Off Grid Electricity without solar panels or wind turbines...

Whole systems thinking, just as in permaculture, pays of big time in savings of money, time, energy and environmental impact. Instead of running out to buy another consumer band aid to cover up a wound or need, having a look around at the energy flows and unused commodities (including energy) we already have can often end up showing us where the resources we need are the ones we already have and just aren't using...usually because we aren't paying enough attention or still lack a bit of knowledge.

All of us drive cars. Automobiles have 12 volt DC electrical systems and battery storage capacity. 12 volt DC is the preferred residential electrical power source for a number of reasons...health is the first. Discussions of electromagnetic fields, chi energy contamination, sleep disorders, immune dysfunction's, cancer, MCS, E.I. allergies, etc. created or worsened by our standard electrical/ grid system (which is 110 volt AC) are found elsewhere in the Resource Files under E.I. (environmental illness) , in The E I Standard and EMF headings. 12 volt DC is the system of health and happiness. Cars have it. You can get it.

(A caution here...for reasons not completely understood...the EMF fields in cars are actually quite high and unhealthy and despite their electrical systems being designed as 12 volt DC, they measure and produce extraordinarily high and unhealthy AC fields. Smart Shelter has documented severe fatigue and nervous system damage (especially to feet) related to prolonged exposure to automobile AC fields. More research is needed. However, the damaging fields related to automobiles comes from their operation...which, obviously, we should be minimizing anyway. The healthy source of 12 volt DC electricity we discuss here is that which we access from the battery storage after the car is stopped. That's the juice we seek...and it's healthy..USDA certified, Chi energy harmonious, Gnu Age guaranteed, "rad", safe for babies and poodles, flamingo friendly...you get the picture)

We're all familiar with, and probably most of us already use, the tapable 12 volt DC power from cigarette lighter adapters in our car panels...now a complete waste since we're all passed thankfully beyond the corporate death wish of tobacco consumption. (Who was it saw to it that every car in America provided a method of lighting a cigarette without a match in the first place??? (Ronnie Raygun, I'd bet...the alzheimer's emperor who married the anorexic witch and wrecked the American airlines industry by deregulation) ...anyway....

CD players, car tv's, electric razors, electric blow dryers and curling irons ...all the gadgets you use in your home can happen in your car ....or your RV. Plug them into the cigarette lighter. They are now universally available and quite operable.

Out of desperation (the real mother of invention) in the fall of '03 on the heels of "the Walker Incident" the decision was made to off grid the Nomad Micro (see discussion of Micros in other Resource File headings). An interesting phenomenon results from the combination of flaming need and no money....usually the two parents of innovation and whole systems thinking...mainly because rethinking the whole system we've got right now is about as far as things are going until the cash flow eases up and the hard rivers of winter again will flow.

The result of this crunch was an observation that our automobiles posses a sizable capacity to generate a ton of 12 volt DC power, most of which is wasted. They also store just enough of it to get them started again. We could harvest the rest and use it at home. In fact...at this writing...six months and a bitter winter later...the excess energy of running cars has turned out to be the only electrical energy source needed for micro lifestyle ...and at no sacrifice to convenience. In fact, the power to run the MacIntosh G3 laptop computer used to write this piece is powered as we speak from exactly this power source...wasted automobile power..in fact specifically that harvested on a run from Delta to Montrose day before yesterday...its sizzling little electrons are still audibly humming in the deep cycle battery against my toes.

The VCR runs about every other nite for entertainment. So does the stereo and the video camera. 12 volt, $8, Chez Targette quartz halogen lights (throw away the ac adapter...they're already 12 volt coming from the Chinese manufacturer) provides more than enough light. All this from car batteries...charged up...excess energy harvested from trips to the grocery store, the contra dance, late night demolition runs to blow up another ATV retail outlet (god those things resprout like weeds).

The average automobile electrical generator (now called alternators) runs automatically off of one of those long rubber belts whizzing around your radiator fan any time the engine runs and produces a wad of power...600 watts, 900 watts, 1200 watts...power enough to run 6, 9 or 12 very bright light bulbs in a standard home. So if we could get at that power, we could leave the one light bulb we need (what are the other 11 doing for you sucking up expensive power in the other rooms of your house anyway....in fact, what is the entire house you're not currently using right now doing for you when you're not in it?...but we digress...see the discussions of Micro Habitats and space efficiency in other Resource Files and the text for Natural Homes #101 listed on the Resource Files directory page if you must go down that isle).

