Today, we’re going to
talk about three (3) types of off the grid living: these are three
realistic options, and basically these are three different levels of
off the grid living.

• The first level is
  roughing it completely, I mean, that’s where you build just a
  basic shack with no running water; you don’t hook up to
  electricity and you are more or less camping with a shack.
• The next level would
  be sort of a hybrid off the grid level where you’re half-in-half
  where you’re connected to the grid, maybe just for power, but you
  have a well, your own septic tank; you’re largely off grid, you’re
  still using the supermarket let’s say but you’re trying to move
  towards off the grid.
• This is where many
  of off the grid-ers are, they’re trying to develop a more
  self-sustaining lifestyle, but they’re holding on to electricity
  in some of the grid for the transition period.
• And then three,
  there’s sort of the modern off the grid lifestyle: That’s where
  you fully go off the grid,  you’re self-supported, but it’s very
  modern; you’ve got solar for electricity or you’ve got wind for
  electricity, you’ve got both, you’ve got battery backups.

Solar is getting less and
less expensive every year and financing is very low on solar, so, it
makes it makes a lot of sense to invest in solar and it will make
more and more sense as the years progress because solar seems to be
the way we’re going and seems to be the least expensive of the
renewable energy sources, especially as the panels go down.

You don’t have to be
really reliant on the wind. Of course, there are some areas where a
windmill might be better than a solar panel, but not many in the
United States.

So, this is just a brief
introduction to the three levels of off the grid living. Most people
just think, oh, you know, most people don’t know about off the grid
living thing: there’s just one type of off the grid living; there
are various phases of it. 

There are definitely some
disadvantages too to the different types of off the grid and living
like, if you’re really roughing it, you can see the disadvantages:
you’re going to miss all of your appliances, your electricity, like
you’re more or less camping.

And there are some
advantages to that too; a lot of people want to dump the real world,
they want to go completely, completely roughing it off the grid, and
they want to live that way for life but most off the grid-ers want
the third choice. They want to be completely off the grid, but with
all the modern amenities; they want the solar, they wanna have
electricity, they’ve got running water from the well, they’ve got
a toilet that goes down to the septic system, so it’s much like
living on the grid. 

Most of those really nice
off the grid homes have all the same amenities as an on the grid
home, the people living in them tend to be more pioneering definitely
like on the grid people and they tend to raise livestock, and plant
gardens, et cetera, and try to move more and more towards the off the
grid living and being totally self-sufficient.