October 2015

Community

Knights Hospitaller

The fall and winter holidays are here, we just went through the first one, Halloween, it’s not something I have been really big on celebrating, but PB has a rich history from his childhood, good memories, mainly of his mother, who is a wonderful artist, making up the 3 brothers in intricate costumes. One of PB’s fondest memories is being turned into the Frankenstein monster.

Fast forward 40 something years and PB is still a kid at heart and loves Halloween. Our community hosts a big Halloween party each year, this year PB decided he was going to go as a Hospitaller knight, you can read about them here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller.

He already had a chain mail headpiece, but he needed a helmet and a tunic. In typical Bobbage fashion, he took the bonnet that had been removed from the VW bug years ago, he cut out 2 pieces of metal and beat on it for 3 days. He molded those two pieces into a helmet, along with a few trim pieces, he actually made an authentic looking helmet.

The tunic was much easier, he took a charcoal gray wool blanket, cut a slit for his head, and sewed a white cross on the chest area. I’d say all in all, he looked quite real, he looked and played the part of a knight.

I wasn’t so keen on dressing up in a costume, so I wore a safety orange t-shirt over a black long sleeve thermal top, I told everyone I was a punkin, not a pumPKin, but a pun’kin.

You can still see the blue paint from the VW bug on the helmet.

It’s fun to have a creative soul in my life, anyone else would have built a standard looking box to live in, not that there is anything wrong with that (said in my best Seinfeld voice). Getting to live in a castle on a mountainside of far west Texas is quite the treat.

Hope you had a fun Halloween.

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October 31, 2015 No Comments

UK commune siuccess story - Windosr Hill Wood leader Tobias Jones

Community

Freedom through Community

Tobias Jones is a co-founder of Windsor Hill Wood community in Somerset. His book about his community, Buy “A Place of Refuge” from Amazon UK, is published by Quercus.

In this extract he talks about why off-grid living is better in a community.

BY TOBIAS JONES

We set up our community, Windsor Hill Wood, six years ago in a ten-acre woodland in Somerset, UK. The sole purpose was to offer sanctuary to those in a period of crisis in their lives: those struggling with addiction, depression, bereavement, homelessness, eating disorders, PTSD, and so on. In that time we’ve had well over a hundred people living in our family home, and the benefits – both to ourselves and to our guests – have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s just a natural, healthy, wholesome way to live.

Yet in all functioning communities, collective choices are made and have to be adhered to. One of the most fascinating communal experiments that emerged from the hippie movement in the US was The Farm, in Tennessee. Inspired by the late Stephen Gaskin, it began in 1971, as you might expect, as a mirror-image of that age’s free-for-all attitude, but slowly began to incorporate “agreements”, which, over the years, made it a very stable and yet very creative space. Communal choices were made to respect the sanctity of marriage and monogamy, to avoid the use of hard drugs, and so on.

But the greatest obstacle to sharing the lessons of communalism is our warped notion of freedom. The essayist Wendell Berry arrived at the heart of the problem in his 2002 book, The Art of the Commonplace:

. . . there are two kinds of freedom: the freedom of the community and the freedom of the individual. The freedom of the community is the more fundamental and the more complex. A community confers on its members the freedoms implicit in familiarity, mutual respect, mutual affection, and mutual help; it gives freedom its proper aims . . . The freedom of the individual, by contrast, has been construed customarily as a license to pursue any legal self-interest . . .”

It is here that, most clearly, a contemporary observer will glimpse the scary needle that administers the medicine we need: to create any sort of community, we need to pool individual freedoms to gain community freedoms. The latter emerge only through submission and obedience, not through exuberance and incessant self-expression. It is, obviously, a hard sell.

It is hard to find a word held so low in the public esteem as “communalism”. For most people it carries a toxic whiff of both “communism” and “commune”, implying dropouts, flakes, fanatics and cultish leaders. If you’re in any doubt about how frightening the word is to the average citizen, try telling your next-door neighbour you’re going to live communally: they will veer away from you (believe me, I’ve …

October 30, 2015 No Comments

Community

Decentralised power in Syria

An obscure American Anarchist inspires a new way of government in Syria

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October 27, 2015 No Comments

Obama endorses off-grid energy (finally – but only for Africa!)

