Off Grid Design in an On Grid World

When was the Last Time you were Off Grid?

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For me, the last time I was off grid was when this happened:

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Scary isn't it? Driving 60 mph in the middle of nowhere doing the North Coast 500 and hitting a deer. Just like that I had to compose myself, get the car off the road, contact my family, get insurance notified, and get a pickup team out, all with no phone service. That was a challenge! It gave me a sense of how challenging living off grid is, especially when it is unexpected.

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So what did I do to get back on gird? Well, I had to get in my pal's car and drive 50 miles south of where I crashed to get service in a wee town called Ullapool. Of course, some serious things could have happened because of this. What if we had hit another deer? What if there was no service in the town? What if someone stole my crashed car? Luckily none of these things happened and everything worked out fine but it just shows that it is really hard to be constantly prepared to live off grid. If we can design to bridge the gap between living off and on grid then these kind of situations will be much easier to resolve. 

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Sometimes all we need to do is Charge a Box!

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I thought this was a really interesting point that Erica made. Everyone in my class had been designing integrated systems for living off grid. For example, a solar-powered light or wind-powered bike, but in reality a battery is often all we need for power. Now, for our project, this doesn't really meet the design criteria but it is interesting to think about nonetheless. Phones, cooking equipment, lights all these things often just need a box with some electricity.

Design for Extremes

The extreme I want to focus on is flooding as I have never experienced it before and did not even know what you had to do when it occurs:

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Just look at the second level, "Turn off utilities if safe to do so". That is the government telling you to start living off grid! Therefore, you must have prevention measures in place. I think it must be a really interesting space to design for.

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