The Sunday Read

Better batteries, an off-grid home in the Honduras, and more

After experiencing economic losses from two years of rolling blackouts, a small city in California is preparing to leave the grid.

Meet the California city that wants to leave the grid

While it’s becoming relatively more common for people to leave the grid, a small city in California’s Salinas Valley plans to take its entire municipality off-grid.

“Agriculture is the big industry in Gonzales,” reports NBCBayArea.com The broadcaster says the valley is known as the salad capital of the world, and notes the city “relies heavily on electricity to keep the engines running at the big packing plants in the area.”

But rolling blackouts in California over the past two years have led to shut-downs and financial losses in the millions to area businesses.

So the Gonzales has commissioned Concentric Power to provide it with a $70-million microgrid that will supply the city with 35 megawatts of power.

The power will be directed to the city’s Agricultural Industrial Business park, “which houses processing facilities for some of the country’s largest fresh vegetable and wine producers. It will also meet the clean energy requirements of the City of Gonzales’s Climate Action Plan.”

For the city of some 11,000 people it’s the first step toward off-grid reliance as a municipality.

“The companies who do business here need to know that they will have the power they need, when they need it, from a variety of green and low-carbon sources,” said Maria Orozco, mayor of the City of Gonzales said in a news release. “This is exactly the kind of project that benefits everyone involved: dependable, independent power that helps us reach our sustainability goals.”

Seeking out the best batteries for your solar system

Solar Power World has a bullish story on lithium ion versus lead acid batteries in off-grid homes. It’s a bit of an odd article given that lithium isn’t all that new at this point.

The story by the publication’s editor in chief, Kelly Pickerel, also offers some strange assertions. She quotes one battery provider - he sells both lead acid and lithium ion - as saying most people don’t have the space in their home for a separate room for their inverter and lead acid batteries.

Actually, neither take up all that much space.

And the story tries to argue that lead-acid batteries won’t supply sufficient back-up for appliances, computers, etc, but that’s not true. If the batteries are kept up properly they shouldn’t have any issues meeting power demands on days when solar panels are idle.

Nor does the story mention the excess cost of lithium ion over lead acid batteries.

What the story doesn’t talk about is the fact that lead acid batteries require regular maintenance, which can be a bit of a pain in the butt, while lithium ion are pretty much “plug and play.”

What the article does do well is break down the different kind of batteries and explain how they work.

Finally consider this closing quote from the story: “Off-grid is around us all the time. It’s not just people in the woods anymore,” SimpliPhi’s Cross said. “It isn’t necessarily possible to completely disconnect or pull your meter, but it is possible to design around an off-grid lifestyle.”

Er, grid-tied is definitely not the same as off-grid, and, sure, there’s a few - very few - urban off-gridders, but most are…well, still in the woods.

How one couple left the grid-tied life in Ontario to live off-grid in the Honduras

An Ontario couple writes about building their off-grid dream home in the Honduras in InternationalLiving.com It took Melanie and John Wood six years to complete their project, but then it doesn’t sound like your typical off-grid place either.

Melanie told the publication that they needed “deep water for our boat and preferably, a dock. We also needed enough property for our horse to graze on, as well as access to riding trails. It was difficult to find all these requirements in one property.”

The Woods ended up creating a compound of four buildings, partly because the building site itself wasn’t level, and they’d spent several years living on a boat, and craved physical space.

They also employed some unusual construction techniques, including earthbag construction, in which Polypropene sacks full of dirt form the walls of the structures.

More than just an off-grid fantasy story, however, Melanie offers some down-to-earth advice for people looking to leave the grid.

She writes: “One man’s dream may be another man’s nightmare. It is important to avoid common mistakes when planning to live off-the-grid. Failure to understand start-up costs is a common error. It is not free to live off-grid. Over time, these costs will be offset by the lack of utility bills, but it is important to research the cost of placing power generation, water collection, and waste disposal systems.”