<\/a>The amazing night sky as seen from the forest … unless it’s raining<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Solar power (or, more precisely, photovoltaic power) was a relatively recent commercial product in 1984, made possible by the same semiconductors that powered my beloved computers. A local entrepreneur, David Katz, had started Alternative Energy Engineering five years before, and my dad was working there part time. Katz, a former Department of Defense employee, was also a back-to-the-land migrant in the late 70s. At the 1980 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Katz came across a guy in a booth selling solar-powered toys. More interested in the solar panels than the toys, he persuaded the bemused booth owner to sell him 100 panels right there. Back in Northern California, Katz sold them all in two days. It was fascinating to me that the energy was, apart from the cost of the solar panels themselves, free.<\/p>\n
I go back to England at the end of the summer, not to return to Humboldt County again for 14 years. In the meantime, the house in the forest gains several extensions, on two levels, and a beautiful J\u00f8tul wood-burning stove. The power system grows more complex, with an Outback inverter and charge controller, and more solar panels. A phone line is installed with 3,000 feet of armored cable rolled out from the neighbor’s house, where the phone company junction box sits. A new bathroom is added in time for a family reunion in 2000. A studio is built for my dad at the bottom of the driveway. Propane heaters go in. Then, a propane tank, and an 8.5 kilowatt Kohler generator to replace the little hand-started one. Three 2,500 gallon storage tanks are added to keep water flowing in the dry summer months and provide water in the event of fire. A cabin is built next to the house in 2005, insulation is added throughout, and the whole thing gets a snazzy burgundy and blue paint job. A covered carport goes up shortly after that.<\/p>\n
When I moved from Paris to live in California in 2009, the house I came to was very different to the little cabin I first saw 25 years earlier. I spent a few months there, before getting a job in San Francisco writing software for a medical device company. \u00a0I visited occasionally, but it wasn\u2019t until July 2012 that I became a permanent resident out in the Wired Woods.<\/p>\n
A difference of opinion at work leads me to a practical appreciation of the difference between European and American employer\/employee relations, a new career as a telecommuting consultant beckons, and I set my mind to inventing technology for off-grid seniors in the next gripping installment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Advances in alternative energy technology over the last four decades have made it both easier and cheaper to live off-grid. This series provides a personal perspective on the pluses and minuses of living with technology in the forests of Northern California.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s July, 1984. The miners\u2019 strike in England is getting bloody. The twenty-third summer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":14845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,31,908],"tags":[3626,3624,2738,3621,3625,2046,3542],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14777"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16399,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14777\/revisions\/16399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}