Off Grid and Unconventional Living

How does living off grid or unconventionally compare financially to more conventional lifestyles?

YouTubers Eamon and Bec have lived full time in their van for the past five years. With the global pandemic they had to leave their original van (pictured above) in Morocco and have just completed a build of a new van.

I would like to look into a lifestyle that gives me more opportunity to do things that I am interested in and could in the long term be a smarter investment. I think that this style of living is becoming more popular with people that are less interested in doing conventional 9–5 jobs.

While this is not super conventional, this style of living is something others should explore because it gives you a bigger sense of freedom, allows for more travel and experiences. It is a large upfront cost, but over time it saves money.

While shipping container houses can be simple, this one shows a bit of an elevated and classy look

While I know quite a bit about Van Life, I do not about shipping container homes or some of the other alternative lifestyles. Looking into those would be something I would want to explore further, as well as the technicalities of crossing borders and traveling with your home.

One of the biggest things with this style of living is the ability to go off-grid, and one of the major components of that is solar paneling. While there are many different styles of solar panels, you have to also consider where you are putting them and where you are traveling.

“To design and analyze solar systems that will convert some of that sunlight into electricity, we need to work our way through a fairly straightforward, though complicated looking, set of equations to predict where the sun is in the sky at any time of the day as well as its intensity.”

For example, if you are planning on traveling in warm and sunny climates, then the technicalities of solar paneling do not need to be that deep thought out, however, if you are traveling in Alaska, you need to realize that it gets dark far earlier and stays that way for much longer, so perhaps solar paneling isn’t the best option for that situation.

Work Cited:

Shibboleth Authentication Request. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2020, from login.gate.lib.buffalo.edu website: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzU4ODg3NV9fQU41?sid=1b9cc1ef-7ef4-4ea5-bd2a-948c2a0b51a3@sdc-v-sessmgr01&vid=14&format=EB&rid=9

(2020). Retrieved October 2, 2020, from Pinimg.com website: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/c0/a1/a1c0a166d625f3f2d1e1d05898865c14.jpg

(2020). Retrieved October 2, 2020, from Ytimg.com website: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AICUOE2xz24/maxresdefault.jpg