- 5 months ago
Living Off the Grid in the City Podcast. Here I discuss the very important advantage of living off grid. The requirement for creativity and ingenuity. These requirements are so because of the many challenges introduced by off grid living. Problems, or what I call “trouble”, that will push your thinking, ideas, resourcefulness, and problem solving to high levels. Perhaps, because of these troubles, you may come up with unique ideas and products, that help you and others live better and happier.
Hector Vladimir 2025©
https://www.youtube.com/@hbcsolarpvtech
https://www.youtube.com/@hbcsolarpvtechbyron
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552559207892
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyWqApEqGtc6nd-_C6bkiKnMxLBg7DfgK
https://rumble.com/c/c-5079280
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/1yG6vacOmMN7
Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/hectorvladimir
Substack page: https://hectorvladimir.substack.com/
For information purposes only. Always follow appropriate and applicable regulatory code for all installations, modifications, and fabrications. For US electrical installations follow the codes of the authority having jurisdiction. For international electrical installations follow the codes of your region’s electrical authority.
Hector Vladimir 2025©
https://www.youtube.com/@hbcsolarpvtech
https://www.youtube.com/@hbcsolarpvtechbyron
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552559207892
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyWqApEqGtc6nd-_C6bkiKnMxLBg7DfgK
https://rumble.com/c/c-5079280
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/1yG6vacOmMN7
Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/hectorvladimir
Substack page: https://hectorvladimir.substack.com/
For information purposes only. Always follow appropriate and applicable regulatory code for all installations, modifications, and fabrications. For US electrical installations follow the codes of the authority having jurisdiction. For international electrical installations follow the codes of your region’s electrical authority.
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TechTranscript
00:00section six ingenuity and creativity being off the grid will incentivize you to think differently think more and think creatively about the way you spend your time resources and energy
00:16this is a great advantage as with this a lifestyle of rapid learning and development may arise so who knows what area of society you may advance or even invent
00:31i believe that as an off gridder you will likely cognitively expand into territories that few around you have putting you in the forefront of learning and creating
00:43perhaps in exciting new and useful fields such as energy agriculture communications and computers the benefits of living off the grid may unlock potential in these and countless other fields because of your decreased reliance on employment
01:00increased time available and newly learned skills thinking efficiently enables you to be not only more efficient but you may generate more with less including works money and ideas
01:15you will be encouraged to think creatively i wrote encouraged and not forced as many in the field express because living off the grid in most modern societies is a voluntary endeavor
01:30the grid in most instances is just a phone call or a few clicks away and it is so natural to become part of a paid grid connection that the opposite not being part of the grid is what's difficult
01:46however once you plunge into this lifestyle and disconnect from your utility services you hopefully will be ready with systems in place to allow you to live happily safely and productively
02:01i did not say replace the grid this is because significant adjustments are required and replacing the grid with a similar system is just wasteful and unnecessary
02:14as in your off-grid endeavors you may be attempting to get away from the glare noise and stresses of the grid instead if well prepared you will be transferring all your systems to what i call real-life testing
02:29this will require your full attention and ingenuity to maintain and steadily improve otherwise if you are not fully prepared before you disconnect this will require not only extra ingenuity but also some failures and suffering to deal with
02:48in either case you will likely use lots of both ingenuity and creativity before during and after disconnecting from the grid
02:59as alluded to here so far living off the grid takes knowledge skills and technologies that you may not have may need to attain or may need to develop further
03:11and if you are the average world citizen your time financial and material resources are limited requiring further creativity and ingenuity to manage
03:23although creativity and ingenuity are terms often used interchangeably here i separate them by my own meaning of the words here creativity will take more of the artistic aesthetic innovative spontaneous trying thought and manual resourcefulness
03:43looking at the world through an improvising lens while ingenuity will take the more technical methodical calculating theoretical and exacting sense of the word
03:57i believe just thinking about getting off the grid kicks the wheels of creativity turning in your brain the very idea of being smartly independent in a significant way can be liberating and exhilarating
04:12i believe this is such an awesome prospect especially if it is adopted by a growing number of people around the world just thinking of the positive consequences and impact on many areas of society like drastically reduced energy consumption world-wide may give you goosebumps
04:31the consequences could involve nothing less than a revolutionary shift toward the improvement of the world's environment health social fabric among others
04:43it would put us on a path of greater productivity and happiness and it would mark the beginning of the fall of many polluting industries
04:52these and other potential goods that you and others may be unleashing will likely fuel your motivation and creativity and keep you going throughout your difficult endeavors
05:04i believe as an off-gridder you will become more creative to solve the many problems that will arise before during and after you disconnect from the grid
