Mainers relish living off the power grid

BINGHAM – Just because Richard Roberts and Martha Maloney live 21/2 miles from the nearest power line doesn’t mean they have to read by candlelight and take cold showers.

On a recent day, with the temperature at 8 degrees and whipping winds making it feel 20 degrees colder, Roberts and Maloney were warmed by the fire in their 25-year-old wood-burning stove and the heat from three propane heaters.

Solar panels in a field outside their home give them power for their electric lights, computer, stereo, TV, blender and other devices. Their refrigerator and kitchen stove run off propane. They heat their water using copper tubing that runs through the wood stove. Their phone operates off an old roof antenna.

Living off the electric power grid can conjure up images of life on the frontier, without the simplest of luxuries such as lights, a TV or a hot shower. Out here in the dead of winter, off a dirt road in a corner of this Somerset County town, Roberts and Maloney are proof that it doesn’t have to be that way.

The husband and wife say they don’t lack for anything – except electric bills – while being self-sufficient and easy on the environment. Even if they could connect to the power grid free of charge, they wouldn’t do it.

“We’ve survived this long without it. What’s the advantage of having it?” Roberts said.

Across Maine and northern New England, thousands of miles of power lines wind their way to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, delivering power to the region’s 3.2 million people. But within that grid of power lines are lots of gaps the wires don’t reach.

Many people who own homes in those gaps use alternative energy sources because of the high cost – $45,000 to $70,000 or more per mile to extend lines to a home, depending on the landscape – to connect to the grid. Other people who live within reach of power lines choose to use alternative power for philosophical or political reasons.

Nobody tracks how many people live off the grid. But it’s thought the number is on the rise as technology improves and prices go down for solar power, and as people move to outlying areas in search of land that is affordable, but removed from the power grid.

Richard Komp of Jonesport, president of the Maine Solar Energy Association, estimates that more than 1,000 homes in Maine are off the grid, not including seasonal camps and summer cottages. The Maine Public Utilities Commission is working with Komp to come up with an exact number of homes that use solar power, either off the grid or as a supplemental power source.

Floyd Severn, owner of Maine Solar in Starks, has a map of Maine on his wall with several hundred pushpins showing where he has installed residential solar power systems since 1975. The pins are in every county, as well as on remote islands off the coast.

Severn, whose house and business are half a mile from the nearest power line, said he personally knows hundreds of people who live off the grid. Severn uses solar panels, perched prominently atop his roof, for his home and business, which have 5,700 square feet of space between them.

The inside of Severn’s home looks like it’s out of a home design magazine – not what you might imagine for a home off the grid. He even has an Italian espresso machine and a red-cedar sauna.

This, he said gesturing to the surroundings, shows that people don’t have to give up anything to live off the grid.

In Manchester, Tom Bartol and his wife and young son live in a 2,200-square-foot saltbox home they built in 2003 with solar power. While many solar power systems can cost more than $25,000, Bartol installed his for $10,000, just $2,000 more than it would have cost to connect his home to the power grid, he said.

Bartol said many people view folks who live off the grid as “hippies or granola-heads.” In his case, he said, his family simply wants to make efficient use of Earth’s finite resources.

“I think there’s a misconception that you have to have this solar-looking house or live this crazy lifestyle,” he said.

Nationally, the hotbeds of solar energy include California, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey and other places that offer tax breaks and other incentives and laws that encourage it, according to Brad Collins, executive director of the American Solar Energy Society in Boulder, Colo.

Alternative energy is also growing in places where the power supply is less predictable. Californians still recall the rolling brownouts of a few summers ago. And who in Maine can forget the ice storm of 1998 that left 700,000 people in the dark?

“I think people in northern New England like to be self-sufficient to the best of their abilities. You see that in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine,” Collins said. “And this is a technology that allows you to be self-sufficient.”

In Maine, Roberts and Maloney built their 16-by-16 cabin off the grid because they couldn’t afford it any other way when they moved to the state from Ohio.

It was 1976 when Roberts, Maloney and a group of 18 others bought 100 acres in Bingham for $18,000, put it in a trust and began building homes. All together, 11 houses were built – none connected to the grid. Eighteen kids were born and raised in the small community.

Nowadays only three of the houses are occupied year-round. The rest are used seasonally, with the owners living in other parts of Maine and elsewhere, drawn away for jobs and other assorted reasons.

Roberts and Maloney have expanded their home over the years, adding a living room, a sunroom, an office, a garage and a workshop. They still use an outhouse, but hope to replace it with an indoor composting toilet.

When people in nearby Brighton Plantation last summer began talking about extending the power lines down the road, Roberts and Maloney gave extra thought to what it would be like to be connected to the grid. They decided that even if it were affordable, they didn’t want it.

Maloney said she always feels comforted when she’s driving home and passes the last power pole on the road leading home.

“When the poles stop,” she said, “I take a deep breath and let out a good ‘whew.'”