Nick Rosen

In Spain – Crackdown or Backdown?

The Spanish authorities are boasting they increased the number of cannabis plants seized in the past year – but that still only amounts to a move from from hardly any to very few indeed given the size of the population.

The Guardian Civil took down 9,200 plants last year from 700 arrests across the entire nation, but the main reason for the 67% rise over the previous year was one bust of 3500 plants in Cantabria this September.

Huge resources are being dedicated to tracking down the illegal growers, thereby forgoing one of the main benefits of cannabis legalisation – freeing up police time for more important things. Like stealing electricity – which is a crime that often goes hand in hand with illegal growing.

Prior to decriminalisation, it was easy for the police to visit a site and take a look. Now, the procedures are complicated and the Guardia Civil officers need to track and collect evidence before the judicial authority will give permission to enter.

Statistics confirms that the profile of the plantation owners, is increasingly from the networks of organized crime.

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ken-torino-older-than-he-looks-9592382
Energy

Human powered energy – your questions answered

By Ken Torino of K-Tor – Human-power expert

ken-torino-older-than-he-looks-9592382
Ken Torino – IBM Retd – older than he looks

My story began 15 years ago when I was looking to buy a
human power generator and had trouble finding one.

I was an an avid hiker and a believer in self reliance during the 30 years I lived in Vermont.

When I retired from IBM, I started a company focused on human powered generators.

Pros and Cons

You might ask “what is the role of human power energy in the modern age” — gas power generators and solar panels are available. The answer is they all have their roles and plus and minuses.

Human power: of course you need to pedal and it is limited in the amount of power by the human being, typically about 75 watts. On the plus side human power always works and can be used in sheltered locations and stored inside as well as is portable.

Solar charges mainly between 10am and 2pm and stores this in
a battery for use. So the solar panels need to be out in the open and there needs to be sunlight, under tree canopy of cloudy skies reduces power, and you need a battery pack large enough to store the energy of the four hours to be used over the next 20. It can generate lots of power as you can scale the surface area of the solar panels and battery pack size. Usually they are not mobile.

Gas generators generally come in a power range but 4000
watts is a typical size, although larger sizes are available. Gas generators also must be placed outside away from dwellings. They
are not easily portable. They make a lot of noise; give off noxious exhaust and of course you have to have a source of gas. Gas is usually pumped from the ground using electricity so is typically in short supply in times of emergency.

As an example in the recent hurricanes in the Caribbean most
of the solar panels that were on roofs were destroyed and gas was hard to get for some time. Human power of course could not run refrigerators or air conditioners. The best strategy is a complimentary strategy. As they say, two is one and one is none.

After K-Tor was founded, the first two years were spent researching
human power energy and developing the first product.

Currently the company has three main generator products, the
Pocket Socket 2 a USB 1 Amp hand crank generator and two pedal generators, a 20 Watt model and a just released a 50 watt model.

Over the past 10 years K-Tor has acquired a lot of expertise in the area of human power energy and the uses of electrical energy and its devices in off the grid and emergency uses. We have many people come to us for advice …

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HJeremie outside his horsebox
Mobile

Living in a Box, a 4-wheeled Box

Jeremie.C.Lingenheim could have anything he wants within reason.

He could drive around London in a Porsche, but he prefers a motorbike.

He could eat in the fanciest restaurants in town – after all, he owns three of them.

He could live in a million-pound townhouse – but he happens to prefer to live in a Horsebox somewhere in North London.  “It makes me feel alive, more alive than I have ever felt,” says Jeremie as we stand in the wide, elegant street outside his mobile home.  The Horsebox moves within a small radius of this chic North London suburb, and Jeremie gets around town on two wheels.  Its painted British Racing Green, classy but understated.  We could not take too revealing a photo of the Horsebox because he needs to stay anonymous, under the radar.

Inside it’s a comfortable and stylish, in precisely engineered Douglas fir. “About a ton of wood,” has gone into the furnishing – “it was designed for three stallion weighing 750 kilos each , so its still relatively light, “ he explains.

