Firstly, the system I am going to purchase can fit into my garden. If I lived anywhere else such as an apartment I could do nothing to generate power or saving the planet except by getting my power from an alternative energy provider and looking at ways I could save on power consumption. This could be by replacing my bulbs for those low output items and asking what some may say are silly questions in the electrical shop when you renew your old appliances. Some manufacturers rate their appliances in terms of efficiency and one day these manufacturers might offer efficiency as a real sales issue... blah blah blah. Grandad might just say put an extra tee shirt on if you are cold but let’s not go there. Things have moved on since then.

So what appliances do I power. Let me go and have a look at the back of the TV. That's 108W, the stereo is 32W and this computer doesn't say anything. So lets say 40W. The kettle is 2200W. The video is 30W and the DVD player is 50W. The fridge, hold on, is 540W and the washing machine, according to the website is 500W typically. The other fridge which is not making a noise as it is hardly ever opened but has beer in it, is also 500W. The dryer is 800W and the hoover is a 1000W option. There are also say 10 lights in the house with 100W bulbs in each. It mounts up doesn't it.

To make sense of all this, let me also add in how many hours they are used for. See the table below: The total wattage used by an appliance is the power rating, say 500W, x the number of hours. For half an hour the total = 250W.

The figures and theory shown in the table have been simplified because I wanted to avoid complicating what is simple to understand if done the way I have illustrated. I should have explained joules and defined electrical units but I chose not to. Nonetheless, the answer stays the same, except it should be written as kilowatt-hours (KwHrs). Basically, 1000Watts equals 1KW and therefore 31260 Watts over this 24 hour period should really be written as 31.26KwHrs. This is helpful though because your power bill is done in terms of Units and 1 Unit equals 1KwHr. Since my power costs $0.17 per Unit, my electricity bill is $5.32 per day. (31.26 x 0.17)

I may wish to cut the hedge or use some power tools and there are bound to be other things I have forgotten. Oh yeah the cooker, that's 1000W per day straight away and the dishwasher. Anyway I was going to take this example to its full and excruciating conclusion and work out my alternative energy system but I already know that by counting things like all my heating appliances it is going to be uneconomic. To generate nearly 40000W per day from alternative sources would just be too expensive. The system I can reasonably afford will either contribute to my power consumption by slowing the meter down or I can look at things I can do to stop consuming loads of power. Clearly adapting a home or office is much more difficult than starting one from scratch.

My lighting amounts to 4000W. Ok I have kids but that is crazy. I'm not going to tell them to turn the lights off all the time as my Dad did that, but I could change them for 60W bulbs or even take one out of the multiple bulb items. The low power ones are 10W so I could buy them instead and they last longer. So that could be down to 400W. Saved already. What else could I do? Well, do I need two fridges? Yes, but now I know it costs me and it has an environmental impact, albeit small, I shall think about it.

To make matters easy let's just say that I can afford to spend enough money on alternative energies to generate 2000W per day come rain or shine and that any other power I need will come from usual provider, the coal fired power station. Small steps but a beginning. For the meantime, alternative energy from solar panels or a wind turbine is expensive in the short term (cheap in the long term though) and our expectations of how much power they deliver needs to be realized. Also, we waste a stack of energy in our everyday lives, energy we should not count as being needed when we calculate our actual power requirements.

I also need to store 21/2 (Two and a half) days of power because there may be some days when I will not be generating power from a lack of sun or wind, and for our calculations I actually need 3000W per day because of the inherent losses of power from inefficiencies in the battery and the inverter. To access 2000W per day I need to store 3000W. In total, because I may have days when nature does not deliver any power, I need 21/2 x 3000 which means I actually need to be able to generate and store 7500W per day. If you have lots of great weather days the spare power can be used.

So I need to store 7500W and if I live without a power supply I will need batteries or if I just want to slow my meter down and generate some electricity, I will not. Slowing the meter is a less expensive option as there are no batteries and maybe a realistic thought for many people. If I need batteries due to my remoteness or because the cost of connection is high, then let’s see how many I need. In the batteries section before, we looked at 220 Amp/hour batteries and with the 24 Volt system I reckon I need, that means I can store 220 x 24 = 5280W. To make 24 Volts I can wire two 12 Volt batteries in parallel (see your electrician). So if a pair of 12V batteries can store 5280 W, then 2 pairs will store 10560W. (24 V batteries are also available). That will do for me. Bingo.