White House Press Releases And Documents

FACT SHEET: Obama Administration Joins with Public and Private Sector to Increase Access to Off-Grid Clean Energy and the Deployment of Innovative Technologies Globally

22 October 2015

•
President Obama is committed to reducing carbon pollution and ensuring that people everywhere can tap into clean sources of energy to power their homes and businesses.

That is why, today, the Administration is announcing new actions to help bring off-grid clean energy systems and energy efficient appliances to the approximate 1.3 billion people without energy access.

Along with other solutions, like grid extension and new energy generation supply investments, off-grid energy systems hold tremendous promise to speed the delivery of affordable modern energy services. Improving access to renewable energy solutions has direct positive effects on education and economic opportunities, while also reducing families’ exposure to pollution, providing clean water access, and empowering farmers and families by providing them with the technology they need to stay connected and learn.
Coming just a month before the Paris negotiations, these actions underscore our commitment to ensuring all countries have the opportunity to power economic growth based on clean, sustainable energy solutions.
To bring the promise of clean energy to more households, the United States, Benin, Bangladesh, and Kenya are taking the following actions:
*The Department of Energy (DOE) is announcing the launch of the next round of the Global Lighting and Energy Access Partnership (Global LEAP) Awards competition focused on identifying and promoting super-efficient, high quality off-grid fans and televisions.
*The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is announcing a new $75 million loan guarantee through the Power Africa program to scale-up off-grid energy investments across sub-Saharan Africa.
*The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is announcing more than $20 million in loans to promote solar energy in 90,000 households in Kenya and Nigeria
*The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is providing $46 million for off-grid electrification in Benin.
*The Governments of Benin, Bangladesh, and Kenya are taking steps to increase access to off-grid energy efficient products, which will be powered by clean energy, and develop standards to ensure the quality ofoff-grid appliances.
Nineteen companies and organizations also are announcing new independent commitments to take a strong step forward toward a low-carbon, sustainable future. These commitments include:
*New funding totaling over $125 million to finance clean energy projects, such as the deployment of high efficiency solar equipment to reach millions of low-income customers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
*Advancing the deployment of over 170 million new off-grid, energy-efficient, standalone and scalable products.
In total, the commitments made today will:
*Provide access to off-grid clean energy products and services to more than 500 million people by 2020, changing people’s lives and livelihoods.
*Prevent the equivalent of over 350 million metric tons of CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the products deployed by 2020, including significantly cutting black carbon emissions, equivalent to …

October 27, 2015 No Comments

What to consider before going off-grid

How do you start when you are wanting to go off-grid? How do you decide where to live? There are many different directions you can go in when you are in the planning stages. I found this video with a true off-gridder talking about how to pick a place to go off-grid. This isn’t about how HE did it, it’s more a set of guidelines as to how to get into the best possible location for how you wish to live.

I think one of the things that might be difficult for people is moving away from where they live now, people tend to want to stay close to family and familiar places. It might necessary to move, possibly far away to find a spot of land that would suit how you wish to live.

Considering these questions before buying, you will have a better chance of succeeding.

Enjoy

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October 23, 2015 No Comments

Community

Reminiscing and a blog update

Each autumn as the weather turns cool and the days get shorter, I think back on our first year living off-grid, eight years ago this month, PB and I had a final trailer full of the last of our possessions sitting in the driveway, we had closed down the last of our life in the city (Irving Texas), PB had shut down his one man business, I had quit both of my jobs, the house was nearly empty. PB had brought several loads of our stuff out to the property some 500 miles to the west, most of it was sitting under tarps to keep the weather and (hopefully) the critters from ruining it.

We were waiting for a break in the weather, that fall into winter seemed more wet and icy than usual. As it got closer to Thanksgiving, we chose to stay in town to spend one final holiday with our families. Again we waited for the weather to clear so we could leave. In the middle of the trailer of our belongings we had a large wire container with food, I worried about the can goods freezing so we placed a small space heater under the tarp, it worked well enough, our food made it just fine.