05:15i believe creativity will make even your most daunting challenges solvable for example you may live in an extremely cold area and you may not be sure how you will have heat if you disconnect from your power or gas utility
05:31but thinking about the problem should cause you to search for answers from others on the internet your library you may find answers in nature through your prayers in your meditations for example you may ask yourself how do birds deal with the cold weather
05:51so you may decide to find more about different types of insulation low energy types of heating technologies and different types of housing configuration and design that allow for better heating
06:04you may find out that body heat is adequate for your comfort and preserving it better may save you large amounts of other heating energy
06:13also you may find yourself constructing or installing rare customized and unique structures and mechanisms to facilitate things that are not available when you are not connected to the grid
06:26for example water collection and pumping systems photovoltaic array structures and septic tanks just to name a few
06:34you may build a motor control circuit for your high efficiency dc air conditioner or build yourself a non-electric food cooler using ancient plans
06:45you can get creative in so many different ways when you have off-grid as inspiration for example through my off-grid endeavors i began to think about custom homes that are built more efficiently for off-grid systems
07:00and the result is a radically different type of home that looks and operates vastly different from the conventional match-box home i call them match-boxes because they are all rectangular filled with sticks and can light up like a christmas tree in the event of a fire
07:19but jokes aside off-grid thinking has taken my creative thinking to a variety of areas of specialty and i am sure it can do the same for many others
07:30off-grid thinking and endeavors will surely engage you in unique ideas experimentation planning and building
07:38it has launched me in just a few years from knowing very little about electricity mechanics design computers and electronics to training working and earning money in those fields
07:52i have thought about sketched designed and built many structures and mechanisms that have contributed to my current off-grid level those efforts may surely further enable others with more resources
08:06i am convinced off-grid thinking can unleash a menagerie of ingenious ideas in any one with comparable passion many can turn these ideas into plans and many may turn those plans into viable finished products
08:23i am talking about new or perhaps never tried technologies for example you may develop an extremely efficient way to heat the air in a room using low voltage or build the next generation of quiet and efficient wind turbines that is cheap and relatively easy to build
08:43you may become an engineer in your own way or you may advance knowledge in a certain field so efficiently that you become a recognized inventor
08:54ingenuity will surely take infinite and unpredictable directions with all individuals involved the larger issue i believe is getting the people involved in this type of thinking
09:06you see when you are herded by the middle people of the grid into a certain lifestyle of just paying for everything then i believe ingenuity becomes dormant
09:18getting yourself into trouble by trying daring new approaches to things i believe turns the wheel of ingenuity in your brain
09:28i believe trouble often spawns clever solutions so what more trouble than the many inconveniences brought upon you by going against the grid connected lifestyle
09:42there won't just be an easy button for you to press for example each time you need food water or comfort that easy button is likely your wallet
09:55in an off-grid lifestyle you will have to provide those independently reliably without money and indefinitely this won't be easy at first and it will take much ingenuity to accomplish
10:10having said all this you need not reinvent the wheel in every step you take mostly you will use ingenuity to improve or customize existing knowledge or technology
10:24for example you should not build a solar module using cells if there are already many cheap solar modules in the market even free unless you have discovered a much more efficient cell or a cheaper way to put one together
10:40make no mistake advancing tech will require tremendous skill and knowledge but some may possess them also you may attempt to improve on solar cell efficiency by building a simple and affordable solar tracker system
10:56something that is currently complex and costly for example i have thought about this problem and perhaps a wooden structure a simple electronic circuit and a few motors may do the trick
11:10ingenuity will likely be often optional and require extra efforts that may not often yield good or any results but this is okay because even if an invention or improvement fails it is a step forward if well documented
11:28so i would ensure to record your ingenious efforts and share them regardless of success because it is often what doesn't work that can reveal what does work
11:40there are many areas of off-grid living that need ingenious minds and contributions especially contributions to low-cost accessible materials parts and high-efficiency technologies
11:54most people that need to be off-grid are the poor so for them to advance economically they need to be off the grid or at least have low-cost energy
12:08this is difficult to achieve and rare to come across especially for reliable systems so development in that area is needed
12:18another example is that materials such as metals are generally costly and their manufactured components require complex and expensive factories
12:30these and other factories make inverters generators and air conditioners largely expensive but economies of scale have made many of these finished products low-cost or even when discarded
12:46also cannibalizing parts from grid-tide to build off-grid technologies are possible alternatives to high-cost items furthermore through ingenuity alternative materials may be developed to replace conventional ones