To generate 7500W then by using the 110W solar panel from Siemens that gets 3.5 hours of sunshine or light per day, that equals 385W so you would need about 20 panels. Hmm. Don't think so. So let’s go for either bigger panels, more money, a complimentary wind generation system, less power demand, a newer fridge, a large coat, home insulation or a house on the equator with no responsibilities to kids. The point here is that choosing your alternative energy system means either spending a lot of money on current technology, waiting until better and cheaper technology emerges or looking across the board at things you can do to reduce the power you need to generate. We all use lots and lots of power without knowing it and thinking about our daily consumption is the first step towards becoming energy conscious.

However, before you choose not to invest in alternative energies in the short term, be aware that by reading this site, a seed has been planted in your head. New efficient things are being produced right now and with institutional and governmental support and promotion, they will reach into all our lives. Newspapers are full of new alternative energy investments as is this site’s news section. The electric car is coming and nearly in your showroom. They can now go 250 miles per charge and they are not slow and they do not look stupid. They run on batteries and in having your home fitted with roof mounted solar panels, it is possible to charge your vehicle batteries yourself and also make your domestic meter run backwards with the excess power you generate. Symbiosis. And when you don't need your pv panels anymore you can sell them for nearly what you bought them for.

How much is your electricity costing you?

A family car is a great example for Combined Heat and Power. Its engine uses petrol to drive the wheels round and at the same time it makes electricity for the battery and provides hot air for the occupants. If you decided not to drive it anymore, you could raise it on blocks and use the wheels to drive a generator round. With the engine running you would also heat up water and if you turned on the fan, hot air would emerge. A CHP system is basically the same as this but of course a CHP plant is devoted to using all its effort to make things go round and its by-product, heat, is captured in the air and water system surrounding the motor used for power generation.

CHP systems can be tailor made for producing power, hot water and hot air for your home, office and industry. No source of heat or power is wasted. Institutions such as museums and hospitals are choosing to use biomass (waste wood) where available, otherwise gas turbines are the primary source of power. In Japan, the refridgerator sized gas powered CHP systems are very popular in new homes and they combine water boiling and power generation nicely. These systems have pinched all the technology existing in large establishments and made it smaller and more beautiful and this Micro CHP market is growing quickly. It used to be perceived that these were noisy because of the association with stand alone building site generators, but not anymore. The industry surrounding this technology has seized upon silence to promote the invisibility of energy and heat generation which it now calls cogeneration.

See: www.climate-energy.com/faq.asp for these MICRO-CHP applications.

CHP is not really an alternative energy, but a system that allows us to utilize our resources more effectively. The transition to full blown alternative energies will take at least a generation and using CHP will no doubt endure as the fuels used in CHP will be available for a long time. It is possible to convert existing boilers and generation systems to CHP and most large establishments like hospitals and universities which already have a boiler, are well placed to benefit from a conversion.

Gain a better idea at:

www.chpa.co.uk - Combined Heat and Power Association site in the UK
www.epa.gov - Similar for the US

See our Products page for further details.

The Fuel Cell uses hydrogen as its fuel and delivers electricity to batteries. This electricity is harvested from Hydrogen by removing one of its electrical charges (electron) by a platinum catalyst layer within the Fuel Cell. One of the great features of this form of energy is that there is no pollution because as the hydrogen leaves the cell it mixes with oxygen from incoming air and water is made as the 'waste' product. Beautiful. A catalyst is a thing that basically speeds and assists the reactions within the Fuel Cell. Platinum is an essential and expensive part of the Fuel Cell but there is new technology which uses more readily available materials and has a greater output.

It seems to be a very new and strange science and the workings of the Fuel Cell are described in:

www.humboldt.edu/~serc/animation.html

To make lots of power you need lots of hydrogen and lots of Fuel Cells. It is envisaged that the future is going to be powered by Hydrogen, from mass power generation to electric cars. In the last year alone the range and variety of Fuel Cell applications has mushroomed and some lap tops are even powered by electricity derived from the hydrogen fuel cell where the hydrogen is stored within a replaceable methanol capsule. More importantly though is that Hydrogen is being used to power fleets of buses in cities around the World and it really is only a matter of time before cars are available. The only real stumbling block at the moment is being able to manufacture and store sufficient Hydrogen and convincing people and industry that it is safe. The buses currently go to their own hydrogen facility to fill up but the fantastic thing is that there is a lot of hydrogen and lots of air but such simplicity sounds a bit too good to be true. Or it is?

