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Are Hybrid Solar/Grid Houses Practical?
Controlio asks: "With the continuing power crisis and the announcement of major power rate hikes, I figure now is an excellent time to pose this question. Instead of pay these inflated prices for power, I'd like to sink my money into a long-term solution. Cutting myself off from the power grid isn't practical, as I use too much power periodically to be 'solar-only'. But how practical is adding solar for either power redundancy (in case of a blackout) or as supplemental power? Redundancy would be nice, but being supplemental would involve using solar power as my primary power when it's available (and I hear tell that you CAN have negative electric bills if you produce more than you use). Do the costs/advantages for either provide enough incentive to be worth investing in? How would one go about creating a hybrid house? And finally, of course, which is cheaper? Investing in expensive solar paneling, or paying the outrageous charges the power company wants?"
If it's a new house, meaning you haven't broken ground yet and you're still talking to the architect, then you can make the energy savings work. If it's an existing house, then there's quickly diminishing returns.
The Canadians experimented years ago with super-insulated houses located up on Hudson Bay. When I say superinsulated, I mean four-foot thick insulated walls with foot-thick panels that closed over windows at night. It wound up being that the body heat from the occupants almost heated the house. If you cooked, even in the dead of winter, you had to open a window. Some of the solar heating panels were disconnected because it actually overheated the house. If you insulated a Florida or Arizona house that much, you could keep it nice and cold inside. (Insulation doesn't just keep heat in.)
If it's solar power you want, well, that kinda works. You can live off it, but it takes a lifestyle change, and some rewiring. No distributed.net cracking for you, and you'll need to get rid of all those appliances (microwave, stove, VCR) that use power when they're not on (those little clocks and indicator lights add up). The Chicago Tribune ran an article a few months ago about apartment dwellers, in urban Chicago, who had gone solar. It can be done, it costs money, and a lifestyle change is mandatory. No blow-drying your hair, no clothes dryer, no electric oven.
Wind works pretty well, depending upon where you live, and depending upon zoning laws (neighbors may not want one looming over everything). There's some concern that wind power kills birds, but since they tend to place those flailing blades in prime bird habitat (open grassy fields), then it may not be a causal relationship. All the old windmills and wind-powered water pumps don't kill birds, so someone needs to get a big grant and do more research. It might be habitat/proximity, and it might be blade design. Maybe noisier blades would help.
What alternative energy for an existing home does do is cut down peak use, and perhaps spin your meter backwards sometimes. There's tax breaks for alternative energy sources, but basically be prepared to write the whole expense of installation off, and consider it paying off Mom Nature's bills. Figure $10-20k to get anything significant going. You'll need a big bank of batteries to store that peak power to consume during off times (like nighttime), or just spin the meter backwards and sell it to the local utility.
If you're lucky enough to have a running stream nearby, there are companies that sell mini-hydro devices. It's not a small dam, but just a small turbine that a head of water spins.
Try http://www.homepower.com as a great starting point.
Contrary to Bush's pathetic energy plan, the real solution is (in order), Lifestyle change, convervation, and consumption limiters (insulation, efficiency changes [better appliances]). Drilling for Alaskan oil won't create one watt of power for California since California doesn't have any commerical power plants that use Petrol as a power source. They may augment power generation with these things, but it's not really what you build a power plant from.
There is a really good web page at http://hit.lbl.gov/ with more information about reducing your utility bills.