When you think about it, $30 a month plus 15 cents per kilowatt hour is a pretty darn good price for being connected to the electrical grid. A kilowatt hour is about 3/4th of a horsepower, produced over an hour of highly reformed energy that can be power even the most delicate of electronics or turn over large motors with ease and efficiency.

A typical house has a 200 amp feed in it, which means you have roughly 150 horsepower worth of electricity at your disposal to distribute throughout your house. Unlike a gas motor, it doesn’t cost you anything at idle, and your pay directly proportional to your use. You can flip a switch on and get instant torque or power from electricity.

Most electric appliances are quite efficient to converting electricity into useful work – almost all the waste is on the generating plant side, not on the consumer side. The generating plant maintains the turbines, buys the fuel, and disposes of ash. No smoke in your backyard or noxious fumes.

When at off-grid living, the truth is electric generated on site is far more expensive and less flexible than grid power. It might be much cleaner and the cost of use is fixed entirely by your capital costs – and is reduced each kilowatt you consume. But it’s still not as cheap and flexible as grid power.