16. The needs of the off-grid life
THOSE photovoltaic panels… those food preserving kits in the kitchen… that vegetable garden and the fruit trees in the backyard… when we leap ahead to the present day we see the intermediate technologies and some of the tools adopted by the early off-gridders being widely deployed.
We can package the necessities of off-grid living as a kit:
- shelter
- energy
- water
- waste minimisation and management
- food
- healthcare
- communication.
Higher level needs add a social dimension:
- access to knowledge and information
- transportation
- social contact
- livelihood.
The technologies of off-grid living include:
- energy independence, full or partial through the application of photovoltaics or small wind turbines; where the collection of fuelwood is possible, heating and sometimes cooking energy comes from fuelwood; the smoke emissions from household fuelwood heaters and their health and air pollution effects has given rise to strong arguments in online fora in Australia
- water harvesting from roofs and its storage in rainwater tanks for use as garden irrigation or, usually filtered, as drinking and cooking water
- waste treatment on-site, including for grey and black water treatment
- home food production for the bulk of a households’ perishable fruit, vegetables and culinary herbs; urban and some rural households lack the space for grain production, the procurement of which retains a connection to the agricultural supply chain; it is the same for other groceries
- working from home where that is possible; this usually requires a broadband and phone connection to the telecommunications grid.
Specific technologies, home-made or purchased, allow us to self-provide these things, some fully, some supplementary to external sources. We can see that fully-escaping the grids of modern life is difficult, and this contributes to the variable definition of off-grid.
Let’s look at a critical few of these needs.
Energy
We are well underway in adoption of the energy production technologies needed for an off-grid lifestyle or even a partial off-grid way of life in Australia with the dramatic upsurge in adoption of photovoltaic systems and solar water heating.
Solar water is an Australian success story. Solar hot water systems of different types, such as flat-plate collectors or vaccuum tube panels, are common on our rooftops. With water heating sometimes the major energy consumer and expense in the home, making use of solar energy where it falls on the roof is only common sense.
Where we do not add to the air pollution and public health risk caused by the smoke haze from home wood heaters, we can make use of them for heating as well as fuelwood stoves for cooking. Home energy batteries storing solar energy may allow electrical air conditioning as an alternative.
The rise and rise of PV
Over the years, element of the off-grid living kit have moved into Australian suburban life. Drive through the suburbs and the most noticeable is photovoltaics.
The years that spanned 1970 to around the middle of the following decade saw the rise of the intentional communities in Australia. These stimulated the first, post-1960 phase of off-grid living. The degree to which people went off-grid varied. Some were too distant from the power grid for connection to be economically feasible. That made photovoltaics a viable option. Later, many would connect their rooftop panels to the grid. That makes sense economically and in terms of energy conservation where domestic energy production exceeds domestic energy consumption.
Photovoltaic systems are now widespread in Australia. In 2015, the number of households with PV systems totalled 15 percent, making Australia the world leader in home photovoltaic installations at the time. By 2017, the number of houses with PV installed numbered almost a quarter of the total number of houses, or 23.2% (https://reneweconomy.com.au/one-quarter-of-australian-homes-now-have-solar-70886/). By 2019, the number had grown to over 2.2 million solar PV installations with a combined capacity of 13,904 MW of which 3,290 MW were installed in the preceding 12 months. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Australia). The Clean Energy Regulator put the total installations as of 2019 at 2,319,784. By June 2020, the installed capacity of Australia’s more than 2.4 million solar PV installations reached 18,583 MW. Installed PV capacity in Australia increased ten-fold between 2009 and 2011. It quadrupled between 2011 and 2016. A total of 4.4 percent of the Australian homes with solar panels had installed household batteries by 2020, around 110,000 homes, according to Sunwiz data.
Other components adopted from the off-grid living kit have seen similar growth. By 2019, a total of 1.23 million Australian homes had solar hot water systems. Home energy storage batteries are being installed on more and more homes and electricity and gas prices rise.
