Living Off Grid – Reduce Your Electrical Use in Two Easy Steps

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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Are you kidding me? Just two easy steps? If it were that simple everyone would be doing it right?
Well, that’s all it takes and I will list them for you now and save you the trouble of reading this blog if you want.

1. Turn it off
2.  Eliminate phantom power

When Laurie and I knew we were going to go off grid and be on some type of solar/battery/generator electrical system we started doing our homework and research. The most common theme in everything we read was about lifestyle changes. Everyone told us that we were going to have to change the way we live if we were going to be successful in our off grid adventure.
That being said, I need to be real clear on this – not once have we sacrificed or gone without in terms of electrical convenience. I’m sure you are wondering how that can be?

In our condo we had all electrical appliances with the exception of a gas hot water tank and a gas furnace. Everything else was electrical including the dryer and stove. We were using an average of 11 kwh (kilo watt hours) per day. If you don’t know what kwh means it doesn’t matter for the purpose of this blog. All that matters is that we were using 11 of them.

We made a commitment to practice reducing our electrical consumption before we moved off grid. All we did was make a conscious effort to turn it off if we weren’t using it and to reduce electrical phantom power. We managed to get it down to 9kwh per day instead of the 11 we had been using. That is a reduction of 18 percent!

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