No electricity bills for 3 years, the challenges and rewards of going Offgrid, Micheál Ó Loingsigh

Interesting interview about going offgrid in Ireland.

What is your background briefly?

I have a degree in Fishery Studies and also studied Organic Horticulture for two years. Between 1999 and 2001 I lived in South America where I worked with indigenous Quechua communities and reconnected with Nature. Previous to that I lived in New York and Boston for two years where I had become disillusioned with modern culture.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Yes, I have had a gradual transition to the way of life I practice now. I was always attuned to being part of nature. Over the years I have become a more conscious consumer and aware that every action I make has a reaction in the environment. The moment I realised the dangerous path humanity is on was when I learned 20 years ago that in 1950 there were 3.5 billion low energy consumers on planet Earth and we were approaching 7 billion high energy consumers (now 8 billion).

I have experienced life in many developing countries and can see the increasing pollution each time I travel. This pressure on the natural world and resources can not continue and sooner or later we will have to face the consequences of over consumption. It is irresponsible of us to pass on an unhealthy planet to our children. I have a 10 year old son and a big part of my mission in life is to teach and share with him a sustainable way of living. He has a great love of nature and connection with nature.

He plays out of doors a lot and has lots of pets and farm animals to care for. We do not have TV for over 10 years but he has a ps3 (with non violent adventure games). As I say to him ‘we want to be constructive not destructive’. This includes the games that he plays and dvds, movies that he watches on the internet.

As a parent it is my job to filter what is suitable for him to watch. He knows from an early age not to ask for things all the time and he will not have a mobile phone until he is 15. He is cool with that. Children are becoming addicted to these technologies and live in a virtual world that can distort their reality. When the weather is bad he sometimes plays minecraft with his friends building a virtual farm.

When the weather is good he is outside with real farm animals (we keep a small flock of sheep, chickens, a greyhound (who looks after the sheep and chickens) and a number of other pets including his favourite, a bearded dragon lizard called Spike. We incubated some of the chicks for our flock of 18 hens with an incubator powered by solar.

Offgrid with Micheál Ó Loingsigh

1 min pitch for what you are doing now Why did you get involved with renewable energy & living off the grid?

To be honest I was fed up with the current energy industry model in Éire and how it was not supporting small energy producers. I remember a pilot scheme was started in 2008 for small energy producers where a number of grant applicants were given a feed in tariff and when that finished after 10 years there were still no proper plans in place to support small scale energy producers. In 2008 I grid-tied one of County Tipperary’s first micro wind turbines to experience the process involved but did not apply for the feed-in tariff/grant. I had an interest but did not want to get involved in grant applications so I just invested some savings at the time.

I wanted to gain experience and see how things panned out. Ten years later the pilot scheme finished and there was still nothing concrete in terms of feed-in tariff being offered so I decided I had enough and made the decision to go completely off-grid. Last year the government announced a feed-in tariff will be offered soon so there is slow progress being made but it will be interesting to see what that feed-in tariff will be.

It should be greater than the current price per kilowatt consumers pay for electricity (or at the very least the same) to make it interesting. My belief is Big Energy won’t like this though. I believe the solution to our island becoming carbon neutral in terms of our renewable energy is a combination of small private and community owned energy producers working with the big energy producers.

Incidentally the current portfolios of large wind and planned future solar farms in Éire are predominantly owned by international corporations so there needs to be more local involvement and profit sharing for a more ethical marketplace and just society.

I don’t feel we are represented well by the powers that be at the moment so I am enjoying our energy independence and not having to deal with the bureaucracy any more. In the future, if the feed in tariff is rewarding for small producers and their efforts, I may get involved in more sizeable energy production where I get rewarded for my efforts but for now the system I have is a perfect fit.

How does your Micro Renewable Energy System work?

I have a 3000watt (3kw) Victron inverter so I can use anything up to 3kw. This includes a 2.8kw shower. I use power tools like a circular saw, power drill, electric strimmers, (we also have 4 sheep that keep the grass down on 3 acres and provide organic lamb… and we have 5 in an energy-efficient chest freezer since December.) You become more energy aware as you live with the system and only switch on power-hungry devices like power tools, washing machine, immersion for a shower during sunny days. We use a small wood and peat burning stove for cooking and heating water a lot during the wintertime.

We harvest our own turf and plant native trees each year where we harvest the turf. It is a very efficient small 4kw Ború stove (made in Thurles) and heats a 40ft by 20ft two bedroom open plan well innsulated cottage. It is very comfortable. A 2.5kw lithium ion BYD battery (10 year warranty) is fully charged by the time the sun goes down most days. During the wintertime I top this up with a 1.5kw wind turbine and I have a petrol generator as back up that quick charges the battery (in a few hours) if needed, very occasionally during the wintertime.

