On Being Off The Grid

On Being Off The Grid
Jan 11th 2010
wolfmoonsleddog
Midwest
Location: Finland, MN
Time - 7:35am Central Standard Time
Temperature: 10 degrees F (minus 12 C)
Conditions: Partly cloudy, cool
Forecast: Partly cloudy today and tomorrow. Highs in the teens, lows in the single digits to negatvie single digits.

This is an old post I wrote but somehow never published. I decided to ressurect it after spending the weekend fighting the generator (constantly reminded of the “furnace fighting” in A Christmas Story) while Phil and Blake were racing the White Oak (more on this later).

Anyway, here is the old post:

Here at MCK we are “off the grid.” I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but I haven’t taken the time to explain exactly what it is we mean when we say we are “off the grid.”

We mean that there are no power lines out this far. We don’t bring in the electricity that is so easy to take for granted elsewhere. Any electricity used at the kennel is generated right here. There are four solar panels out in a small clearing just down from the cabin. During the Winter we must brush any fresh snow off of them so that they will make use of the daylight hours, which become shorter and shorter.

There is also a windmill out in the yard. We are relatively high up at the kennel (especially for Minnesota) and it is often windy. It might be cold but when the wind is at its strongest we always have the thought of “we’re generating some good power today.”

And finally there is a generator, which we run in the morning and evening - especially during the Winter months. This is always interesting.

All of the power generated by the solar panels, windmill and generator goes into a battery bank in the basement and all of our electrical appliances pull their power from these batteries. We are always checking the readings by the battery bank to see how much power we have and how much is being used.

Coffee makers, hairdryers, microwaves, etc. One doesn’t usually give much thought to how much power they use…but we can’t use them here because they pull a LOT of power! And if you pull too much power…well, it’s not a good thing. For this reason, there has to be someone at the kennel every day (not to mention the 80 dogs in the yard that need care every day).

It’s a different world once you start looking at lights, camera chargers and computers in terms of how much power it will take to use them. And you start to realize just how much power you use and just how much you take for granted in the “on-grid” world.

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2 Responses to “On Being Off The Grid”
Dave Lukosik on 15 Jan 2010 at 8:32 pm # edit this

Did not know you all where “Off the Grid”! That makes for a whole lot more work and self reliance to say the least. I know about stubborn generators! Wishes you had a spare as a backup when the main one doesn’t want to cooperate!

wolfmoonsleddog on 16 Jan 2010 at 6:20 pm # edit this

Yes, being off the grid always makes things interesting. We did have a spare backup generator - that was the one we were fighting with! The main one was being worked on at the time. Currently it is working but not perfectly.