Super-efficient generator

Watch out for Shannon Miller and her company EtaGen. Her generators may soon be providing a power solution in places with little sun or wind.…

Mitsubishi Smart House

Service promises to keep energy bills down and an eye on grandma Is today’s smart home technology, which connects a household’s appliances to the Internet,…

Underground shelters

A second home or cabin that just happens to be 20′ underground? Could be useful if you live in a tornado area, or think the…

World’s Top Eco-Cop

David Higgins works for Interpol. He wants the world to wake up to eco-crime, and take steps to prevent it. Higgins is head of Interpol’s…

Eco-tricity on a still and cloudy day

BioLite stove products are making camping and cooking with wood more eco-friendly, and providing an off-grid power source for charging phones, lights, and other electronics…

Horse Power

Here is an idea that ought to be included in Revolution, the new JJ Webber series, on NBC. When I was writing my book OFF…

Making a living – part 3

William Hunter Duncan lives what you might call a conflicted life.   He is an urban off-gridder in Minneapolis where he has owned a home…

Huge off-grid community

Ralph and Mary Johnson (pictured) live in Three Rivers Recreation Area, a 4,000-acre development near Lake Billy Chinook that relies on solar power for electricity.…

Solar panels for sunless setting

A hunting lodge in Maine with two small solar panels, some old used car batteries,a quarter mile of wire and careful management. An old-timer explains…

Swiss Army charger

The makers of the ubiquitous Swiss Army knife have already branched out into watches, camping gear and even a motorised bike – now Wenger have…

Factory built autonomous home

IT looks like somebody in the construction industry has been listening to all this talk about off-grid homes. At last. Quest is a 400-square-foot, off-grid…

Yurtshire goes for gold

Yorkshire in the UK has already “won” four Olympic gold medals as sportsmen and women from the Northern county have taken the medals as part…

Growing food in a drought

The crops got a little drink in the US today but the drought is still severe. It looks like the combination of extreme heat and…

Food price crisis looms

Just a few weeks ago traders were expecting a bumper food crop in 2012, and prices were low. But now a 2008-style food crisis is…

UK couple abandon money

Damian Smyth is giving up everything. He and his wife Victoria Groom are giving up their rented six-bedroom house in the British countryside, their tennis…

12-volt fridges

It’s the ultimate off-grid luxury – the sun is baking, dust is caking the back of your throat….. you reach into the DC Cooler for…

Water Powered Charger

Time was, the phrase ‘water powered’ meant driven by the force of a river or torrent. Lately, it acquired a new resonance with the launch…

Haunting photos from off-grid

Les Rencontres d’Arles 2012 is one of the world’s key photo exhibitions. this year it has an off-grid theme. In the centre of town, the…

Dr No-ah and his $1m ark

Johan Huibers, a carpenter, has built a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark in Dordrecht, in the west of the Netherlands. The vessel will be opened…

Where the grid does not reach

The conquest of space may one day become man’s salvation. Mars is our species most likely second home. This picture, taken over a period of…

US Army speeds up move off-grid

The recently unveiled Army Energy Initiatives Task Force has launched its most ambitious project yet: a 50-megawatt biofuels power plant on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Army…

Health tips for the heatwave

To keep safe the Health Department recommends that people: • Slow down and reduce outdoor activities, especially during the hottest part of the day, from…

Home for less than $20,000

An electrician from England built himself and his girlfriend alarge comfy home for less than $20,000, (£12,000). Daniel Bond turned a double-decker bus into his…

UK Utilities allowed to profiteer

This graph of wholesale and retail electricity prices reveals how successive governments allow the big Utility companies to make bumper profits, increasing the price of…

Lucas Foglia pics

“By the time I was 18 we owned three tractors, four cars and five computers,”says photographer Lucas Foglia. Growing up on a small farm in…

Solio sucks

Whether you are living off the grid, or just moving around away from power outlets for your smartphone or laptop, solar chargers can be a…

Crowdsourcing permaculture

Sophia Novack is creating a huge, Open Source Permaculture dictionary and a free Urban Permaculture Guide eBook. She has crowd-funded the project on Indiegogo Now…

Now marketers want a piece of off-grid

Alleluyah – The London Sunday Times has discovered unplugging. ‘Welcome to our “always on” society,’ journalist Laura Atkinson informed readers yesterday. ‘Whether we like it…

Affordable Green Homes

China’s government just announced it will allow financial institutions to provide lower mortgage rates for buyers of environmentally friendly housing (see below for more detail).…

Hare Krishna UK Eco Farm

A group of Hare Krishna monks in Scotland are pioneering a new sustainable community. The project, called the Krishna Eco Farm, is based at an…

Solar Kindle

Keep reading on the move, when hiking, or a long sea journey. This winner of a Consumer Electronics Show innovation award for 2012 is a…

NBC to air off-grid drama series

Prolific writer-producer JJ Abrams is behind the new series Revolution – a post-apocalyptic off-grid drama to air on NBC in a late-evening Monday slot –…