There is a kitchenette, a portaloo, and a bed above the Horsebox driving cab for him; another bunk for his 5 year old son who was one of the main reasons for his decision to adopt van living 6 months ago.  There are holes cut into the cupboard doors next to the bunk so his son can climb up to get to bed.

“We’re on an adventure together,” he said as we sat in his van – surrounded by art and a copy of Walden by Thoreau prominently on display.  It was mid morning and his son was at the nearby Steiner school.  Come 1-o-clock each day, Jeremie collects him , and they go exploring London, “museums, cafes, galleries.  “We dont spend a lot of time here – mainly to sleep and read.”

 

Jeremie runs three restaurants each serving small scale farm produce, ethically reared meat, line caught fish,  and organic “low intervention” wine.  They are all in the same part of London and he employs ”scores” of people in total across the three – Primeur, Western Laundry and Jolene’s Bakery.  His bread uses ancient grains grown by a friend in France, and he is working with two UK farms to bring the seeds into wider use in the UK.

Jeremie’s lifestyle, like his restaurants’ menus is a principled, ethical decision.  “It seemed like the most effective political statement we can make is to live autonomously,” he says.

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How to Make a Great Campfire – Easily

Going camping is a fantastic way to relax and unwind. And it’s a first step towards a life off the grid.
Its an activity you can enjoy by yourself, or you can invite friends and family. When you are preparing a camping trip, there are several points that you will have to keep in mind, such as a suitable shelter, and packing enough food and water for your adventure.
Another aspect of camping that you should plan carefully is how you are going to create your campfire at night. The main requirement is dry wood, and a way of lighting the fire. You might want to take a few logs with you, as well as collect some on the way. Wet wood is harder to light, burns slower and gives off more smoke and pollution.

Making a Campfire
Making a fire when you are out camping is useful for two reasons. First of all, a campfire is a great way to keep everyone warm when the temperature drops at night. Your fire will be a fun place for everyone to gather and spend the evening together. This will help everyone get warm and cosy before they go off to their own tents.
Secondly, if you dont happen to own a sun oven, a campfire can be used to cook on when you are sleeping outdoors. You might be tempted to take a stove with you for convenience and ease, but why not cook on a campfire for a more authentic outdoor experience!
Flint and Steel
Using flint and steel to start a campfire is a reliable solution and does not require much time or effort. You simply strike the steel, and sparks will fly into your char cloth, which you then use to ignite a pile of kindling, allowing you to easily start your campfire. Preppers recommend make sure to shop this flint and steel collection. This is going to come in very handy if you find that there are no other ways to make a campfire, so always ensure you have access to tools like this if you want to keep warm while camping.
Teepee Campfire
This is one of the easiest ways to start a campfire. Simply lean your logs together in a pyramid shape over some kindling and add pieces of fuelwood as the fire is getting started. Depending on the size of your teepee campfire, you may find that the logs fall as they burn, so make sure nobody is sitting too close to the flames when you are using this method.
Star Fire
This is a great way to make a campfire if you do not have access to much wood or if you want to keep your fire small for any reason. To make a star fire, get a small pile of kindling going and then position logs into the fire …

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Ben and Danny with empty wallets
Community

Merry Pranksters go Off-Grid and try to Eat Free

Ben and Danny (pictured) are two of the merriest pranksters on the green scene. They have been spending some time in London and kindly agreed to take time off from their own work in order to help out on the off-grid web site. In their first film they see how hard it is to eat free in Britain’s capital city.

Over the next few weeks they will be making videos on all sorts of issues important to our readers – from water supply to van dwelling to mental health.

In their first video, I send them off to see how hard it was for them to eat for free in London. The answer is – its tough, and slightly disgusting. They are remarkably resilient duo but the tasks I set them are hard to endure and over the months ahead, will test the relationship between us to its limit.

See what you think of the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gxtr19jR6w

Things were very different in my day. As a young man in London I was able to eat free 24/7 in a permanent round of openings, closings, community events and commercial freebies.

