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Wireless Internet In An Off-Grid House
matt20 writes "This is an interesting article of a family living off-grid using solar panels. In such a setting, every watt adds up. The typical home computer and monitor use almost 150 watts. What is the best computer arrangement in such a setting? Here is what worked best for them. Anyone know what percent of our national power is used on computers? Should we be thinking wireless on laptops?" Even on-grid, this article raises some good points about power consumption and convenience.
Hardly. Buying your energy from a nuclear power plant will never net YOU, a homeowner, a net profit. Maybe if you live in the town that houses one you'll see something from their tax money.
;) But it does frequently exist, and a net zero or close to it for energy manufactured from a clean and renewable resource, for many, is maybe worth forgoing marble countertops.
If you aren't actually OFF the grid, most areas have a net metering program where you can sell excess power to the grid during the day and buy back power at night. This eliminates all the battery banks, a substantial chunk of the cost. If you furthermore design a home to be energy efficient to begin with, you can have an "affordable' solar system. I use quotes as it is undeniably a greater up front cost, but there is a return, though admittedly not much and it takes awhile to accrue.
If you ARE off the grid, then many people go with solar simply based on the economics of having a power line run to your home, if one doesn't already exist, can very quickly outstrip the cost of an entire solar electric system.
And for $1000 US or less, you can get solar hot water collection to at least augment your domestic hot water needs as well, with a definite payback period of less than ten years.
Not that payback is currently the best reason to go with solar. If someone hits a baseball into your panels, there goes your chance of payback for awhile
Interesting that I routinely deal with homes that will think nothing of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to use Antique Jerusalem Stone on the floors, but mention Solar and the first question is, "what's the payback".
Actually, they are developing hydrogen producing bacteria. Check it out. More accurately, people are working on using existing bacteria to produce hydrogen. But eventually genetic engineering will probably be used to up the efficency of the process. Once you have the hydrogen, producing electricity from it is pretty trival (burn it in a turbine or fuel cell).