....So where the hell are we here...(how would you like to have to live with a mind and mouth like this in the same house??? How would you like to have to live with it in the same body??? Yikes)

...Oh, ya....so why so much wasted power in a car? It sure doesn't take that kind of watts to run the engine and dash panel. Well, the reason is that the car's electrical system is designed for worst case scenario...three starts in a row at 10 below zero dead winter on quick trips to school and store with no significant battery recharge time in between. The alternator has to make wads of juice and the battery has to store it quick...milking the few minutes the car is up and running to assure a good start next trip.

In all but these worst case instances, huge amounts of usable electricity are dumped by your electrical system beginning minutes after the car starts. They're not needed and the car is designed to just trash them. All I've done is add additional storage batteries to capture that...and to make a long story short..."Thug" the rusty 4 wheel drive '84 ford gas guzzling workhorse of the Smart Shelter fleet pumps enough juice into the spare "home" batteries on a 20 mile commute and back to power the Nomad Micro living environment for two days.

By having 3 or 4 spare batteries and rotating them into the vehicles for charging and into the house (housed safely in leak proof, covered plastic battery cases...ala Wallyworld..$6 each and covered tastefully with a chunk of plywood and tablecloth to use as micro coffee tables) I have at any given time...given I've been paying attention and rotating them...a week to ten days of power stored up...and a safeguard to inevitable grid power failure...and of course, the long range inevitability, seeing as how we continue our denial about being attacked by terrorists because our oil companies and corporations keep terrorizing their homelands, stealing their resources and destroying their cultures...that the inevitability that they are going to continue attacking us is assured and off-gridding is our smartest safeguard...outside of taking responsibility and making changes...don't hold your breath for that one.

Here's where the radically increased energy and space efficiency of Micro Habitats really pays off. In so many instances, once safely and comfortably below the Micro Habitat Threshold for home size (150 sq ft max per person), the viability of passive solar heating design as well as off-grid energy technologies starts working and working well, whereas above that threshold we're back into "pig" level consumerism and our egos and the illusion that we need or deserve large living structures grabs us by the short and curleys, hauls us on an expensive consummer-related ride, and eventually plows us into the early grave of work fatigue and treadmill mindlessness...which, as we all know, pretty much necessitates the mind-numbing addictive escapes of alcohol, drugs, sports television, personal motorized recreation vehicle terrorism and organized religion...just to get us to the start line tomorrow for another meaningless trip around the corporate gridiron.

In a Micro lifestyle, the energy demands are so refined and reduced that technologies like car powered electricity not only, as if by magic, become feasible, but they become delightfully entertaining. Try telling the bridge circle girls you run you house off of your car and watch their girdles start to snap. Cheap entertainment and the best assurance possible you won't have to come up with excuses not to waste another evening like that one again.

Drawbacks: ...no free lunches??? Not quite true. But a few conditions you should have your head up for. Off-grid living categorically means radical transitions in energy efficiency...you've got to have your mindset tuned not to waste energy...which starts with knowing where the energy goes and how to trim it...(and doing it) another layer of whole systems thinking. Batteries charged up in your car in winter get stingy about giving up their power and need bringing into a warm home to get it coaxed out of them (kind of the way sex works, come to think of it). It's a hassle lugging 40 pound chunks of lead across slippery sidewalks every other day. What's losing your power bill worth? What freedoms of choice would off-grid power sources bring into your life? Right now you could be camped indefinitely in a nudist circle on free BLM land 5 miles south of Quartzite, Arizona in 90 degree late February sun instead of shivering your touche off in Silverton....choice is yours...so is the cost.

Third drawback is startup costs...bucks needed to get from here to there...no brainer...and guess what...Wallyworld and Homely Despots had every single item necessary to convert the Nomad Micro...at a cost under $500...(exactly one year's power bill down on the old Walker homestead) (where my entire, hip slick and cool environmental living unit was all-electric...110, grid powered AC...nightmare...yuk, not to mention I wrote a check monthly to a corrupt power distribution monopoly, which took 15% of it and funded state and federal legislature lobbying to keep this country from signing onto global warming programs the rest of the world was progressive enough to greet with intelligence and glee)...before I knew better.

