Off the Grid

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What Does Off the Grid Mean?

Off the grid is any IT environment or facility that is not dependent on public power companies for energy /electricity needs.

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It is a facility that has on-premise infrastructure / equipment to generate and distribute electrical power and energy.

Techopedia Explains Off the Grid

An off the grid facility is not connected to an external electricity provider or the public power grid. Rather, electricity generation unit such as power generators, solar panels, or wind turbines are installed within or close to the facility.

Such independent power generation equipment provides continuous power to the facility. Unlike public power /energy providers that are suspect to power failures and interruptions, the off the grid approach has minimal and/or foreseen downtime.

The off the grid approach is mainly implemented in data centers or high-end computing facilities that requires total availability of power resources in ensuring critical business /IT operations.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.