We finally got a break in the weather on December 21, the sun was shining, it was above freezing, the roads were dry, so we decided to make a run for it. As we were walking through the house one final time to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, we heard a loud crash, turned out it was PB’s son coming home for lunch. He made a left turn in front of a car that was going way too fast down that road, but since he had pulled in front of her, it was technically his fault.

Fortunately no one was injured, the vehicles however were not so lucky. As a result, our start time went from morning until after 3pm, we couldn’t risk staying another night, the weather could turn on us again and we wanted to get to our new off-grid home. PB drove a truck pulling the trailer, I drove his service van pulling the VW bug, everything was loaded down to the max.

It took us 12 hours to drive the 500 miles, stopping only for fuel, bathroom breaks and to adjust the loads as needed. When we arrived at the property, it was COLD, I found out the temps that night got down to 14 degrees F, and it was blowing a gale all night long. We hiked up to the box PB had build that would become our SkyCastle, climbed the ladder into the house and hung on while the wind threatened to knock the place down.

Well, I didn’t wait, I was too tired, I crawled into the tent that was inside the …

October 21, 2015 No Comments

The Star Wranglerstars sad to be on the grid

Community

YouTube’s off-grid stars….. go on the grid

Working almost non-stop as young professionals, they knew something was missing.

“We were both working a lot of hours – 80 hours per week — eating out three meals a day, coming home to a dark house,” says Cody, one of the stars of the Wranglerstar You Tube channel. “Everyone you meet says, ‘Oh, you guys have it made. You’re making so much money. You’re building these careers.’ But we didn’t really like it. We didn’t get to spend any time together.”

That’s when his wife, Jessica, learned through a Bible study about a couple who had moved to Montana, dropped off the electrical grid and created a new life.

“It was just happen-chance they were speaking in town,” Cody says. “We met them and they invited us to spend a weekend with them in Montana. On the drive home, we decided to do this. We put our house up for sale when we got home.”

What has followed is the creation of the You Tube channel where the couple and their son, Jack, share their story about modern homesteading. Despite putting a part of their lives out on the Internet, the couple prefers to maintain their privacy and asked that their last name not be used in this story.

Jessica also has written a book. They’ll hold a book signing from 4-6 p.m. Friday at Yankee Peddler West in downtown Fremont.

The You Tube channel started out as a hobby. But it’s grown into much more. It now has nearly 271,000 subscribers and the videos have been several million times.

And it has become a way to help support their lives.

“When we made that decision, no one was making money on You Tube. It was done as a hobby,” Cody says. “I remember when we got our first check from You Tube. It was $100 or something. I thought, ‘This isn’t real. This is never going to cash.’ … That really changed my way to thinking.

“I think she was really annoyed from my You Tube videos. I think probably she thought it was taking away from a real job. But I really started to realize we could do this, we could make a living at this.”

It is more than they anticipated, Jessica says.

“The subscribers want to watch daily,” she says. “It’s definitely more work than we anticipated.”

Still, they are able to keep some privacy.

“When we do apple pressing (the subject of recent video), that’s half an hour of our life,” says Jessica, who grew up in Fremont – a fact not mentioned in the videos. “The rest of our life is not shown on camera.”

All those videos – and the connection to their subscribers – led to the new book.

“There’s this publishers and his wife is a viewer of ours,” Jessica says. “She went to him and said, ‘I think you …

October 19, 2015 No Comments

Life in a small community

We are back on track now, after last week’s rain deluge, our little community really pulled together to help all of us. This is one of the good things about living in a small community, when there is a need, we all jump in and help, no matter what differences we may have.

We typically have 2 people working on the roads out here, but after the 4 days of heavy rains, our roads were decimated beyond use, there were about 30 volunteers in the following days working on the 2 worst roads, mine was one of them. Folk came out with heavy and light equipment, some had hand tools, shovels, chainsaws and the such.

Living in a small community has its ups and downs, right now we are going through some political issues, not national subjects, but much closer to home, we have a POA and have a board of trustees who are voted in to represent the people out here. Some would like to do away with the POA but something I learned is if we didn’t govern ourselves, then we would be governed by the powers that be in the county. I prefer governing ourselves.