Hydrogen does not occur on its own. Industry currently separates hydrogen from water or air or methanol and energy from oil and gas is needed for this. So whilst it seems that using Hydrogen is clever, its manufacture still relies on the input of fuel that Hydrogen is supposed to replace. But this could be a largely temporary situation because small scale hydrogen manufacturing can be achieved by separation from water in an electrolyser that uses DC power generated from wind power or photovoltaic cells. In this manner hydrogen could be deemed to be a non-polluting and 'free' energy source if it then did not need cooling down to - 250 degrees C for storage as a liquid. Liquid hydrogen contains 1000 times more Hydrogen by volume than when in gas form and because lots of Hydrogen is used in fuel cells, having the fuel as a gas is not sufficient. Using methanol is a way of storing hydrogen conveniently in any decent volume, but having these complications merely emphasizes that producing hydrogen is not the same as making it available for fuel cell applications.

So the book is definitely not closed on hydrogen yet. Yes it can be produced using renewable sources but it may not be feasible to consider it useful in many applications. Some educated people even consider it to be a bit of a white elephant. There are however, hydrogen manufacturing facilities relying solely on power generated by alternative energies, but it does not seem to be able to achieve the great status its promoters declare. Not yet anyway. These are illustrated in:

http://www.renewables.ca/h.html

Three good sites on the Hydrogen industry to have
a look at are:

www.captainozone.com - Opinions of a Hydrogen superhero that make total sense.
www.fuelcelltoday.com - hydrogen fuel cell markets and technology

With an electrolyser, water is the new fuel. You can get more of an idea of the marketplace by checking out our Products page.

Biomass

Biomass is a term to describe anything in plant form that can be used as fuel. Biomass is a new word, which has not helped people understand what it is, nor that it could become a hugely popular source of energy. And boy it really could. Think of it like this. Oil is plants that have been squashed by their own weight and compressed into liquid. Coal is squashed plants that, in time, would turn into oil, and peat is plants that would, in time, be squashed in to coal. Amid all this, Natural Gas is the gas from squashed plants and since it is impossible to conceive how much oil and gas have been extracted from the Earth so far, it is even more implausible to imagine all the plant matter that has been buried over the eons and gone on to form oil, gas and coal deposits. In burning these fuels we release this infeasibly huge bank of Carbon into the atmosphere, a bank that has been raided for about 150 years now. Burning oil based fuels produces Carbon Dioxide, the main Greenhouse Gas component. No wonder atmospheric CO2 is at a 650,000 year high.

Notwithstanding all this, the simple conclusion is that plants actually contain a huge energy potential and rather than wait 200 million years for oil or gas to form, mankind can burn plants in such a way that energy can be gained. Wood burns pretty well but using an open flame is one of the least efficient ways of gaining energy from things that can grow. By burning different types of wood or grass (or roughly anything from nature that is biodegradable) at very high temperatures and by limiting the oxygen involved, oil and gas can be extracted and used as a fuel. Creating this high temperature, oxygen starved environment needs special machinery and this is where the gasifier comes in.

www.woodgas.com/gasification.htm - explains the basics behind heating wood and wastes to gain useable gas.

Firstly, there is no sense is growing biomass just to set it on fire because the process of planting, growing and harvesting uses up huge amounts of energy. There are already huge amounts of waste biomass available from growing corn and the cropping of sustainably grown forests and the logging and lumber industry could have a viable market for all the parts of the tree it leaves on the forest floor that would otherwise rot and give off methane. The waste from municipal tips and dumps is an excellent source of fuel and there can’t be any better way of reducing the landfill burden, reducing potential atmospheric methane and providing free heat to the local hospital for example.