13:02these may offer comparable or the same benefits contributions to technologies that are more economically accessible and reliable are to be welcomed by much of the world
13:16contributions to efficiency are always important for off-grid living efficiency can save money time and make off-grid living possible for many low-resource people
13:29technologies methods and environments can use efficiency advancements technologies such as air conditioners battery operated vehicles and others can be operated more cheaply and longer when they are more efficient
13:47if efficiency comes at a low cost the benefits double as they become more efficient and available to more people ingenuity can enable anyone with the means and opportunity to enhance technologies with efficiency
14:04methods can also be improved and become more efficient for example running energy demanding equipment during the most energy abundant part of the day is an efficient method to use the energy
14:17for example solar energy stored in a battery bank but be aware that energy companies charge more during high energy demand hours
14:29automating efficient methods is also a way to be more efficient for example electric vehicle charging could be set to automatically occur during the least expensive energy rate hours of the day
14:44for grid-tide systems this would generally be in the midnight hours and for off-grid it would be during the most energy abundant part of the day or midday
14:54experimentation and testing are important tasks that many off-gridders engage in you may experiment with technologies you may have developed or improved to see if it works and see if it is useful in real life
15:10by real life i mean under normal conditions not highly controlled conditions as those in a test lab you may experiment with unique and innovative combinations of parts or configurations of equipment technologies and methods
15:27you may get more efficiency or more utility from equipment this way at times much more or you may be attempting to build a new technology that requires both experimenting and testing throughout its design phases
15:43you may even be able to come up with a revolutionary discovery one that may change the off-grid landscape completely testing is very important for existing and improved technologies
15:57it allows real world data to be generated under various use conditions many of which are unique this data may be valuable for you others and even for the manufacturers of the products being tested
16:13for example the speed at which dc to ac inverters are manufactured throughout the world beg for real world test results
16:22as these are often tested in controlled lab environments and lack data from various user scenarios for example you may test the technology in a very hot and humid location such as inside of a boiler room and share the performance data with other users and the manufacturer
16:42you may share such user test data online through popular feedback reviews blogs videos or audio podcasts
16:50testing may also help you quickly determine if a piece of equipment will work for what you need it for if you fail to put that equipment through a series of tests similar to what you will be doing later on you may find that the equipment fails or underperforms
17:07then it may be too late or inconvenient to get a refund or replacement from the seller this very scenario occurred to me years ago with a rather expensive large inverter
17:20upon receiving it i assumed it was good and stored it for many months later to find it faulty when i installed it for use it ended up being useless
17:31by that time return options were not available and repair options were not worth the cost i ended up selling the product for parts at a fraction of its original cost
17:43while off-grid your technical and scientific knowledge is surely to flourish so are many other types of knowledge in many instances during your efforts you will surely be required to understand concepts in many areas of technology and science
18:00such as electricity computers physics chemistry hydraulics biology botany mechanics and more electrical knowledge will be critical because this is perhaps the most noticeable change in your off-grid lifestyle
18:17once you pull the utility plug you're disconnecting an entire industry that was working day and night to keep hundreds of amperes at your disposal
18:27when that goes you are left with whatever amount of energy you can produce and only for as long as your storage bank can dispense it
18:37you will likely and are highly encouraged to install maintain and use your off-grid electrical system yourself since straying away from self-installation and operation can be prohibitively costly
18:53and this way you are truly in charge and self-sufficient for these to occur you will need to understand system components and how electricity works
19:05for safety understanding electrical flow cannot be understated most off-grid electrical systems generate ac current that is lethal
19:16death or serious injury may come from electrical shocks or fires caused by sudden discharge of current also electrical arcs may occur where a violent electrical explosion may cause serious bodily harm
19:32electrical knowledge will also be required to improve and maintain the reliability of an off-grid electrical system i recommend you become knowledgeable on basic electricity before going off the grid if you plan to have electricity
19:50this knowledge will give you an appreciation for its dangers and ensure you remain safe and it will give you satisfaction and pride in your efforts
20:01electrical knowledge may be expanded to the point that you become an expert in the field and perhaps work as an electrical worker electrician or electronics equipment repair person
20:13then you may build innovative circuits that are useful customized and unique even groundbreaking as it has been said knowledge is power and the more you know about a subject the more options you have with it
20:28you may learn or expand your knowledge in computers and programming automation is an exciting aspect of off-grid living and its systems
20:38and computers enable automation best you may automate many things using integrated circuits through computers and programming such as lighting solar trackers door systems water heater switching etc
