Off the Power Grid Completely

Oct 08 - The News & Observer

Chris Carter's 19th century farmhouse is hidden from view, but there's a telltale landmark: a wind turbine atop an 84-foot pole.

The propeller generates wind power for Carter's home near the village of Saxapahaw in Alamance County.

The Duke Energy lines in the distance don't connect to his rural property. Carter and his wife, Lynn, live completely off the grid, a supreme achievement in the energy counterculture.

Carter took his lunch outdoors one day last week, preparing ostrich meat, homegrown shiitake mushrooms and other vegetables in a portable solar oven. The turbine's propeller blades whirled nearly nonstop for two hours as Carter described his self-sufficient lifestyle.

Brought up in Chapel Hill, this modern-day Henry David Thoreau has worked as a solar power system installer for more than a decade.

Two solar panel modules rise from nearby bramble thickets and shift position every so often, tracking the movement of the sun like giant mechanical sunflowers. One unit stands near a pawpaw patch; fruit trees grow everywhere.

But on to practical matters: The solar and wind equipment cost $45,000. One way to look at it is that this exotic hobby costs Carter $150 a month over a 25-year period. Another view: It's outrageously expensive and impractical.

"If you're off the grid, you not only have to be efficient, you have to be ultra-efficient, because your power is costing five times more than your neighbor's," Carter said.

It's a question of priorities, solar enthusiasts say: Many people spend thousands of dollars on their hobbies.

The sun didn't always smile on Carter and his project. He eventually had to bring in wind power to supplement solar power.

"That was the big discovery," he said. "There was no way to live off the grid in the winter without bringing in a backup generator. It was too cloudy for too many days to generate any solar power."

The two-story farmhouse is energy efficient, using about a quarter of the electricity of a typical North Carolina house. But Carter carries on like an energy glutton when it's sunny and windy.

"It's a great feeling to be able to squander energy," he said. "You go around the house, turn all the lights on, crank up the radio. It doesn't matter anymore."

When the skies grow dark and becalmed, Carter has no energy to squander. His backup batteries will get him through two days, and after that, he revs up the gasoline-powered generator, something he does about 16 times a year.

"The main thing you do is, don't do the laundry," he said. "You don't vacuum the house. You adjust."

Carter uses propane for cooking and for a radiant floor-heating system. He uses two window air conditioners, both energy efficient models. He has a washing machine, a propane gas clothes dryer, a refrigerator, microwave, fax machine, copy machine, two computers and a TV.

"It's not a matter of going back to the Stone Age," he said. "You want a hot shower; you don't want a nuclear-powered shower."

Carter finds observers' questions about the expense and the personal sacrifices of off-the-gridding a little tiresome, but predictable. Let's talk about the real costs of coal and nuclear power, he says. The environmental costs. The hidden costs.

Some day, solar energy might be a mass phenomenon, but that day has not arrived.

"This is not for everybody," Carter acknowledges. "I've talked people out of doing this. It's an area for new adopters."

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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.