Funny How That Works

Pan fried grey squirrel. Damn tasty, actually

It’s been more than a year since we grid-connected, and after a recent email exchange with my friend Ben Falk about electricity consumption, I thought it might be interesting to talk a bit about the experience of living with essentially unlimited cheap power after a decade-and-a-half of being off grid.

I won’t get into too much detail regarding our decision to hook-up; suffice it to say that after much debate and soul searching, we determined that given the relatively short life span of the expensive storage batteries off-grid living demands, connecting to the utility grid wasn’t about giving up our electricity “independence”: It was about trading one type of dependence (on batteries and the industrial processes required to make those batteries) for another (the grid). The other aspect of off-grid living we were keen to liberate ourselves from is the need for backup production, in the form of a highly inefficient (not to mention noisy and prone to breakdown) gasoline generator.

A lot of people seemed to think that once we grid-connected, our consumption would inevitably rise. In truth it did, but that’s only because we retrieved the three chest freezers we had installed in neighbors’ basements. But overall, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how little electricity we consume. Over the past year, we’ve averaged 5 kWh/day, and that’s with 5 chest freezers residing in the basement. Our consumption varies according to season; in winter, when we press our passive ice box fridge into action, and when the ambient temperature of our basement drops (this means the freezers don’t have to work as hard), our consumption averages 4 kWh/day. In summer, with the plug-in fridge humming and the increased use of power tools, it averages 6. For comparison’s sake, the average American household uses 30-ish kWh daily, and it’s a safe bet they don’t have 5 chest freezers.

Since our solar production feeds back into the grid to offset our consumption, our actual daily net consumption is generally in the 1 or 2 kWh range. Obviously, our electricity bill isn’t much to speak off. A few bucks per month at most, though there’s a baseline connection fee that’s adds about a tenner.

Thus far, I see no downsides in our decision to grid connect, other than the upfront cost, which was not inconsequential. Fortunately, we hired ourselves to do the bulk of the labor, and were able to connect for about half what the utility originally quoted. But it was nonetheless north of $10k. Still, the batteries we so desperately needed would’ve run us about $6k. So in that sense, we were already half way there.

If anything, being connected has motivated us to be even thriftier. What’s amazing to me is how easy it truly is to live well on so little electricity. As I remarked to Ben F, I can’t fathom how most families even manage to burn through 30 kWh/day. I assume there’s a lot of screen time involved, and maybe a hair dryer or two. AC. An electric hot water heater. Basically, things we just don’t have, proving that the best path toward conservation isn’t always efficiency. It’s simply doing without.

The thing is, not having these things doesn’t diminish the quality of our lives. Indeed, if anything it makes our lives richer.

Funny how that works, eh?