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" CABOT, Vt. \u2014 Welcome to the resurrection of my blog. For the past year, I&amp;#039;ve been checking in on the progress of our Solar Home Project, a series of stories that have run in Popular Mechanics (the grand finale is scheduled for the January 2007 issue).  If you&amp;#039;ve somehow missed all the excitement, allow me to bring you up to speed. I live with my family (wife and two sons, ages five and two) in northern Vermont in an off-grid home. By &amp;quot;off-grid,&amp;quot; I mean that we are not connected to the electrical grid. We have electricity, but it&amp;#039;s harvested via a 1.8-kilowatt photovoltaic system and a 900-watt windmill (we also have a gas generator as backup). We store our power in a 24-volt, 1100-amp hour battery bank\u2014enough that we can run our house for about four days without recharging.  This blog will be about our experiences in off-grid living, but it will also be about much more. Should you choose to follow along, be prepared for somewhat-opinionated-but-always-honest discussions of energy in general. What is the future of energy in the U.S.? How can we make a successful shift from non-renewables to a sustainable energy future? Should I really purchase an espresso machine, even if it means I must run our generator to power it?  At least two out of those three are hugely important issues that deserve nothing less than frank discussion. It is my belief that for too long, we&amp;#039;ve had our collective head in the sand as we burn through our endowment of cheap oil and natural gas. Global warming is happening. Three-dollar gas has happened, and will happen again. The electrical grid is frayed and overloaded. In some regions, severely so.  Let&amp;#039;s talk about all these things, and some fun stuff, too. Questions? Comments? I love &amp;#039;em. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for more. \u2014Ben Hewitt "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a1036/4203188/>