Overview of alternative energy solutions for the house

Ok, now in this blog I just want to have a look at different sources of energy. If any other members of this online community want to add more things that I may have missed
out on then please feel free to let me know in the comments section
below. I will probably be adding my own biases and obsessions, but
heck, I am human :)

If we have to face a global energy crisis, more energy may have to be made at home, that means power for the computer, TV, radio, heating, washing clothes, lighting, cooking
and water heating.

Everything has its cost somewhere along the line, so you have to think with care about what it will cost, be it in terms of time, energy, resources, money and/or environmental
cost. In this era, everyone is time poor, so we have to have
solutions that we can fit into our lives, either solutions that can
be created and then don't need much maintenance such as, maybe, a
vertical axis wind turbine, or something that might require small
bits of time out in to it every time you use it, such as filling up a
heater with wood or other fuel.

Also, with each form of energy that you use at home, it may take some knowledge to get the thing working such as the mechanical skills that you need to build a wind turbine. This
is another opportunity cost and possible area for inefficiency (if
you take into account the time or money that you need to invest in
the actual gaining of information and skills).

So, the alternative fuels fall into a few categories. There is solid, liquid and gas (for physical fuels), mechanical energy (including wind to drive a turbine), radiant (solar
thermal and photovoltaic), thermal (as in the thermal electric
effect).

For solid fuels, probably the most available would be biomass, which means vegetable matter that is burned or consumed in another way, or possibly animal wastes
including dung that is either burned or digested in a digester to
make methane. Solid fuels also includes coal, but is it all that
sustainable to use could and if so how can one get it in a crisis?

My favourite biomass that can be bought is wood pellets which has an incredibly high calorific value (over 4 Kw / hours per kilogram) and is similar to that of coal. It can be
burned in a wood gas stove to make flame for cooking (outdoors
ONLY!!), can be used in a wood pellet boiler to power the domestic
hot water and space heating and can be run in a indoor pellet stove
for indoor space heating. Also the wood pellets can be burned in an
Imbert gasifier. These are downdraft gasifiers (for which there are
FEMA plans for on the internet) that makes a combustible smoke and
gas combo that is burned in an internal combustion engine (such as an
electricity generator) instead of gasoline. So you can even use wood
pellets to generate the electricity that you need to power your
houses electricity. However that takes either mechanical knowledge
and skills to make the Imbert or to buy a “Gek” (Gasifier
Experimenters Kit) thus requiring time, energy and money.

However there are some varieties of wood gas stoves (that run on an updraught principle) that are made by the guy who runs the WorldStove youtube channel that crates enough
wood gas to be extractable and put into an engine with a special
adapter. So maybe the wh*** process could be cheaper and easier (?)
even if it means shorter burn times.

Wood pellets can also be made by a pellet making machine (the same type that is used to make food pellets for cattle) however that requires money, space and diesel or
petrol to power it, not to mention tonnes of wood to pelletise.

As far as liquid goes, there are two to consider, alcohol that can be made at home through fermentation of good yeast and sugar, and biodiesel. Of these two, alcohol is the
only one that can be made itself at home, but again you need a lot of
raw materials, as well as a home made distillation plant to
manufacture the alcohol at the rate and purity that you might need to
burn it. To be able to make your own biodiesel to run a generator
with made up of old oils that have been discarded by fast food shops
requires equipment to remove the bad stuff and leave you with a good
high quality burning fuel. I saw a news article about a lady who ran
a taxi company who had a plant installed to help her cut down the
business overheads of running the taxi company, so it can be done,
but again there is an expense.

On the side of gas, you have two main possibilities, one is hydrogen that can be made by the electrolysis of water, and the other is methane that can be made by decaying
matter in a digester. As far as hydrogen is concerned, you will need
to firstly have some electricity on hand (so in reality what you are
doing is converting electricity into a combustible fuel and doing so
at a low efficiency. It will depend on the usefulness of hydrogen to
you as to whether you use it or not) and electrolyte which will be
the highly dangerous potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide. Also a
way of getting rid f the products of the reaction being liquids
containing a compound of chromium which is highly toxic. Also the 316
grade stainless steel electrodes will need maintenance and
replacement. However, it may be possible to use other renewables
(solar and wind) to produce hydrogen that can then be stored for less
windy/sunny days.

The other gas possibility that you have is that of methane. It requires space to have a sufficient digester to make the gas from decomposing food and vegetable matter, it
requires bacteria gained from a sewerage plant to start the reaction
and can be rather smelly. The gas on the other hand, needs storage
and there is less of a risk of explosion by comparison with hydrogen,
but on the other hand, hydrogen is not harmful to humans. So there is
a trade off there. Ga**** are great as they can be used for heating
and cooking and hot water, but they also have another use and that is
for bright indoor lighting when one uses a gas mantle.

For mechanical energy you have wind (both vertical axis and horizontal axis, which is something that should be common knowledge to you by now), hydroelectric (either from
a stream or other steady flowing waster supply or from pumping water
into a high tank and then releasing it though a water wheel to
generate power) as well as bicycle or similar fitness equipment
orientated energy, including dynamo torches and other “wind up”
style devices. However trying to power yur washing machine on the
energy of cycling would be really hard work even if you were a
professional rugby player . . . .! However I did once see a you tube
video by a man who used his bike to charge a battery that he could
then use to power his entertainment system on (TV, Stereo and CD/DVD
player), so there are possibilities there for you.

On the subject of solar, there is photovoltaics which are pricey, but the government in my country is introducing a scheme to make it either cheaper or free to get solar
installed and then to recoup the cost via the energy bill. So there
are more possibilities to get your power that way, but solar heating
can be cheap even to the point of being almost free. I saw some
people make solar furnaces using a wooden box with a polycarbonate
window and the box had pipes made of aluminium beer cans painted
black and he reported great results.

If you are just experimenting at home for fun, I recommend that you look into wood gas cooking stoves on the internet as they can be made nice and cheap from food or coffee
tins. Wood pellets are the best fuel for these by far.