My Alternative Energy Plans

 

Hi, I'm Chris from my-energy-plans.com, this website is all about alternative energy and what we can do as individuals to help ourselves and reduce the impact we each have on our environment.

 

Can We Each Make a Difference?

Yes I think so, but not just on your own. I've been thinking for some time that the answer to the future of alternative energy is more about many individuals all producing their own energy as opposed to large companies producing energy from large alternative energy plants. Lots of small installations instead of one monolithic one.

 

 

What Are the Key Issues About Alternative Energy?

One key issue is the cost of energy in the future, there are no two ways about it, buying energy from the grid is set to get more expensive in the future. We can all offset some of this cost by producing energy of our own so we take less from the grid... or even none from the grid if you can produce enough.

 

More importantly to many of us, is that grid energy is primarily produced from oil and coal. This process produces harmful emissions which accelerate global warming which is gradually destroying the environment that mankind needs to survive.

 

Can I Really Make My Own Energy?

Yes of course you can, in particular you can make your own electricity and hot water from renewable sources. I suppose you might be able to produce gas too but handling and storing it is fraught with risk and strict regulations!

 

So What's the Basic Principle of Producing My Own Energy?

Simple. You just need to convert one form of energy to another. You take some freely available energy and convert it to different types of energy that you can more readily use or store.

 

Can You Give Me an Example?

The most obvious is converting energy from the sun into electricity or hot water. The sun produces more energy in one hour than the whole of humanity uses in one year, tapping just a tiny, tiny proportion of this energy and storing it instead of using fossil fuel energy is already a step forward. You can convert sunlight into electricity and store it in batteries for later use, you can concentrate heat energy from the sun and use it to heat water which can be stored and used later.

 

We Can Use Other Natural Energy Sources Too?

Definitely, you can convert wind energy into electricity using a windmill attached to an electrical generator. Mankind has been using wind energy for centuries for processes like grinding cereals into flour. In the past we constructed large windmills with huge sails to capture the energy of the wind and convert it to rotational energy to turn a massive spindle. A network of connected spindles and gears were used to transmit the energy to a huge grindstone which could be used to grind cereal into flour.

 

A flowing stream of water presents us with an excellent source of free energy, use that energy to turn a water wheel or spin a water turbine and we're just a step away from making electricity from it. The mass and velocity of the flowing water can turn a large wheel with buckets or paddles around the circumference or spin a simple hub on a spindle with fins attached to it. The rotational energy can easily be converted into electricity using an electrical generator.

 

So All of This Energy is Completely Free?

None of these methods are entirely free in terms of their effect on our environment. Solar panels, wind turbines and water turbines all require materials to be used in their manufacture. The production of those materials requires using some energy, which may come from a fossil fueled energy plant, and will involve other processes that may have a detrimental effect on our environment. None the less, once you have manufactured a solar cell or a turbine you can use it for many years without consuming any more energy or using any further materials. This makes our energy conversion formula very sustainable in the long term.

 

What's the Next Step?

Our first step must be to make the most of the energy we already use and not waste any unnecessarily, saving energy is a keep step to a greener future. After that all we need to do is find a free energy source, build our converter and start creating our own green, cheap energy.

 

Want to Read More?

The US government have a whole site dedicated to alternative energy and just to be sure we don't miss out the UK have the Department of Energy and Climate Change website.