I’ve written a bit about alternative energy and, put succinctly, getting and having it is fairly simple, fairly expensive but definitely well worth every penny. So far, however, I have just written about the money and effort. I think you should know the benefits as well….

There is a sense of freedom that can’t really be described adequately in conventional ways. Not by the weird finances of it, the relative ease of it, the reliability of it or even the sense of independence it represents for one’s own personal psychology (read: paranoia). And it is more than just not being dependent on a faceless, inhuman utilities company. Or government.

It is more like a hard-edged, measurable manifestation of personal growth.

Independence coupled with a bit of competence and a familiarity with one’s personal life support systems actually feels like an extension of yourself. Like you have grown stronger somehow. It’s weird. I am older, stupider and definitely poorer but, somehow, I feel stronger, more able and more competent simply because I put ‘another section’ of my living requirements under my own control.

It’s kind of pathetic, really. How dependent must we be from birth in our society that one small step away from the bosom, umbilicals and grasp of the city makes one feel so liberated?

Yes, I know what you are thinking…..“that’s just a feeling of independence, silly!”

And I am saying that it is more than that. Think of it this way: if I was given a chance to prepay-for-life all my electrical bills, including maintaining existing and owning new appliances with a source that was 100% reliable and I had the money with which to do it, would that not be the same?

Answer: No. No it would not. Even with that fantasy, I am ‘connected’ to something against my will. With my system, I can fix it. I can add to it. I can change it. It does not send me mail or phone me. Ain’t no smart meter reporting on me, either. I can care for my system as I do myself (hopefully a bit better) and it is that sense of personal ‘extension’, I am talking about.

There’s something else, too. It, too, is weird science. Having an alternative energy system feels organic. Crazy, eh? I mean you have steel towers (windgen) and wires and batteries and gensets and solar panels and God-knows-what-all technology and yet it feels organic. And this is why: the power (mostly) comes from the sun and the wind. And the more panels I add, the more organic it feels. It just feels ‘natural’ in a way the grid never can.

We try to do all this ‘personal growth’ stuff in other ways too, of course. Gardens. Fishing. Hunting (some day, maybe) and a variety of anyone-can-do-its like fixing and building things (instead of buying) and cooking from scratch and all that. Hell, we even try to eat the 100 mile diet and do it with slow-food. But there is nothing yet quite so satisfyingly lovely as generating our own electricity.

You might want to try it?