What is off-grid?
According to Wikipedia's explanation, I made a summary, which is also my own understanding: off-grid is a feature of buildings and a way of life. It refers to designing a building in an independent way so that it can achieve self-sufficiency of people and buildings without relying on one or more public facilities. The public facilities here include the public power grid, water supply system, natural gas system and sewer system, etc.
Why do some people choose to go off-grid?
There are many reasons why people choose to go off-grid. They want to take a RV trip; they are tired of life in the big city and want to experience life close to nature; perhaps some people are worried about urban riots and choose to stay away from the city. Of course, in addition to these active off-grid ones, there are also passive off-grid ones, such as the paralysis of public facilities and water pollution due to hurricanes and fires. Before receiving government relief, they will have to be self-sufficient.
How to protect off-grid life?
As mentioned above, off-grid requires us to achieve self-sufficiency in the materials and energy needed for life such as electricity, water, and fuel.
The first is electricity. We need electricity everywhere in our daily life. Electric lights are needed for lighting at night, fans or air conditioners are needed to cool down when it is hot, and the mobile phones we use for communication and information also need to be charged on time. Obviously, as modern people who have already adapted to today's life, without electricity, our life will become very difficult. In the off-grid life, the most commonly used items that can generate electricity are solar panels. Common solar cell materials on the market include amorphous silicon and crystalline silicon. Among them, crystalline silicon can be divided into polycrystalline silicon and single crystal silicon. The photoelectric conversion efficiency of the three materials is: monocrystalline silicon (15%～24%)>polycrystalline silicon (12-15%)>amorphous silicon (about 5%). However, crystalline silicon (monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon) basically does not generate current under low light, and amorphous silicon is good in low light (but the energy is inherently low under low light). So on the whole, it is more suitable to choose solar panels made of crystalline materials.
Of course, solar panels alone are not enough, because they themselves are prepared for generating electricity, and to store electricity, energy storage devices are needed. It is best to have an energy storage device with a variety of power interfaces. We can directly connect the charging cables of other items to the energy storage device and place it next to it, which can reduce our external long wires. But if you're not afraid of messy wires tripping you up, or messing around while tidying up, ignore my advice.
Then there is water, which mainly refers to drinking water. As an important component of the human body, water is closely related to our health. If we can use rainwater, river water, lake water in off-grid life, it will make our life more convenient, because we no longer need to go to the city to buy drinking water regularly. However, there are often many viruses and harmful substances in this kind of water, which requires a water purifier that can filter out these substances that will endanger our health, and the core of the water purifier is the filter element. The common filter elements on the market include PP cotton filter element, activated carbon filter element, ultrafiltration filter element and reverse osmosis filter element (RO filter element).
Among them, the main material of the PP cotton filter element is polypropylene, and the filtration accuracy is between 0.5um and 20um. It is generally used as a pre-filter to filter large impurities in the water. There are many kinds of activated carbon filter elements. The coconut shell activated carbon filter element commonly used in water purifiers is a kind of granular activated carbon. Its main raw materials are coconut shells, almond shells, walnut shells and other shells or anthracite coal. Activated carbon has a good adsorption effect and can effectively remove residual chlorine, odor, color, and organic matter in water, and is often used in secondary filtration. The filtration accuracy of the ultrafiltration filter element is between 0.01-0.001um, which can remove some bacteria and viruses in the water, but cannot filter heavy metal elements,It is often used to filter tap water and cannot be used when the water quality is unknown.The last is the reverse osmosis filter element, its filtration accuracy is between 0.001-0.0001um, and it can filter substances larger than water molecules, including heavy metal elements. At first, reverse osmosis technology was used in the space capsule to solve the water problem of astronauts. In the small airtight space of the space capsule, every drop of water is very precious. The sweat, urine produced by astronauts, and the water used for bathing must be recycled, which is why the water treated by reverse osmosis was also called space water. Of course, because the pore size of the reverse osmosis filter element is very small, the reverse osmosis technology squeezes water molecules from the high concentration area to the low concentration area. Due to the violation of the normal water flow direction, the side with high concentration needs to be pressurized during use, so it needs electricity to maintain, but the water filtered by it will be cleaner than the water filtered by other filter elements mentioned above. It can be seen from the above that different filter elements are used in different scenarios. PP filter elements and activated carbon filter elements are often used as pre-filters; if you only use tap water, you can use a water purifier with an ultrafiltration filter element; In order to drink outdoor water safely, it is very necessary to be equipped with an electric-driven RO filter water purifier. Here, you are very welcome to choose ITEHIL’s RO water purifier. In addition, I would like to remind everyone that due to the strong filtration capacity of the RO filter, the minerals/electrolytes contained in the water will almost be removed, which requires you to supplement additionally to supplement what the body needs.
Click here to know Solutes Removal Rate of ITEHIL RO Water Purifier
The last thing is fuel. In fact, in my opinion, solving the problem of electricity basically solves the problem of fuel. After all, we can also cook food with an induction cooker. Of course, this requires enough electricity, and we can also buy gas tanks to solve greater fuel needs.
Meeting the needs of electricity, water, and fuel basically guarantees the energy and material needs of our off-grid life. Of course, there is also the important need of food, perhaps we can open up fields, raise animals, or hoard a certain amount of food on a regular basis to solve it.