Post-Brexit London is a much tawdrier place, and Ben & Danny’s films will reflect that I think. Ben and Danny are both highly motivated by the new paradigm of minimising your carbon footprint, living without impacting on the earth, and keeping yourself outside the system – I am very proud to have them as our new Ambassadors in London.

I look forward to hearing what you think in comments – or write to me at nick@off-grid.net.

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Fonder of water vapor firm
Water

Zero Mass Water

A regular supply of drinking water is the holy grail for off-grid living.

If you can get a bare minimum of water and heating of some sort, you can live anywhere. but you would be surprised how many spots that are otherwise ideal do not have an easy water supply – either due to the topography, or local laws.

Now a US startup has come up with a solution that actually works! And its for sale now. At a reasonable price

Zero Mass Water, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, produces $2,000 “hydropanels” that the company claims can capture water vapor from air. One panel can make up to five liters a day, and two of them together could produce enough for a household’s daily drinking and cooking says the company. In theory, someone could drive out to the desert, and live off the grid with water to spare.

A journalist from Wired checked out the gadget – basically a solar panel bolted on to a special membrane that extracts the water vapour, filters it and pumps out 12 liters per day – it works out about $50 per month if you spread it over 10 years, which is pricey but you can take it anywhere and what you get is pure water, untainted by any Utility company, when and where you need it to be.

You have to accept that Zero Mass is just the name of the product. The company’s founder, Cody Friesen, a professor of materials science at Arizona State University says the units weigh 275 pounds (a long way from zero then) and are intended for yards and rooftops, rather than mobile living.
Hydrophilic membranes trap water vapor from air that’s blown across them by a solar-powered fan. The vapor-turned-water then drops and pools and flows through a series of mineral cartridges to make it more drinkable. Because both the landscape and the water vapor in the air are changing all the time, the panels connect to HQ back in Scottsdale via a mesh network, and Zero Mass Water staffers upload predictive algorithms that adjust fan speeds and maximize energy efficiency.

How the Hydropanel Works

The panel contains absorbent material that pulls moisture from the air.

Solar heat causes the moisture to form drops.

The drops collect in a reservoir at the panel’s base.

A pump draws water out of the reservoir and into a tap.

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PR Blurb from property company
Energy

The House with No Bills

An Australian housebuilder has launched a search for a family to live in its prototype Home with No Energy Bills.

Mirvac is building the house in a suburb of Melbourne – the least sunny spot in Australia, with a total of 2028 hours of sunshine per year. The problem is striking the right balance between free energy from the sun, and power-hogging cooling bills in the hottest months.

The company is currently searching for a photogenic young family to live “free” in its “house with no bills” “for a year.”

And the idea that a brand new prototype home will generate no bills is laughable when you consider the number of little things that go wrong in every new home during the first year. The moving costs alone on this project will be excessive.

It will be hard to find just the right individuals – sassy enough to give good interviews, but willing to play along as the PR department dreams turn into a DIY nightmare.

Mirvac has teamed up with a group of tech companies around the Pacific rim including Fujitsu and Fischer & Paykel, both renowned for putting PR stunts ahead of reality.

Off-Grid forecasts the story if it appears, will be less than forthcoming about the actual cost of the huge number of batteries that will be needed so that their typical family can always flick on the light switch. There is also considerable doubt over the size of the solar panels and inverters. These numbers will no doubt be kept away from prying eyes as part of the “ proprietary information” that will give Mirvac the “commercial edge” in its future eco-builds.

The company is trying to wrap itself up in the sustainability flag, while building developments of 2,000 homes. Surely the local media outlets are not going to fall for that one?

“The first ‘House with No Bills’ will become home to a key worker family of four over a 12 month period,” says the press release. In an industry-first initiative, Mirvac will utilise a long-range study to follow their energy useage (sic) within the home to uncover how average families consume energy and how the house design and associated sustainable technology performs.”
Leaving aside the bloopers, how will a 12-month freebie for this unfortunate family turn into a “long range study”? And given the energy is all free for the family, what possible motive will they have to limit their consumption? Saving the planet is all very well, but once the “key worker family” are tucked up in bed and one of them remembers she left the lights on in the kitchen, will she really respond in the same way as if she was paying?

