Why would you bother producing your own electricity with solar panels or a wind turbine when you can simply take it out of the grid?

Well, it can save you money, and it helps the environment.  But the most important reason is that it makes you more independent from the centralised power distribution system.  Read on to find out how you can generate electricity at home.

One way, which is not particularly environmentally friendly, is to have your own engine driven generator.  If you do this, you’ll need a generator set.  It is better to have a diesel rather than a petrol one – you’ll need to store a lot of fuel and petrol tends to deteriorate if kept for long periods, and diesel engines are more efficient.  You could use a heat exchanger and use the excess heat to provide hot water or heating for your home.  The cost of fuel will probably mean that it is cheaper to buy electricity from the grid, but you can use the diesel generator in case of grid failure, or if you are completely away from the grid.  One other disadvantage of a generator is the noise and need for maintenance.  Diesel generators are reliable, but still need downtime for routine maintenance.

The Bloom Box is a new technology which will eventually become an option.  This is a fuel cell which can run on any form of gas (including biogas) and produces electricity and minimal emissions (lower than buying your electricity from the grid if your power company burns coal).  Pricing has not yet been released, but I saw some prices around $3,000 for a 3 KW system (enough for a house).  It is not a zero emission device as it burns carbon based fuels, even though it is very efficient.

Another way of producing electricity is to get a wind turbine.  A little one that you put on your roof won’t produce enough power (why?  because the air around buildings is very turbulent, and efficiency increases significantly with turbine diameter), you need a reasonably sized one.  Wind power is cheap and reliable, as long as you have wind.  The important factor is to get a high tower so that you can tap into the more continual stream of wind above the turbulence of buildings and trees near the ground.  Wind turbines can be noisy, which will lead to difficulties in installing a wind turbine in suburbia.  Most local governments will not allow them in built up areas.  If you live in a windy area, and have some space around you, they are a good option.  The price per kilowatt is lower than solar panels.

The preferred option is solar panels.  They simply need to have sunlight and are usually mounted on the roof.  They require virtually no maintenance, have no moving parts and last for at least 20 years.  I have 7 solar panels on my roof, and they put out about 1 KW of power.  They have cut my electricity bills by about 40%.  In the winter time when there is heavy cloud cover, I don’t get much out of them, but in the summer when we use peak power, they work very well.  They are fairly costly, but prices are falling all the time.

I have a grid connected solar system, with an inverter, which feeds any excess power straight back into the grid.  The electricity company offsets that against my electricity bill.  The only downside is that when the grid goes down, my system goes down as well.  It doesn’t work like a UPS (uninterruptible power supply).  The sun might be blazing down, but if the grid goes off, there is still no power for the house.  I have met my goal of saving money (in an environment when our electricity costs are increasing by 20% per annum), but as yet I am still not independent of the grid.

I would like to be able to operate independently of the power grid.  Why?  It is inherently fragile by design.  It is centrally controlled, and I don’t want to have to rely on something that can be turned off at source or restricted (or hacked).  Where I live, a week of hot days can use up the natural gas supplies in the pipeline that feed extra gas turbines that kick in to provide peak power.  When that happens, in the past they have ordered air conditioning and even lights to be turned off.  Electricity is under government control, and they can heavily fine those who refuse to do so.

Previously all the air conditioning in one building I worked in was turned off.  There were no opening windows, and the humidity increased to the point that water ran down the windows, and 20% of staff were off sick the next day.  Well, today was 42 degrees Celcius, and the minimum was 26 degrees overnight, and I don’t really like being that hot.  I wouldn’t like to not have air conditioning at the hottest time (I hope that this won’t happen).  I would like my own independent, off the grid, decentralised electricity production.

If you have some more information on installing your own electricity production system, or want to express your views, please leave a comment to share with others.

Tags: alternative energy, energy, solar panels, subversive, wind turbine

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Daily subversive tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.