Ironically, jaldi is actually a Hindi word that means fast and according to company founders the name started almost as a joke. (As you can imagine Wi-Fi connections in rural India are mostly anything but.)

It just so happens that a vast amount of entrepreneurial energy is laying the foundation for decentralized clean energy to succeed by piggybacking on the most successful leapfrog technology to date -- mobile phones.

It's time policymakers woke up to the real impact of distributed power and bottom up electrification. There are a thousand unnecessary obstacles that will slow down progress when it's judged by the wrong yardstick. It's time for that yardstick to be the presence of energy, not its price.

When Loren Amelang's Silicon Valley employer put in florescent lighting and wouldn't let employees bring in their own lights, Amelang moved to an off-grid property to create a space where he would have control over his environment.

The only real shelter on the property was an old sheep barn, leftover from when the property was homesteaded a century ago, so he decided to build a small shack inside the structure as a home.

It was thanks to the pot-growers of Northern California, and one pot-smoker in particular, that the solar power industry grew into the $60 billion a year behemoth that it is today.

Here is a distillation of the lessons I learned while researching my book Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America.

As the technology continues to improve, living off-grid has become more comfortable. Millions value the simplicity of off the grid living, and the freedom it confers because it is a low-cost existence.

Going off-grid doesn't have to mean giving up luxuries like hot tubs, blended drinks, flat-screen televisions or electric razors. In fact, as proven b...