Energy Independence

In many parts of the world energy and air conditioning are becoming more essential. Yet brown outs and other power disruptions happen at times when the air-conditioning load gets extreme or existing power transmission lines are brought down from natural disasters. It is precisely those times when having your freezer, heater or air-conditioner operating are the most important.

Hospitals, traffic lights and other services require a good consistent energy supply. Grocery stores don’t operate well if perishable food items start spoiling.

Many existing energy power generating plants have issues. Anything that burns fossil fuels puts CO2 that was locked up in ancient times back into the modern world, raising the CO2 level in the atmosphere and causing other pollution. Nuclear energy is dangerous and disposal of spent nuclear fuel is an issue. Having this stuff around is potentially a disposal problem that will last for many generations.

High voltage power lines could potentially cause cancer or other health issues and are expensive to build and maintain. Plus there is a loss of energy that happens depending on the distances and resistance in the wires.

Today I noticed a new solar roof installation going in

Personal Ideas for a Solution

I’ve been thinking about how to put all the pieces of technology together in a practical way to modify my existing house to provide a steady source of power. Frankly, I don’t have the cash right now to do anything so these are just ideas.

First off I would replace my existing roof shingles with power generating shingles. My roof doesn’t leak right now but at some point it is going to need to be done and I think another layer of shingles could be added without stripping off the existing shingles.

Hopefully this will be able to generate more than my current power needs. I have a lot of rooftop area but I’m not sure how expensive it would be to replace all the shingles. The cost of a roof with solar shingles is still high.

Cheap power could initially be sold back to the current electric grid but that is only part of energy independence.

So the next question is - how do you store the solar generated power?

I have never been that much of a swimmer but it would be cool to have an indoor hot tube or swimming pool. My current structure does not have the room to put one in easily and there is not that much space in my yard.

But, I was thinking that there is an enormous crawl space under the house that is not being used. Some friends I knew actually hired some unemployed people to dig out a swimming pool in their crawl space. Perhaps I could do something like that with my spare time.

Pools always require a lot of water circulation to prevent growth and maintain water temperature. If I constructed two pools I wonder if I could pump water during the day from one to the other using the extra solar power generated. Then let the water run back down from one pool to the other at night time generating power through a water wheel or turbine.

It sounds like it might work but I’m not sure how much extra power could be generated from the size of my rooftop and I’m not sure how much loss there would be pumping the water and recovering energy from it.

As a proof of concept I thought about trying it out with a couple of 55 gallon drums set with one above the other. Or perhaps making a couple small ponds in the yard to farm fish and use the water for gardening. Where I live a lot of rainwater could be easily collected.

Perhaps a better solution might be to use batteries to store the solar generated power. Having extra capacity in an electric vehicle could help run the power needs of a house at night, especially if the batteries for the car could be swapped in an out. Batteries are still very expensive though and they don’t last forever. For example a new battery for my ebike runs around $500 and lasts maybe a thousand cycles? Plus it seems like there might be more of a disposal issue with batteries at the end of their life.

Buying a new electric vehicle is out of the budget now, unless Steem really goes up in value or governments start subsidizing these technologies more instead of fossil fuels.

Just some ideas, what do you think about them?

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Thanks for reading! I always value your support and comments. The picture was taken by me with my Galaxy S9+ and modified in software. Text and graphics copyright lightsplasher & litesplasher.