We know it’s possible to live off-grid, or to produce your own energy and feed it back into the grid, but is anyone actually doing it? It turns out there’s a growing number of self-sustaining homes, which in turn sustain companies like this one, that will retrofit your home with solar panels and wind turbines for energy production.
One homeowner in downtown Toronto finds it hard not to feel smug about living off-grid, and who can blame him? Energy independence, and especially being able to produce this energy using sustainable technologies, must feel pretty darn good.
What are prices like these days? A home retrofitting kit, to set you up with a micro-hydro or solar system, and which comes complete with batteries, inverters, and installation kits, can cost as little as $9,795! That will give you up to 45kW of power, which is more than enough to supply a home. Kits go up to almost $30,000, and installation by the company costs more—but going off-grid is certainly not as prohibitively expensive as it once was, and is quickly becoming a more viable option.