Off-griding not only bought me freedom of choice in my front yard view (I now gaze out on the flowing Gunnison River and 1000 canadian geese instead of herbicide riddled ditch banks and highway bypass traffic roar) (before that it was the desert serenity of the Escalante Canyon in winter)(tomorrow it will be the majesty of the West Elk Range above the canyon gorge of the North Fork watching the green of spring creep up the sumptuous legs of Western Colorado) ...for 500 bucks...that I would have spent in a year anyway to line the pockets of the ______ church...which controls not only the power generation and distribution grid in the desert southwest, but also the coal industry that fires it and kills our wilderness areas...I was writing a check monthly to those goons and railing relentlessly for them to ramp up wind and solar programs. They all own stock in Peabody Coal...what chance does sanity about resources and global warming have in boardrooms floating in sludge like that? It's about demand side management...we are the originators of the resource demands...we change our uses and technologies and the lackeys we fund will wax or wane in accordance. If we don't they won't...and this was one of the weirdest winters ever. Global warming and climate change...the antidote for $500. You decide.

"When we quit writing them checks to do this, they'll stop doing it...until we do, they won't. It's up to us. We create it, we can uncreate it...the key is to take responsibility for our consumerism, the tyrany it fosters and change both...today. Short of that, you're kidding yourself...especially with committees and public education ...for a public whose high water mark is monday nite football."

OK, so how???....Get your energy uses way down (move into a micro for starters). But if you can't leave the place you're in right now and join the rest of us in Nirvana Trophy Trailers, start by off-gridding (and DCing) just one room of your house...your bedroom is the best place to start, it's where you sleep (maybe) and therefore is the environment your immune system would start with in its plea to be rid of its struggle against AC EMF and Grid-Contamination (I consider the American electrical distribution grid a disease...tendrils riddling our nation just like the metastatic roots of spreading cancer). A third of your life is spent in bed...more, if you're sexually active and healthy.

You don't even need the car set up to start. Buy a $65 deep cycle battery (look at the lables...deep cycle batteries take lots of discharging and still stay healthy...which standard car batteries are not designed to withstand). Then buy a $30 automatic deep cycle battery charger (all quite available at Wally World). Put the battery in a $6 plastic case...they're right by the batteries in the auto section. Hire or bribe a thug to lug them home. This is one viable use of republicans, in an era when we see them sadly (or maybe not) extincting themselves...which is, of course, the inevitable end of all inferior species who refuse to adapt. Give them a couple of bucks for bud and send them to the sports bar for smoke inhalation therapy....aren't the efforts of the tobacco industry in assisting us in the global depopulation program encouraging? What better friend could we have. Self financing too.

At Chez Targette (sometimes at Homely Despots) $8-10 quartz halogen lights on flexible arms with clip bases that can glomb onto the edges of desks, counters, pulled out silverware drawer fronts, bra straps of sizable women, polished belt buckles of rigid range-maggot-conductors (a useful application of an Ed Abbey-identified toxic resource...the cattle industry)...all depending on what you're doing, what light you need to find what you're doing it with and whether what you're doing it to will stand still long enough to clip a light fixture to (...or not).

One huge key to energy efficiency is to have lighting that goes where you need it. My 86 sq ft Micro is lit by two quartz halogen fixtures....one on each end of the vast corridors of my domicile. If I cook, the clip light goes over the cutting board. If I read, it bends in long graceful arc sensuously over the book (and under my eyes) allowing excellent reduction of glare.

(A little aside here...three "ET" lights...converted self-charging solar malibu lights with high energy efficiency LED bulbs (from Homely Despots) fitted with micro switches from Radical Shackups provide full night walkway/front doorstep lighting and interior night or emergency lighting and are self-propelling and a back up source (also very aesthetic and handy) for battery problems, etc. There are whole nights when the solar LEDs are on (and the bright quartz halogens are off)...they give an other worldly, almost lunar, ambiance to the doorstep and interior for moody evenings watching the stars or the light dances of Delta on the ripples of the Gunnison riddled with honking geese and an occasional beaver...some inside...some out. ET lights are discussed, as is so much, elsewhere in the Smart Shelter Resource Files...given we live that long.).