Water
The traditional rainwater tank storing water from the roof is the simplest solution to self-reliance in water and to reducing expenditure on water.
In urban areas, where air pollution can settle on roofs, the recommendation has been that rainwater is used for garden irrigation and other non-drinking, non-cooking purposes. People in rural areas and towns make use of tank water for drinking and cooking, however even here a water filter comes in useful to filter out the dust and to prevent infections from bird and possum droppings on the roof.
When site analysis discloses how rainwater runoff moves across your property, hand-dug diversion channels can move it to retention ponds from where it can infiltrate the soil profile and become available to plant roots and groundwater storage. I would recommend the books of Brad Lancaster for how to do this. Although his books are written for dryland climates they can be adapted to humid environment. Consider growing the water fern azzolla or a similar water plant to cover the surface of standing water in ponds to reduce mosquite breeding.
Rainwater tanks had for a long time been common fixtures for rural houses. They started their return to respectable social and environmental life in the 1990s with the interest in resource-efficient living. Their adoption was boosted with the drought of the early 2000s when state and local government offered subsidies for their installation. Along with photovoltaic arrays, they started to appear on municipal buildings.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, “In March 2013, 34% of Australian households living in a dwelling suitable for a rainwater tank had a rainwater tank compared with 32% in 2010 and 24% in 2007. The increase from 2007 to 2013 may be attributed to water restrictions, government rebate schemes, water regulations and water pricing.” (https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4602.0.55.003main+features4Mar%202013)
Food
The options are well known to off-gridders. Grow as much of your own as you have space for and time to manage. People adopting off-grid ideas in urban areas but who lack growing space at home might have a community garden in convenient reach. In both cases it is best to have a soil test done to check for pollutants. Especially in urban areas, earlier land uses might have left pollutants in the soil.
Vegetables, fruit trees and shrubs and culinary herbs are the necessary crops that can be supplemented by a small flock of chickens. It is probable that most off-gridders will have to buy in grains like wheat.
Food self-sufficiency is an unachievable goal for most of us, however households with the interest, skill, sufficient land and the available time can produce a substantial portion of their commonly-eaten foods. Doing this, they reduce their reliance on the food industry with its long supply chains. That is important to a society seeking to increase its resilience to the challenges and forces bearing down on it in these environmentally and economically uncertain times.
The value of home and community garden food growing came to the fore in early 2020 when the global Covid 19 pandemic saw panic buying in Australia’s supermarkets. It was not only toilet paper, but foods like flour, pasta, canned vegetables, powdered milk and more that disappeared from shelves and led to restrictions on the number of those items that individuals could purchase. Similar panic buying emptied supermarket shelves in late-March 2021 when Brisbane went into a short lockdown as the Covid virus reemerged. The shortages were due to the limited stock held by the supermarkets and their just-in-time resupply system which was unable to cope with the sudden surge in demand. It was a problem about distribution and not about food shortage, highlighting the vulnerabilities of Australia’s supply chains. The food was there but there was delay in getting it to the supermarkets.
The pandemic stimulated home gardeners to boost or to start their production of vegetables. Social media commentators with a knowledge of history found a precedent in the Australian government-supported Gardens For Victory campaign which encouraged domestic food production during World War Two. It illustrated Mark Twain‘s quote that history does not repeat, but it rhymes. As a society we had been here before.
Panic buying brought a shortage of vegetable seed. Not knowing how long social isolation would last and stimulated by food shortages in the supermarkets, home gardeners ordered big. A number of non-hybrid seed companies temporarily stopped sales as the flood of orders overwhelmed them. Others advised of delivery delays.
It seems that with so many people displaced from their work by the virus, the consequent social isolation and the perceived vulnerability of the food supply, a latent desire to grow food was rekindled now that people had the time. It was another example of how something popularised by the off-grid-pioneers of an earlier generation suddenly found renewed social and nutritional value.
