November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Off-Grid Guerrilla Games

(Page 3 of 3)

March/April 2000
Andrea Curtis Shift Magazine (www.cmpa.ca/no29.html) 
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If anyone has turned isolated skirmishes into war, it is Richard Perez, editor of the Oregon-based magazine Home Power. Perez coined the term 'guerrilla solar' when readers began to report their illegal clean-energy systems. Now, every issue features profiles and photographs of solar insurgents in Subcomandante MarcosÒstyle bandannas and ski masks under the gleeful heading 'Rogues Gallery.'

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The magazine and its Web site, www.homepower.com, have become a gathering place for energy outlaws. And judging by the letters that fill a folder in Perez's office, everyone from electricians to hippies in the woods is going guerrilla. Solar arrays and wind turbines are now cheap, efficient, and reliable enough that anyone who knows something about electrical wiring can have a renewable-energy system up and running in about two hours. Perez gladly takes credit for mobilizing the guerrilla movement because he sees it as the best way to force utilities to consider alternative energy sources.

'Electricity is no longer a scarce commodity made by grinning acolytes in huge power plants,' he declares. 'Electricity now can be generated on any roof that has sunshine. I've got news for [the utilities]: They aren't needed anymore.'

Go for it

Home Power
www.homepower.com
Box 520, Ashland, OR 97520
800/707-6585
The magazine for DIY power.

Natural Resources Defense Council
www.nrdc.org/nrdc/brie/fbelec.html
212/727-2700
Alternate energy technologies information.

Utility PhotoVoltaic Group
www.ttcorp.com/upvg
202/857-0898
Solar education and great links.

From Shift Magazine (Sept. 1999). Subscriptions: $17.97/yr. (10 issues) from Box 29, Lewiston, NY 14092-9929.

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