Today, Mr. Bathelt and his wife have two off-the grid houses on their property.
The term is trademarked by American architect Michael Reynolds, who began to design sustainable, off the grid houses that people without specialized construction skills could build.
She loves to garden, sew, design, write, paint, ponder, create, study human nature and culture, do it yourself and believes that having an off the grid house in the middle of the city would be her safe haven.
One investment, Newterra, builds modular systems to clean wastewater in remote locations, such as mining operations or off-the-grid housing developments.
She lives with her husband, Doug, an accountant, in a new-model Colonial set inside a neatly gridded housing development just south of Wilmington, Del.
Faculty from across MIT met with representatives from many of the affected Caribbean islands, assessing the damage to those nations' electrical grids, housing, water systems, and roads, and drafting strategies to both rebuild them and make them more resilient.
Besides wind farms, potential markets include off-grid housing complexes and solar power plants, especially in places like California, where there is a large difference in the cost of peak and off-peak power.
Susie's bathroom, like the rest of her one-room, off-grid house, was wallpapered in heavy duty Reynolds wrap.
From that charred waste, in the background, rises the skeletal frame of a new, off-grid house.
"A typical home draws about 30 kilowatt-hours a day," Mr. Crea said, whereas a typical off-the-grid house may try to get by on 4 to 10 kilowatt-hours.
