O Spacious Skies, with Nary a Power Pole in Sight

FROM the highway, it is six miles to Brenda Black's house, along a dusty road through boulders and saguaro cactus. For the first four miles, a power line parallels the road. But then the necklace of wooden poles and black cables -- the reassuring accompaniment to millions of miles of American highways -- ends. The house is still 1,000 feet away.And yet, as a visitor discovered after pulling up next to the Honda and the Chevy Blazer in Ms. Black's driveway, she is not lacking for appliances. One of four television sets was on; so was the ''movie star lighting'' over the bathroom sink. The kitchen boasted not only a microwave oven, but also an electric grill. Indeed, Ms. Black's house in Tonopah, some 60 miles west of Phoenix, is typically American, which means it is jammed with stuff.In Arizona, it is becoming easy for ordinary families to live ''off the grid'' -- that is, without a hookup to electric lines -- and not sacrifice comfort. For $270 a month (about $1 a kilowatt hour), Arizona Public Service will install a backyard unit consisting of solar panels that produce enough power for most domestic uses, a generator that kicks in automatically when there isn't enough sun, and a propane tank to fuel the generator. The company guarantees the equipment, promising that it will keep power flowing around the clock.''I've had them out here in the middle of the night,'' Ms. Black said.A result? ''It's solar power for the fast-food generation,'' said Katy Hundelt, an off-grid customer near Sedona. ''If we didn't tell you, you'd come in the house and never know we had solar,'' she said. ''We have everything everyone else has.''Indeed, living off the grid, an option that was once available only to the rich or the intrepid, is going mainstream, at least in this sunniest corner of the country. Arizona Public Service has yet to advertise the program. Even so, Pete Johnston, the company's manager for technology development, said, ''It's taking off.'' There are now 30 families hooked up, he said, and ''we're adding at least one a month.''To be sure, solar systems have been available for decades. Dan Reicher, the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said, ''A surprising number of companies make, supply and even finance solar systems,'' although he added that the majority of such systems augment company-provided power.Arizona Public Service has big hopes for its off-grid program. ''There are a lot of people moving from California to Arizona, people with a fair amount of money,'' Mr. Johnston said. ''They want to build on dramatic sites. And until now, their only options were propane generators or do-it-yourself solar.''The workers who developed the no-fuss system see themselves as environmentalists. And in trying to limit reliance on fossil fuels, they are.Yet, the program may prove to have an environmental downside, as new homes, untethered to power lines, turn up in some of the state's most pristine locations. Ms. Hundelt's house occupies just such a spot. ''We've got a whole mountain for a backdrop,'' she said.Vern Swaback, a Scottsdale architect responsible for some of the largest suburban developments in Arizona, said that everyone there has had the experience of discovering that a favorite mountaintop or butte is suddenly dotted with buildings. ''Too often,'' he said, ''people are under the illusion that what they're looking at is preserved open space, when it's just land that people haven't gotten around to using.''Anne Verner, an off-grid customer outside Prescott, in northern Arizona, worries that ''the open land may get chopped up.''William Riebsame, a professor at the University of Colorado who studies land-use patterns in the West, said the 90's have seen an explosion of home building in remote areas, where obtaining electricity is often a challenge. In Arizona, hooking up can cost $50,000 or more -- sometimes much more -- for each mile off the grid. Most off-grid customers, said Herb Hayden, the program's coordinator, are more than half a mile from the nearest power line.''Independence from the grid, with reliable power for everything from family entertainment centers to pool and spa pumps, would be a further enabling force for even more rural and near-wilderness development,'' Mr. Riebsame said.Mr. Reicher, the Assistant Secretary of Energy, disagreed, noting that for most people, the costs of building roads and bringing in water are even more daunting. ''I don't see solar as a big factor in where people decide to build,'' he said. Moreover, he noted that state and local laws on land development were the traditional way to control land use.In Bisbee, a small mining town in the southeast part of the state, a California company is turning a canyon lined with cholla, agave, cottonwood, yucca and pinyon into a development called Bisbee Ranch. The land, which has been described as ''national park quality,'' had not been developed, in part because bringing in electricity was prohibitively expensive. That was before Arizona Public Service made a deal with the developer to provide the off-grid system to those who will buy the 60 40-acre plots.The other utility -- telephone service -- ceased being a stumbling block when cellular technology came in. (Even in cell-less areas, radiotelephones work fine, as the reporter interviewing homeowners for this article found out.) Wireless Internet connections will be next.No wonder the developer of Bisbee Ranch, Joe Pinsonneault, said of the off-grid system: ''This seems to be the ticket to the future. It's really the millennium system.''He may not be far off. It has been about a century since electrification came to America, with the resulting patterns of habitation, where even rural houses were built in proximity to the grid. Now, the off-grid system, at least in the Sun Belt, could result in a new development model.The technology the off-grid customers are using isn't especially new. Photovoltaic panels capable of powering a house (at least in the Southwest) have been around for decades. Prices have been dropping steadily. Assistant Secretary Reicher said that in 1980, the cost of producing a kilowatt hour with photovoltaic cells was about $1; now it's down to about 15 or 20 cents in some cases. (That compares to an average cost of about 9 cents a kilowatt hour for power from the local utility.) ''It's a wonderful technology,'' he said, ''with no moving parts.''Until now, a family hoping to rely on solar power had to do its homework. The Real Goods Trading Company, a leading purveyor of residential solar generators, markets systems similar to those offered by Arizona Public Service. But they start at $5,000, and $17,000 is about the lowest price for a unit that will handle ''problem loads'' like a laser printer or an adjustable-speed ceiling fan, the company says. Plus, as Real Goods warns in its Internet catalogue, its kits ''require substantial time, expertise and small parts to install on site.''It is true that the off-grid system is more expensive than a conventional hookup (the average residential electric bill in Arizona is $92 a month), but it's much less expensive than bringing in a power line. Other options -- including wind turbines and hydrogen-powered fuel cells -- are not yet economical enough for residential use, said Doug Livingston, the technical products merchandise manager for Real Goods.Generators are more affordable, but they tend to be problematic. Ms. Verner, the off-grid customer near Prescott, made do with a diesel generator on her family's cattle ranch for almost 20 years. The equipment was smelly and expensive, she said, and the power wasn't steady enough for a computer. Now, her teen-age children have no problem doing their homework on the family's PC.And in the old days, she said, ''I had to wait till nighttime to do wash'' when there were fewer demands for power. ''Now,'' she added, ''from about 10 till 3, I have electricity coming out of my ears.''Arizona Public Service's off-grid customers generally do not have air-conditioners, but they do have energy-efficient evaporative coolers. Otherwise, normal appliances are O.K. The company recommends using mainly fluorescent lights.In Tonopah, Ms. Black has noticed that if she leaves the microwave on too long, the back-up generator kicks in, consuming propane. So if she has to cook for six minutes, she may do it in three two-minute stretches.But that's her biggest problem with the off-grid system, which is why Ms. Black is the envy of neighbors who haven't yet signed up. ''Some of the other people who live out here, they've just got generators,'' she said. ''And when the generator breaks, they've got nothing.''