The Sunday Read

Competition heats up for off-grid internet; tiny homes, and more

See the last item to find out how a tiny home connects with Hunter S. Thompson’s classic book of gonzo journalism

Competition opening up in the race to provide rural, off-grid internet

With its beta offering starting to roll out, Elon Musk’s Starlink may be the big player in rural, and off-grid internet currently, but others are entering the market, including Amazon (of course!), and Canada’s Telesat satellite agency.

But the latter won’t be ready to launch until 2023, according to a well-researched story in the Bangkok Post

Currently Starlink has 10,000 people testing their beta service in three countries, including Canada. (Full disclosure: I am signed up for Starlink beta, but have not yet received it.)

“Internet from space has obvious implications for potentially closing the rural/urban digital divide, not only for Americans but also the rest of the world. It could also encourage new ways of working and living, untethered from cable and fiber-optic internet connections,” reports the Bangkok Post.

Besides Telesat, which is a long-time satellite firm, and a competitor out of the U.K., the biggest competitor to announce its entrance into the new market is Amazon.

“Amazon's Project Kuiper, about which the company has remained relatively tight-lipped, has announced that it is committing $10 billion to launch a network which, by all appearances, is very much like Starlink's.

“While the company has not announced its satellite design or launch timetable, it will have to launch half of its intended network, or approximately 1,600 satellites, by July 2026 to comply with its FCC license,” notes the Post.

Television host Ben Fogle with the Goddard family.

Off-grid living isn’t the easiest lifestyle, as one family found out the hard way

Adrian and Nicola Goodard took their family off-grid in 2012, giving up a four-bedroom house in Sussex to live in a caravan on the island of Rum. The latter is 30 miles from the Scottish mainland, and has between 30 to 40 inhabitants, according to the Scottish Sun

The paper reports Adrian quit his job as a sales executive, and which was worth 45,000 English pounds annually, to live off-grid.

But it all went sideways.

Nicola, interviewed on the British show titled Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, said: “It's really difficult, there's six hours of daylight a day, any other day there's a gale storm.

"We felt like we were doing nothing productive. We literally spent our days gathering firewood and keeping animals alive for the winter.”

It sounds like they were living off-grid.

The family decided to opt out, and move back to the mainland, and a mainstream lifestyle.

“It was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. We just didn't have the resources we needed to do it,” Nicola said.

SoLo House in British Columbia

A ‘temple to douglas fir’

Architect firm Perkins & Will set out to create a zero emissions building, according to Canadian Architect

The architects declared the home will test low-energy systems, healthy materials, and other methods that could then be used in larger projects. The building is passive house-certified, and is - in the words of its designers - a temple to douglas fir.

When it comes to its off-grid capacity, the home is a bit overboard, to say the least. It is has a photo-voltaic array, geoxchange system, and hydrogen fuel cell “as a back-up energy storage solution.” The array feeds 32 W into the building. It can also have wind power added in the future.

The home has already won a number of architectural design awards.

A tiny off-grid rental in a volcanic crater

A redwood glass log cabin in California available for rent

Who hasn’t wanted to stay in a tiny home located in an ancient volcanic crater? Well, here’s your chance.

This vacay rental, a redwood glass log cabin is located in a 10,000 year old volcano near Barstow, California.

This Airbnb is really off-grid: no refrigerator, no plumbing, and no power. Your hosts over at Airbnb recommend that you bring a lighter for fires, and an ice chest for longer stays. The amenities include a compost latrine and “a place to bathe.”

Add the owners: “Get back to the basics here and realize what’s truly essential when living off-grid. Who knows, you might be relaxing barefoot in the volcanic sand around your tiny house!”

As a historical side note, Hunter S. Thompson opened his ground-breaking work of gonzo journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the unforgettable first line: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”