With the current rise in energy prices and people looking to save money living off the grid has become a popular alternative. The current recession does offer us some relief, but this is only temporary and at most can only last a year or two.

That's right, it's easier than you think to start living off the grid. For example, it used to cost well over $50,000 to put solar panels on your house, but now that cost is down to around $10,000.

Now that living off the grid is such a hot topic with todays energy prices more and more people are asking me questions about how they too can live off the grid.

16 long years ago my family decided to completely change their lifestyle. I didn't understand exactly why my parents wanted to live differently then everyone else, but now that I'm older I understand better. They were forward thinkers.

One thing that I tell people over and over is that they can make their own conversion to renewable energy. It's not really as hard as you think, and it doesn't cost nearly as much as you hear on the news.

I can't go one day without hearing something on the news about green energy. I'm sure that many of you hear the news about how we all need to 'go green' or the planet will die. The problem with the news is that they tell you it's going to cost you $25,000 to make the conversion.

It's really not as hard as you think to make your own electric car. We used to think just like you... that it was beyond our skill level to make your own electric car, but after actually converting our car to electric we found that it's really a lot easier than we initially thought.

When we first wanted to learn how to make electric cars it was almost impossible to find a good set of plans. We searched and searched for how to make electric cars, but it was almost impossible to find plans.

Now that renewable energy is so popular many people ask me if I have a guide to living off the grid. Many people have the preconception the living off the grid is harder than it actually is.

That's right I said it. It's not as difficult as you think to build a wind generator. 16 years ago when we decided to make to change to off grid living it was one of the things that was on the top of our to do list.

If I had to pick any of the renewable energy methods when starting out again I would start out with building a wind generator. If you were to compare the cost of building solar panels to the cost of building a wind generator you would see that the wind generator options costs about 20% of the solar panel option.

It's true... in the last 10 years living off the grid has become a real and viable alternative to divorcing the electric company. We decided to make the change to living off the grid well over 16 years ago and haven't looked back since.

Most people assume that homemade wind generators are very difficult to build. A couple years ago I would have agreed with you. I mean they look very hard to build with those fancy blades spinning atop of their tower.