The rest of the PR blurb runs as follows: “The House with No Bills is an innovative initiative forming part of Mirvac’s ambitious sustainability strategy ‘This Changes Everything’, which …

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Infograph showing EU prefers business lobbyists to pressure groups
Energy

EU tries to stamp out off-grid living

The European Union (EU) devotes huge resources to delivering the power grid to every nook and cranny of Europe. Brussels is on a mission to stamp out off-grid living which it wrongly equates with poverty and deprivation.

Despite the promise of off-grid solar, 99 percent of EU energy funding still goes to grid projects. The EU has always served the interests of the big energy producers, including state-owned Nuclear power companies and the global oil giants.

The same is true in EU foreign policy towards the world’s most underdeveloped countries, where EU and other central government aid is focused on huge infrastructure projects rather than simple practical steps towards providing off-grid energy.

Despite innovative off-grid technology and high-profile initiatives, electrification in sub-Saharan Africa still trails population growth. In 2009 there were 585 million people in the region without power. Five years later, that figure had risen to 632 million, according to the latest International Energy Agency statistics.

United Nations analysis of the flow of capital, released in September by the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All program, shows that off-grid systems simply are not getting the support they deserve.

“This research shows that only 1 percent of financing for electrification is going into this very promising and dynamic energy solution,” says program CEO Rachel Kyte, who calls the findings “a wake-up call” to the international community.

The 20 countries targeted in the U.N. report account for 80 percent of the estimated 1.06 billion people around the globe living without electricity. The report found that total investment in electricity infrastructure averaged US $19.4 billion a year in 2013 and 2014 (the latest year with full statistics). Of that, only $200 million per year was dedicated to off-grid systems.

This is “alarming,” the authors write, considering off-grid solar’s “enormous promise” to rapidly and cheaply deliver basic electrical services compared with the ability of traditional grids. The International Energy Agency estimates that 70 percent of rural electrification is best achieved by off-grid systems, including solar.

The report does note a few hopeful developments: The World Bank this year committed $150 million to rural off-grid renewable projects in Kenya, and companies installing pay-as-you-go off-grid solar systems raised $223 million last year.

Even those solar enterprises, however, face an enduring “grid is best” mentality. “Most of the political actors in this sphere still believe that the ‘real’ power is the national grid,” says Daniel Becker, founder of Rafiki Power, a company that has built minigrids in Tanzania and wants to invest throughout East Africa.

Becker says vague plans for extending national power grids also create a barrier to off-grid developers. “No one wants to give you money to build a minigrid where the government says the grid will be there in five years,” he says.

Other financing hang-ups relate to project scale and revenue expectations. Lenders and governments are only willing to …

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Van living is road to freedom

“Living in a van, I can make money, be an artist, and travel three continents,” says Nathan Murphy, an accomplished amateur rock climber from Cornwall in the UK, who has spent the past two years fitting out and then travelling in his Ford Transit.

With the number of van conversions and purpose built motor homes at an all time high, what used to be a tiny subculture is going mainstream. The mobile life is no longer seen as a family vacation option. Improved technology, better camping gear, mobile phones and the internet mean it just as viable long term as owning a bricks and mortar home.

We have written about Nathan before, but recently he was featured in The Sun newspaper, and that was a reminder at how mainstream the lifestyle has become.

These days, retirees and students are just as likely to be buying a recreational vehicle if they can afford it, or converting a small van if they are on a budget. From snowbirds (the retirement generation seeking the sun) to snowflakes (as thin-skinned millennials are sometimes known) there is a growing realisation that a McMansion has too many overheads that eat into your freedom.Van living is a way to “make your life cheaper so you can do more with less.”
“Why engage in a system that is broken?” says Nate in an interview on the off-grid youtube channel. “I just don’t want to waste my entire life paying the bank interest.” There is a housing crisis affecting the generation that are leaving college now – because not enough homes are being built, and scarcity is keeping prices too high. “More and more people are choosing a different option,” says Nathan. “There are hundreds of thousands of people across Europe looking at alternatives – tiny homes, off-grid, van living. Its a huge trend.”

