Health Ranger - Mike Adams - Achieving off-grid power independence: Best options for 2025

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Aug. 13, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams

17:33

Achieving off-grid power independence: Best options for 2025

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	With the power grid becoming increasingly unreliable and of course more data centers coming online taking away the power that would otherwise be available to homes and businesses, it's more important than ever to be able to get off the grid, off the power grid, and have power self-reliance as much as possible.
	This is very difficult to achieve, and there are no good solutions yet.
	But there are a couple on the horizon, and I thought I would discuss this with you because I've been working on this problem for, I don't know, 15 years, something like that, playing around with different solutions, solar battery systems, off-grid, hybrid research into flow battery systems, which are not appropriate for residential use, lithium-ion batteries, and then, of course, the upcoming wave of sodium ion batteries.
	Also, storing energy in the form of diesel fuel and diesel generators, etc.
	So let me tell you what I've come to, the conclusions.
	The simplest and easiest way to have some kind of off-grid power is to have a solar generator.
	And a solar generator, you know, it's basically just a charging station that you can connect solar panels to.
	And there are a number of different brands available.
	Our sponsor, the satellite phone store, has them at beready123.com.
	You can get solar generators there or sat123.com.
	And with some, you know, pretty portable panels, actually, you can get maybe 400 watts or even 800 watts of power input on a sunny day.
	And you can charge that sucker.
	It's got onboard charge controllers and, of course, an onboard inverter and typically lithium-ion batteries on board.
	And that way you can charge your mobile phones.
	You can charge flashlight batteries.
	You can run laptop computers, even blenders, small refrigerators, things like that.
	So that's the easiest option.
	It's the least expensive option, but it's not going to run your house and it's not going to run your air conditioning.
	So air conditioning is really critical for surviving our modern world because before air conditioning, homes were built in a style that did not require air conditioning.
	They had very tall ceilings, for example.
	They had a lot of open windows, open breezeways, so that there was some airflow through.
	You know, they had tile floors, which were cooler.
	They were made, especially in the southwest, places like Arizona and California.
	They were made with tapia or kind of traditional ethnic Hispanic construction that was naturally cooler because the large blocks of mud would function as heat sinks or coolness sinks out of phase with the day so that when the sun was overhead, your home was much cooler.
	And then when the nights got cold, your home was warmer because of the construction techniques.
	And you can still find older homes in places like Arizona or Southern California or even West Texas that were built in the 1960s or 70s that are built that way.
	And you can actually survive in those homes without air conditioning.
	But most homes in which people live today require air conditioning to be livable at all because they're sealed up.
	They're sealed up to achieve the high climate ratings or energy efficiency ratings.
	So they have virtually no air exchange with the outside air so that they need the least amount of air conditioning as possible.
	So everything's closed up.
	There's no fresh air.
	You actually have worse quality of indoor air under these conditions.
	And without air conditioning, it's just an oven.
	It's just going to cook you.
	So air conditioning is key to having our homes be survivable.
	And once you realize you probably can't live in your house without air conditioning, at least during the summer months, and what about heat in the winter, etc., then you realize we're going to have to do something more than a solar generator here.
	This isn't going to be just some little portable thing that you can hand carry around.
	You're going to have to have a much larger power infrastructure in order to be off-grid.
	Now, solar is great, but solar doesn't work off-grid unless you have an entirely off-grid system, which most people don't have.
	So solar power is a grid tie system in almost every case.
	And the only way to go entirely off-grid is to invest in a massive battery bank.
	And of course, the inverters and the charge controllers and all the infrastructure of solar to batteries, typically with a generator somewhere in the mix there, so that you can generate power on cloudy days or rainy days, etc.
	If you add a generator, it dramatically lowers your overall cost of solar installation.
	Even then, your battery costs are going to be through the roof because battery technology is still not great.
	That may be changing with the arrival of sodium ion batteries, but we're not quite there yet.
	It's still very expensive.
	And the lifetime of those batteries or the number of cycles they endure is not good.
	Obviously, lead acid batteries are out of the question.
	Don't even bother with that because you'll spend a fortune on replacing the batteries every few years.
	And then lithium-ion batteries, which have become a lot less expensive lately, are typically used in a lot of those options.