Another clever way of using plant matter to derive fuel is in the manufacture of Ethanol. This is manufactured using fermentation, like a brewery, and plants high in starch such as corn can yield a fuel that just about performs the same as petrol. The idea of growing the fuel in the first place appeals to many because plant matter actually consists of carbon, the so called scourge of climate change, and burning biomass merely puts the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came. The argument is that essentially no extra carbon enters the atmosphere and so biomass is a fuel that industry refers to as Carbon Neutral. In the Ethanol section of the site, in Vehicles and Fuels, I rubbish this claim because of the use of Carbon fuels in the farming, processing, manufacture and transportation of biomass for Ethanol production, but there is some merit is what is said. However, on a much more positive note, the whole biomass industry roundly claims that all the products currently manufactured from oil such as fuels, plastics and adhesives can be gained from oils manufactured from biomass and even achieve the massive production levels that would essentially render mineral oils as out-dated. Can't imagine it myself but petrol also made some wild claims in 1880. Just not sure how our planet would look if biomass was embraced without concerns for the environment.

The site below illustrates the calorific value of various fuel sources and notes that 12kg of manure produces 1 cu m of biogas, the same energy as 1kg of low grade coal:

www.indiasolar.com/cal-value.htm

There is a good case study at: www.primenergy.com/Projects_detail_Stuttgart.htm and more details generally in the Case Studies of the site.

Biomass is a just cause where it exists as readily available waste. For wood burning fires and stoves in the home, visit the Biomass page in Water and Room Heating. For ideas on gasifiers and industry contacts, see PRODUCTS.

Micro-hydro is the term used for the local and small scale generation of power from moving water, and it is most popularly employed where there are streams and rivers in hilly and mountainous areas. The scheme is set up so that part of the stream is modified to encourage some of the water to flow into pipes or a trough, which then run downhill for as far as possible before entering a sort of shed or house which contains the refridgerator-sized generator. Nozzles right at the end of your downhill pipework focus the pressure of all that falling water right on to the blades of your generator and the water then passes out of your system and rejoins the stream to carry on its merry way. The more water you can capture and the further it falls the better.

Micro-hydro systems are usually designed so that this system of pipes and troughs has relatively little impact on the environment, whereas full blown hydro usually involves the construction of a large dam. Micro-hydro installations vary depending on the landscape of course, but they can be designed to generate up to 300KW, which is enough to power 20 or 30 houses quite well. Normal dam-type hydro systems can generate far more power but the boundaries between micro and normal hydro power tend to fall at the 300KW mark. Being able to generate this much power with solar panels would be too expensive for one party and using wind technology would mean havng a windmill with 50m (150ft) blades on a 70m (220ft) tower. Even then, the delivery of power would neither be continuous nor aesthetic. Any alternative energy system that develops 300 KW continuously and as invisibly as hydro is a considerable asset.

There are some good Case Studies at www.microhydropower.net/casestudies/ and a description of a typical Micro-Hydro installation. Do you have access to fast running water?

As well as it being important to have a lot of water falling a long way, the key to achieving a high level of power generation also lies in the choice of waterwheel. The best option is a Pelton Wheel which has its paddles cupped to gather the most power and this type of design is over 100 years old. I have seen statistics from another site some time ago that stated that a wheel measuring only 380mm (17 inches) in diameter can generate up to 15 KW of AC, not DC power and this is confirmed at www.canyonhydro.com. Generating AC is much more useable than DC power generated by ‘traditional’ alternative energy systems.

Another superb and innovative design for use in the deeper waters of rivers is to be found at www.verdantpower.com/tech/lowimpact.html. Amongst a whole series of great river bound designs they illustrate, they have developed underwater propellers that can generate anything from 25 to 250 KW and a farm of these has great potential.

Likewise, the Aquair Submersible Generator is another revolutionary product (forgive the pun) that can generate a modest 2.4KW and is best imagined as a small rotating barrel sitting in the middle of a body of quite fast flowing water. This does not sound much but if you think that a solar panel would struggle to produce this amount of power, this is considerable indeed and again it is a consistent power supply. This type of generator is available from many distributors across the web.

Using rivers or streams to generate power could come up against much opposition, but with the idea that there are low impact solutions available, it could be feasible to take advantage of this much moving water and please everybody. Rules and policy on this will emerge no doubt, and whilst the reality is that any works will change the nature of the river bed locally and temporarily, in the long term, these are solutions that can be done sensitively, be beneficial to many people and do no measurable harm to the environment. Not convinced? When plans emerge for the construction of a coal fired generator to sustain the growth of your local economy, which form of energy generation would you rather choose?

See New Products for suppliers of Micro-Hydro Systems.

Wave or sea power used to be hailed as the power provider for the future and then someone said what happens in a storm? Won't it get trashed. I remember it being called the salter duck and in a storm it generated piles of power from acres of bobbing plastic things. And then I never heard about it again.

