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Going off the grid: Why more people are choosing to live life unplugged
For people who want to get away from today's consumerist society, living off-grid can be an attractive option.
Wed, Nov 14 2012 at 6:03 PM
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Photo: Amy Johansson/Shutterstock
Imagine living off the land, producing your own food and energy and getting away from the consumption economy that drives so many of our decisions. For more and more people, off-grid living has become the way to go. Although statistics on Americans who choose to take this route are hard to come by, trends suggest that the number is increasing. Some people do it to be self-reliant or more in touch with nature. Many go off-grid to step away from society. Still others do it because it is the most financially viable option available to them.
"Going off the grid is not a game," says Nick Rosen, founder of the Off-Grid website and author of "Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America" (Penguin Books). "It is real life and a real choice for real people."
Rosen says people go off the grid for a variety of reasons, and they vary how deeply they go off-grid. "You can't get off all of the grids all the time," he says. "It's a question of which grids you choose to get off of and in what way and for how long." Some people live off the grid part of the year for leisure purposes, taking a few months off from their jobs so they can live in a more relaxed manner. Others get themselves off the public electrical or water systems but still participate in what Rosen calls the "car grid" or the "supermarket grid" or "bank grid."
Off-grid is green
Although a desire to go green isn't usually the primary driver for people going off-grid, the lifestyle has many environmental benefits. For one thing, most off-grid homes or communities are in places where nature plays an important part of their everyday lives. "You become much more aware of the sun and the wind because you need it to power yourself," Rosen says. For another, people who are living off-grid do not tend to fill their lives with the same amount of stuff as your average consumer. "We're all consuming too much. One of the big motivations for off-grid living is a weariness of the consumer society. It's not necessarily anti-consumer, but post-consumer."
Off-grid homes also eschew the American tendency toward overly large residences. "We're over-housing ourselves," Rosen says. "That's been very big feature of American society since the '50s: The overly large house with the big heating and cooling bills, storing vast amounts of unnecessary possessions." Although off-grid housing varies in size and scope and energy needs, Rosen estimates that the average off-grid residence uses about 20 percent of the energy consumed by a typical American home.
Another green factor is a lowered reliance on transportation. Although people living off the grid still own vehicles, they use them much less frequently. "You may only need it once a week or once a month," Rosen says.
Other motivations: Fear and finances
Some off-grid people do it to get away. "Perhaps the biggest motivation at the moment is a loss of trust in the government and the ability of social networks to look after us," Rosen says. These are people who feel as if society no longer provides the sense of safety that they require.
For others, going off-grid is an economic necessity brought about by hard times. "A lot of the people I met when I was traveling around the States writing my book were people who had to hand back the keys to their properties and find a new lifestyle. In one case they bought some land on eBay and moved themselves into a trailer. And they find themselves living a more ecological lifestyle just by the fact that they're generating their own electricity and growing their own food, but they were motivated by financial matters rather than by more pure desire to tread more lightly on the planet."
How much do you really need?
Rosen says most families could go off the grid with as little as a half an acre, "as long as it's the right half-acre." Ideal locations would have some woodland, an area for agriculture, enough light for solar power and a good source of water, either a well or a stream. "The era of 40 acres and a mule has been replaced by the era of a half an acre and a laptop and a solar panel," he says.
But even a half an acre can be a lot of work — too much for most people, Rosen says. "You're giving yourself a lot to do if you're running your own power plant, dealing with your own water supply, disposing of your own waste and pulling your own food."
Instead of going it alone, many people form off-grid communities. "The best way to get off-grid is to go off with others in a group of families, so each have half an acre and share resources and skills," Rosen says. "One is tending livestock and one is growing vegetables, while a third is looking after the power supply for everybody else."
The next generation?
Going off the grid today doesn't mean reinventing the wheel. "The existence of the Internet that has made living off the grid a real choice and a real possibility for so many people," Rosen says. Websites like his own provide lessons and plans and advice for off-grid living, as well as a sense of community for people who might otherwise be physically isolated from each other.
In addition, some off-the-grid communities are ready for new people to join them. "There's a huge generation of 1970s back-to-the-land movement people who are now getting pretty old and they're sitting on these huge tracks of land that can't be broken up," Rosen says. These communities are looking for young people to buy their way in. "The idea of land trusts is being used as a way these older people can get some new residents to help look after them and then work on the land or take over part of the land as the older generation dies out."
Rosen says his own ambition is to create an off-grid village of 300 or so homes in his native England, provided he can find a local zoning board willing to allow it. "I think there's a huge demand for off-grid living that can't be satisfied because the places where you'd want to live off the grid are the places you can't get permission to do so," he says.
Related stories on MNN:
- Off-the-grid communities: 5 places creating their own sustainable future
- Retired couple lives off the grid in tiny, floating cabin
- 8 eye-catching shipping container homes [Photo gallery]
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i like it
I feel like there's a future in technologically-aided homesteading.
I feel like a certain threshold will soon be crossed, where the cost to convenience ratio of tech(hacker-style add-ons) will drop low enough for more people to be able to take the plunge into off-grid living without losing all their precious modern life.
I have lived off the grid now for 6 years. One of the best moves I ever did. The peace and tranquility of waking in the morning to the sound of a loon out on the lake or a walk in the forest listening to the wind in the tree tops.
I would do it mostly for going green and for meditative purposes.
I'm going off grid to escape crazy neo-fascist religious corporatist conspiracy theorists: i.e. the people who think government, not corporations, are the problem. Deep in the woods, no one can hear a hillbilly scream :)
Until very recently, there was all that super-sizing everything. Now it seems the only rational sensical way to go is simplyfying, downsizing and making as light a consumer footprint as possible, buying only what's needed rather than what's hot that you just gotta have NOW! Personal consumption and the planet's sustainability are connected. All who disregard, including globally burgeoning producing nations are hastening the destruction of Earth.
The reason is not important on some level. The sign is that there is a flow out of this condensity which we call civilization.
I've been living off the grid for 9 years now. Wouldn't have it any other way!
Well, I've been doing it for 2 years now and it's working really well. It doesn't mean you've become a hippie (nothing wrong with that either), you're just taking the best of both worlds... on your own terms.
Would love to do this if I were younger. In our area, I can't even get permission to build a small house. Regulations say you must have a minimum of 1000 sq ft. I don't need or want this much space but I can't find a way around zoning laws.
Build underground,secretly so the goofs don't know what ur up to?
Living off the grid certainly sounds appealing for a few months out of the year, like 3-4. It'd be a great way to recharge your physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual batteries, plus it would give you a lot of time to focus on what you can't when you're in society. I can't imagine making a permanent lifestyle out of it though, I enjoy other people and technology too much for that.
Well, living truly off-grid is a lifestyle you put everything in it, 3-4 months is not off-grid, it's a vacation.
I would love to live like Grizzly Adams,remember that show? I could live off the land no problem.Ride my bike in the country and grow all my veggies and herbs and be happy.BUT must go to town for Wine,lol
You could make your own wine from fruits on the land. Its actually pretty easy and don't many supplies. ;o)
haven't had television for going on 10 years now... and I love it. Haven't missed it for a second. I've done a lot more reading. And I'm outside waaaay more than I am inside. I believe that the addiction to TV will take years off of your life, along with starving your brain. Or destroying what brain cells you may have left. Kill your TV before it kills you.
to learn more about truly living off the grid, watch Alone in the Wilderness....the story of Dick Proeneke. nobody did it better than this guy http://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss
just watch the 2 shows about the people up in Alaska that have been living all their life like that.