He was brought up in a big old house in Cornwall that needed constant works – which gave him the skills he uses van living.

“I can do a huge amount for very little money,and my rent is zero. I can do so many things that most people don’t dare to do – I just want to show people they can do it all,” by reducing their living costs to nearly zero, meaning they no longer need to be wage slaves.

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A nightingale - star of the final chapter
Spirit

Strictly for the Birds (book review)

Birds are the constant companions to an off-grid life. Alone, in pairs, or most mesmerizingly in flocks, birds are a distraction for the eye, they are food, and they are a soundtrack for humans in the wild.

But it in the UK,people who go out in search of birds are called Twitchers, and they form a network – tipping each other off whenever there is a rare sighting. Recently on the Sussex Coast, a boatload of illegals from Iran landed silently in the early morning on a little known beach. Their plan would have worked brilliantly on any other morning, but unfortunately for them word of a Golden Eagle had gotten around, and as they strolled onto the beach, there facing them was a 40 yard line of camo-clad birdwatchers, monoculars and cameras at the ready – its hard to know which side was more disappointed.

A new collection of poems and aphorisms about the avian world, Buy it on Amazon – As Kingfishers Catch Fire, captivates through the diversity and the sheer love that some of us humans have for our feathered friends. “This book came to me in a cabin in the woods…near Athens, Georgia,” says author Alex Preston, as he introduces a chapter on the Nightingale.

The Robin redbreast is at once the humblest and most loved of common songbirds. Preston says English Essayist William Hazlitt valued the Robin more than a friend or a lover: “Give me the robin redbreast pecking the crumbs at the door, or warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form that has followed me wherever I have been….”

But this is no literary history. Preston gives us an intensely personal account of his reaction to the appearance of birds in literature. We learn that a Robin was living in a shed when he bought his bleak new house in South Eastern England. His son nicknamed the bird Mr Bulldozer.

The Dove is introduced via the diagnosis of Preston’s father with cancer. A pair of doves bookend his memory of caring for the old man: “We spoke about the doves, about poetry, to avoid speaking of other things, or rather as a way of speaking about them….”

The relation between doves and death is continued in TS Eliot’s in the Four Quartets:

“After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Has passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the ashphalt where no other sound was….

Other chapters take in the Gull, the Nightjar, Kestrel, Peacock , Crow and many more. The Nightingale is saved for the final chapter. It’s a bird that to this writer signifies walking home through City squares after a late party. For Preston it’s a song heard from the bedroom that inspired him to what Wallace Stevens called “the yellow moon of words about the …

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Bloomerg New Energy Finance chart showing the falling battery costs as a per cent of Electric vehicle costs
Energy

Battery costs plummet

Huge advances aimed at the Electric vehicle market are slashing battery costs, changing the way the power grid works and bringing benefits to off-grid communities and industries.
As the world prepares to spend trillions on new renewable energy installations, the cost of storing power is plummeting. Battery costs are the biggest single obstacle to the potential for living and working off the grid, because reliable power storage has been the missing element until now.