	And things like, you know, the Tesla wall, which is a giant lithium-ion battery, or not even really giant.
	But there are a lot of lithium-ion battery options.
	The thing I don't like about lithium-ion batteries is that you're installing them typically in your garage.
	And if they ever catch on fire, if they get punctured by anything, they can start a fire.
	And that fire can never be extinguished.
	I mean, not by any typical fire control means.
	You'll end up burning down your whole house because of the lithium-ion batteries in your garage because nobody can put them out.
	And it strikes me as just a very bad idea to have basically a ticking time bomb of massive fires like sitting in your garage.
	So that brings up the chemistry of sodium ion batteries, which have most of the best characteristics of lithium-ion batteries, except they're not flammable and you don't need lithium in them.
	You need sodium, which is a very commonly available element, obviously, all over North America and many other places.
	And then you need some certain trace minerals in the cathodes and the anodes or whatever.
	The battery chemistry, you know, you're going to need some copper.
	You're going to need some, I don't know, maybe gallium, whatever.
	But the bulk of it is sodium.
	And they're not as compact as the lithium-ion batteries, but who cares if you have a garage?
	You know, if it takes up 30% more space, you don't really care.
	The thing is, the sodium ion batteries, they endure many more cycles.
	Some of them endure 8,000 to 10,000 cycles, still maintaining something like, I think, 80% of their overall depth of charge.
	So that's a breakthrough, really.
	And those are starting to come online.
	So I just ordered for the first time some 12-volt truck battery replacements that are made out of sodium ion chemistry.
	I haven't received them yet, but when I do, I'll probably shoot a little video, show you, and give you a report of the performance.
	Or I might install one in one of my pieces of farm equipment and kind of show you that.
	But personally, I'm very excited about the idea of having sodium ion batteries as a possible alternative.
	Now, there are makers of sodium ion that can be used for off-grid systems.
	They're just coming online right now.
	I would expect that over the next two to three years, you're going to see a mass production of sodium ion batteries.
	And you're going to see them in the higher voltages that are used for off-grid systems like 48-volt systems.
	And when that happens, I'm going to acquire those.
	And I'm going to attempt an off-grid system that is what the inputs would be partially solar and partially generator.
	And I'm going to see if that's viable at that point because of all the benefits of sodium ion technology.
	I guess we'll see.
	But that's a couple years away.
	So what's the best option right now?
	Well, believe it or not, the best option right now is like a whole house diesel generator.
	And believe me, I've done all the research.
	I've done all the math.
	I've done all the cost analysis.
	Your best option is a diesel generator.
	And it needs to be sufficient to handle your whole house.
	And then what you do is you have an electrician install a transfer switch.
	And so you install your diesel generator wherever it works on your property, you know, outside the garage or backyard or wherever.
	And then you run a big thick cable from that generator to a transfer switch, which I personally, I suggest you make it a manual transfer switch because the automatic transfer switches, they suck and they break.
	And when they break, you're screwed.
	And yes, I've had that happen before.
	So a manual transfer switch is super reliable.
	You grab the switch and you throw the switch and guess what?
	Yeah, it's transferred.
	So there's nothing to go wrong on a manual transfer switch.
	So that's what I strongly recommend.
	It just means when the power goes out, you're going to have to walk out into your garage.
	You're going to have to fire up the generator.
	You need to let it warm up a little bit.
	And yes, I recommend diesel.
	And Kubota has a model.
	I've actually got one of theirs.
	I think it's 11 kilowatts.
	That's plenty for most households, by the way.
	And it's a very reliable generator, relatively easy to maintain.
	The fuel tank is not that large.
	However, it's a work site generator.
	So you're going to have to refuel it every few hours.
	You can go with other generators that are larger and that have much deeper fuel tanks.
	But remember that you want to run diesels at a minimum of 30 to 35% of their total capacity in order to make sure they get hot enough to burn off the product of the diesel combustion.
	If you don't run those diesel engines at at least 30% power, you're going to cause problems in the engine over time.
	And you're going to end up with like some nasty oily liquid coming out of the stack.
	I think it's called stacking your diesel engine.
	And that's just buildup of the unburned exhaust products because your engine never got hot enough.
	All right.
	So you don't want to oversize the diesel engine.
	You want to get it, I say get it about twice the capacity of where you of your average real-time load.
