Could you do it? Could you really live comfortably without relying on the local utility company? More Americans, seeing potential in renewable power sources, are giving it a try.

About 750,000 U.S. households are now living off the grid and the number is increasing about 10% each year, estimates Nick Rosen, author of Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America. His website has a map showing where these people live.

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"Going off the grid is like insuring yourself against a time the lights may go out," Rosen tells the Christian Science Monitor. "In the 1970s you had a lot of old-style hermitlike survivalists. But these people are different. This isn't the Stone Age anymore; you can live a quite comfortable life."

For Wayah Hall, the story says, going off the grid in a cabin 26 miles from downtown Asheville, N.C., was a way to live in harmony with nature and avoid reliance on electricity from the area's coal-burning power plant. His water comes from a stream and his electricity from solar panels mounted on a wagon that can be repositioned to catch the best rays. He uses a wood-burning stove and an indoor waterless composting toilet.

Paula and William Cirone went off grid in central Illinois for a more pragmatic reason: the utility company couldn't extend lines to the property where they wanted to build in 2001. So, the story says, they built a spacious house powered by wind and solar energy that uses a geothermal system for heating and cooling.

"If we are going to move toward an age of energy independence," Rosen tells the Christian Science Monitor, "these are the foot soldiers, the people who show us what we have to do."