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http://www.off-grid.net/2009/10/17/german-village-goes-off-grid-ready/

As an example.

You could get some better economies of scale with larger reactors than we build now but it's hard to transmit and distribute electricity from anything much larger then what we build now.

1. The Big Potential of Micro Nukes.
2. Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes.
3. Toshiba's building a "Micro Nuclear" reactor for your garage?
4. Micro-nuclear plants for local power
5. Bill Gates and Toshiba teaming up to build small, 100-year nuke plant?
6. Scaling nuclear power for villages, apartment buildings, shopping malls, factories, and ships

You were saying what again?

Falcon

Some people are already using "humanure" toilets that compost their waste into fertilizer. It's essentially a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat and a side bucket of sawdust that you scatter over your waste to kill the smell until it's time to empty. More here.

I suppose it would make sense if we actually had gardens to fertilize and had to worry about the cost of water. Fortunately for the average slashdot reader these are only 3rd world concerns.

IMHO, it's energy *storage* that matters more than generation.

Storage only matters much in Off grid situations. Individual grid intertied systems don't need storage. Of course with a significant increase in intertied systems then storage may become an issue.

there's no practical way of storing the generated energy to use later.

Sure there is, many of those off grid depend on storage and use battery banks.

Falcon

Where on earth are you getting this data? Please provide at least some reference to any accumulation of people that is self sufficient on solar and wind. Unless of course you are playing loose with definitions and "renewable technologies" includes geothermal, trash-to-steam, etc.

While I agree about cities being self sufficient in renewable energy, the only place I can think of is Iceland and to a degree Hawaii using geothermal as they are, but there are plenty of people who's house is energy sufficient, Off Gridders. Daily more and more people are going off the grid. Oh and geothermal is just as renewable as solar and wind.

I have a coworker that is very interested in living off grid, and is also an engineer, and cheap to boot. As much as he wanted solar, he couldn't afford it. Why? The payback period (without subsidies) is 100 years! Even with a 50% subsidy, it is 50 years, which still exceeds the life of the panels (which are NOT "emissions free" to manufacture).

I don't know where your friend gets his data from. According a study published by Wiley, "Photovoltaics energy payback times, greenhouse gas emissions and external costs: 2004-early 2005 status" [$30 to buy] payback period is less than 25 years. Some of those who have built their home off the grid, had payback periods of under 15 years, before the warranty of some components expires.

It seems France is using Fast Breeder Reactors. From "Science Magazine" dated 1980 "Breeder Reactors in France". Ok, Sciam says France shut down it's breeder reactor, but it doesn't say why. However the nuclear waste, or reprocessed fuel, wasn't the only problem the Spectrum article said the French had, they also had all the toxic chemicals left over from reprocessing.

I admit research may solve all the problems with nuclear power, but so can research with alternative energy sources, geothermal, solar, wind, and others. And with these others, whereas nuclear power requires massive centralized plants that when decommissioned can't be used for anything else, they can have distributed and decentralized electrical generation. I think the energy problem comes from centralized power generation. Another is waste, conservation measures can cut the US's energy needs down a lot as well as waste heat going up smoke stacks when it can be recovered. As more and more Off Gridders are showing simple conservation measures can go a long way to satisfying US energy needs.

Transmitting electricity as DC at high voltages reduces the loss.

It mskes sense to use DC in many applications, but transmission to homes and businesses isn't one of them, because of the added cost of conversion hardware per-customer.

My understanding is that using HVDC for distribution is usually less efficient than using AC due to the cost of conversion.

Of course where HVDC is used by the tyme it reaches the point of use it's been stepped down and converted to AC. And while there's a loss when converting, it's not as much a loss as what would be lost by transmitting it long distances over AC lines. It would actually be more efficient to use the DC instead of converting the DC electricity to AC and then using the AC. And it's compleatly possible to use the DC, those who build Off the Grid use DC instead of AC.

Is somebody going to suddenly start giving away power for free?

When you can generate your own energy big energy businesses will look at it as if you are stealing from them.

Solar is expensive and can't be built (on a large scale) just anywhere.

Those who build Off the Grid can have a payback period of as low as 7 years. The problem as you say is solar can't be built everywhere.

All electrical items with microelectronics use DC.
But that's not the point, is it? Very few electronic items use 110/220v directly?
If you tried connecting your laptop to 110v DC, bypassing the transformer/rectifier, you wouild end up with lots of magic blue smoke and quite probably a loud bang or two.

