Domestic Power Generation - The Basics
Domestic Power generation relies on small-scale heat or power generation units such as photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, limited size wind and hydro powered generating units, solar water heating panels, ground or air source heat pumps, boilers or combined heat and power units fuelled by wood chips to name the most common.
Domestic power generation units will likely reduce energy bills, impact on the environment, and with a surplus of power generation the capacity to sell your electricity back to the national, or local, grid. It also ultimately feeds into national and international geopolitical objectives of reducing dependence on large generating plants located far from where one lives, and the importing of costly energy from overseas.
Domestic battery technology is developing all the time. It can be used alongside the common domestic renewable sources of Solar and Wind generation respectively. There are different batteries and portable power stations using different types of core battery. Certain size batteries allow electricity generated by small scale power generation units to be stored both for later use and for transferring into the National Grid. In such a way domestic-scale PV can store solar energy during the day, when peak solar supply results in low or negative prices for energy produced, and release power at times of later peak demand.
In order to be able to use the power generated 24/7 one needs a battery or relevant power station to store it for transferring power to domestic appliances.
This page concentrates on Solar (PV) and Wind Turbine led power generation.
The focus is often on PV as a viable option for home use because of the noise and visual presentation effects of a Wind Turbine. However, there needs to be a balance or trade off, especially during Autumn and Winter when there is a plentiful supply of wind and far less cloud-free sunshine in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first limitation of Solar panels is one can generate plenty of electricity when the sun is shining, but far less on overcast days, nor at all at night time. So there is always the need to store, or have alternative supplies of power to maintain regular domestic appliances 24/7.
On more established domestic solar power units power generated ends up being shared with the National Grid. This requires X relationship to be renumerated for it, and certainly not as much is saved if you use the power yourself.
Before looking in detail at PV and Solar sources of power generation and storage there are a variety of factors to take into account in order to make the right choices most suitable for one's individual circumstances.
Making Battery Storage viable as part of Domestic Energy Independence:
There are various basic first questions to ask oneself.
How much electricity do you use. 6 Units + per day or... Or what is a reasonable budget according to your means.
Equally, are you looking to recoup the cost, read investment within a short space of time. Then Domestic Battery storage isn’t viable for you.
Alternatively, if one seeks to maximise your self-generated electricity but struggle or are unable to consume most of your electricity during the day, or produce significantly more electricity than you use from whatever power generator.
Does one seek to contribute to a local, regional or national future energy system and reduce emissions.
Simply one wants to be off grid or as energy self-sufficient as possible.
To answer these questions and assess the financial investment required, one will need to know
- Annual household electricity usage, and the actual or expected output from your Solar Panel(s).
- Installation costs based on battery type.
- Surplus Capacity Transfer to grid payments.
Energy Trading methods:
- International Battery Communities
- selling electricity locally to neighbours or to a micro grid.
Types of Domestic storage batteries:
- X batteries can now transfer in and out electricity into the grid, contributing to grid demand and supply issues, and supporting carbon reduction (consumption of power raw materials) during peak times.
Generator, money to power generator. To charge batteries to heat water and such like.
Following one knowing how much your electricity usage and generation capacity is one can think about the types of battery storage system that suits you.
Battery storage is developing fast and one can find one has invested in an only so effective battery for the amount paid, and then within a year or two something far superior becomes commercially available. In turn, with growing demand the typical costs are expected to reduce significantly from only a few years back..
Technology and linked support is evolving too, offering more options for getting involved in a growing decentralised electricity system and network.
Battery Cycle:
A Batteries Capacity relates to how much it stores in kilowatt hours (kWh). While actual useable capacity is always less than total capacity, and its advised not to discharge a battery fully, this depends on watching a Power station LED monitor or where one has just a battery it can be prevented by a Charge Controller.
A 14kWh battery might have a useable capacity of 13.5kWh.
A single battery cycle is a full charge and full discharge, but this is not recommended. Batteries usually partially charge, so a 50% charge and discharge is half a battery cycle. Looking at the manufacturers guideline total cycles (i.e. the number of cycles you are expected to get) you can work out how many kWh the battery will give you e.g. 10,000 cycles of a 12 kWh battery will give roughly 120,000 kWh. Naturally in time the battery will degrade with fewer kWh per cycles. The numbers of battery cycles expected isn’t the same warranty, which is normally 10 years, although batteries last longer than this.
Battery Charge/discharge rate
This relates to the power input and output in kW.
The Battery output is key to what appliances a battery can power. This depends on the range of power sources one is using, and the range varies from a Portable Off-Grid backup power station as low as 200w to a 5000w or 5kW output unit.
A different unit can run multiple appliances at the same time whereas a portable power station relates more to out and about convenience powering laptops, phone and other smart devices. So the greater the battery output, the more likely one can sustain a kettle, tumble drier or electric fire, as is the case with a 5kW, but a 2 kW output probably can’t.
If stored battery power isn’t available when needed such as during the night time one will have to revert to grid electricity. Similarly, if you can generate 5 kW and your battery can only input 2.5 kW you are wasting 2.5 kW of power which you will be unable to store, and will transfer to the grid for less return where one has such a relationship.
