Self sufficient electricty, what are my option?
lets say i have a three bedroom house with 5 people living in it.
What would be the best solutions? What are the most common solutions? Does anything work? What would be the cost? Is it cheaper than staying on the grid?
my main concern is saving $$$ not saving the planet.
I don't know anything about this stuff.
Comments
Becoming totally independent from your local grid is expensive and counter productive. No matter what you do, you will rely on the local grid. Even with expensive setups some times things don't work out. So, instead of going independent why not balance the load.
The above should get you started, check these links for more information and a step by step guide.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2312666_up-house-solar-power-basic.html
http://www.homeenergyhowto.com/
The cheapest nastiest ghetto rigged but quite powerful choice would be converting induction motors into generators
http://www.qsl.net/ns8o/Induction_Generator.html
if you had a reasonably forcefully flowing creek on your property,or didnt care about the green aspect and used a engine
it would perform pretty good till you needed more power, at which point i guess you could either upgrade to a larger
more powerful motor to become generator, or add more, adding more will require you to read this
http://yarchive.net/car/rv/generator_synchronization.html
Hope this helps a bit
Get a diesel generator. Make a rig to extract biofuel from used deep fryer grease.http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html Get an arrangement from some local restaurants to collect their grease. Then you can either stay on the grid and sell your excess power back, or use storage batteries for your low use periods and tell the electronmongers to fuck off entirely.
C/O
inspirational music; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkLdUp9jRmg