February 2010

Community

Fox buys John Twelve Hawks

Is there really a John Twelve Hawks?

The author of a bestselling sci-fi series called the Fourth Realm Trilogy lives off the grid, according to the New York Post and writes about the surveillance society. He has never met his editor or agent and uses a voice scrambler and satellite phone to communicate.
Recently,Fox optioned the film rights.  This success generated considerable envy from poorly paid scribes.
Twelve Hawks might be a pseudonym of James Frey, suggests one.
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10 acres near Durango — trees,spring

Brian writes:
Hello!
I own two separately deeded 10 acre parcels side by side.
Both border 9000 acres of public land and are secluded and quiet. They are located approximately 30 miles sw of Durango, Colorado and have a nice view of the La Plata mountains to the north about 20 miles. These are the southern San Juan Mountains.

There is no water on the property but a very nice spring that you pay $100 per year to use as much as you want. There are many people hauling water in this area and it is only about 9 miles from the property on a straight country road. The last 1.75 miles to the property is an unmaintained county road. I am keeping one of the 10 acre parcels to live off the grid and will built a small structure out there this summer.
I have already done experiments with gravity fed drip irrigation on timers to grow food. It was very productive and I was able to leave for extended periods and it took care of itself on two double A batteries. I would be
willing to sell one of the 10 acre parcels. Let me know if you are interested in more info

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Emergency Power: engine-driven generators

Living off the grid,  generators have a place. There comes a time  when some backup power is needed.  In most cases  this means using an engine to turn some form of generator.

People living  in Vans, camping trailers or small cabins tend to view  a seperate engine driven  generator as a nuisance  to be tolerated  and  usually do  not wish to spend much money. Various alternatives  present themselves.
Running the Van motor to charge up  the battery is among the first  solutions  that  comes to mind.  Next is a small  stand alone portable genset and  a typical automotive charger  that plugs into the mains.
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LandBuddy – link with others off the grid

Welcome to the beta launch of LandBuddy ™, a place where you can find new off-grid friends and form groups to share land, acquire real estate  and other resources (no commercial postings please).

Looking for the perfect bug-out location?  Real Estate prices are high. Or perhaps you already have some forest or agricultural real estate and are looking for others to share the land?  But who?

Or, maybe you’re just intrigued by this idea of living off the grid, and you want to meet some folks who are building a community together, and help out a bit.

Whichever your interest, Off-Grid.net’s new LandBuddy service is for you. Real estate prices may have fallen but good land is still out of the reach of most. And finding other people who also want to live in an off the grid community in the same region as you is really hard.

We are here to help change that.

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Energy

Government grants create turbine debacle

The UK Government’s energy conservation watchdog has admitted that consumers were duped by inappropriate grants into buying wind turbines that never stood a chance of working properly.

In an attempt to ensure that there is no repeat of the wind turbine debacle, the Energy Savings Trust, funded by Government and big energy companies, has embarked on the first large-scale trials aimed at providing definitive information on the performance of different green technologies in the UK.

The first trial concluded that an unknown amount of government cash has been wasted encouraging urban consumers to buy wind turbines when no one really knew whether they were effective or not.

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Land

US Embassy in London to be off-grid ready

For decades the residents of elite Grosvenor Square in London’s Mayfair had to contend with overbearing security along the entire side of the square occupied by the American Embassy.  Now, much to their relief,  the Embassy is moving to the less rarified area of Wandsworth, and in environmental terms, the new building will be everything America aspires to but rarely achieves.

The $500m building will be nearly self-sufficient in energy production and capable of operating off-grid “for an extended period,” according to officials.
Unlike most glass office buildings, which appear slick and hard-edged, this one will look soft and pillowy thanks to the lightweight plastic attached to the façade “like boat sails.”
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Powell: Hypemaster-General
Energy

Bloom energy box enables off-grid living

More details of the Bloom Box have been revealed at a carefully managed press conference in California.  The much-hyped off-grid source of cheap electricity  will not lead us all to disconnect from the grid tomorrow, but it is undoubtedly disruptive technology, and very exciting for the off-grid community.

The firm’s executives and backers do think that many people in future may choose to install the small box in their home and use it to generate electricity from such fuels as methane and ethanol or even solar, rather than buying it from expensive, wasteful centralised producers.  It is a game-changer.
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Class of its own

The first off-grid classroom with a revolutionary solar-powered rainwater harvesting and filtration system, has been opened.  Exclusive Benenden School in the UK, a girls-only boarding school, launched the classroom last term as a place to conduct field studies of nature subjects.

Benenden provides the innovative teach space set amongst mature parkland. The unique education facility is designed to be entirely off-grid, relying only on solar energy for electricity.

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Energy

Boom time for Bloom Box

A new but still unseen fuel cell technology that its creator claims can be an off-grid source of cheap energy, and clean power,  is about to get its formal debut

Bloom Energy’s much-hyped fuel cell, known as the Bloom Box, will take place at eBay’s headquarters in California tomorrow (24 Feb).  Bloom Box is already being trialed on the campuses of Google and eBay among others. FedEx, Wal-Mart and Staples are among a score of Fortune 100 companies that have signed up as Bloom Box clients to save million in electricity costs. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, among those who endorse the technology, is on the Board of Directors of Bloom Energy, an eight-year old stealth start-up that raised more than $ 400 million from Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists who have installed Bloom Boxes in their own bug-out locations.
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Energy

V2G will sustain microgrid

Micro-grids could operate reliably without the need for a national grid backup if they tapped the vast amounts of power stored in the batteries of electric and hybrid vehicles, to balance out fluctuations in supply and demand.

Vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, technology, which will enable electric car owners to make money while storing power for their local micro-grid, was unveiled at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The first experimental V2G system went live last year at the University of Delaware, the Christian Science Monitor reported. At Delaware,  electric cars are connected to the grid whenever they are not being driven.
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People

Rocker who lives in a shed

Tim Barry has been rockognised.

The singer songwriter from Richmond VA lives back of his girlfriend’s house in a shed with a busted kerosene heater – not great at this time of year, but ok, really, when you are wearing camouflage coveralls to fight the chill.

Winter has been harsh but the shed balances Barry’s queasy relationship with fame. Since the early ’90s, he’s fronted the speed ’n’ scream punk rock band Avail, but he isn’t always as comfortable with the attention.

He’s a hermit with a publicist.

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Where have all the engineers gone?

A common theme  running through  many if not most  if the current  crop of discussion threads  dealing with alternative lifestyle and off-grid living is a lack of solid engineering  know how.
Many posters ask basic questions about the technology involved.  All the major green and alternate  energy projects we hear about in the news are mega projects  involving  huge amounts of money and  aimed at  creating megawatts of power to feed the existing grid.
These projects  do employ engineers but  very few of these engineers  seem to get involved with low tech small scale energy projects.
I began wondering why.
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