20:54you may be able to track your wind or solar electricity generation and use it through a computer application and you may develop applications to calculate and monitor battery storage wind turbine size and solar array size needs for a particular home or load
21:14your knowledge of physics will enhance and expand your capability to do more and do better with off-grid technologies you may be able to save time and effort going after seemingly impossible feats like the elusive perpetual motion generators and black box technologies
21:34the internet is littered with claims of mysterious power machines and free energy devices although i warn you against these fantastical pursuits knowledge of physics can ground you into exhaustively established scientific principles
21:50and perhaps allow you to improve and invent technologies and mechanisms that work
21:56for example you may build a sound structure as an efficient home for living using physical principles like the use of the arc and fluid convection
22:06you may incorporate fluid heat exchange principles into an inverter to optimize its performance
22:13you may bring alive an ancient refrigeration technology and save hundreds per year on refrigeration costs
22:21you may with ease make measurements of optimal angles for your solar array or determine your neighborhood's visibility for your forty foot high wind turbine mast all thanks to physical principles
22:34relatively basic mathematics may be required for many of the physical and electrical principles encountered in off-grid fields of knowledge but a middle school education and above should suffice for most people
22:47chemistry is very useful knowledge when dealing with battery systems lead acid nickel iron and lithium ion batteries all rely on chemical reactions to operate
23:00if you understand these chemical reactions even on a basic level you are likely to effectively maintain and optimally use these batteries with cost effectiveness
23:12for example if you understand the limitations of lead acid batteries and your load or applications are low drain consisting of a few lights and solid state devices then lead acid batteries will do fine
23:27with deeper knowledge you may be able to refurbish old lead acid or nickel iron batteries and reuse otherwise throw-away assets
23:38and if you become an expert then you'd be capable of building battery systems from available raw and finished materials and working in this growing field chemistry may even help you replace your electric air heater or cooking range with butane or wood chip furnaces
23:57understanding the relationship of the elements of heat and fire are essential in improving and inventing heat exchange devices for many different uses
24:07further knowledge in hydraulics may enable you to wisely choose use and maintain different pump systems for water distribution water filtering and automation
24:20you may be able to improve on existing water pumps with your hydraulics knowledge or build your own automated irrigation system for a garden
24:31hydraulic principles apply to gravity powered water systems where no pump is needed
24:37this concept has been used in aqueducts and water distribution systems throughout the world since ancient times
24:46for example you may be able to cheaply and efficiently channel water into your home from natural water reservoirs like ponds lakes rivers and groundwater using simple and cost effective hydraulic principles and technologies
25:02also knowledge in biology is important when you are off the grid for your food sources farming animals humanely and efficiently requires knowledge of biology in the fields of animal welfare human health animal biology among others
25:20plants are live organisms that need understanding too knowledge in botany will enable you to economically grow maintain and consume quality and dependable plant foods
25:34and keeping abreast with plant needs diseases and harmful pests will enable you to be a more productive planter mechanics as a science is everywhere
25:46if you basically know about it it will help you make better choices and improve on available structures technologies and concepts used to live off-grid
25:57if you become specialized in mechanics you may improve technologies and incorporate them into a system for a variety of off-grid uses
26:06you may invent new technologies or systems that may facilitate or enable people to live better lives off the grid for example you may create lighter customized bicycles for transportation cargo and working
26:23many people around the world depend on them and there is a considerable demand for all types of bicycles or you may invent a lifting mechanism from existing parts or cheaply sourced parts that may enable loading and unloading of heavy items at low cost
26:41for example i currently work as a multi-purpose technician and i often install large heavy monitors on the walls of classrooms a compact lightweight mechanical device that helps me install these without help from a second worker would be extremely helpful
26:59multiple fields of knowledge are often used in countless modern technologies electricity mechanics and hydraulics often come together in automated systems of all kinds
27:13if you add computers to these then you approach the field of robotics some off-gridders may delve into this exciting field after becoming knowledgeable and skilled in these various fields
27:26robotics may help off-gridders in further automating tasks for their everyday life or work that may also earn a significant income
27:37knowledge and skill in robotics will surely generate demand from generously compensated positions and contracts which may be used to expand your off-grid endeavors and introduce them to different industries
27:50clearly expanded technical and scientific knowledge will help you in your endeavors before disconnecting from the grid and while off the grid and may help you enhance your income potential too
28:02even plainly theoretical knowledge of these fields will enhance your experience with your off-grid endeavors giving value to the many tasks and technologies encountered while off the grid
28:15and most powerfully is the potential of sharing much of your learned knowledge with an audience that in turn may take some of that knowledge and run with it
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