I think you're basically saying the same thing I did. Fact is is most if not all electronic equipment converts the AC they are fed into DC. Being true doesn't it make sense electricity should be delivered DC to those items that use DC and AC to those that use AC? Of course this requires buildings to be wired for both AC and DC. Many of those who build Off the Grid wire DC for many things but will include AC outlets where it is needed. For instance while some refrigerators like Sun Frost come in 12 and 24 VDC as well as 110 or 220 VAC a person may want to use an electric stove and oven or washer and dryer that uses AC.

Thanks for the explanation. What I'm wondering now is if it is more efficient to use high voltage to transmit electricity long distances then step down the voltage at the point of use or transmit AC at lower voltage then convert it to DC at the point of use. I know those who build Off the Grid wire the home for DC and stock it with DC appliances because it's more efficient. However the point of electrical generation is close to use, and with a battery bank involved, inefficiencies are introduced in converting DC to AC then back again.

Put it this way, the computer you typed that on runs on DC. If you print this out, the printer will use dc power as well. Almost every electrical or electronic equipment in the home and office converts the AC power they are fed into DC power. Inefficiencies are introduced during the conversion. Because of these inefficiencies people who build their homes Off the Grid wire the home mostly for 12V, 24V, or 48V DC then they furnish it with DC appliances where they can.

Wind of course is vary variable and there is already significant resistance to more towers marring the landscape. So the only alternate at the moment is nuclear, preferably many low temp, long life reactors, rather than the high complexity, high temp units currently used.

Though there's resistance to wind farms there's also resistance to nuclear power plants, so that's a wash. As for variability of wind usually when it's not windy it's usually sunny, and modern wind gennie designs don't need a lot of wind. Though it's small, for Off the Grid applications, the BWC XL.1 Wind Turbine is a slow wind speed gennie capable of producing electricity with wind speeds as low as 5.6 mph.

Ethanol is proven as a fuel. Brazil has proven ethanol made from sugarcane is feasible. Switchgrass however is a better raw material than sugarcane.

Windmills turned out to be bird-blenders are useless with still air.

Older technology windmills, with their faster blades, are a danger to birds however today's slower spinning wind gennies are safer.

The problem is that solar, wind, and biofuels are actually not half bad for "peak" load, but most folks can't tell the difference between base and peak load.

Many people are able to live comfortably Off the Grid with solar and/or wind gennies. "Homepower and Solar Today show how people do it.

t is easy to be critical and not actually try to be part of the solution. Does your house have the most efficient heat and air conditioning?

Right now I don't own a home, I rent. While the whole building is heated from one gas unit, there is no air conditioning. Why I don't own it now the plan is that I will buy the building, which contains 4 apartments. Currently my sister owns the apartment building, because I'm on disability and don't work I wouldn't qualify for a mortgage to buy it. However once there is enough equity in it it will be transfered to me and I will take over the mortgage. Once I do I plan to save as much money as I can for a few years then hire an architect to create a better design. Reusing as much of the material as I can I'll gut out the interior and rebuild the interior adding more insulation ceiling fans for air circulation and radiant floor heating each unit can control themselves.

Prior to my disability I was roughly designing the home I wanted to build, being that I wanted to build it Off the Grid I was designing it to be as energy efficient as possible, then it would of been powered by a hybrid system using PVs and a wind genie, generator, with a battery bank to store the energy.

Are you driving a vehicle that gets 50+ MPG?

No, my car only gets about 30 mpg city. However I drive it less than 5,000 miles a year, I got it new in 2000 and I haven't yet put 40,000 miles on it. I'd love to have gotten a better mileage vehicle, such as a hybrid, however being on disability I couldn't afford it. Even when I attended college and worked though, I still rode my bike most of the tyme. Though I had a car, I rode my bike more than 200 miles a week. Actually that's how I ended up with my disability, while riding my bike I was hit by a moving van, the apartment movers sort, and I was not expected to survive. While in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Instead I survived a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI, and my life has been a living hell since.

Your comments stating,"Yea, because energy users never actually see how much the energy they use costs." is a little ambiguous. Do you pay an electric bill?

