In practical terms, going off the grid is simple. Essentially, it involves three key services that the municipality would normally provide: power, water and waste. You could have a generator, a borehole and a septic tank, and free yourself from the grid. There are houses far from municipal services – on farms or at nature reserves, for example – where living off the grid has been the norm for years. But here’s the kicker: it isn’t necessarily the most environmentally friendly way of living.
Ken Stucke, director at Environment Response Architecture (ERA) and senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, says that between the growing awareness of the global climate crisis and the erratic or threatened delivery of services by local municipalities, interest in off-grid architecture
