ASHLAND — Something’s missing at Risa Buck’s house: wires connecting it to the city power supply.

Buck is off the grid, and as fossil fuels become expensive and scarce that’s a step more people are taking.

Nationally, 180,000 homes are off the grid, a number that is rising by a third each year, said Richard Perez, publisher of Home Power Magazine in Phoenix.

"Why is green energy important? Because we’re going to see the end of cheap fossil fuels in five to eight years, then, with diminishing supply, very expensive fossil fuels for 30 to 50 years, so we need an alternative to that," said Perez.

The magazine is joining with the city of Ashland to sponsor Ashland’sannual tour of "green energy" homes Oct. 9.

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In addition to Buck’s house, tour participants will check out straw bale construction, a solar electric system and an agricultural greenhouse, among others.

In building her passive solar home near downtownover the past 10 years, Buck engineered it to be powered by roof-mounted, 371-watt photovoltaic cells and a wind generator. They feed into six storage batteries that operate when sun and wind are weak.

Where possible, Buck avoids 120-volt in favor of 12-volt appliances, including a television and her stereo system, a car radio. Her refrigerator and stove run on propane. Lights are low-energy fluorescent.

South-facing windows allow sun to be stored in the mass of cement floors, while large grape covered eaves prevent overheating through windows in summer. The earth-bermed north and west sides insulate against winter heat loss and retain summer coolness.

A rain catchment system that stores water for gardening use includes a pond and a 3,000-gallon, gravity-fed ferro-cement tank she built. Household water comes from the city.

A Kakelofen slow-heat release oven burns small amounts of wood, storing heat in its mass and gradually releasing it to heat the house and heating interconnected water pipes.

Landscaping is drought-tolerant and native, thus requiring less water.

A roof-mounted heat exchanger kicks water up to 140 degrees in summer. In winter, it gets it to 80 degrees and a small propane water heater does the rest.

Perez noted that alternative energy takes advantage of what the Earth already has available.

"There’s lots of free wind — and enough sun striking the Earth in one hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, to supply all energy needs on the planet for the year," he said.

Though it takes work and investment to create green energy systems, it steadily pays itself off within 12 to 17 years, then is free, Perez said.

A small photovoltaic panel like Buck’s might run $8,000 while a full-scale photovoltaicsystem might run five times that, he said. Buck supplies 85 percent of her energy needs while the wind generator, costing about $600, supplies the rest.

Buck faced considerable "angst" from a city government that "didn’t want me to do it" a decade ago, she said. Today city government co-sponsors the tour and offers a credit up to $10,500 against the first $28,000 spent on such systems.

The state offers tax credits and the nonprofit Energy Trust of Oregon, , also offers incentives.

"The city was afraid everyone would want to do it, but that didn’t happen," said Buck, who, over many years, taught herself everything about green living, even serving on the city’s conservation commission.

"It wasn’t easy," she said. "I spent 10 years learning how I wanted to live. I was building my house and I wanted to do it in a way that reflected my values and how I want to be in the world — in ways that make sense and are connected to the basic energies of nature that sustain me. I wanted to make a difference. This house has been my palette for that."

A wall-mounted "tri-metric meter" tells Buck how much energy she’s accumulated each day from the wind and solar system.

"It’s like my bank account," she said, adding that the green system makes her live in connection with her environment every day. If she wants to vacuum on Wednesday and it’s been cloudy, for instance, "maybe that doesn’t happen."

The tour also visits the Hilary Best home, with solar electric, and the Ted Holden home, with a solar greenhouse and a passive solar system. It features the Beeman-Watkins home on the slopes of Grizzly Peak, highlighting a 4.9-kilowatt-hour solar electric system, battery storage, solar water heating, passive solar mass and water catchment that supplies all domestic water.

Another home on the tour took advantage of the city’s Earth Advantage Home program — the first such home in the city — using building materials with low environmental impact for improved indoor air quality. It also features in-floor, heat-carrying water tubes. The heat is circulated by fans. Paint, plywood and carpeting are made with "low offgassing" materials and no formaldehyde, said owner Doyle Brightenburg.

While Buck’s home is off the grid, many of the homes are "intertie connected," meaning their energy-stingy systems supply the house and make money feeding energyback into the city system in sunny or windy times, and may draw on the citysystem in winter.

There are 180,000 homes off the grid in the United States and 25,000 intertie-connected, said Perez, with those numbers increasing by a third each year.

"The Rogue Valley is an area that’s very attuned to green energy," he said, "because so many people here live an unaffordable distance off the end of the grid and the power lines and have had to learn how to make green work."

Take the tour

When: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9.

Where: A half dozen homes in and around Ashland are on the tour. Participants should meet at Ashland High School’s Wilderness Charter School on Morse Avenue near East Main Street and will travel in buses. Participants should bring a sack lunch.

Cost: It’s free.

Details: Larry Giardina, 552-2065.

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland.E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.