off-grid

Word family

• grid
  nounB1
• on-grid
  adjectiveC1
• off-the-grid
  adjectiveB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

These four words all suggest independence from outside supply, but they differ in scope and tone. Off-grid is the most specific: it focuses on cutting ties with public utility networks for electricity, gas, and water. Self-sufficient is much wider — a self-sufficient farm may also grow its own food, raise animals, and need no money from outside, so it covers economy and food as well as power. Self-powered is narrower than off-grid; it usually describes a single device or building that generates its own electricity, but says nothing about water or gas. Stand-alone is a technical term used for systems and equipment, often in engineering manuals rather than daily speech. So a family who 'go off-grid' in the mountains may also be self-sufficient on the farm, with a self-powered cabin and a stand-alone solar array.

Common collocations

Etymology

A modern compound from off (meaning away from or not on) plus grid, the network of cables and pipes that carries electricity, gas, or water across a region. Grid in this sense came into use in the early 1900s as power companies built large connected networks; off-grid emerged in late twentieth-century English, especially around the 1990s, as renewable energy and rural living movements grew. Today the word also stretches beyond utilities, sometimes used loosely for any way of life that steps outside mainstream systems.