Then buy a $6 battery powered digital alarm clock. You now can shut off the AC circuit breakers to your bedroom. Have someone with good EMF meters (like Roland Holzwarth..on our green pages) come over and make sure you got all the AC power/ EMF sources shut down. Put the battery and charger well outside the bedroom. Run any old kind of bigger gauge wire from the battery to cigarette lighter receptacles of your choosing and number...located for convenience in the room, whack the wire of the quartz halogen lights off (throw the half pound AC adapter at a motorhead...responsible disposal of maximum environmental impact), put a male cigarette lighter adapter on the cord end (if you can't identify male from female adapters, have another look at your boyfriend), plug it in and you're set.

Your bedroom should now be AC EMF free (or radically reduced). Buy a $17 digital tester (at Wally World...they're yellow with black and red tester probes). No need to read the instruction manual that comes with them...their use will be all too obvious after you destroy a couple of $65 batteries through ignorance...as is the learning curve for us all. Plug the charger in to charge the battery. Monitor its energy state with the tester. See if sleeping in this environment doesn't result in sounder sleep, richer dreams and waking refreshed as well as ramping down whatever EI or allergic symptoms you may be having...because you are now not mutilating your Chi energy system (which drives your immune and glandular/organ systems) with what Thomas Edison himself warned us about vehemently...the dangerous and destructive effects of alternating current...which will literally kill dogs (and kills humans daily). Read all the instructions, develop the discipline of monitoring the batteries, plug in the charger when they're low.

You have now created a 12 volt DC "seed space" for safer slumber...albiet still fueled from the grid power running the charger.

Step two...add another deep cycle battery to your car. This takes a bit of doing...platic safe case, convenient and accessible location...strap it in so it doesn't tumble even in a wreck or if someone is doing too much "bouncing" in the front (or back) seat....or even on washboards on your way to another "motor head" or "aerial spray/crop-duster"shoot with Charlton Heston.

Here you can fall victim to the car-care gadget counter. There are isolator switches which separate the auxiliary battery from the car battery, meaning you don't suck down the car battery starting power if you use the auxiliary battery for , say long computer laptop use (which we, of course assume, is a MacIntosh...Apple being the only computer company not supplying corrupt American military multinational weapons corporation CIA riddled bomb and missile sighting systems). They will also sell you big piggy wires for handling lots of juice. Jury is still not in on this one. A caution is, if there are "plug loads" or leaks in your car wiring system (as I have discovered are rampant in the frayed and rusted wiring of the the funky old truck I love so deeply ...."Thug") You can charge all the batteries you want to your heart's content as you drive with renewed environmental consciousness to the hot springs more frequently because you rationalize that the gas you guzzle is also the juice you produce...only to park your "Thug" for the night and have the damned electron gremlins suck it dry with shorts and dashboard clocks...which stay going when the car isn't.

The isolator switch ($15-45... and an afternoon to install from Checker) is a lifesaver, if I think to use it, allowing me to drive till the auxiliary battery is charged (usually 20-40 miles) and then click it off when I get home. This I don't always remember...having once had to endure 8 years of an alzheimer's riddled presidential brain clogged with camel straight residues and failed acting careers...which we now know, given the horrific resprouting of the American goon syndrome under the unelected usurping of white house occupancy at the hands of the current baboon...are contageous...melatonin taxing...forgetter addling. It's not our fault.

In the newly revived 1980 Vanagon camper (protected by Smithin' Flamingo...see story in the Gonzo Literati), I just cut the battery charger clips off a fluey charger, wired them to the car battery and have the quick convenience of fast changes with skinny wires and it even works better than the $30-40 isolator switch, fat wire rig in "Thug". But be sure you don't have current leaks when the car is off or touch the two leads together..ever!!!) Disconnect the positive lead of the car battery and retouch it to the post to test for plug load and leaks..if you see a spark it's leaking. If you're affraid to play with wires and sparks, get the ornery little shit that rides the buzzing dirt bike and does donuts in your driveway to come over and hold his tongue on the battery post while he holds the cable is his snarly little hands. You'll know pretty quick about plug loads. If the "little shit tester" is not available, get an amperage reading from the handy digital tester you bought (and have now read the instructions for). Make very sure you don't got a leak that will suck your power source dry. Leaks can be fixed by prolific cussing and victim-based rationalization, buying a cheap old vehicle and dismantling the entire electrical system...reinstalling only what's absolutely necessary by trial and error until it runs...diagnosing, tracing and remedying the leak (which should only be done as a last resort (remember...whining always before responsible action...the codependent credo)...or, take it to a competent mechanic...like Bob at Grand Mesa Imports north of Delta or Jeb up in Paonia...they might be listed on our green pages...or ought to be.

