Long before the Rural Electrification Administration started bringing power to rural folks who hadn’t been reached by big corporate power companies, farmers and people living away from profitable to operate transmission lines were stuck without the many benefits of electricity. Our grandparents and great grandparents were often figuratively left in the dark. However, rural Americans are a tenacious lot, and if the power lines wouldn’t come to them, they would bring the power to themselves.
As labor-saving devices like washing machines and electric milkers became more important to the rural off-grid farmer, or things like radios and electric lights became more in demand, a number of ways to electrify the farm were used. They are all going to sound familiar to the modern prepper because we still use the modern versions of these methods to power off-grid cabins, and our homes in emergencies. As the old saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, and here are three ways our great grandparents made their own electricity…
Wind Power
The earliest successful home wind generators showed up in the 1920s. These generators allowed farmers to harness the wind to charge a battery bank and power their homes. Sound familiar? It should because little has changed, beyond improving the efficiency of wind generators, battery banks, and control equipment.
These first wind generators were perfect for running radios, small home appliances, low wattage lightbulbs, and other sundry appliances that were mostly limited by the capacity and output of the farmer’s battery bank.
Today, we have higher output turbines, superior battery technology, better power control tools, the benefit to incorporate solar panels into the system, and more energy efficient appliances, all of which come together to make a wind power system a smarter off grid choice than ever before.
We can learn a valuable lesson from our early wind using ancestors. They didn’t understand electricity as an unlimited commodity that was simply there when you flipped the switch. Instead, they were painfully aware of the cost of creating that energy, and the upkeep required to keep it flowing. They knew that they were limited in how much power they could draw, and how long it would last when the wind wasn’t blowing – all things the modern off gridder should also understand.
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As we can see, this nearly century-old home technology is far from obsolete. In fact, in a pinch, a person could do just fine with old school lead acid batteries and a basic wind generator just like our great grandparents did.
Home Electric Light Plants
The Delco-Light Plant was exactly what it was advertised as in the 1920s and ’30s – a complete home power plant. However, rather than running a dynamo at all times, it was used to charge a bank of batteries, which were connected to a monitor that would automatically start the generator when power dropped below a certain level.
These old fashioned home lighting plants follow a common theme – using battery banks to provide power most of the time, and simply being used to recharge them. It’s how most off-grid power systems work as well, and for good reason; it’s cheaper and quieter than an always-on dynamo, and outside of high demand loads, you don’t need to have a huge amount of power always available to you.
The idea of the old Delco system lives on today, in a modern off-grid generator. One might want to let the good folks at Generac know they are about 90 years too late for their claims though.
Delco offered farmers and other off-grid folks something no other home power system could offer at the time, a guaranteed charge all the time on their batteries, or at least as long as there was fuel to keep them charged. While there is a strong argument to be made for cheap wind power, that isn’t always a viable choice when you are off the grid.
Another thing Delco offered was complete home wiring kits, making it possible to purchase an entire system, right down to the wiring and a number of different home appliances all from one source, and financed through one place. It was a truly one-stop source for most everything a person might need when electrifying for the first time.
Of course, Delco plants became obsolete shortly after widespread electrification, and they are obsolete enough to not justify restoring and putting back into service, even with modern batteries. But they offer a fascinating look at how what’s old is all new again.
