One Step Off The Grid
Solar, storage and distributed energy news
Astrid Liberts had no choice but to be off-grid in her dream home with spectacular ocean views. Each upgrade delivers improvements, but sometimes she yearns to be connected.
Columnist and cartoonist Jill Redwood had to start over after the Ash Wednesday bush fires in 1983. She explains how she lives off grid with just a very small solar system of 1kW and battery storage.
Leigh Adamson recently bought the house next door to create a rare half acre block in suburbia. He now has an alternative retirement income and is readying both homes for the oncoming energy storage revolution with small grid-connect solar systems.
Port Macquarie Hotel that is 100% carbon neutral uses strata fees to generate 16% return on rooftop solar panels on its roof – rather than sitting in a bank – and even hosts a Tesla charging station.
While most people dream of building a carbon neutral home from scratch, the Severin family were lucky enough to walk straight into an established family pad near Horsham in western Victoria. All they needed was more solar.
Going off grid doesn’t necessarily mean a large solar system powering your entire home.
This nursery and cafe business is off-grid by necessity, but it’s a system designed to power a full commercial kitchen, including the most important appliance – the very best European coffee machine.
How effective is a standalone solar system in areas that experience snowfall? We asked Ed and Laurie, off-gridding Americans who live, and grow most of their own veggies, at 1280m above sea level.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale chose to go off-grid 10 years ago, largely because of the huge costs of connecting his then weekender and now family home to the grid. He says it’s a great feeling to be able to convert the sun into useable energy.
It’s satisfying to turn on a light or power tool and know the energy was generated only a few metres away.