In its latest annual report released this week, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts trillions of investment in renewable energy worldwide in the next 10 years. The need to store renewable energy (along with the coming boom in Elelctric Vehicles (EVs) has led to advances in battery technology and a 75% fall in the cost of batteries since 2010.
As we first reported over two years ago, plans to mass-produce car batteries are behind much of the progress.
Technology is also allowing us to be more intelligent in the way we consume electricity. One interesting idea in the electricity market now is “demand response”. Instead of building capacity to provide extra megawatts, we instead use “negawatts”— forgone power consumption. This already works well with cooling, heating and pumping, which are mostly not time-sensitive. If you run greenhouses, or cold-storage equipment, your only priority is keeping the contents within the right temperature range. Whether the machinery comes on at five minutes to the hour, or ten minutes past, does not particularly matter.
But to the electricity networks, this flexibility matters a lot. When demand spikes — say on winter mornings — they no longer need to use the dirtiest and most expensive generating capacity, such as banks of diesel generators, to keep the lights on. Instead they pay companies to postpone power consumption to a more convenient time. The result is greater efficiency and lower costs.
Increased use of electric vehicles will create even more flexibility: they can charge overnight on cheap wind power, and even send electricity back into the network when needed.
This is not good news for the utility companies. They like big, expensive investments because, in a regulated market, they can dump the cost — plus a profit margin — on the consumer. The question that no country has answered is how to manage the transition between the expensive, old-style power system and the decentralised, flexible, low-cost (and low-carbon) future.
BNEF’s annual energy outlook, published this week, forecasts $7.4 trillion (£5.8 trillion) of new investment in renewable energy by 2040. That is an encouraging leap on previous predictions — but still short of the nearly $13 trillion investment in zero-carbon power it reckons is necessary.

Even without the fall in battery costs, coal is ailing even in countries without abundant natural gas. China and India are turning away from the black stuff, partly to stem public fury at air pollution, but also …

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Energy

Love those Tesla-lovers

Jason Hughes is a happy hacker – but not of computers – he is known for leaking Tesla’s plans ahead of the company’s actual announcements, and now he has revealed photos of his own Tesla battery-powered compound in North Carolina. The 4,500 square-foot home has 102 commercial-grade solar panels to capture energy from the sun which then gets stored into a home battery storage unit composed of battery modules ripped from two Tesla Model S 85 kWh packs.

The 44.4 kW home solar system produces enough energy to not only power the entire home and all of its electrical appliances, but also provides enough energy to charge a pair of his and hers Model S each day. The end result is an elaborate home-engineered system that took roughly a year to design and build, and has allowed Hughes and his family to remain 99% self-sufficient for the past two years.

The battery banks used for storing solar energy are derived from*battery packs found from a salvaged Model S. Hughes dismantled the packs to create a stacked array of battery modules. A total of 36 modules are used in the home set up which equates to 2.25x Model S 85 kWh battery packs.

Here’s a video of Hughes performing a teardown of one of the Model S battery packs.

hughes-solar-home-electrical-roomhughes-solar-home-tesla-battery-module-2hughes-solar-home-tesla-battery

COSTS OF SOLAR POWER

Hughes says a large portion of the overall expenditure went to the $40k cost in Tesla batteries. He admits that the project likely doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective, but it’s important to understand that the value of his project goes beyond what a cost benefit analysis may yield.

Beyond being able to show that living solely off of sustainable energy is possible, the main inspiration behind his yearlong project was his father who taught him at a young age of 9 how to build a small off-grid solar system that produced enough energy to power his bedroom light, a small TV and a PC. That became the catalyst to what would become a lifelong dream to design an off-grid system capable of powering an entire house, along with electric vehicles.

HOME SOLAR SYSTEM WITH TESLA BATTERY

36 modules from 2.25x Tesla 85kWh packs
191.25 kWh (DC side)
~4,200 Ah
43.2V nominal @ 3.6V per cell
15,984 cells (!)
Inverters: 8x Outback Radian GS8048A
240VAC @ 60Hz w/neutral
64kW continuous AC output
30 minute surge: 72kW; 5 second surge: 96kW; 100ms surge: 135.76kW
Grid-Battery Charging Capacity: 57kW
Expected AC output from pack after safe SoC window and efficiency considerations: ~160 kWh usable AC power
PV: 102 Sunpower Commercial Panels @ 435W (20% efficiency) for 44,370 Watts DC
Split into 17 sets of 6 panels (3 parallel of 2 in series)
17 individual MPPT charge controllers (Midnite Solar Classic 200)

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