Water Powered Charger
by ALEXBENADY on FEBRUARY 21, 2011 -
0 Comments in EVENTS

i Pod sized Powertrekk
Time was, the phrase ‘water powered’ meant driven by the force of a river or torrent. Lately, it acquired a new resonance with the launch of a pocket-sized charger that needs just a few drops of the stuff to make it work.
The Powertrekk from Swedish company myFC was launched at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, with the slogan ‘Instant Power Anywhere’.
On the down side, the Powertrekk only works with devices that use a USB, but it has the potential to make being off-grid easier. The company says it needs just a tablespoon of water to work. (more…)
Off-gridders flee ‘solar Katrina’
by ALEXBENADY on FEBRUARY 11, 2011 -
3 Comments in EVENTS, SOLAR

The Rodriguez and their off-grid chicken coop
Ideology , security, solitude: there are many reasons why people move off-grid. Hitherto “cosmic rays” has not been one of them.
Yet fear of what has been called by NASA ‘a solar Katrina’ is precisely what prompted Larry Rodriguez, 54, and his wife Sandie to flee Florida for a former chicken coop in Pennsboro, West Virginia.
“The bad weather we are having in the world is because of the solar storms now happening because the sun is ramping up,” says Rodriguez. “We are the kind of people that want to be ready for anything and I’m hoping that it isn’t true but all of the signs are in place.”
Grid vulnerable to solar storms
It would be easy to dismiss his concerns as apocalyptic, But the ‘signs’ he refers to are detailed in a series of increasingly urgent statements by NASA, which reveal a very real possibility over the next three years of a solar storm that could knock out the entire power grid, crippling modern society for weeks or even months. (more…)
Cheapest place to be happy
by SUPERJOE on JANUARY 29, 2011 -
4 Comments in EVENTS

What is she on?
Eureka, CA is the cheapest town on the Happy list – the list of the top ten places to be happy, as reported in
Sunset.com.
The average price of a home in Eureka is $207,000,compared to $569,000 in the town which takes the No 1 spot on the happy list, Salt Spring BC/ Eureka is still considerably cheaper than Creston, CO, number ten on the Happy list and one of the main off-grid centres in the USA. In Creston the average home is $250,000.
Eureka, on the Redwood Highway in Humboldt County, has a population of about 36,000, except during cannabis harvesting when it grows to about 70,000.
Here’s the full list of the happiest places to go off-grid: (more…)
Grid tie solar useless in Queensland flood crisis
by NICK ROSEN on JANUARY 13, 2011 -
4 Comments in EVENTS

Solar roof - but no power
With Queensland’s capital Brisbane devastated in the Australian floods, householders are learning the disadvantages of grid tied solar.
Because of the way Utility companies in Australia and the world over, insist on gaming the system, grid-tied solar panels only produce power when the grid is running. So they fail to fulfil the main purpose that many people buy them for – to give safety and independence from the collapsing energy and financial system.
However, there are ways to convert a grid-tie system to work off-grid in emergencies – just a shame that the Utility companies do not provide a simple trip switch to allow homeowners to operate the panels off-grid when needed.
National Grid faces complaint from family of woman it killed
by NICK ROSEN on DECEMBER 11, 2010 -
2 Comments in EVENTS

Unsavoury face of Utility industry
Shamed Utility company National Grid is to be sued by the family of the New Hampshire woman it killed when the Utility shut off her power earlier this year.
Kay Phaneuf, 53,died after her respirator stopped functioning due to the power cut-off. Her account had a medical protection notice intended to prevent such a shutoff in the past, but it had lapsed.
National Grid, whose Executives are being investigated after they filed expense claims including wine and international travel, was cleared of misconduct in the Phaneuf case by the New Hampshire regulator.
(more…)
NPR follows our story on No Name Key
by NICK ROSEN on NOVEMBER 24, 2010 -
2 Comments in COMMUNITY, ENERGY, EVENTS

Ill-considered - NPR presenter Mary Louise Kelly
NPR’s All Things Considered show ran a segment on a battle we have been following
over the years – between residents of No Name Key Florida. The radio spot is a piece of pro-grid, anti-battery propaganda, talking about the dangers of battery banks and allowing an interviewee to assert it is safer and cleaner to use the grid for power, without running any counter argument to balance it. (Judge for yourself at http://www.npr.org/2010/11/23/131543151/tiny-fla-island-debates-joining-electric-grid)
No Name in Florida is an off-grid Island with 42 inhabitants, featured in my book OFF THE GRID, and some of the newcomers want to bring in grid power to boost their property values. For an excerpt from the book see below. (more…)
Prince William’s off-grid eco palace
by NICK ROSEN on NOVEMBER 16, 2010 -
2 Comments in EVENTS

Not your typical off-grid eco dwellers
Off-Grid.net predicted years ago that the wedding of William and Katie Middleton would finally be announced. This settles, amongst other things, the future of the $10m Herefordshire eco-palace that Prince Charles has been preparing for the happy couple.
We first reported it in 2006. An old sandstone quarry had been re-opened within the estate as a so urce of stone. Oak was sourced from the Duchy’s Herefordshire woodlands, and natural slates for the roofs from Wales. An on-site eco-sewage works will filter waste through a bed of reeds.
(more…)