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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Off The Grid - Out of the Question?
  • Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:14:54 EDT



> Comments, anyone?

It is a perennial koan amongst us self-sufficient types. Is it possible to
generate all the electricity you use on you own homestead?

Tricksty, that.

There is the old saw where the enterprising child has a lemonade stand with
the sign "All you can drink for ten cents,"

The patron plucks down a dime and drinks a glass of lemonade.

"I'll have another."
"That will be ten more cents."
"But your sign says 'All you can drink for ten cents.'"
"Right. That's all you can drink for ten cents."

Like that, I could just run some wires out to the battery of the truck and
get all the electricity I use from that. IF that was all the electricity I
used.

This fellow has the full nine yards as far as eletrical gadgets go and a 3500
sq ft house no less. I got to the middle of the second page of the article
and Firefox decided it didn't like it. But from what I read, this fellow's
doing the world and environment no good. Sure, he's demonstrating that given
enough resouces and acreage, one person with a LOT of money could unplug from
the
grid and use all the electricty they wanted. The teaser is that if he could
do it, anyone could do it.

A friend of mine did him one better in a lot of ways. He built a boat that
uses no fossil fuel whatever, a steam boat. He built it all himself. Of
course, he owns a machine company with sixty Bridgeport machines, has access
to
all sorts of odd and exotic bits and pieces of metal. Could everyone build a
boat like that and get around by burning driftwood? Not likely.

The fellow in the article got off the grid and spent $500,000 doing it. That
half a million dollars represents a great deal resources natual and human
that went into providing electricity just for him alone. That much money
would
buy a lavish use of electricity on my homestead for 700 years. </HTML>




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