The “half of americans” in the headline is those that live in apartment buildings.
No roof, no solar power.
That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun.
While community solar is indeed awesome, we need to have apartment and commercial buildings install solar as well.
It’s easy to set it up as a mobile “off-grid” wifi access point to host a calibre library of banned books.
https://github.com/hydroponictrash/Tiny-Banned-Book-Library
This is good, but more work needs to be done to hook up private, home based solar and wind systems to the grid. Some local power companies still drag feet to tie home solar to their grid.
You need to pull your usage records from the electric company to have a baseline of what you will need in terms of Kw over the course of a month. It should be on your bill.
Then figure out what you can cut, and what size generator/solar panels/battery backup you’ll need to get by. Make sure to figure out what you are going to do in the cold months and the hot months.
THEN figure out if you are even allowed to be “off grid” in your area. You may be required to keep the electric line running to the house, but you can shut this off at your breaker box so you won’t use any electricity. You will still get a monthly bill from the electric company for the hookup (it’s usually very small, $5-$15).
best of luck!
For thousands of years humans have lived in “15 min villages” where almost everything has been nearby.
And most 15 min city definitions I’ve seen includes some sort of bike option.
I encourage everyone who lives in a city (or suburb) to look up routes from their home to groceries/pharmacies/schools/etc on google maps. I just did for myself and I’m already in a 15 minute city.
What’s lacking is the infrastructure for people to safely get to these places without a car.
Decathlon? They used to carry somewhat decent wool shirts. The ones I got from there still hold up.