In the past couple of years, there have been a change of the guard, the old guard was voted out and a new bunch was voted in, for the better or worse, we are working through changes and growing pains. As will happen with groups, there is a division in the community and some smaller divisions as well, there are a few, vocal folk who have been creating more problems than they are solving and lately the noise level has gotten pretty loud.

Honestly I believe this storm was exactly what this community needed, it caused everyone to take a step back, to reassess what is real, what is important, and we all came together, neighbor to neighbor, neighbor for neighbor, we put our differences aside and worked together to fix the roads, and hopefully heal our community.

This is life in a small community, and I love it.

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October 17, 2015 No Comments

Would you live in a parking garage?

There is so much unused space, especially in the USA, space that was created for one purpose but with fresh eyes, can be used for living space. In many large cities, you will find parking garages, multilevel, covered enclosures meant for parking cars, how about taking the parking garages that are not being used and turn them into homes for people? That’s what this experiment is all about.

Combining tiny homes with a parking garage gives a wonderful space a new life, it lends protection from most of the weather, but it allows light and air to come in. There is space for the tiny homes as well as communal spaces for gardening, gathering, eating and the such.

Think of it as high rise apartments without the apartments, it’s much more people friendly, I think it’s a great concept, one that I hope takes off. Enjoy the 3 videos below.

https://youtu.be/v_dvbS0yaZQ

https://youtu.be/ryTpbXegbyU

https://youtu.be/6LlwsJvcQGE

https://www.scadpad.com/

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October 15, 2015 2 Comments

Company with largest corruption fine in history is caught out again

Energy

Siemens NY power plant false claims

In an echo of the VW emissions scandal, a Siemens power plant paid for entirely with public money was built on the basis of false claims about its energy saving potential.

Siemens claimed it would save Warren County NY at least $1.5m over 5 years. When a former Siemens employee questioned this, he was told he was not a team player.

A fraud investigation by the Warren County sheriff’s office found there was probable cause to charge a top county official with misconduct for his handling of the project, involving a cogeneration plant deal built by Siemens Building Technologies, based in Penn Plaza Manhattan.

Siemens is well known to be morally bankrupt. A 2008 investigation found Siemens’ culture of corruption extended far beyond the executive suite. As one investigator said “bribery was Siemens’ business model”. In fact, the company even had a handy accounting euphemism for its bribes: “nützliche Aufwendungen,” or “useful money”.

The Warren County investigation, which began in 2011 and ended earlier this year, determined that County Administrator Paul Dusek could be charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor, for allegedly misinforming the county Board of Supervisors when he negotiated an energy-performance contract with Siemens in 2004, when he served as the county attorney, according to the sheriff’s department’s investigative file. The contract was tied to the cogeneration plant at the Westmount Healthcare Facility. As the county attorney at the time, Dusek was responsible for reviewing the contract and offering advice to the county board of supervisors on the agreement with Siemens.

However, Siemens intentionally overstated energy savings in the contract, and Dusek “repeatedly misrepresented his comprehension of Energy Performance Contracts to the board, other elected officials and the public,” according to a portion of the investigative report — about 150 pages — that was released by the sheriff’s department this week in response to a Freedom of Information Law request by the Post-Star newspaper in Glens Falls, which first reported the information.

In 2004, Warren County signed a contract with Siemens to finalize the building of the cogeneration facility designed to supply electricity to the Westmount Health Care Facility, the county’s former Social Services building and another annex. The cogeneration plant was installed at the county-owned Westmount nursing home in 2005. County officials celebrated the system as a money-saver at the time.

The equipment was fueled by natural gas purchased from National Grid, another energy company which has been exposed and fined for false accounting and overcharging consumers.

the equipment allowed the county to generate its own electricity for the nursing home and move the facility partially off-grid. The equipment also generates heat used to warm the air and water inside the building.

