. The 240 volt air compressor could be traded for a 120 volt machine. Laundry could be done only on sunny days. We could downgrade to a smaller fridge. Wouldn't hurt to throw another solar panel or two on the array.

I've given some thought to adding a windmill. It's often windy when the sun doesn't shine. The price of windmills has come down. There are some problems with my location. The house is on the side of a good sized hill. Large hemlocks surround the place. A tower high enough to clear the turbulence caused by the hill and trees would cost a small fortune.

For about 7 years we temporarily solved the winter problem. We drained the plumbing, shut the house down, and traveled all winter. That works. I tied a canoe to the car and drove south until it stopped looking funny. Last winter, family obligations kept me north, and may do so again this winter.

In spite of the problems of doing so, I'm getting more and more tempted to pull the plug. The utility charges $35/month just for being hooked up. Imagine getting a $37 electric bill. That's $35 for the meter fee and just $2 for actual usage. It's over $400/year before I use a single watt. Nice system they have there.

Next summer I think I'll kill the main breaker and see how many months we can go without the grid. Who knows, maybe I'll have figured out something by fall.

-Sixbears