Dom Eccleston

How has the cost and viability of living off-grid changed in the past 5 years?

Internet

Starlink became available in 2020. Prior to that, the best available remote internet setup for a homestead was 25 Mbps GEO satellite wifi from providers like Viasat. This wasn't that much more expensive than Starlink, but it was about 10x higher latency and had strict data caps. Starlink was truly a 0-1 product.

Currently Starlink costs $599 for dish installation, then $120 per month. This isn't likely to drop in the near term since they have a monopoly, but once Amazon launch their competitor (Project Kuiper) prices should start to come down as the jockey for market share.

Solar

The price of manufacturing solar has fallen by about 55-60% in the past few years due to Chinese overcapacity. I'm not sure exactly how much of those savings get passed on to the consumer, but it seems safe to assume about a 50% cost reduction in running your own solar array to generate off-grid power in this timeline.

Batteries

Pretty similar story to solar: lithium batteries roughly halved in price while also almost doubling their lifespans.

Misc

A few other innovations that O3 mentions as significant in this time are

Conclusion

Living self-sufficiently is much easier than it used to be, and it's going to keep on getting cheaper and easier. This is interesting. Historically, human beings usually had to make a choice between participating in markets and living in the countryside. You could live a pretty good life in the countryside (if you were wealthy) but there was no way to trade or create wealth.

Solar, batteries, and wifi don't completely fix that. But the pace of change is astonishingly fast. I eagerly await the day when I can escape the rat race and move to my solarpunk homestead.