wrote:
On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 17:15:08 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

wrote:
http://gizmodo.com/5104016/dean-kame...y-off-the-grid

Well, yeah. His home is typical of folks who invent the Segway or the
Pop-Tart. Bill Gates probably saves bags of money on
air-conditioning by living inside a mountain.



I guess you missed a few things, like the fact that part of getting
off the grid involved figuring out ways to use LESS energy.

There is no single magic bullet. If you have that sort of tunnel
vision, you are doomed to failure and extinction.

By using less energy, and producing more of it at the point of use,
you CAN save money.

Agreed. Some people, however, confuse the goals and the methods. For some,
using less energy is the goal when energy usage is really the MEANS not the
END. If you can accomplish the same goal using less energy, then good on
you!

There are several ways to test the rationale of an hypothesis: One is to
take the tactic to its extreme. If the goal is to find the cheapest on-going
way to watch the Super Bowl on a 52" plasma TV, you might look at wind power
or solar collectors. If the goal is to reduce energy consumption, then the
extreme is the Unibomber's sharck or an Indian wigwam.

Regrettably, extremists have elevated reduced energy usage to the goal. You
find this construct in slogans such as "Eliminate coal-fired power plants
and we'll have cleaner air," implying that the elimination of coal-fired
power plants is the goal and a subsidiary benefit is cleaner air. In my
view, a better way of making a similar claim is "One way to get better air
is to eliminate coal-fired power plants."

In reality, many environmental activists are closet Luddites who want us to
devolve to a hunter-gatherer society. In the above example, they don't want
cleaner air, they want our electricity consumption cut in half. Only then
can we "get back to nature," maintain a simpler life-style, and lead lives
that are short, painful, and brutish.


You don't have to be Bill Gates to do it, either.
I'm currently looking into installing geo-thermal in my primary
residence. I will use photovoltaic solar to provide the electricity
needed to operate the controls and pumps. So, I will be heating and
cooling that house without any connection to the grid, and no fossil
fuels. I'll be able to keep my house at any temp I want without
worrying about how much energy I'm using to do it. I'll also be able
to heat my hot tub for free, saving an additional $30-$40 a month. The
initial installation will be expensive, but part of it will be offset
by the boiler I won't be replacing. Since I won't be buying any oil,
I'll break even in about 10 years at MOST. More likely about 7 years.
After that, heat and air conditioning will be FREE other than
maintenance, which is pretty minimal on these systems.

If you do undertake this salutary plan, it would be really neat to keep a
journal of expenses and savings over time - starting at day one. After a few
years, you should be able to divine a trend and the whole shebang would be
excellent fodder for a magazine article or opinion piece.

I predict is will be a money pit into which you'll have to keep throwing
coins called dear, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise by cold, hard,
facts.

Let us know how the project goes.