Alternative ‘renewable’ power sources are now a realistic option at home. Some people even generate more power than they need and sell it back to the grid. Generating your own electricity at home is called microgeneration and is fast becoming a great investment in the face of rising energy costs. Once you start looking for free energy you will see it everywhere. For example enough light energy falls on the planet in just 40 minutes to supply our needs for a whole year.
There are political issues here in that microgenerated power is ‘decentralised’, ie out of the control of a monopoly. If you swing that way, generating power at home is a very good way to evade your involvement in centralist monopolies.
A recent ‘intermediate technology’ experiment in an African village shows how creative we can get with this. The village had a very deep well and no electricity. They built the children a playground with a roundabout that powers a pump to bring the water up into a header tank. Now the children have somewhere interesting to play and the village has a pressurised water supply! I’m not suggesting that you wire the children up to the mains (and how we all want to sometimes !) – but the chances are that there is free energy up for grabs somewhere in or near your home. Solar power technology is more commonly being used to pull water up from deep wells – but funding for this in third-world countries is a big issue
The two most realistic options for home power are wind and solar. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Solar photovoltaic panels only really work well when the sun is out. They are still expensive and although it is cheaper to make them than to buy them it means you get no tarrif. They have quite low efficiency – at best up to about 15% and need a whole load of other stuff to regulate and store the power if you don’t sell it to the grid. It may be worth installing a 12 volt lighting system for your home to use this power efficiently – the bulb technology is easily up to it with LED lighting designed to run on 12 volts.
Much more efficient is a solar water heater that can warm your water – still the most efficient way of storing home generated power. My own ‘home made’ solar water heating panel heats the water up to 47ºC when the sun is out – easily warm enough for a luxurious ‘free’ hot shower.
Wind power is a very realistic alternative power source in many parts of the country. Planning regulations can create a problem and there are also noise issues that need to be addressed. There are some excellent manuals on how to make your own power-generating windmill or solar collectors, even using recycled materials such as used vehicle alternators.
