A Howick Township family that lives on about 20 acres of land has been off the grid for almost four years now.
Kevin Armstrong says it's working very well.
He's an electrician by trade and owns his own company and when he made the decision to go off-grid, he was determined to do it without making a lot of sacrifices or changing his lifestyle.
"We have all the appliances, couple of fridges, couple of freezers, dishwasher. We didn't want to make the sacrifices," said Armstrong. "So when people hear off-grid, that's what you first think about is they're making a lot of changes in their lifestyle, but we did not want to do that."
Armstrong says finding ways to increase efficiency almost became a hobby but after the first winter he found that, particularly on a sunny day, his batteries will fully charged. So the challenge was finding something to do with that surplus.
And the answer was to buy a used, electric Tesla.
He says the previous owner brought it out to their home so he could make sure they were able to charge it and they were and they took it out for a test drive and everything worked.