Storage Capacity - Price per kWh
The choice of battery varies significantly, and relative price to quality needs to be taken into account. Often the best way to distinguish batteries on the market is to look at the price/kWh of storage capacity.
It is axiomatic the larger the storage capacity the greater reserve during an emergency, such as a powercut.
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Solar Power (PV)
After one has answered the core strategic questions above there are a range of more individual questions to answer.
These include the size of one's property where PV will be installed.
- Small - such as Shed or Garage
- Medium - Terrace house
- Large - Detached House/Bungalow
- Extra Large - Warehouse/ Barn conversion
Ownership status
- Own
- Rent
Type of use of property
- Residential
- Commercial
Type of PV on your rooftop
Monocrystalline (mono) or Polycrystalline (poly) solar panels. Both are durable silicon, while Mono panels are shiny black and poly bright blue. Black monocrystalline panels are slightly more expensive.
class="section-heading">Solar Inverter
The PV inverter takes the direct current (DC) generated by one's panels and converts it into alternating current (AC). The PV inverter chosen may have effect one's panel options.
Which structure you mount panels onto your roof with
How your roof is constructed influences the choice of anchors required to attach panels safe and securely to one's roof, it also effects the angle at which the sunlight is received and the efficiency of your PV panels.
Which Battery Storage Unit
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Warranty
Installers or original manufactuers will provide warranties or limited warranties. Knowing the different general limitations and benefits of all warranties is a sensible approach.
Domestic Wind Turbines
These are normally errected on a pole on the ground or on building rooftops, and more regularly offgrid units with accompanying charge batteries and inverters for domestic use. Depending on turbine model they are not strong enough to supply households full electricity needs, but more as an accompaniment to other power sources.
As well as reducing your energy bills like PV, following paying of the cost for your turbine, wind power is essentially free, and domestic wind turbines may be slower to gain the return on investment but do reduce electricity bills over the long term.
Like PV one can sell unused energy back to a grid and with the increasing prices of domestic energy, and securing more of your own source of energy could help to mitigate the impact of future price hikes.Before choosing which Wind Turbine one will install one should reflect on:
- Financing options available for wind. These include Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs—enable homeowners to finance their installation through tax levied on one's property, and its repaid via one's annual tax bill. https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/main/wind-turbines/finance-options-for-wind-turbines/ https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Property+Assessed+Clean+Energy&source=hp&ei=ugGBY-aeOpiigAbUnKCYCA&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAY4EPymKGnj7eoEaBVi442Yfs60Fp2Vpx&ved=0ahUKEwjm45vl88n7AhUYEcAKHVQOCIMQ4dUDCAo&uact=5&oq=Property+Assessed+Clean+Energy&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEUABYAGCCB2gAcAB4AIABQ4gBQ5IBATGYAQCgAQKgAQE&sclient=gws-wiz
- Researching wind patterns at one's chosen location.
- Whether your local area requires planning permission, even for rooftop turbines.
- Likely noise of chosen turbine.
- Space. In general wind turbines need to be 30ft higher than any object, within a 300-foot radius. Depending on the landscape and wind patterns of the location, this could be between 60 and 120 feet high. If one lives in a space of less than one acre of land, one is likely to be focussing on a rooftop turbine.
- Up-front cost of the turbine itself can be high even for a rooftop model and anywhere signficantly more for most pole-mounted turbines, including maintenance costs over time as well.
- Which Model - the best way to generate wind power is to install a free-standing pole-mounted turbine—in an area with good space.
- Can you partner or create a hybrid partnership with another renewable energy like PV or otherwise.
Off Grid Tags:
Achieving Domestic Energy Sufficiency by.....
Individual and Family Consumption
Convenient and to a budget
Realising Domestic Energy Independence
NatureBasedSolutions Sustainable approaches leading to...
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Key Debates- Green Tech how diverging from Renewables...
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Individual and family consumption – (not accounting for businesses or those with increased health or other needs for energy consumption.
What do you need to use.
What makes life reasonable.
Stand alone Power source, power station AC and DC Power Source, Battery, Inverter, DC or AC output... 
Which future course will key world trends and issues take? What is the complex reality behind why they will be that way? Are we happy with such, or how can one present and realise smart and ultimately sustainable solutions where needed...
OffGrid
OffGrid pages are focussed on Domestic Energy Consumption, effective OffGrid Domestic Power Generation and Storage with a remaining relationship with the national or local grid. The implications of OffGrid living are cross cutting interms of Sustainable Food, Shelter, and Wider Local Community relations needs and consumption. OffGrid starts from the aspiration of Individual, Family OffGrid or Community Power Cooperatives, Sustainable Communities and Self Sufficient Communities. From a purely domestic energy needs perspective this will often require local authority subsidisation, or return on investment whether cost coverage or wider exernalities gained such as Community Cohesion and Public Health benefits. Urban and rural, relative affluency and relative poverty, and relative social and economic capacity/ disadvantage factors all influence how realiasable many of these solutions or energy sufficiency outcomes are for any individual, family or community. There is also the influence of centrist and centre right governments in most European societies' focus on the market as the best source of supplying domestic energy. It then becomes a personal privately financed started up choice otherwise. Different case studies around will be shown as to what is possible at a community level. Yet to begin with the focus is on Individual and Family choices for OffGrid living.