Anyway...there you go. Keep the charger handy for emergencies. Lug the batteries back and forth in cold weather. Run a wire to plug your house into your system for warm weather...and stop hauling batteries to keep them active and warm...don't develop the habit of driving off with your car plugged into the house. You are now authorized to wear one gold paste on star on your forehead, which, of course, will serve to show the rest of the world (at least the civilized part of it) that you are hip-slick-and cool, way off grid and so environmentally evolved that only the bare tips of your toes need ever touch soil. Yes. And you'll probably get laid.

The Conveniences...all the thinking in the world about not needing CD, Public Radio and old cassette tape music...the evening video from the foreign collection at Front Row Seat (Montrose) or the Austrian Permaculture video from the Grand Junction library were wrong. $150 Wally World strikes again...12volt DC powered 9" screen (just move it closer) VCR built in RV tv...pack it home plug it in, bag of Smart Food Cheddar Popcorn (which probably isn't really that smart, right?) and voila...off grid convenience abounds...seemless transition...and it takes way less space than the old 13" and double dubbing AC cassette deck...now safely in storage. It's amazing that all this off-grid enabling gadgetry came from those disgustingly destructive and horrifically toxic big box corporate monsters we all fought (and still valiantly do) to keep from inflicting their cancerous destruction of riparian fields-turned asphalt parking lots on our region. It may be because the blue rinse snowbird crowd that parks their 65 foot "pig rigs" in the Wally World parking lots buys their 12 volt gadgets inside and Wally World is going to let us get a cheap ride to off-grid sanity on the backs of the retired elite...who stole our hippy bus migrant philosophy from the 60's and now won't let us share RV parks with them unless we're as illusory in appearance as they are. Oh, well...they have short life spans and fast-food diets.

AC power appliances and tools aren't obsolete with DC systems...$75 or as low as $35 buys a Wally World Inverter...inverters convert 12 volt DC power to 110 volt AC, with limits...don't get your expectations too high about how big a device your battery will power or your inverter will handle. They clip to the posts of the battery and have regular three prong outlets that your old 110 ac stereo, power drill or jig saw will plug into and run...I know, because I run those devices on mine as needed. They work fine. For big drills and heavy boring...like ventilating the craniums of republican county commissioners...I latch the inverter onto "Thug's" car battery posts and start the engine...running it at a mid speed rpm so that the inverter is working off the alternator, not the battery...which incidentally, turns my car into a power generating facility and allows me to bore away as long as it takes...which in these parts, going through thick-calcified skulls, even with a 1/3 horse Milwaukee 3/8 inch variable speed, reversing drill with a brand new $16 high speed tungsten twist bit can take hours to get through an aged republican skull (and I doubt its worth it...still the wind whistles through their ears). But it proves this works. Skill saws are beyond the capacity of this system...get out your hand-powered "whoompah" and go aerobic...good for the tricepts...don't forget to change hands periodically...saves overdevelopment of one arm, which can make you (as in other single-handed endeavors) lopsided...and result in clothing problems.

Laptop computers have DC/ cigarette power adapters. Get it Use it. The carpal tunnel syndrome characteristic of long term computer users (such as anyone who would invest such inordinate time writing the current drivel) is bull shit. The nerve deterioration is due to saturating the wrist and its nerve junctures in the highly toxic AC electromagnetic fields of grid-powered computer keyboards and electric typewriters...we certainly hope you are evolved beyond computer game sticks. You should see what these things do to a good EMF meter...that'll make you stand up and take notice.

The solution is to eliminate (most of) the AC fields by using the DC power adapter...even if its only plugged into a remote DC battery, charged periodically with an AC charger...which we would hope by now you realize must be kept at a huge (as in 12 feet) distance from your torso always....these puppies have very nasty fields, because of their huge coil windings.

