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Jo Smith

Why Off-grid Housing is the Future

Green living has gone beyond being a fad and has become an essential part of modern life. So much so that people nowadays are looking to live off the grid to pursue sustainable lifestyles, geared towards less consumption and making less of an impact on the environment.

Off-grid living has become a survival mechanism for people who acknowledge that there are issues more important than political squabbling to address. We all know what these are – the climate crisis and the rise of populism

This has led many people into adopting greener lifestyles and many of them look towards off-grid housing as an important factor for making this transition. In fact, the prevalence of off-grid housing will likely lead towards better adaptability, especially as more people are looking for better ways to safeguard the environment from ecological doom.

And no doubt, off-grid housing will reduce risks and will most probably define how people could be living in the future.

That said, let’s look at a few important advantages that off-grid housing could provide for us in the coming years:

1. Reduction of energy costs
Energy consumption has spiked recently as urban centers continue to grow to envelop the countryside with suburban developments. In fact, the continued rise in demand would cause energy consumption to rise even higher. At least with living off-grid, you get to escape from high electricity bills and successfully live a more frugal lifestyle.

2. Numerous options for customization
Living off the grid does require some modifications your home design. This leaves ample room for creativity as you pick the most essential features you might need for pursuing an off-grid lifestyle. You could experiment with plenty of conventional floorplans, but most off-grid homes are already designed keeping both functionality and comfort in mind. You just have to pick the right contractors who can handle such eco-friendly concepts.

3. Being located far from urban centers
On-grid living entails locations away form urban centers where crime rates are consistently on the rise and frequent traffic accidents, or vandalism, will have you searching for ICBC glass express, each time you need to replace your car’s windshield. Off-grid housing is typically located a long way of urban centers.

4. Promotion of health and wellness
Living off-grid doesn’t only impact your energy consumption, it can also improve your family’s health. Off-grid housing is made from organic materials that do not contain the traces of carcinogens typically found in standard homes. That said, off-grid housing allows you to secure your family’s health for the better.

Living off-grid has a plethora of benefits for people who want to live simple, eco-friendly lives. It’s only a matter of investing in such a property that could very well change the housing landscape. And considering the need to adapt in the midst of an impending climate disaster, off-grid housing could be the “new normal” in …

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Nipton Hotel
Community

Where to drop out in the USA

Does your life ever get you to the point where you want to just drop out and leave the system behind? Here are four options for starters. There are many more – you can hook up with others using our free classified ads service or posting on our searchable map – landbuddy.com

NIPTON
In the Mojave desert town of Nipton, the spirit of the western frontier has transformed a forgotten outpost into a self-sustaining ecotopia where the dream lives on.
A former long-haul trucker with a bowie knife strapped to his hip, Jim Eslinger serves as caretaker and hotelier of Hotel Nipton, its existence marked by a wagon-mounted sandwichboard that reads:
WELCOME TO NIPTON, CA B&B HOTEL & ECO-CABIN STORE, RV PARK & CAMPING RESTAURANT
Eslinger added a cluster of tented eco-cabins, outfitted with platform beds and wood-burning stoves.
A faded settlement of about 20 permanent residents, the town consisted of an assortment of structures, some solid and occupied, some as vacant and splintered as an Old West movie set. Computer Gamers might know Nipton for its cameo in Xbox 360’s Fallout: New Vegas, where it played a post-apocalyptic wasteland infested by giant mantises. But otherwise it was your typical drive-through desert community, fixed at the crossroads of Nowhere Special and Wherever You Were Going when Eslinger arrived. There was one notable exception: Nipton, and everything in it, was for sale.
There a cluster of tented eco-cabins, outfitted with platform beds and wood-burning stoves. Popular with today’s 30-something crowd, the cabins were based on a design by Frank Lloyd Wright. There is a solar plant, which produces 40 percent of the town’s power. It sits on the outskirts behind a barbed wire fence, its rows of reflecting harvesters mirroring the sun as it moves across the sky.
There is a hydrogen system in order to store clean energy.
The town of Nipton is for sale.

KALANI HONUA
A solar-powered village tucked away on 120 acres of lush Hawaiian rain forest sounds a lot like Lost: Season 3, but it’s actually an eco-minded retreat center in one of the best areas in the state to drop out. Here in the heart of the Big Island’s Puna District, residents and volunteers are busy harvesting papaya and avocado, cooking farm-to-table meals, and taking classes in hula and tauhala weaving. Book a night in one of their cottages, pop in for a gong bath, or grab some honey produced from the on-site apiary. From $95; kalani.com.