Free solar in Wales

Looking for free solar power and live in North Wales? Farms and rural businesses without mains electricity in Conwy, a costal community at the tip of…

Smart Meter backlash

Bloomberg News reports a fast-growing consumer movement in opposition to smart meters.   Smart meters, so called because they allow real-time usage monitoring, originally were pitched…

From farm to plate

London, Ontario……For two hours every Thursday afternoon,  Julie Richards-Bramhill  is a conduit connecting a lone vegetable farmer with  hundreds of families looking for organic food.…

I dream of the Smart Grid

One man’s fantasy of what the so-called smart grid could mean for all our futures: The further encroachment of government and bureaucracy on our private…

Microgeneration in UK

These are exciting times for the British microgeneration sector. Dave Sowden, chief executive of the Micropower Council has said that the UK is “the only…

Future high-end homes

Los Angeles, the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of Technology are running a poster child for a new generation of smart…

Solar Power intro

Are you thinking of switching from conventional energy to solar power? A rooftop solar PV power plant is not only a money-saver, it can also…

We were an island

Art and Nan Kellam bought an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine in 1949 and lived there for more than 35 years, content with…

Fred Eaglesmith

Canadian Country singer  Fred Eaglesmith is our kind of environmentalist. “I’m not part of the trend. I’m not part of the Green Revolution,” he tells…

Dig a borehole for free water

Thames Water and six other water companies in southern and eastern England have imposed hosepipe bans – but keen gardener Alison Brown can carry on…

US-China Trade War escalates

The long-awaited Trade War with China has started. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke (pictured with President Obama) has slapped a retroactive tax on all Chinese solar…

Off-Grid alarm system

Where we live is pretty far off the beaten path, which means it is either very safe or not so safe depending on how you…

Net zero homes – do the math

Gary and Bobbie Worker from Portland, had their heart set on an energy neutral home that was as financially-efficient, as it was ecologically effective. “We…

NPR on Electric cars

How would an electric car work out for an off-grid household?  Remarkably well assuming it could be charged up during visits to the grid.  And…

Early Spring Garden

It is rare for us to be able to plant our garden before April 15 but, in rather shocking fashion, spring weather is upon us…

Land in Hungary and Romania

Austrian farmers are buying cheap land as fast as they can, but there are 10 million hectares to go, mainly in smallholdings across the country.

For sale: Off-Grid home in Eire

Green Valley Properties, a rural property specialist in Ireland, is selling a fully equipped off-grid property in Co Clare for just €99,000. GVP is a…

Cabin Porn

A web site where readers around the world post large high-res pics of remote or abandoned cabins? Surely, it will never catch on? Yes it…

Unplug for an hour

Small initiatives can sometimes have a big effect, and its that time of year again when Australians are asked to turn up their environmental conscience…

Facebook is History

Resentment at high handed approach - a terrible redesign, and refusal to share revenue with users are base of its problems

The sunspots are coming

Dangerous new groups of sunspots have unleashed a storm of huge solar flares which threaten grid connections worldwide, as astronomers predict two years of storms…

Holistic parenting

California March 2nd — Redlands mom Lara Carlos is part of a parenting movement that bucks the mainstream. Her three children, ages 7, 6 and…

Afghan cook stove

A video from USAID shows the details of how to design a cheap efficient stove to cook your food and heat your home. you have…

Charlotte suffers BoFAdose

Employees at Corporate HQ are familiar with the term “MyLearning” - a module contains lessons on how to behave in public when asked certain questions

Seed catalogs

It’s the middle of winter, cold, dreary, but something I start receiving in my mailbox makes me long for the warm days of spring, the…

Jewel spurns Discovery

Platinum chanteuse Jewel Kilcher will have "nothing to do" with new Discovery series about life off the grid

Off the grid in Canada

Over the next few months we will be running regular stories and photos of Canadian off-grid men and women. Please send us your photos and videos.

Ten low-tech gadgets

The yearlyInternational Consumer Electronics Show (CES), has seen off another round of headlines about lust-inducing gadgets soon to be on store shelves. Some survival gadgets…

Supermarket Survival

Worldwide food shortages and higher gas prices continue to drive food prices up, up, up. And yet there are still massive savings to be had…

Slab City for a warmer winter

CBS Evening News has reignited interest in Slab City – the off-grid community near Los Angeles. It is celebrating its 20th anniversary and is growing…

Mobile wireless hotspots

$100 plus a monthly charge of about $50,you delete all other internet charges, and run four gadgets simultaneously, almost anywhere

Grid can’t handle mass solar

Further evidence in favor of Micro-grids and against the so-called Smart Grid. The runaway take-up of rooftop solar panels in Australia has undermined the electricity…

Doomsday Preppers

This TV show first aired in the US last summer and arrives in the UK this wednesday on an obscure cable channel.  It is the…

Make money from your land

Great article by Merlyn Seeley on Examiner.com about the wide range of ways you can make money if you are lucky enough to have a…

Efficient fireplace inserts

They look great but that homey glow real fires produce sends heat right up the chimney as the fire sucks warm air from the rest…