Yes, I pay an electric bill. And nowhere on it do I see anything about paying for the pollution my use causes to be released. Frequently though the power company does include pamphlets on what they're doing about it, or tips on conserving energy. Actually my power company gets a lot of it's electricity from wind genies, the state I live in is Minnesota and it generates several megawatts of wind power. And it can be ramped up to produce more, which helps farmers as they get paid for the property rental the towers use.

62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.

It isn't obvious, what is obvious is that if energy efficiency measures were taken electrical demand could be cut down to size. The biggest lightbulb I use is a 15 watt CFL and it puts out what a 75 watt incandescent bulb puts out. Other bulbs I have are 12 watt which puts out 60 watt equivalent. Half of the energy used in the US is consumed in buildings, so using efficient lights and fixtures as well as increasing the R value of insulation used can significantly reduce electrical demand. A lot of people design and build homes Off the Grid and are quite capable of using solar or other alternative energy sources to provide all the energy they need. Just because you don't know or won't acknowledge it doesn't mean it's not possible to reduce energy needs.

I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon.

If the users, and creators of the problem, aren't the ones who pays then who does? The Inuit who falls through the thin ice in the Artic while hunting? Or the Southeast Asian who finds his land and home submerged because of rising sea levels?

the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.

The real crooks are the ones who create the problem but leave someone else to pay for it.

It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!

Yea, it means you can steal and murder and not have to pay for it!

You pay either way, the cost shows up in your tax bill or your electric bill.

Only if you rely on the power company instead of generating your own energy. More and more people are going Off the Grid. At least if producers have to pay for cleaning up then only their users will pay and not those who have their own systems.

It works if you ignore that it has a poor energy/dollar ratio as compared to a wind turbine. Even if you ignore all other short comings of solar photovoltaic cells, you still won't get away from this simple fact. Wind power is cheaper. MUCH cheaper. Of course, on life cycle costs modern nuclear power plants are cheaper still, but I suspect you don't like those or won't believe me, so I'm using wind power instead. It doesn't really matter, the conclusion is still the same.

Wind is only more efficient than solar where there is good wind and where there's little if any direct sunlight. However like there's many places not appropriate for solar there are places not appropriate for wind either. Now what some who build Off the grid do is build a hybrid system and use both solar and wind, or another energy source. When the sun shines the solar pvs generate power and when the wind is blowing they do.

For laptops I'd rate it as simply stupid. A simple conservation of energy calculation against incoming insulation and the capacity of a Li-ion battery should make this obvious. Maybe if you are studying the ecology of a remote pacific Island or something, but for normal consumers it is just a waste of cash.

For a laptop I think these are a waste. You get a laptop because you want to be able to take it with you and use it on the road. However these solar systems aren't very portable. The only places I can think one would be useful is in remote locations where the person will be located at for a longer length of tyme.

Vertical axis windmills are not new. They have a nasty habit of shaking themselves to death.

As for getting water out of air, using desiccants sounds more promising.

If you figure we have 15 years left on this roof, I have to wonder whether an expensive photovoltaic system will end up going the same way as the solar water heater.

Most good solar panels have a 25 year warranty. You should be able to disassemble the system and reassemble it once the new roof is on. If you've got it grid-intertied you won't notice any power outage.

Another question in my mind is the uncertainties related to the craziness California has been seeing in electric rates, as well as uncertainties about when is the right time to buy photovoltaics, given that the technology is advancing rapidly.

The latest thing in solar panels are flexible amorphous silicon solar shingles. But other than that, the standard amorphous silicon panels haven't changed much since the mid-80s. They've just gotten cheaper to manufacture as economies of scale have kicked in and larger players like BP and Sunoco have started producing them. I could take one of my dad's old Mother Earth News and design an identical PV system using modern technology and the only difference would be the efficiency.

And then there are all the other things that might be easier and more practical than installing solar panels. I replaced a bunch of incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents last month.

I'm thinking of doing something similar to take my refrigerator, about 20% of my electric bill, and my network equipment off of the grid. Not only would it save me a ton of money, but I'd have the added security of knowing that my food won't go bad if the power goes out.

One of the big electricity hogs in our house is the pool pump, and there's not much you can do about that; if you don't pump long enough on the pool every day, it turns green.

All the more reason to develop a system to take just the pool pump off the grid. It's something that uses a lot of power, needs to run all the time, and is costing you a lot of money. The $600 solar power system I linked to before should be sufficient to run your pump 24/7, especially in SoCal.

And you'll even be able to get your own story on /. if you document it!