SYNCHRONICITY
There’s no rule that says you must drop out in a rural location with hippies running nude through the woods. Case in point: Synchronicity, a creative community set in L.A.’s bustling Koreatown. Though a small group of artists calls it home, the door is always open to guests, who can stop by for weeknight dinners and a monthly art salon. There’s even a private room …

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Community

British passivehaus opposed by Braintree planners

Another example of the obstacles facing Brits who want to live off-grid –  plans for a home that would run entirely on its own electricity and water are set to be refused by Braintree County Council, a notoriously backward looking area of southern England

Peter and Janine Schwier, bought a plot of land in Great Maplestead, their first mistake – since local villagers oppose any new properties being built out of fear it will encourage other new properties to be built.

They wish to build a house described as an ‘off-grid’ Passivhaus, meaning it is self-sufficient and capable of generating its own electricity, heat and water.

Great Maplestead Parish Council – which includes a number of what we believe to be wealthy bigots –  objected to the application, saying the village was not sustainable for development.

Braintree Council planning officers have recommended to refuse planning permission, as residents were against further development.

However there was some support for the application, with residents saying the area lacks modern efficient homes, and this one would take advantage of all technology.

The unique house would also include the use of electric cars.

In a planning statement, the agent Green Architect said: “(The applicants) are concerned about the environment, pragmatic about climate change

and wish to live in a dwelling that is totally self sufficient, one that is capable of generating all its own electricity, heat and water from within the site,

disposing of all their waste within the site and providing all the power necessary, with the option to run their cars from within the site.

“The proposal includes the use of electric cars and bicycles powered solely by the sun and space for home working.

“In addition it is close to excellent employment opportunities in Sible Hedingham and Halstead and the village has super-fast broadband which supports home working and wellbeing.”

Planning officers said although charging points for electric cars could be included, it would not be reasonable to require future homeowners to only use electric cars.

They said: “Cycling could be an option for some future residents, but not all, depending on mobility and proficiency thus reducing the reliance that can be placed on this mode of transport as an alternative to a private car.

“Although the proposal should be commended for including such sustainable features, as it is not possible to control the provision of these through the planning process, they carry little weight in favour of the development.”

Braintree councillors will have the final say at a Planning Committee meeting on January 10.

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Energy

German Energy Industry in Painful Transition

meme2Handelsblatt Global Edition

Germany’s massive push into renewable energy has a dark side. As green policies drive up the cost of power, entire industries are shrinking.

Germany is a world leader in green power is by now familiar. Much less familiar is the price the country is paying for it, not just in cold hard cash, but in growing losses and dislocations across the entire economy.

A vast economic upheaval began when Germany launched its energy transition that simultaneously phases out all nuclear power, winds down coal and other fossil fuels, accelerates the push towards alternative sources of energy, and builds the new grid infrastructure to make it all possible.

The losers include once-stalwart utility giants like E.ON and RWE that are struggling with rising debt and falling shares. Manufacturing companies, from chemicals maker BASF to carbon fiber producer SGL Carbon, have shifted investments abroad, where energy costs are often a fraction of Germany’s.
Losers include laid-off workers in these industries, but also millions of ordinary consumers. Their utility bills have skyrocketed, largely driven by subsidies for eco-friendly fuels. As much as the transition creates new jobs building wind turbines, farming biofuels or installing solar panels on rooftops, the changes are cutting a deep swathe through other parts of the economy. Germany’s “green” revolution has a dark shadow.
The reengineering of Germany’s economy is of course deliberate. When the environmentalist Green party first began co-governing at the national level in 1998, Berlin quickly drafted plans to exit nuclear energy. Generous subsidies to support wind and solar power, tacked on to consumers’ electricity bills, got their start in 2000.
Already struggling to expand renewable energy fast enough to compensate for the nuclear phaseout, Germany had to move even faster after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s surprise decision to accelerate the shift just days after the news from Fukushima. Now, the country is rushing to replace what was once 35 percent of German electricity generation by 2022.

Hit hardest, of course, are the traditional utilities. After all, the energy transition was designed to seal their coffin. Once the proverbial investment for widows and orphans because their revenue streams were considered rock-solid — these companies have been nothing short of decimated. With 77 nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants taken off the grid in recent years, Germany’s four big utilities — E.ON, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW — have had to write off a total of €46.2 billion since 2011.
RWE and E.ON alone have debt piles of €28.2 billion and €25.8 billion, respectively, according to the latest company data. Losses at Düsseldorf-based E.ON rose to €6.1 billion for the first three quarters of 2015. Both companies have slashed the dividends on their shares, which have lost up to 76 percent of their value. Regional municipalities, which hold 24 percent of RWE’s shares, are scrambling to plug the holes left in their budgets by the missing dividends.…

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off-grid in North Devon - animals make the money while you sleep
People

Off-Grid living on British TV

Channel 5, the smallest UK channel, is featuring a British off-grid family next month as part of a series which usually visits pioneers around the world.

