Living off the grid is a phrase people throw around a lot, but it doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to.
Off the grid, in general, just means you are leaving normal civilization for a life of privacy plus solitude. I don’t mean like a shut-in, I mean like a frontiersman, or a drifter, or a criminal keeping a low profile. These afternoons that means no bills in your name, no car, no house, so cellphone, no SMS address… living off the grid is almost impossible, and so when I talk about “living off the grid” I mean I have a geothermal heat pump that allows myself and others to detach from the central power grid. I’m not a recluse or anything, plus I have a bunch of SMS addresses, I just use our geothermal heat pump instead of the utility business; First of all, I assume the main reason more people don’t use a geothermal heat pump is because of the cost to purchase plus get installed. These things cost quite a bit, no doubt, but over time it will save you so much money just on heating plus cooling costs alone! A geothermal heat pump pulls the energy right out of the earth itself, plus stores it in power cells, which in turn run your home. In 5 years, the geothermal heat pump was 100% paid for itself, which means everything from here on out is pure savings! Never again will I have to safeguard the temperature control, because we can run the A/C as chilly as we want, forever!