Surveying pandemic food production
A survey of home food growing by Australian food advocacy, Sustain, supported by the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Fund, disclosed the extent of home food production during the pandemic of 2020. (https://www.communitygarden.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SUSTAIN_Pandemic-Gardening-Report_WEB.pdf)
The survey found that for those growing more than 30 percent of their food, the income for 45 percent of respondents was below AU$50,000pa. Gardening declined as income increased.
A total of 97 percent grew vegetables and produced other foods:
- leafy greens were grown by 94%
- fruiting vegetables (tomatoes, eggplant etc) by 58%
- herbs by 89%
- legumes (beans, peas) by 71%
- root crops & aromatics by 67%
- fruit by 66%
- eggs by 28%
- meat or fish by 3%.
A total of 62 percent increased their food growing activity to varying extents during the pandemic. A total of 35% continued gardening at their previous level. Three percent decreased gardening activity.
The survey disclosed how home gardening (as does food production in community gardens) has the potential to increase food security during times of crisis. That was a fact already disclosed during Australia’s Gardens For Victory campaign of the Second World War. As part of the lifestyle kit of off-gridders, the findings suggest those living the lifestyle have a significant role in increasing social resilience during emergencies, especially if they trade ow swap their excess production with other gardeners and non-gardeners.
Communications
Communications, knowledge and information flow through the social networks of off-gridders. This suggests that, today, the internet can be counted as a complement to off-grid living whether that it practiced in its fullness or partially, whether it is urban or rural.
Learning from emergencies
There is nothing like an emergency to focus us on what the necessary, basic needs are whether we live on or off-grid, especially when it comes to communications.
We learned the true value of the internet, and a good case for considering it an essential service like the water and energy grids, during Australia’s widespread and devastating bushfires of the spring and summer of 2019–2020. The internet with its websites and social media, the mobile phone network with its voice, instant messaging, video and internet connection proved critical to those fleeing and fighting the fires. We also learned how the national broadcaster, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) became the trusted and much-accessed source of alerts and news during the bushfires. That was because of its extensive coverage, its local radio network and because of the quality of its journalism.
After the fires the true social value of the internet was again reinforced as we adapted to life during the Covid 19 pandemic with its lockdowns and, for some, to working from home.
Finding a livelihood
“Just step around it,” she says as we stop to look at the venomous, red-bellied black snake stretched from one side of the garden path to the other. “It’s no stranger to the vegetable garden”, she adds. That was where we are headed, the vegetable garden.
We got to know Tania when she and her husband lived on the NSW Central Coast not far north of Sydney. Her local group, Permaculture Central Coast, hired Fiona and I to teach a permaculture design course. Now, here they are living in the forested hill country between Byron Bay and Lismore. Their house is weathered weatherboard typical of dwellings of this part of the land. Its rusty brown colour almost matches that of the galvanised iron roof. The house that is their home came with the convoluted ridgeland that falls steeply around.
How many generations have called this old house their home? What did they do for a living? The land is too steep for cropping. Did they run cattle? I look over the folded, steep terrain of ridge and clearing, the forested hilltops and the narrow, steep-sided valleys that separated them. Ridge after ridge. This is inspiring country.
We tour the large and productive food garden and sit around talking. I learn that Tania and her partner’s move to these parts was made possible thanks to telecommuting. Tania’s partner continues his consultancy work for a NSW government department remotely from a home workplace where his window looks over the hills.
Their’s is a dream life, I think. A house on a hilltop, an income that enables them to meet their needs, a large garden for Tania to manage, a female German WWOOFER and an Englishman to help out (WWOOF, Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms, is a farmstay-for-work service linking farmers needing assistance with visitors wanting to experience farm life in return for food and accommodation). Dependent on computers and telecommunications, theirs’’ is a largely off-grid working life connected by the national telecommunications grid.
Unless you have private wealth, some kind of livelihood is vital to living off-grid. Capital must be earned to buy or build the home and install and maintain the energy and water systems. Income is necessary to pay for the repairs and maintenance of running a motor vehicle. It is also needed to sustain the off-gridders themselves. Those with building, carpentry and food growing and preserving skills can offset some of these costs, however the remaining costs have to be met.