The show will feature Simon Dawson and his wife Debbie at their smallholding in Barbrook, near Lynton, Devon for a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Speaking about the experience, former journalist Simon said:: “It was rather surreal. There were times that we were lying in bed and texting people saying ‘guess who we have sleeping on our sofa’.

Throughout the seven-day adventure,  the Dawsons were followed by a nine-strong camera crew, who followed their every move .

Although before filming began Simon said he was not daunted by the prospect on being constantly on camera, he said it took “a bit of getting used to”.

“I didn’t realise it would be all day, every day,” he said.

“Even when we were driving we were still being filmed.

“But after about day three you get used to it.

“It’s really weird how they just became a part of life.

“It was even weirder when they went and I kept wondering ‘where is everyone?’.”

Viewers will also meet the menagerie of animals living in and around their house – small chicks in the kitchen, a beautiful Great Dane on the sofas, pigs, chickens, horses and geese on the land. The 12 beautiful black Berkshire piglets born last year will have grown up by now but will still provide plenty of comic moments.

Have a read about Simon’s antics on his own blog and look out for his next article about dairy farming for the first time in Devon Life soon.

https://theselfsufficientwriter.blogspot.com/

As part of Ben Fogle’s series of New Lives, the episode will air on December 3 at 9pm.

 

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Escape to Crete - container living
Community

Sold up and gone to Crete

Artist and carpenter Julienne Dolphin Wilding has recently sold her flat in Kings Cross and bought land in Crete. She shipped out all her possessions in a 20 foot container – including all her tools,  her bed, a small caravan she had lovingly restored and her favourite pieces of furniture.

Once she had emptied out the contents of her container onto her new [property, she set about converting the container into her primary residence.  With the caravan as a guest bedroom
“I would love to have done all this in the UK,”said Dolphin-Wilding, “but it wasn’t possible — even if the weather was warmer, the main obstacle is the planning regulations. you just canot buy affordable agricultural land and then move on and live in it.  You have to get change of use permission, and locals will oppose that.
“But I am very happy here and my next project is building some off-grid holiday homes which will give me a regular income.”
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Solar Tax replaces solar subsidy i
Energy

Spanish govt to tax Solar batteries

Cash-strapped Spain is planning to tax homes that produce their own energy through solar power and store some of it using batteries, according to El Pais newspaper.

Amounts due will discourage the use of home solar panels. But off-grid consumers WILL be able to use batteries without financial penalties.

The Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism has drafted a decree that would discourage the use of solar charged batteries or other storage systems

Users of solar or photovoltaic panel systems that charge batteries will be targeted by the new rules. These self-reliant consumers will not be able to use products such as the Powerwall battery recently launched by car manufacturer and energy-storage company Tesla.

Moreover, they could find themselves being penalised additionally for the storage systems that come included with the latest generation of solar panels.

If you live in the country, however, you may escape the ´tax on Sunlight´ as only off-grid consumers who have their own, completely independent energy-production systems will be able to use batteries without being penalised.
The tax will only apply to systems that use batteries to store the sun’s power – direct usage, or instantaneous consumption equipment will not be affected.
This enormous U-turn in the Spanish government’s attitude toward solar energy policy in the last five years is in stark contrast to other European countries, such as Germany, which is encouraging the use of solar panels with batteries.

Business spared the worst effects

To rub salt in the wound, and to further discourage self-production by anybody who previously invested in solar systems for their home after being encouraged to do so, the draft legislation also makes it clear that any energy surplus that individual self-producers feed back into the grid will not result in any monetary benefits.
The exception to that rule being businesses who are high voltage customers, who will be allowed to turn a profit on their surplus.

Since 2010, when Prime Minister Rajoy upset the applecart with international investors by announcing cuts to subsidies for renewables as part of a review of energy policies, the government’s view towards solar power appears to have toughened.

In 2011 the Emirate of Abu Dhabi threatened to sue Spain over its reduction of premiums for solar thermal energy. Previously, a lawsuit from 14 photovoltaic renewable energy producers, who complained that the Spanish government had unfairly changed the rules of the game, was rejected by the Supreme Court.

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