If you have finger tingling or wrist fatigue/ache related to electric typewriters or computer keyboard use...try this and see. Carpal tunnel became a diagnosis immediately following widespread use of electric typewriters. It has become epidemic in the computer keyboard age. No child should be allowed to use a computer that is not DC powered...that's like boring holes in their wrists and threading them with barbed wire. Probably same is true of adolescents and adults.

Power adapters...for computers, digital video cameras, etc, enabling use on 12 volt DC systems are exorbitantly priced...$75 for a good one. Buy them. You have no choice. Then track down the little slimy slick faced corporate marketing/ investment maggot that glommed up the market monopoly that fired this price support...unsupportable by cost of manufacture...and remember..."wealth in a democracy only accumulates through criminal acts." and execute the little bastard. Saves court and legislative lobbying time, which are such a drain and hassle to those of us obviously more evolved and really pressed for time, especially in spring when we could be practicing bio-mimicry of rock toasting, napping lizards replenishing their stored body heat after cold winter weathering. Also, consider what you will be saving posterity and the example it sets for other slime balls who think dismantling the safeguards of consumer protection and freedom from monopoly and market manipulation we pay government to enact and maintain....We need fewer, not more of these... smug smart guys who own Jamaican and Costa Rican beach front property while the rest of us squirm through the diabolitry of the toxic maze their actions exude.

 

SSSSSSOOOOOOOOO.....there you are...off grid, less than $500, no solar panels to pack around, buy, mount or maintain. No whirring buzz of erratic wind turbines. Whole systems thinking...capturing the wasted energy of your car and using it to unplug from a corrupt and toxic electrical grid and generating monopoly hell bent on bush-propping and scorching the planet to death.

This is a baseline system I can add solar panels and wind generators to tomorrow. What I'm looking at now, now that this recapture technology is up and running and after 6 months seems more than workable (for instance my power tools are usable wherever I go, whether the power line has invaded there or not...meaning I could be building the new wooden air filter housing for the twin Webber carburetors on the VW van up Escalante Canyon next to the fishing stream instead of sitting here whacking angry diatribe onto digital documents no one will probably ever read...that kind of freedom)...now I'm going to start adding a little $100-200 roll up, thin film portable solar charger unit as back up so I don't have to tote batteries...or build a pump to get laundry water straight out of the Gunnison river driven by its own solar panel set up and slow pumping into the tank on the back of Thug while I'm out in the inflatable kayak hassling a fat catfish for dinner. Why not? Permaculture principle..."minimum effort in...maximum effect out." Wit and willingness...that's what it's about.

Maybe a used $300 wind generator with its own stand for when the Micro is out in the upper Escalante Canyon wind tunnel. Once the car battery base is ramped up and humming, the rest of the off-gridding is optional and can wait for better ideas and cheaper deals.

What more could you ask?

(Well....large breasted blondes, a trip to Patagonia, a trimaran in Belize, toucans in Costa-Rican trees, time on the Italian Riviera, seeing those carved stone pumice villages in Turkey, a trip up the Nile....oh quit it...)

Afternote on battery maintenance....the fragile (and critical) link in this system is the lead acid battery...they won't take abuse, they've got to be kept warm and clean and ventilated.

They produce hydrogen gas in small amounts when they're charged...which is everywhere in small amounts already and won't harm you. However, if you stuff these puppies in small closed spaces and light a match...well, they do call it the "hydrogen bomb" don't they. Actually that's a different process. But hydrogen is a fuel. The batteries do well in the plastic containers with the ventilated top...four of them disguised as coffee tables in an 86 square foot living space. Don't put four of them in a sealed container under your bed and then light a match when you open it.

Every once in a while, batteries need a bath...I load a quart bottle with two or three tablespoons of baking soda, use an old, small paint brush, pull the battery out of its case and rest it on top of a couple of sticks or rocks on bare ground (the acid will eat grass) and give it a good brushdown with the soda, then a rinse and let it sun dry. When it's well tanned and healthy, take one of those circular battery post wire brushes from the auto parts store and clean the terminals (or a straight brass or wire brush). Soda water the case and dry it too (clean clothes, clean body, happy battery). Beware that the acid collected on the outside of the battery is corrosive. Don't get it on your skin or in your eyes...wear surgical gloves. It will eat holes in clothing...wear old stuff, or do this naked (with obvious precautions)(tell your neighbors its your right...you're saving the planet).

