Alternative Energy

Alternative power sources for energy saving

Alternative 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. A recent ‘intermediate technology’ experiment in Africa shows how creative you 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!

Solar panel technology to make your own energy

Solar panel technology has come of age. PV (photovoltaic) cells convert sunlight into energy that can be stored or used directly. They are made by taking silicon crystals (grown from sand) and impregnating them with a chemical substance called a semi-conductor to create oppositely charged layers. The layers are covered with glass to make a PV panel. The sun hits the layers and frees electrons that make an electric current. Several PV panels can be linked together to increase a local energy supply.
Some of the energy gets lost in this process and the most common PV panels still only convert somewhere between 4% - 13% of the sun’s energy into electrical energy, although this is improving with the technology. Solar panels are ideal for lighting needs and can even supply 25% of a household’s needs in the winter and about 75% in the summer. Although they can be expensive to buy and install, there are sizeable grants available in parts of the UK to help with this.

Solar Water heaters to make your own energy at home

Solar water heaters use the sun’s energy to pre-heat cold water that is then stored. Even raising the temperature of your water a few degrees using ‘free energy’ creates a saving on your domestic fuel bill. Solar systems can supply about half the energy needs for hot water in an average household. Fuel cell technology is catching up fast and before long it will be easier to convert solar energy into storable heat energy using this tecnology.

Wind power technology to make your own energy

You must have seen small windmills on boats and vans by now. The microgeneration of energy through wind is ideal for 12 volt lighting systems and once again this is a free energy source that nearly anyone can tap into. Wind power is used to turn an electricity-generating turbine, from huge windmills on the landscape to smaller localised versions; they can vary from a few hundred watts up to several megawatts. Household sized wind systems are usually two or three kilowatts.
Once again grants are available to help install localised wind turbines but there are other issues such as efficient siting, localised noise and planning regulations to consider.

Heat exchangers to save energy

In some areas of the world heat from under the ground is captured (thermodynamic energy) and used to provide central heating and hot water. They use an electric pump to bring up the heat and for every energy unit this pump costs it gives up to 6 units of heat. This is still a very expensive technology to set-up and is used for large buildings or building complexes and designed in at the buiding stage.
Some people who live by water use heat exchanger technology to extract and store heat from streams or rivers, a sort of modern equivalent of a water wheel. Others actually have heat exchangers fitted to their baths to reclaim heat from bathwater before pulling the plug.

External combustion to make energy

In 1821Robert Stirling invented an engine that used an inter-cylinder, hot-cold air-exchange system. A heat source, such as focused rays from the sun is applied externally to create a smooth and quiet engine which is being developed for localised energy production.