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“It was a move on our part to downsize and to become more self-sufficient,” Gargan explains by phone from Bantry, where he still lives. “We had a kind of missionary zeal; we were so concerned about climate change.”

The house Gargan lives in is a purpose-built straw-bale house; “a low-impact and more sustainable way of building a house”. Although they were hooked up to the grid, they deliberately wanted to live off-grid as much as possible, as a way of being self-sufficient. “The key thing is to reduce your demand and insulate the hell out of your house.”

They installed two small wind turbines, one of which Gargan designed himself, and three solar panels to generate hot water, which they retain. They also added two small solar panels, which cost €1,000 each at the time.

They used gas to cook, and a wood-burning stove to heat the house. They didn’t have any electric kitchen implements or heaters. They did have a freezer in an outside shed, which was powered from the grid, so that it would not have to be dependent on their own erratic store of energy.

In the years since Gargan moved to Bantry, the associated costs with generating one’s own electricity have changed. “When I put in the wind turbines, the solar panels were more expensive. It’s the other way round now. A small wind turbine is about €20,000. Ten years ago, the solar panels on my house would have cost between €10,000 and €12,000. Now they’d cost €1,500. The cost has come down because of mass production. The best – and the worst – solar panels are made in China. ”

Source:IrisTImes