The Plan
Moving between countries is not an easy thing. But we had to do it because Thatcher’s Britain was crushing the life out of us. Slowly. Of course now the UK is a full blown police State, not as bad as the US, but not far behind. When we came here in ’94 this country had a good degree of freedom, compared to the UK. And, you could afford a roof over your head at a sensible price. Oh how things have changed, all in line with Agenda 21, of course!
However, back to the plan. At the outset, we wanted to get off grid as much as practicality allowed and produce as much of our own food as we could. This process went through many changes over time as there is no perfect ‘schematic’ for this way of life. But, over time the project evolves naturally. The more you try, the less progress you make, you have to let it all evolve at its own pace.
The big step was getting off the power grid. We developed our own system to the point where we were buying 7 yo-yos worth of ESB power over a two month billing period, yet, with all the silly tariffs, levies and taxes the bill came to 60 yo-yos. One has to ask: what the fuck?
Four years ago, the confidence in the system we had developed had reached the tipping point, where remaining on the grid made no logical or economic sense, so we asked the ESB to ‘de-energise’ us, they charged us 78 yo-yos for that privelige.The ESB have good engineers, some of the customer facing ones can be a bit arrogant and ‘know it all’, which they don’t. They never will be Tesla!
So, four years on, off grid is good. We have to support the system with diesel, so we are not independent entirely, we buy ‘tractor diesel’ when it is cheap (the crude prices are being manipulated, as is the price of gold and silver, its to serve the agenda). If there is no wind for a few days we run the generator every few days to lift the batteries. Over the summer, generally the solar panels cover our use entirely. Of course we do have to have the occasional generator run to ‘equalize’ the batteries. Essentially, this is a monthly ‘over charge’ of the batteries to clean up the plates. The plate surface is huge, as in football field size, that takes some cleaning!
Going back slightly. When we bought this place in ’94 it was a wreck,in need of TLC and we did that in spades, every spare penny went into making the place livable.
Over the years we have developed what we do and refined the process and thinking, and that will be my next post, techies will like this part as we get to the nitty gritty of the technical side of, living off grid!