Living off-grid just got a little bit harder.

A man who designed and built his own home especially so that he wouldn’t have to pay tax on his energy bills has had to do exactly that.

Kris Currie had a dream of going off-grid and went about finding how he could transform his home into an energy-creating complex.

He built his house in New Dominion, P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island), Canada so that every aspect of it was designed to create energy. He dreamt of not paying any money to the government for energy that he planned to make all himself.

But he got a nasty shock when he received a bill for tax on every kilowatt produced per hour in his home.

His ‘net-zero home’ led him to believe that he wouldn’t have to pay this kind of tax, however the HST (harmonized sales tax) still charged him.

Despite paying absolutely zero for his energy bills, he still has to pay a monthly for a tax despite incurring no charges.

Kris said:

“It’s nonsense really. It should be exempt. We’re using it for heat, for one. Oil’s exempt. Now that we’re producing electricity we’re getting charged for it.”

This bizarre set up is just another one of the governments schemes to dissuade people from living off grid, just recently the U.S government put a stop to people building their own eco-friendly tiny homes.

CBC have reported:

“Currie’s home is generating more electricity than it uses, feeding the excess into P.E.I.’s electricity grid, where it’s sold to other Maritime Electric customers — who pay HST on what they use.”

Currie spent $46,000 on building his own solar paneled house in the hope that the government would not be hassling him about energy bills, sadly he was wrong.