Bear in mind that the sea has already collected all that energy from the wind by making a continual supply of waves and it is also a massive heat sink for the sun's energy. For me, waves seem a bit more predictable and reliable than wind and using the heat of the oceans gives the impression of vast and certain supplies of power with little impact on the environment other than creating an inconvenience for boats.

Fortunately the idea was not lost and much has obviously been going on in back shed wave tanks around Europe. What I am going to do is basically explain the bullet points of the following web sites which you can access should you wish to delve further.

www.wavegen.co.uk

This has been going ages from what I remember and as with all things related to sea based energy extraction it is clever and at the same time childishly simple. Its a large tube with a fan/turbine inside which is driven round by the swell of the waves pushing air up the tube and then sucking it back out again. The blades of the fan turn irrespective of the direction of air flow and come rain or shine it won't stop working as waves themselves are shielded from entering the tube and it doesn't matter anyway if some water goes in as the entrance chamber is sloped to let water run back into the sea. The fan/turbine generates enough power to supply the local Scottish village.

www.oceanpd.com

Another Scottish development where a series of metal tubes 3m in diameter and about 10m long each are fastened together with hydraulic hinges. They float completely submerged in the surface waters and as each tube falls and rises against the other, the hydraulic fluid within the hinge is pumped through tubes and through a turbine to generate power. It does not say how much yet but this is no longer experimental. Pictures on the site say it all. Massive potential.

www.waveswing.com

The Archimedes Wave Swing is now on the seabed and for the life of me I can't quite grasp what goes on but something goes up and down and knocks out 10MW. That's a lot. It's been 10 years in the making amid the usual financial woes but at last it seems to have turned a corner. I wonder how many places could benefit from having one of these things floated 200m offshore and sunk and then switched on.

www.seasolarpower.com

The sea has a lot of heat stored within it but what can we do with it. Well you can make steam by boiling propylene can't you. Sounds complicated but again this is a working scheme generating 100MW plus it turns out fresh water as waste. There are already lots of desalination plants helping equatorial countries to get fresh water from the sea, well now this one makes power as well. You can't help but be optimistic if any or all of these schemes become mainstream. Sign here.

www.tidalelectric.com

Tidal power seems to have supporters in some nations but is held back by the huge environmental implications. The scheme involves using tidal flows to turn turbines built into and across the full width of a river as it nears the sea. The landscape is changed but in actual fact only temporarily as the nature of the estuary sands reshift with the changing water flows. This generates huge amounts of power and as a bird-watcher, yes there are changes to habitat but if it is done sensitively, tidal power can be feasible.

There are alternatives involving the same principle. This means building a very large round dam in the shallow ocean with one entrance for the tide to flow through. A turbine is positioned in this entrance to gather the most speed from the tidal flow. Pacific Nations maybe.

If you wish to learn more about these certain developments please see the Products section.

For an overview on Tidal Power, there is a good up to date report with some other innovations that again resemble an underwater propeller at http://rise.org.au/reslab/resfiles/tidal/text.html

Some places are lucky that they have volcanic action on or near the surface and some places have remnants of volcanic action in hot rocks below the surface. Some people may say living near to volcanic action is not so good as we found here in NZ when some people lost their gardens to newly formed vents one day.

Geothermal energy is well documented and not seen as an alternative energy source in the hippy, green sense. Industry has embraced its potential for years and people in some nations use a combination of geothermal energy and heat pumps to heat their home. This is best explained in the website we have recommended before in www.climatemaster.com.

On a much larger scale, most developed countries have experimented with drilling into volcanic rocks hot water to heat water for steam generation and this has culminated in a project in Australia www.geodynamics.com.au which claims the potential for huge power development from seemingly limitless supplies of steam. Unfortunately, the development of Geothermal has suffered some set-backs due to the 'emissions' of heavy metals and poisonous and caustic minerals in the steam and water as it comes out of the ground. The Geothermal Industry in NZ appears to have no effect on the environment because it is located around volcanic hotspots which have already reduced the terrain to a lunar looking landscape. This might not always be the case though in other nations.

Using information from the site’s National Policy page, http://iga.igg.cnr.it/geoworld/geoworld.php?sub=elgen provides a great overview of global Geothermal Energy production. The Products page also can help you gain a better understanding.