Posts by — Oaya

A parallel life

The New Gypsies by Iain McKell is a stunning collection of photos taken over a decade, of NewAge Gypsies and other off-grid travellers.
The horse-drawn people are a loose-knit group of 800-1000 British, working class families living permanently in wagons spread across the country.  Their numbers swell to a further 3,000 or so part-timers who all converge on various festivals during the summer. They have no ID, because you do not need registration documents to drive a horse and cart. That is why they choose this way over buses and vans.  You can buy the UK Edition of The New Gypsies here. (more…)

PR stunt is also a real job An Australian island is offering  the ‘best job in the world’ as caretaker – with a salary of nearly £1,000 per HOUR.

The position on Hamilton Island requires ‘minimum effort’ and involves ‘relaxed’ duties such as feeding turtles, watching whales, and picking up the island’s post. Applicants require no academic qualifications, but must possess good swimming skills and a love of snorkelling, scuba diving and other water sports. (more…)

Better than a Solio

There’s nothing worse than your mobile phone running out of juice when you need to make an important call and when there’s nowhere to power it up. Get the BOOST Emergency Phone Charger �5.95 in the UK Just click here to buy it. This simple little charger is powered by a regular AA battery � you just plug it into your phone and it will give it a good charge. More pricey but good quality is the Freeloader solar-powered charger (pictured) which competes with the Solio, but is cheaper and better.

Sealed Lead acid batteries are not recommended for off-grid use, according to a recent thread on the Yahoo group, offgridlivingandhomesteading . There’s no way to make up the water lost during heavy charging. The valve regulated units are usually done after 2 years max. (more…)

Biolan composter

Canada is taking to the composting toilet with a speed umatched in any other advanced industrial nation.

Although Toronto Mayor David Miller told a conference of Great Lakes mayors they should ban conventional toilets and switch to low-flow models, others go much forther. Shane Jolley, provincial Green Party candidate in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, goes further. He says it’s time for technology that might allow builders to take toilets in new subdivisions off the grid altogether – no-flow composting models instead of the low-flow ones Mayor Miller suggests.

“People have an aversion to dealing with our own waste,” Jolley says, “but this type of toilet uses far less water and makes far fewer demands on our resources. There’s work to be done educating people about how compost toilets work and the benefits, but there should be financial incentives and effort made to implement this concept.” (more…)

Making solar popcorn

When the oil runs out, Bob Fiske will be ready. He talks us through some of the essential gizmos and gadgets for a life unplugged, items such as a self-powered fridge, a solar cooker, a cool tube, and Active solar lighting.

There are certain major areas of preparation I would focus on for a time when our fossil fuels are effectively spent or are at least out of the common person’s reach anymore. These aren’t supposed to be the ‘Global Solution’, but are small, numerous and repeatable by everyday folk, such that word of them and designs would be easily shared, if people saw them as successful and attainable.

First, though not necessarily more important, would be a range of ways to divest a household and a town from external energy imports, and I list some examples below. (more…)

Dean Kamen’s off-grid island, near New York

A great interview on news.com with Dean Kamen, inventor of the ill-fated Segway personal transporter.

We sincerely wish Dean better luck with his next two big ideas  a gadget for serving clean water to some billion people who would die without it each year, and a box the size of a dishwasher that delivers an off-grid source of electricity.

Dean plans to sell both these gadgets throughout the developing world using micro-financing to enable small businesses to distribute his products. It’s a bit like a franchising operation, but with a heart. (more…)

Bill Kemp – knows everything

The Editor of Home Power magazine says there are 180,000 off-grid homes in the US. But there�s a bidding war going on. William Kemp, author of �Renewable Energy Handbook�, and its urban sister�publication �$mart Power� says there are 250,000 off-grid locations in the US. (Click on the link in the left column to buy his book).

It�s the battle of the experts. Home Power has a formidable reputation, but the thoroughness and technical expertise in these two books, puts Bill Kemp up there with the industry leaders. If he says there are a quarter million of us out there, then there probably are.

The difference between the two volumes is that the Handbook is aimed at solving energy requirements in off-grid locations. $mart power is aimed at grid-connected urbanites. They do overlap, so you certainly would not want to buy both, and I consider the Handbook the better of the two. But most people live in towns and cities are grid-connected and they will need $mart power. The key information is on page 8. Wind turbines and solar panels are not $mart. They may be smart � as in good for the environment, or as a protection against a collapse in civilisation, or your local power station being taken out by Al Quaeda, but you are never gonna save cash that way (at current and predicted energy costs). The same is true of solar water heaters. The same is also true of wood burning stoves, although if you love the sight of fire and you want to scavenge for your wood in the street and building sites, then that would tip the score heavily in favour of the stove.

The place that urbanites (and people living off-grid) can get smart about power, is in energy-efficiency � designing your home so that it needs less power, and buying products that consume less power, like low-energy light bulbs. Kemp�s book does the math, and lays out the massive savings that can be made.

It has to be said that The Renewable Energy Handbook and $mart Power are in no way a fun read, and feel more like Bill�s lecture notes in book-length form. That said, they offer great value in terms of the depth of information given. They are absolutely fact-crammed and largely reliable guides to most of the technical questions you are likely to ask about renewable energy systems to generate electricity in the home, whether off-grid or on. Both books also covers Water heating and space heating, and cooling.

People actually living off-grid, whether full time or part-time, will want �The Renewable Energy Handbook� rather than $mart Power. When it comes to understanding and installing the essential elements of off-grid power, from whole energy systems to the heating unit in your hot tub, Bill Kemp is The Man.

The books make no claim to cover off-grid water systems, or anything else. Just Energy, like it says on the cover.

Shagnasty’s Rex Ewing – NOT the green guru

Reading an interesting and informative article by Rex Ewing titled Piecing together a spanking-new $600 solar-electric system, we were appalled that this pioneer of grid life could be the same Rex Ewing who played guitar in the naughtily brilliant SHAGNASTY band.

Fortunately its a different Mr. Ewing — a knowledgeable practitioner on the maturing frontier of solar applications…..and this is what he had to say:

Got 600 bucks hiding in an old book somewhere? Maybe it’s time to bring electricity into that little homestead you’ve got tucked away in the woods. But wait a minute, you say, with justifiable hesitancy. Solar-electric systems all cost thousands, don’t they? No, just the expensive ones. (more…)

Lucy Neville-Rolfe

Owning a biofuel car will be easier in future now that Britain’s top grocery market group Tesco Plc is set to expand its sales of biofuels over the next few months with UK duty incentives helping make them competitively priced, said company executive Lucy Neville-Rolfe.

But maybe the best answer is to make your own biofuel, and cut Tesco out of the loop.

How to Make Biodiesel – buy it from Amazon UK for 5.99 and 4% goes to Off-Grid

How to Make Biodiesel – Amazon US (more…)