	So if your real-time load, obviously you need to have an electrician maybe help you figure out what's your actual load, or you can look at your electric bill, whatever.
	But if your real-time load is like two kilowatts, then get yourself either a three or four kilowatt diesel generator.
	But don't get a six or eight or ten because then you have all kinds of problems with it.
	Anyway, you have to warm up your diesel engine for a few minutes anyway before you put the load on it, before you throw the transfer switch.
	The advantage of the diesel generator is, of course, you can store diesel fuel, which is stored electricity in essence, it can be converted to electricity through the diesel generator.
	You can store diesel safely and cost effectively.
	500 gallons of diesel costs you what today?
	I mean, it's less than $3 a gallon at the moment, typically.
	And especially if you're getting the red dye diesel, because you don't pay road taxes on it.
	You don't pay the federal tax.
	So cheap agricultural diesel fuel can be stored very inexpensively.
	And diesel has a lot of energy per liter.
	So you get a ton of electricity out of it.
	It does a lot of work, and that's great.
	And if you have a diesel vehicle, of course, you can also use it to extend the range of your vehicle without going to a gas station.
	Because if there's a power outage, then the gas stations won't be functioning.
	So I know it costs something.
	But the best option today is, one, get a diesel generator sized appropriately to what you intend and get a transfer switch, get it in place.
	Two, get a diesel storage tank.
	500 gallons is typically the minimum because a diesel delivery company won't even deliver less than 500 gallons, typically.
	And if you want to store 1,000 gallons, that's even better.
	Make sure it's a double-walled tank and it's safety listed and everything else.
	Make sure it's installed correctly.
	This is going to cost.
	And then get a diesel vehicle if you want to have double use of that.
	And also if you have a little hobby tractor or if you live on a small ranch or hobby farm or something like that, guess what?
	Your tractor is going to run on diesel too.
	So now you've got three uses of that same fuel and that's smart.
	That's smart.
	One power source, diesel, gives you three different ways to use it.
	And then you can decide, you know, how to split up the diesel fuel between your car, your tractor, and your generator.
	Now, the downside to the generators is, of course, you need to change the oil filter typically about every 250 hours, which is only about 10 days of operation if you're running it 24-7.
	So you're going to need to stockpile oil filters.
	And there's also diesel fuel filters, right?
	And then there's also a fan belt typically with the cooling fan.
	And you're going to need to look at the required spare parts there.
	And you're going to need to stock those for several months of operation for however many months you want to be still online if the power grid goes down.
	So you could end up stocking a lot of diesel fuel filters, which fortunately are not very expensive and they're easy to replace.
	You know, diesel generators are typically pretty easy to maintain and do basic maintenance on, right?
	So go ahead and stockpile those as you need.
	And if you end up with extra, well, they have a very long shelf life.
	So don't worry, just hold on to them.
	Of course, you're also going to need diesel engine oil itself, the oil.
	The good news there is, depending on your tractor or your car, you might be able to just get the same oil for all three vehicles, kind of like a generic diesel engine oil.
	Now, some diesel engines require a special weight of oil.
	So obviously check the specs and everything.
	But I just, like, I buy oil by the 50-gallon drum because that's just the kind of prepper I am.
	But I've got multiple vehicles to deal with, you know, tractors or whatever, ranch equipment.
	And it's also cheaper in a 50-gallon drum.
	And a 50-gallon drum is very durable.
	Just don't leave it outside in the rain or anything, obviously.
	So that's my advice.
	Now, if you want to get prepped with some products that can solve some of these issues for you or related issues, check out my affiliate website, rangerdeals.com.
	And there I've got links to all the providers of things like ivermectin for pets, really high-end firearms from Shield Arms, ballistic vest, de-googled phones, a lot of other things, chlorine dioxide, etc.
	You can find all that, you know, healing peptides for off-grid medicine.
	Find it at rangerdeals.com.
	And there's a link and a discount code for each of our partners, including our gold and silver sponsors as well.
	So take advantage of that and support us at healthrangerstore.com for all of your food, your nutritional supplements, personal care products, all laboratory tested and almost all organic as well.
	And thank you for supporting us.
	Get prepared.
	The power grid is not reliable.
	So make sure you can survive without electricity for weeks or maybe even months.
	Thanks for listening.
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