Finding a livelihood and income stream in rural areas has been a challenge since the rural resettlement of the 1970s. Talk to people living in ecovillages and you learn that it is a continuing challenge for all but the retired and superannuated or those with their own money. The livelihood challenge can be a barrier to moving onto a rural ecovillage or moving to the country at all.
Most urban people moving rural off-grid lack the skills to make a living in conventional rural service or production industries. They do best when they have skills that are transportable and in demand, and markets that are accessible. Small scale farming has succeeded for the few. Starting a cafe in town for others, teaching, and in enclaves where the legacy of the alternative subculture persists, in alternative therapies. With unemployment already high in rural regions, local opportunity can be lacking. Markets for services might not be there.
Those I know making a living in rural and off-grid circumstances have skills that enable them to work remotely. A few teach the permaculture design system from their rural smallholding, though this is far from a road to riches. One works as a magazine editor, his work computer-based. Another travelled long distances to and from his ecovillage, Monday to Friday, to work in a local government office. Another has a home lab and does biomedical work. One was lucky enough with his entrepreneurial, technical and people-skills to be employed by a renewable energy installation company.
For the off-grid life to be an income-earner when rural skills are lacking, high speed broadband connection and the mobile phone network become very important.
Those best-placed
Those best placed are people with skills transferrable to rural areas, skills such as building, carpentry, teaching, nursing and other trades. A few manage to wrangle projects on which they can work remotely by telecommuting. Others have the skills to be hired for fixed-term projects, becoming participants in the gig economy. Many grab at the insecurity of jobs as bar staff, waiters and baristas.
Just 40 minutes drive from the couple living on their hilltop property in the Byron Bay hinterland, in Jalanbah ecovillage on the edge of Nimbin a woman makes her living by providing Japanese language translation services. She commutes to the city when she is needed. Meantime, a friend and one-time work colleague plans to continue his consultancy work in international development now that he has returned from his posting in West Africa to his house in Byron Bay. There, just a couple hours from Brisbane airport with its international connections, he hopes to be able to travel for consultancies. I suspect, though, his main work is less international development and more surfing the local breaks.
Purists might argue that telecommuters remain connected to mainstream society through an umbilical cord of digital connection and economic transactions. Similar criticism could be levelled at most off-gridders.
This raises the question of the intention behind off-grid living. Is it a means of moving from city to country and living there cheaply after making the initial expenditure on land, home and off-grid systems? Is it a response to environmental issues like global warming? Is it driven by increasing utility costs and the hassle of life in the cities? For the children’s future in a safe environment, perhaps? For downshifting? A retirement retreat after a life working in the city? Is it a partial retreat from society, propelled by fears over the future? Is it driven by the experience of the urban lockdowns and social isolation of the pandemic of 2020–2021?
A future thwarted
There was a conversation in the 1970s that asked this question: how would we spend all of the free time that new technologies and the computerisation of technologically advanced economies would open up?
People, the media and social commentators anticipated a shorter working week. Where people worked less, computerisation and automation would take up the productivity slack. Thinking and talking about this at the time was exhilarating. A new technologically-enabled age seemed about to dawn, an age that would well-suit those seeking less grid connection, more personal autonomy and discretionary use of their time. In many ways it presaged today’s conversation about the future of work in the encroaching age of automation, without the anxiety.
It never happened. The 1970s was the time when neoliberal economic theory became real. Neoliberalism treats spare time as a commodity and seeks to turn it to economically productive purposes. It absorbed the promise of less time spent working and turned it into more time at work. The idea of technologically-enabled leisure was stillborn. So was the opportunity it might have held for people to use it to create their off-grid lifestyle. Now, especially with the casualisation of a large segment of the workforce, financial uncertainty compels people to work whatever hours they can rather than working less.
Like food, fresh water and energy, finding a livelihood is a necessity for rural off-grid living.
