How to Live Off-grid

by Nick Rosen

Literally, the word 'off-grid' refers to places or people without mains water or power. Off-grid locations can range from private islands to yurts and tree-houses; the people living there might be back-packers, right wing survivalists, international business travellers or hippies; they may move around in buses or yachts, houseboats or 4-wheel drives. All are outside or in between the criss-crossing lines of power, water and phone that delineate the civilized world. Some are trying to save the planet, some live that way because it is all they can afford, some just want the freedom. This book is about that physical sense of off-grid. But it is also about taking the off-grid attitude into your local park or your own back garden. It is part travellogue as Nick Rosen, his wife and baby take off in a camper van to visit off-gridders representing every aspect of living off-grid, both part-time or permanent. And it is also a guide to avoiding the pitfalls and finding the best solutions - and the most appealing gadgetry - for going off-grid yourself.

Nick Rosen is an award-winning documentary-maker, journalist and media analyst. He has produced and directed documentaries for ITV, Channel 4 (including Brezhnev's Daughter which won Best International Programme: New York Film and TV Festival 1994, and the widely praised documentary for PBS and C4 about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York) and for BBC Radio 4. His articles have appeared in the Times, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and Washington Post. In 1995 he founded one of the first UK Web-design companies and the same year he wrote the Durlacher Report, a financial study of the Internet which spawned a generation of Internet investors. He recently launched a website on the subject of the book: www.off-grid.net.