After 16 years of living off the grid I now have a wealth of information to share with you. After a lot of writing about different topics I realized I don’t have a tips and tricks for living off the grid. These are just some basic tips that will help you achieve your dream. If you keep them in mind while you are trying to make the switch I’m sure you will succeed.

The biggest tip I can give you is to never lose sight of your goal. 16 years ago when we were going to make the switch we actually had people laugh at us, but those same people now ask for our help with their own conversions.

Start small and take baby steps at first. Living off the grid is a learning process. You’re going to be generating your own energy and you’ll need to do a little bit of learning along the way. I recommend to first start out by making your house more energy efficient, and just become more aware of how you’re using energy in your home. This can help quite a bit when it comes to building your renewable energy system as the less energy you need the less money you’ll need to spend to produce it.

If you have a little bit of DIY skills consider building the solar panels or wind generator yourself. I know you may not think that you can actually do this, but trust me… we didn’t think we could really do it either, but we managed to do it.

Get in touch with people who share the same ideals as you. They have a ton of information that they are willing to share with you. Right now there are literally thousands of places you could find people who are like minded. Forums are the best place as you can take part in discussions and ask questions from people who have actually made the switch.

Above all is never give up. One of my favourite quotes of all time is “those people who give up never realize how close they were to success.” This is true in almost every case. We’ve been very close to giving up several times, but just by hanging in there and reminding ourselves why we were doing this we were able to achieve our dream of energy independence. I believe that if you want to you can do it too.

Andrew Oke is very interested in renewable energy. He has 16 years experience living off the grid, and has completely built his own renewable energy system. Visit his website at Living Off The Grid

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