{"id":20769,"date":"2016-05-19T20:28:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T01:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20769"},"modified":"2016-05-19T20:28:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T01:28:57","slug":"how-to-get-your-apartment-off-the-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20769","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\n

\"Solar<\/a><\/p>\n

Picture: Low-tech Magazine’s solar powered office.<\/p>\n

The typical solar PV power installation requires access to a private roof and a big budget. However, wouldn’t it be possible to get around these obstacles by installing small solar panels on window sills and balconies, connected to a low-voltage direct current (DC) distribution network? To put this theory to the test, I decided to power Low-tech Magazine’s home office in Spain with solar energy, and write my articles off the grid.<\/p>\n

Solar panels have become cheaper and more efficient in recent years, but they are far from a universal solution, even in sunny regions. One reason is that a typical solar photovoltaic (PV) installation is still beyond the budget of many people. The average pricing for a 5kW residential PV system completed in 2014 varied from\u00a0$11,000 in Germany to $16,450 in the USA. [1,\u00a02] Roughly half of that amount concerns the installation costs. [3]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

A second obstacle for solar power is that not everybody lives in a single-family dwelling with access to a private roof. Those who reside in apartment buildings have little chance of harvesting solar power with a conventional roof-mounted system. Furthermore, in apartment buildings, the roof would quickly become too crowded to cover the electricity use of all residents, a problem that grows larger the more floors there are in a building. Lastly, a typical solar installation is problematic when you’re renting a place, whether it’s a house or an apartment.<\/p>\n

I’m one of those people who runs into every one of these obstacles: I live in a flat, I rent the place, and I don’t have the budget for a conventional solar system. However, I receive a lot of sunshine.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid Picture: Low-tech Magazine’s solar powered office. The typical solar PV power installation requires access to a private roof and a big budget. However, wouldn’t it be possible to get around these obstacles by installing small solar panels on window sills and balconies, connected to a low-voltage direct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13911,11521,1574,1859],"class_list":["post-20769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-apartment","tag-low-tech-magazine","tag-power-grid","tag-solar-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20770,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20769\/revisions\/20770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}