Fallible

With the exception of a series of articles I did for Popular Mechanics magazine way back in the hazy mists of time (2005? 2006? Like I said, eons ago), I have written very little about being off-grid. That’s probably because we have been disconnected from the utility grid for nearly 20 years, ever since we bought this property in ’97 and intermittently for many years prior, owing to the fact that we were unwilling to pay more than $100/month in rent. What sort of rental might one inhabit for $100 month? Generally speaking, not one that includes electrical outlets.

Anyhow, the issue has been on our mind of late. Our batteries, which store the power generated by our solar panels and small wind turbine, are – to put it bluntly – fecked. Batteries aren’t merely the achilles heel of off-grid living; they’re more like the achilles soul. They’re wickedly expensive, require very particular maintenance to maximize longevity, and even still don’t last all that long. We got about 7 years out of our current array, although to be honest, we were pretty rough on them; they should’ve lasted a few more years. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, and all that.

So now we’re stuck running our gasoline generator with alarming frequency (with good batteries, we generally don’t run the generator at all from about the middle of January to the first of November). Never mind all the gas we’re cookin’, or the sad irony of generating the electricity for our bucolic, so-called sustainable off-grid farm in such a wantonly inefficient manner: The noise alone is enough to drive us infreakingsane. Imagine being forced to listen to Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen turned up to 11 for hours on end. Ok, well, nothing’s quite that bad, but you get the idea.

New batteries are about $6k and should last us 10 years, at which point we’ll be faced with the same dilemma all over again. Which is why I actually have a call into the local utility company to see what it would cost to run lines down our quarter mile drive. Because Vermont has net-metering, in such a scenario we could actually feed power back to the grid and bank credit for the short, cloudy days of winter. Given that we consume about 3 kilowatt hours per day, and for at least 8 months of the year generate an average of twice that, it could be a tidy solution.

Except two things. One, I haven’t the foggiest what such a venture might cost, but there’s a decent chance it’ll be well beyond what we can afford. Two – and this is sort of the point of this whole story – we almost can’t bring ourselves to seriously consider doing such a thing. We’ve been off-grid for so long, it’s become a part of us, almost like a birthmark or tattoo. In some unflattering, close-minded way, it has become part of our identity. We can’t imagine being connected to the utility grid because it’s not us.

I have no idea how this’ll all turn out. But I think it’s good for me to remember that I am not immune to the constraints of self-image. I can become just as hamstrung as anyone by the fallibility of the notion that my identity is dependent on particular factors, such as whether or not my home is connected to the utility grid (I realize how ridiculous this must sound to the 99.9% of Americans who have always been connected to the grid. What can I say? I’m ridiculous).

In my books, in person, and in this space, I often ask others to question assumptions about the arrangements that define their lives and that even, to a certain extent, define how they perceive themselves. I suppose the least I can offer in return is to do the same.