OffGrid pages are a pure start-up guide and are a resource for potential routes of personal inquiry, and where to look for more authoratative expertise otherwise. Ideas here are for those conceptually interested but not necessarily grounded in much practical ability or experience. One will find a variety of resources or links and a collation of knowledge and practical skills amongst others from those that have relevant things to offer. Such as commercial options as well as survivalist and practical projects for off grid living enthusiasts and experts alike.
The core motivator for these pages is an awareness of potential futures, and current local, national and international environmental trajectories and geopolitical energy and resource reality. Whilst the reasons for this maybe premeditated by powers that be for meeting energy transition, systemic economic and labour market pressures, or simply a result of successive crises such as Brexit, Pandemics, Geopolitical multipolarity tensions and competion, they are an increasing feature of our Consumption-Driven, Peak-Fossil Fuel, Climate-Challenged world.
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The bill payer in any given household has a series of basic questions: How much do I/we consume and how much do I pay per unit of energy. Am I able to generate energy for any of my household's needs, am I able to store it whence I have generated it, and how much and in what way am I able to. If one has a fairly limited understanding or constraints on making change, do I seek to make a realisable change to how I currently answer these questions, and can I, and how, make any incremental or automatic changes.
OffGrid is not focussed on Home Energy Efficiency, whether through consumption habit changes, relative adequacy of home insulation or efficiency and productivity of domestic appliances or household members. It seeks to show what one currently uses or seeks to improve usage on interms of per unit energy, and what proportion of that whole usage can be generated, stored and consumed independently or trading via a locality exchange/trade system.
The OffGrid page explores the basic concepts of energy sufficiency in its broadest context. From these relevant sections there are a series of linked pages that go into detail what is introduced on the OffGrid pages. At the outset, the two core link pages are Domestic Power Generation , and Battery Solutions .
OffGrid related pages are framed with people who have a limited to varying level of understanding about what it means to be independent, but harmonious, cooperative and coexistent.
It is framed around a novice person and draws on experienced operators.
By novice one means:
By experienced one means:
Professional contractors / Trades people. Association kite marks.
A real neat commercial venture and guide from an ex-US Soldier is the Survival Projects and is a really comprehensive guide to how to manage off-grid.
In the UK as a direct example, as outlined in the following BBC article
Under the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG), the typical household upto April 2023 paid £2,500 a year for energy. The UK energy regulator Ofgem said that without government support households would have paid £4,279 from January 2023. Under the EPG, suppliers can charge a maximum of 34p per unit for electricity and 10.3p for gas until the end of March 2023. This rate will go up slightly in April after the new chancellor scaled back the support, and remain in place until the end of March 2024, leaving the typical household paying around £3,000 a year. Ofgem's announcement, however, shows that without the government's help, consumers would have had to pay 67p per unit for electricity and 17p for gas from January 2023. It means the government's support will save typical households around £1,779 a year compared with what they would have had to pay under the regulator's cap. The total cost of someone's bill will vary depend based on how much energy they use, however.
Households vary from a single occupant and his dog to a vast extended family. Taking the example of a frugal 2.4 Nuclear Family household. In the current energy landscape, said family's electricity per unit usage per day hypothetically is between 5 and 6.5 units during week days, and naturally around 7 to 8 at weekends. This equates to £60 to £70 per month at prices to April. They then consume between 4.5 and 6.5 units of gas in any given day. This potentially rises during the most coldest days and at weekends. This equates to circa £60 per week or £240 a month for gas. Certainly in December to February end during the winter proper.
Regardless of the family's Tariff plan with their domestic energy supplier, which for sake of argument is best tariff for their given locality (Standard Variable - not inflated fixed term one's in the current market). The family has a fixed Dual Fuel Direct debit of £178, but this will increase / or be offset by reduced consumption of gas from spring. A manageable arrears will be covered. This of course depends on any households ability to pay and balanced with all the other costs of living they have to meet. The basic question here is when one has exhausted all consumption efficiency efforts, how much does the family wish to pay the domestic retail supplier or do they seek to explore greater energy self sufficiency.
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The ultimate extreme is societal breakdown. Depending on the nature of the breakdown, different scenarios lend themselves to managing life. Lewis Dartnell in The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch describes a possible 'grace period' in which survivors could salvage food, materials and tools from the ruins of society. However, after a certain point this grace period would end, and humanity would have to produce their own food, make their own tools, practice hygiene and fight infection to maintain health, and develop energy stores for a new society to survive the aftermath. His book covers topics including agriculture, food and clothing, substances, medicine, and transport.
DIY Indoor Solutions
How to Build an OffGrid Hot Water heater https://thehouseandhomestead.com/
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DIY Outdoor Solutions
How to Build an OffGrid Hot Water heater https://thehouseandhomestead.com/
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