
Urban off-grid homes for sale
Six homes foreclosed after being illegally connected to utilities. Will be sold grid-free.…

Six homes foreclosed after being illegally connected to utilities. Will be sold grid-free.…

The UK Government’s planning White Paper is mainly aimed at forcing through large national infrastructure projects like airports and power stations, but it represents a unique opportunity to bring in an off-grid category of planning permission, which would allow another 25,000 homes a year to be built off-grid. …

Designer John Bartlett really got to the heart of the issue, with a menswear line created entirely off-grid, using tools of days gone by like foot-pedal sewing machines. …
Florida realtors and scientists announced plans to create an energy-efficient, environmentally progressive community called “Sky” on 571 forested acres in Calhoun County. …

China will provide electricity to remote regions and alleviate fuel shortages in rural areas through renewable energy microgrids.…


The Development Marketplace team of the World Bank today launched a competition, to reward project ideas that address the various off-grid lighting needs of Sub-Saharan Africa, including alternative distribution models, new clean lighting technology, stronger production chains, and improvement of the policy environment.
Ten to 20 winners will receive grant funding up to $200,000.
The competition is open to a broad range of innovators around the world, including private businesses, nongovernmental organizations, universities, government entities, and individuals. …


Here’s another idea for disconnecting from the mains electricity grid – not cheap to buy, but cheap to run on a pint of diesel per hour. It’s the WhisperGen off-grid heat and DC power generator sold by Volpower NZ Ltd, Auckland, distributor of Volvo Penta marine and industrial engines. The company shot to notice last year when, after a five-year product trial, it won a $300 million contract to supply British electricity and gas giant Powergen with 80,000 domestic AC units over the next four years. These will be installed in British homes as replacements for conventional hot-water boilers, running on natural gas to generate AC power and hot water. But natural gas is running out and rising in price.…

Teams from 20 universities have spent the summer building enough homes for an entire solar village. The off-grid, self-powering homes will be on display for 10 days in October on the National Mall in Washington D.C., competing in the Department of Energy’s 2007 Solar Decathlon.
The point of the competition is not to create new building technologies. Entrants have to use commercially available products to prove that their sun-powered home can be commercially reproduced. For Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) university with its access to super-efficienct, NASA-grade solar panels, that was a disadvantage.…

In his new eco-TV series Ed Begley has just outed singer songwriter Jackson Browne as a long-time off-gridder. Browne, who used to go out with Daryl Hannah, is living on an off-grid ranch in deep Southern California.
“He’s got this big wind turbine, and his ranch is completely off the [power] grid,” Begley said. “He’s done all of it himself.” We’re impressed. But Browne is so cool and unassuming that no further details seem to exist
Browne founded Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) along with Bonnie Raitt back in the 1970s. They put on the very first Live Aid in 1979, though they did not call it that.…

After the arrest of a man for piggybacking on a neighbor’s Internet broadband, we are compiling a list of all known “war surfing” hot-spots worldwide. All readers are invited to add to the list by going as quickly as possible to the Off-Grid forum.…

An off-grid community in Devon – has won temporary planning (zoning) permission after a long battle against wealthy local residents.
The group of 16 people, featured in Nick Rosen’s book, How to Live Off-grid, paid just …

The tiny outback town of White Cliffs in far north-west New South Wales can now claim a place in Australia’s engineering history, alongside the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Hydro scheme.
The opal mining town, where most of the 200 residents live in underground homes, was the first in Australia to be powered entirely by solar energy, and is still a fully off-grid community.
The solar plant is now closed but it has earned a national award that will see it preserved as a piece of alternative energy heritage. …