We have good wind where we live on the west coast. www.windguru.cz is the website we use for forecasting the wind each week. If it is too windy I switch the turbine off. We are over producing solar electricity with our 2.4kw pv array for 7 or 8 months of the year so the wind turbine is really only on during the winter months to top the battery up to 100%.

A digital colour monitor from Victron Energy shows how much energy is in the battery and how much is being used when appliances are on. The goal each evening is to have the battery at 100% charge to run through the night until solar power starts charging again the following morning.

Why do you think it is such a powerful idea? 

It is important for people to have the freedom to be energy and food independent. The Government model wastes a lot of energy and money with big business influence and ‘the grant culture’ we are addicted to slows progress down. An example is the 12 years it took to figure out a feed in tariff as mentioned earlier. This isn’t rocket science. It is ‘plug and play’ technology. We currently need 3 planet Earths in terms of resources so something will eventually give if we don’t change. We need action Now.

If we continue to live unsustainable lifestyles en masse we will face resource wars in the future. When this happens Eire, being an island, is at the end of the supply chain for energy and food in Europe. In an emergency there is a 4 or 5 day supply of fresh food on supermarket shelves (an example of this was seen when bread started running out during the Beast from the East snow storm a few years ago).

We can easily be self sufficient in food and energy if we (and our government) have the vision to do so. We also need to look at more sustainable forms of agriculture such as agroforestry in our food and energy mix. Our off grid homestead In West Clare practices agroforestry on a 4 acre small holding where 1000 native trees and fruit bushes have been planted over the past 3 years. Trees grow quicker due to the animals manuring the land around them.

Payback? … Pay it Forward!

The most popular question I hear from people is ‘what is the payback?’ when it comes to micro renewable energy systems. I choose not to participate in the grant culture and instead ‘just do it’. I am ‘paying it forward’ for Nature and have no regrets. It is a lifestyle choice. Some people go out and buy a new car.

I have a good second hand car and have no electricity bills for the next 25 years at least. If you look at a typical small household electricity bill of €800 per annum then my payback period for the system we use is about 8 years but I honestly don’t think about this any more.

The most important thing is I have not paid an electricity bill for 3 years and in 5 more years I will be getting free electricity for 17 more years (with possibly one battery replacement at a cost of approx. 1000e after 10 to 15 years). The inverter may also need to be replaced after 5 to 10 years at a cost of ~ €500.

Once the system was purchased all I thought about was managing my lifestyle around it and it has been a very rewarding adventure. I chose a low energy fridge freezer and lcd monitor for my son’s playstation and watching dvds. I have not had a TV for over 12 years (highly recommend it).

We have a rechargeable bluetooth speaker for extra sound if we want it. We can use all modern appliances under 3000 watts which is our inverter size. You learn to use one heavy load electric appliance at a time and not overload the inverter (eg. 2.8kw immersion for shower, 1200 watt hoover, 800 watt toaster, 1200 watt circular saw, toasted sandwich maker, 2000watt mini oven, 2000watt kettle.

Only one of these items can be switched on at a time but it is a habit you develop naturally after a few weeks). If you accidentally did overload the inverter by drawing two heavy loads at the same time eg. the oven and the immersion all that happens is you hear a beep from the inverter and it shuts off, then automatically comes on again when you turn one of the appliances off. The system teaches you naturally and you become aware of the wattage of each appliance after a very short time.

You can have as many small appliances like phone, laptops, fridge, tablets, stereo on at the same time totalling 3000watts. During the winter time we use a wood burning stove for cooking sometimes and there is always a large pot of hot water on the stove for washing dishes, etc. You learn not to waste electricity before generating it.

We do not use oil or gas heating although we have a biogas digester from www.homebiogas.com ready to go just haven’t got around to installing it yet. That will supply 6-8months of cooking gas each year from kitchen compost and sheep manure when we get it up and running.

What tips would you give to those looking to follow your example?

Don’t think about it too much.. start your renewable journey sooner rather than later. Buy a couple of extra 100Amp batteries for winter time and a battery charger (and charge on sunny days) plus 150 watt to 400 watt inverter for small appliances during the wintertime if needed to replace the need for the back up generator.

You can follow our Off Grid journey on our new website www.iEco.ie and plant trees every time you shop as an added bonus from our shop and Eco Marketplace links. The website is only getting started. The Off Grid Living blog will be filled with product reviews and Eco Tips as it grows and we hope you will join us occasionally and purchase using our affiliate links so that we can plant trees le cheile in Eire and Costa Rica.

We also operate a sister website (being redesigned this year) that promotes Ecotourism. Both websites are designed and maintained using our Off Grid renewable energy system.

www.iEco.ie

www.IrelandEcotourism.ie

See more information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

---

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking