Here we go! Now off grid!

5, 4, 3, 2.... 1 off!

This was me last night turning off the electricity. I think it will take me a few days to not instinctively reach for the light switch when I walk into a room. Fortunately, being the middle of the summer, its not dark for long and even when its dark there is so much light pollution you can find your way around quit easily. But it doesn't have to be like this for long.  

Yesterday I went to see Moixa Energy with Nick, our Senior electrician at Joju Solar. Moixa came up with the USB powered battery: http://www.moixaenergy.com/page.asp?pageid=3 helping us to stop using ridiculous disposable batteries (more on this later). 

Moixa also specialise in DC micro-grids. What the hec is that? Here's a photo of Simon from Moixa  with his Micro-grid kit:

Simon from Moixa with his fancy DC micro grid kit.

First a bit of back ground. The national grid uses AC (alternating current) but nearly all our gadgets work using DC (direct current). When you buy a mobile phone or a laptop they all come with a transformer to convert the AC to DC, there are big efficiency losses on the way, you can tell because your transformer/charger gets really hot.

Here's my laptop transformer. Its hot... ouch!

To be honest I'd quite like to have lighting and be able to charge my laptop and mobile phone. Fortunately, with the right kit this takes virtually no energy. Laptops and mobile phones are designed to be energy efficient for obvious reasons i.e the manufacturers want them to last for as long as possible before you need to re-charge them. LED lighting also uses virtually no energy. We are talking about 4 Watts to get the same light that an old 100W incandescent bulb would achieve. That is phenomenal progress. When politicians talk about generating enough energy to keep the lights on, its now only a fraction of what it used to be and most (if not all) of that can be generated locally using renewable energy. 

Moixa kindly let me borrow some of their kit. I'll let you know more about this and how we hooked it up in my next post.