Off Grid Living

Time for real world reasons to get off the grid most people live in areas that in the last 5 or 10 years have had a growing problem with brown outs. Yes I know some of you people live in a few select areas that have not yet had them but you will here is why as people keep adding in more electronics to there every day life they use more and more power. Just take a look at the south side of Chicago they in the last few years have had the most brown outs some for no reason. As people use more power there is one very big problem the power grid demand grew last year by 21% meaning there was a need for 21% more power. The power companies only added 3% new to the grid this means that they fell short by 18% now I know that’s only one year but the fact is every year that number that they fall short is growing. The year be for was only like 14% so if you add that up for the last 5 years. I found out that at times in the year they are short about 50% of the needed power to keep everyone happy. Now I know some of you are asking what time summer but if it keeps going like it is soon winter will be catching up to it.

There is also another big problem the power grid we use today is over 50 years old they just add little parts here and there but never over haul it putting more stress on the whole system. Look at it like this if you have a crane holding up the power grid each time you add a new gadget to your life you add one grain of sand to the over growing bucket and one day that cable on the crane will break. I know one grain of sand that’s no big deal but what you forget is you’re not the only one that is adding sand to it. If in every state 100,000 people add one grain every day now if you times 100,000 by 50 that’s 5 million per day. Think how much is 5 million grains of sand what one 5 gallon bucket maybe I don’t know don’t care let’s just say it’s a 5 gallon bucket now if we take that and times it by 365 days in a year that now is 1,825. Keep in mind that’s a lot of 5 gallon bucks full of sand each year now if each bucket has an overall weight of say 50 pounds each year that means we add 91,250 pounds the crane. But the power companies say take 3% off for the year they only took off 2,737.5 pounds not even enough to really make a difference. The thing is how many more years until the whole grid just stops working well reality not long be for we start seeing long black outs not the simple brown outs.

Here is another and different way to look at this if we look at this in terms of power usage and use a small amount. If 500,000 houses in each state use just 1watt more each day not a lot more each but in a big picture a lot. This is equal to just 500 kilowatts more for each state each day so multiply that by 50 states then multiply that by 365 days in a year that means people just put an added demand on the power grid each year of 9.125 GIGAWATTS now to put this into what we would need to make that much is. Well I did some checking some older coal plants make around 9 or more gig watts just so you know the numbers it takes 1000 watts to make 1 kilowatt. It takes 1,000,000 kilowatts to make 1 gig watt and it takes 1 billion gig watts to make 1 megawatt now you have the numbers to see just how much power you really do use.

Don’t let the kilowatt-hours thing get to you it’s really just a term used for billing in the end 1 kilowatt-hour for your use is still 1000 watts it’s really the same thing it just gives a way to figure out how many kilowatts a device will use per hour so a 100 watt light bulb can run for 10 hours and in that 10 hours will have used up 1 kilowatt. So if you take your electric bill and look at just how many kilowatts you used in one month you can find out how many watts it is and then you can start to look at what is using up a lot of your power by buying a kilowatt meter. I have 2 of them cheap to buy but very handy when you want to cut electrical use here is how just get one and go to the power strip that your TV and all that stuff is plugged into turn off everything so it’s all in standby mode then unplug the power strip and plug in the kilowatt meter then plug your power strip into it. Now just let it set for a little bit and watch you have different read outs on it amps, watts, kilowatt-hours, they all have different options but in the end you can test and see just what is eating up all that power.

I took one of mine over to a friend’s house to show him just what eats up all the power his living room TV, DVD player, surround system and he had a few other things I forget them all but it would use if it all was on standby 1kilowatt-hour every 3hours. So we did some math he has it on standby at least 9 hours every night. We took that it used 3 kilowatts in that 9hours times that by 30 days and it was 90 kilowatts each month by its self so he put it on a different outlet that was on a switch and it cut down his bill and he then did that with some other things around his house he and just from that he cut off almost 1/3 of his monthly bill.

I took my kilowatt to a few different people I know and asked if I could test some items they have to see how much power the different items use in standby. I found most TV’s use around 5 to 15 watts per hour on standby but I was surprised at a few of them newer TV’s I had one I tested used 25 watts. There are some big differences here a 5w would use 1kilowatt about every 200 hours on standby but on the other end the 25watt one used 1 kilowatt about every 40 hours on standby. As you can see it really adds up fast that’s just one TV I will in the next part give some numbers for different items and this will let you estimate just how much your items eat up in power when you are not using them. How you do this is find out about how long each item is on standby each day and multiply that number by the watts used per hour in standby then multiply by 30 for each month or to find out what it uses each year by 365. Then divide that number by 1000 to get how many kilowatts for each month or year than once you have it for each different item add up all the kilowatts and you can see how much is wasted each month and each year.

List of items and how many watts they can use each hour on standby

TV’s – 5 to 25watts

Rear projection TV’s – 7 to 48watts

VCR’s – 5 to 10watts

Microwaves – 2 to 5watts

Coffee makers – 2 to 9watts

Now I just looked up and found a web site with a nice basic list of just what some stuff uses for standby power go here http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-chart.html and look at it and compare items in your house. Write down the list of items you have and how many of them and then take down the watts used average for each item then put next to each how long they just sit now you can get a real idea of just how much power you really do waste each day, month and year on letting stuff standby.

The difference between a brown out and a black out is a lot brown out means very short time meaning they shut it off due to they can’t make or get enough power for every one so they shut off areas to give more to others while the ones they shut off go without. Now onto what a black out is that is when they don’t shut it off but, it shuts turns itself off there is a very big difference this means they really stressed something and it broke now. What if it’s a main power hub well that could mean months of a large area with no power at all until they rebuild it, just think how long some of the projects take years to build to get all the stuff to make it yes I know they have some plans to help speed this up. What if it is what’s called a shock wave meaning the first part goes and from it the surge takes out a few more things with it. Then it goes from a simple big fix to a very big fix what are some people going to do say if that happens and you are just in the black out area for a year or more or let’s even say 6 months. I will be okay and so will some of the people I know. This is for all you people living in the city and even the small towns do you think if the power goes out for 6 months you will make it okay. I don’t think so a big area out means no gas no food no cell phones no internet the list goes on and on.

I am not putting this out there to scare people I want more people to realize just how bad this really is why do you think the government says have a stock of minimum 6 months stored food and water to feed everyone in your house. They don’t want to say it’s just in case you live in a spot that may be blacked out one day. The fact is no one knows where it can happen or when if they would just say these states need to get on their own power setup and if they are not on it by such date we have to cut off the power to keep the rest of the grid working. They won’t ever do that why everyone or most would jump ship and move be for that date and in the end that wouldn’t solve the problem so they say nothing and do nothing but say have all that food and water.

So if you haven’t read any of my other work please do you can learn a lot about how easy it really is to work your way off grid. Thank you and keep learning not from just me but from everybody there are thousands of other people out there in their back yards building good stuff to make their life more off the grid.