Living "OFF THE GRID" is a psychological state too

 I actually lived completely "OFF THE GRID" mostly from 1980 to 1985 while we home schooled our children. 

No phones

No TV

No Electricity (unless we generated it with a gasoline generator

No electric lights (other than battery powered)

What we did have:

Aladdin Kerosene Lamps (which are really bright but they do smell like kerosene).

The largest Clawfoot bathtub (antique) for our A-Frame house that could shed 7 feet or more snow without shoveling it off).

Two Wood stoves:
 

1. was a antique wood cook stove to bake food and to bake bread and casseroles and to cook generally

2.  was a home made (by my father) welded up custom built from a water pressure tank before he had piped in water to his property in Yucca Valley area. He owned 2 1/2 acres of land there that he planned to retire on. also, we built his retirement home ourselves from 1968 until 1980 when he retired on weekends.

The welded up converted water pressure tank worked very well even when the temperatures on Mt. Shasta went down to about zero Fahrenheit in winters some times.

And of course we had a kitchen area and kitchen sink. 

and outside we had a septic tank underground with a toilet inside a shed (however, this only worked when it was above freezing outside).

However, living like this the first thing you notice is you feel less stressed because electrical fields stress a human body out (they affect some people more than others).

for example, the electricity in your home from the power station still travels between the power station and the walls of your house even if you aren't using it. this always affects people to a greater or lesser degree.

Do some people die of this? Not sure but I know the electricity seems to make some people more crazy than others.

However, if you grew up in a home with electricity and you didn't die from it then likely you will be okay because you haven't already died from being sensitive to electricity in your walls or electric vehicle when you ride in it.

I find myself more sensitive than most simply because my father was an electrician and I worked for him and with him in his business from the time I was 12 to 17 years old and learned the electrical trade part time (when I wasn't going to school) (so weekends and summers).

So, Living off the grid is likely not for everyone and you have many less people doing this because of solar power than in 1980 to 1985 when solar power wasn't as efficient or as cheap as now. also there weren't solar batteries to store that power then unless you used 12 volt car batteries or something like that.

some people including some I know still use car batteries or something like that to store power for DC appliances of various kinds who still live off the grid today.

It doesn't usually work very well to go from battery to AC things. However, because of newer batteries some people now do this except for heaters which usually draw too much power (electric heaters and electric ovens who are 220 volts usually (though some electric heaters are 110 volts too)

(Important note). I'm not implying that you can use an electric heater with ANY smaller generator. IF your generator (gasoline or Diesel or natural Gas is big enough you might get away with this but usually you need a 20,000 dollar to 30,000 dollar system to run heaters off a generator. So, unless it's some kind of heater you might find in a car or motor home you cannot electrically heat where you are with a generator. 

However, the types of heaters found in cars or motor homes MIGHT work it depends upon the electrical load they draw. You can tell if when you engage your 110 heater because if the generator goes down in speed or dies completely it's because you have overloaded the capacity of that Generator and so you cannot run a heater then without destroying your generator. Even buying a new one won't solve this problem unless it is big enough and has the capacity to run the heater or heaters  you are trying to run.

So, likely you need to consider a wood stove or some kind of gas (heater like propane or natural gas or something like this to heat where you are. Because it isn't going to work with smaller generators only designed really to keep your refrigerator  or refrigerators going and a few lights and maybe wifi and Cable TV and your TV Flatscreen and generating power for your laptop computer and re-chargable phones and stuff like that. 

end note: 

So, we would read at night or play board games or talk mostly among our family instead of watching TV or being on the internet which didn't exist then either. We were also too far away from civilization to have a phone even for emergencies. However, all our neighbors (mostly on 2 1/2 acre plots also lived off the grid then too.

However, remember this is 1980 to 1985 which is now 40 years ago since 1985 here in 2025 and I was in my 30s then. So, I did this from age 32 to 37 when my father passed away that year in 1985.

However, one of the reasons I'm still alive today is the miracle that time was in my life in me feeling much more healed and alive after Growing up in the big City of Los Angeles from age 6 to 21.

So, I was able to evolve to become more the enlightened person I always wanted to be in living off the grid for about 5 years time from 1980 to 1985.

Then in 1985 in December my family went to India, Nepal and Thailand and traveled through Japan on the way there.

I would have liked to stay longer in Japan but for me it was just too expensive. When I learned it was 300 dollars just to travel from Narito Airport to the city of Tokyo I put my family on another plane for Bangkok Thailand where it was 40 Bahts to the dollar then (a Baht is the Thai dollar) . So, I could feed my whole family then for 5 to 10 dollars a meal in 1985 and 1986 while we were there.

We stayed in Thailand, India and Nepal from December 1985 until April of 1986 while home schooling our 10 to 14 year old kids then and becoming more citizens of the world in the process.