Learning to monitor battery voltage is a critical habit of daily routine in this automobile based (as well as wind turbine or solar panel or hydro-powered) off grid lifestyle. Batteries can store power, but if they get sucked too dry they croak...just like we do (and our planet is). Batteries are moody and you've got to understand how they work, or you're not going to get what you need from them...kind of like other relationships. The key to that diagnosis and understanding is the digital voltmeter...this might be a good time to read the instructions...now that you suddenly can't get any charge to sustain on the two batteries you already bought and squeezed dry convinced instructions were for others (oh well, what's $130 ?).

Batteries get overamped when they've just been charged...kind of like panting after orgasms. Not a good time to talk about accounting and taxes, right? Same thing with battery testing. If you just used or charged a battery, voltage readings won't be accurate...they are in a stage of over stimulation, exhaustion or afterglow...and will probably appear to be a completely different person once they're back in the office. I check mine every morning right after coffee and meditation...when I'm settled down too. They haven't been charged since day before yesterday and haven't been used since watching "La Lectrice" (foreign film section, Front Row Seat, Montrose...excellent) on the tv last night.

Battery charge states are indicated by precise voltage readings...in decimal points. 12 volt batteries seldom read 12 volts. If they read below 12 volts they are dangerously discharged...allow that to happen many times and their brain cell fins will crud up and croak...kind of like eating fast foods too often. When they're hot off the charger (and settled down) they will (besides having that "fresh laid" ruby glow) have voltage readings around 12.6 to 12.7 volts. That's way good, but won't last long once you start using them. Readings in the morning around 12.4 mean you've still got some use, but get ready for a recharge. Some people change them out at 12.2 volts. I usually do it at 12.1 or 12.0 and so far, so good.

The habit of battery monitoring is a good way of enforcing awareness of your use and keeping your razor-sharp wit (bright now from not sleeping in AC fields) constantly seeking sleeker machines to cut the losses. Lugging batteries helps that too.

There are moderate to expensive gadgets which give a wall display voltage reading, tell you what you used and when and will even regulate charging if you add solar or wind sources. In the long run, convenience will probably opt for these once the pocket book will accommodate them. What this discussion does is to keep the system intentionally bare bones...baseline. If you want to become one of the green yuppie consumer elite...what the hell, go ahead and buy the tech...I probably will. But what I've seen time after time prototyping these technologies is, that if I start with the bare bones elements, instead of buying the garbage up front, once the system and lifestyle have shuffled to accommodate each other (which can sometimes be like falling in love with a Swahili who decides to move in...with the goats and parrots) a level of knowledge develops that starting with the high tech will never permit. See our green pages for off-grid/ pv providers when you decide to do that anyway.

Battery Sources...The expensive $250 off-grid solar system batteries are where this probably ends up, although their weight and resistance to repetitive rapid recharges of automobile systems might not permit that...which is not yet investigated.

New deep cycle batteries available at most battery stores are probably the best start. They are medium priced and available at the big box community shredders that, of course, we fought so hard to prevent and now wouldn't be caught dead in. (Just be sure to take as few breaths as possible inside to prevent toxification and EI ramp up from the formaldehyde out gassing from the cheap clothing and fabrics made cheap by the sweat house labor in Bangladesh by poor women and children now immune-system trashed by "better living through chemistry" and american consumer hysteria).

But it may be that standard car batteries are not unusable, especially in a shorter run...and in the interest of just getting started. Your neighbor has one in their SUV right now. They can also sometimes be resurrected from the piles of traded in "junkers" at the parts store by putting them on a charger and restarting, or arcing them a few times. One of my fleet of four is just such a soul, resurrected from the dead...even frozen with bulging (but not split and leaking) case, cleaned up and "zapped" with the deep cycle charger through three or four repeated charging cycles. It's weary eyes opened, new life dawned and its now romping and playing with its other black plastic cohorts just fine, taking its turn valiantly and without impairment in its zeal of servitude to bring the obviously superior species light and joy each nite. This is, however, about the fringe of efficiency here and probably an exercise only for the terminal and foolhardy "planet savers" (of which, if you are indeed one, are the most blessed and will be given a silver plated battery post cleaner on arrival at the pearly gates...conx, uneleahh, umbah).