> With the article about Europe, I'll note the average house here uses half the electricity of your very efficient Canadian house (probably more gas for heating though).

No, we were way ahead of our efficient house here in Europe because we were able to design that efficiency right into the structure. That house sipped power and the heater ran off the damaged trees on the property that we cleaned out annually.

I kept pretty careful logs of consumption before pulling the trigger on going off-grid and it's interesting to see how the reduction in consumption factored as much into that as the increase in renewable energy. Once the windmill was added the generator basically never ran again.