Alternative Energy for the Home

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The trend toward homes that are powered by alternative energy sources, ranging from wind turbines and solar collection cells to hydrogen fuel cells and biomass gases, is one that must continue in the 21st century and beyond. We need more energy independent, and not have to rely on the supply of fossil fuels from unstable nations who are often hostile to us and our interests. But even beyond this factor, we as individuals need to obtain "off-grid" and also have to stop being so dependent on government lobbying giant oil corporations who, while they are not really involved in any conspiracy disguised, however, have a stranglehold on people when it comes to heating their homes (and if not through oil, then heat usually supplied by the network-driven electricity, another stranglehold).

As Remi Wilkinson, Senior Analyst with Carbon Free, puts it, inevitably, the growth of distributed generation will lead to the restructuring of the retail electricity market and the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. The power providers may have to diversify their business to offset the revenue lost through microgeneration energy at home. She referred to the findings of a group of UK analysts, herself included among them, who call themselves free of carbon emissions. Carbon Free has been studying the growing trend toward alternative sources of energy used by households in England and the West. This trend is being driven by ever more government recommendation and sometimes backing of alternative energy research and development, the rising cost of oil and other fossil fuels, concerns about environmental degradation, and want to be independent energy. Carbon Free concludes that, assuming that energy prices remain at their current level or rise, microgeneration (meeting all of the home energy needs by installing alternative energy technology such as panels solar or wind turbines) will become the power supply to the house what the Internet has become a home communications and data collection, and ultimately this will have profound effects on business of energy supply companies.

Free carbon analysis also show that energy companies have jumped into the game and try to take advantage of microgeneration to their own advantage for opening new markets for themselves. Carbon Free cites the example of electricity companies (in the United Kingdom) reported that they are seriously researching and developing ideas for new geothermal energy facilities, as these companies see geothermal energy production as a very profitable wave of the future. Another conclusion of Carbon Free is that solar energy hot water heating technology is an effective technology for reducing the costs of water heating source in the long term, although it is initially quite expensive to install. However, solar energy still is not profitable for companies as they require too much in the way of specialized plumbing to implement solar energy hot water heating. Finally, carbon free tells us that installing wind turbines is an efficient way to reduce the cost of electricity generated from the same time, be more independent. However, again this is a very expensive to be installed, and companies would do well to begin slashing their prices on these devices or may be losing market share.