The initial coast to build was $3.5 million and the county was expected to generate a savings of $1.5 million over the next 15 years, according to the documents. However, the

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October 11, 2015 No Comments

Community

Stuck in for 3 days

Earlier this week, I only worked Monday and Tuesday, I had an unexpected “vacation” after that. On my way home Tuesday, I passed through a storm, a heavy storm with lots of lightning, hail and rain. I was able to get ahead of the storm and got home safely. About an hour later, the skies opened up, it poured in buckets, the hail, some as big as golf balls bashed everything in sight. I went out on the covered porch and moved the solar panels, I tilted them away from the prevailing wind, it’s not 100% guarantee of protection, but it’s better than nothing. The other bank of solar panels that are fixed in place, we have placed heavy concrete wire over the top and weaved 2 layers of bird netting through the concrete wire. It does create the tiniest bit of shade over the panels, but it has also protected them from damage from hail on more than one occasion.

The creek at the bottom of the property was flowing at flood stage, the water was coming over my neighbor’s bridge by a good foot and a half. We had wave after wave of heavy rain fronts passing through at half hour intervals. We had already had 4 days of good rain so the ground was saturated and the water had no where to soak in.

The rain eventually stopped during the night, we mopped up as best we could and went to bed. The following morning was really eye opening, it was clear that we weren’t going anywhere, and neither was anyone else out here. The roads were devastated, gone in some areas. We have over 70 miles of unpaved roads in mountainous terrain in the neighborhood, we have many many low water crossings. The creek, which is dry much of the year, meanders across the road as you go out. Most of the time when it rains, you might have to drive through a few inches of water, this time, the roads were washed out, large basketball sized rocks (some larger) were left in the way, there were places where you couldn’t see what was below the water, whether it was more rocks or a hole that might bury your vehicle.

We were stuck in for 3 days, some of our neighbor’s farther down the road from us were stuck in 4 days. Other neighbors were stuck out, they had gone out and couldn’t get back in. Fortunately my little community pulls together in a crisis and 30+ volunteers came out to work on the roads, some with heavy equipment, others with hand tools. My road was hit the worst so they worked our road first.

Fortunately most of the folk living out here are aware of the possibility of being stuck in (or out) for days or even weeks at a time, it doesn’t happen often, …

October 9, 2015 No Comments

Andrew Price leads campaign to unplug in NSW

Energy

Oz The Grid – world’s first town plans to unplug

Tyalgum in Australia wants to make a name for itself by becoming the first town in the world to voluntarily disconnect from the electricity grid.

The New South Wales community is quietly working on a plan to unplug its 300 citizens from the energy grid.

Its location, about an hour’s drive north-west of Byron Bay, puts it in the perfect position to do it.

“Geographically it’s in the right location as far as networks go,” said Andrew Price from Australian Radio Towers, the company spearheading the town’s renewable energy project.

“It’s right on the end of the grid so it’s not disruptive to other communities further down the power line.”

Mr Price said the community is very receptive to the idea as there is already a huge push toward sustainability and renewable energy in the area.

“Ultimately it’s got to be a community-based decision but (because of) the size of the community and the style of the community it is, we’ve got a really good chance of doing that,” he said.

Tosh Szatow, from Energy For the People, wrote a feasibility study for the renewables project that found frustrated community members want to take back control of energy infrastructure.

“The community there is pretty frustrated with the rise in energy prices and not really seeing benefits proportionate to that — they’re not seeing more renewable energy, they’re not seeing better services and more reliable power,” he said.

Deputy Mayor Gary Bagnall has also expressed his support, but hurdles must be cleared before town can unplug

Mr Szatow said there are two approaches the community could adopt to achieve this.

“One way is that every house and every business gets their own solar system, potentially gets their own battery storage,” he said.

He said the second option would be to construct a hub somewhere in the town that individuals and businesses could source energy form.

“It means the town can be either completely off-grid or largely self-sufficient using renewable energy,” he said.

The cost of switching entirely to renewables would depend on which option is taken, but early estimates have the cost from anywhere between $4 million to just over $7 million.

And there are several hurdles that need to be cleared before the town could completely unplug from the grid.

One is that those developing the project would need to negotiate viable access, tariffs and potentially the transfer of ownership of a portion of the electricity network from the local power provider.

It will also require strong community support and legislative change from the New South Wales Government.

Organisers from Australian Radio Towers are in talks with school and community groups to discuss funding options and said they are confident the project could begin as soon as it is given the green light.

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October 8, 2015 3 Comments

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