Would it ever be possible to become completely self-sufficient for our electricity needs? Is it possible that I would never have to buy another kWh from the national grid, ever again? How much would it cost? Is this something socially responsible and worthwhile to pursue?
If we were to disconnect every single electrical appliance in our home, and never turn a light on again, then obviously the answer would be yes. But this is not an acceptable solution for me and my household. You could quite accurately accuse me of being an energy non-conformist activist, but I'm not about to become a hemp-wearing yurt-dwelling beardy wonder.
So let me rephrase the question: Assuming my household continues to use the amount of electricity we're using at the moment, would we ever be able to generate that amount indefinitely? Then we would be truly electrically self sufficient.
Being an electrical/electronically minded geek type, I find this kind of thing interesting so I'd like to investigate what it would take to actually make this happen.
As for being a socially responsible and worthwhile project to pursue, I'd say unequivocally, a resounding yes. Given that our country is muddling its way through an emerging energy crisis, and will continue to do so over the next 5 or 10 years, reducing my demands on 'the system' is a wholly responsible thing to do.
The cost? This is also key. Making a responsible judgement on the use of our finances (in conjunction with my loving and long-suffering wife of course) must be weighed into the equation. Is becoming electrically independent something only the filthy rich could aspire to?
I've broken the question down into three solvable parts:
1) How much electricity *do* we use at the moment?
2) How many solar panels/wind turbines/insert other renewable energy source here* would be needed to generate that amount?
3) What kind of energy storage requirements would be required to make sure the energy was available to use even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing?
4) What kind of costs are we talking about?
Question 1:
This is dead easy to solve - I'm with npower, and they have a very helpful website showing me how much energy I've used over the past years, broken down by month. For the whole of 2012, we used 8969kWh. I gather this is quite high for domestic consumption, but then I work from home and have a number of computers/air con etc. in the office that's in use 9-5 throughout the working week. Broken down by month, December was the highest with 982kWh. July was the least at 393kWh. From the 2013 readings so far, our consumption has dropped slightly this year, probably due to me fitting LED lighting in the office and throughout the house.
Question 2:
I'm not yet in a position to answer this accurately. Our solar panels have been up for just over 2 weeks, so the predications/estimates for the amount generated this year are just that. According the latest figures I've compiled, we could be generating between 1700-2000kWh per year with our 8 panels. Using a simple division of the 2012 yearly amount, this shows we would need between 36 and 42 panels. We could fit another 2 onto our south-facing roof, taking us up to 10 panels. Still only about a quarter of the power we would need for the year. But even now, this doesn't sound absolutely out of the question - even using only solar power. For the sake of three more bits of roof that are the same area as ours is currently, it is looking quite achievable from a generation perspective...
More later on this methinks... off out to walk the dog with the wife...
Please feel free to leave comments/ideas about this topic.
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