Efficiencies and Energy Conservation

Much has been written about efficiencies of wind solar and micro hydro.

One of the subjects that rarely get any mention is the energy efficiency of the home that an alternative energy system gets installed into.

Proper design of the home can greatly reduce the amount of energy required.  For example a forced air system needs lots of energy to drive the fan that circulates the air in the duct. Improving the insulation and weather sealing will reduce the energy used to circulate the warm air. Better methods of heating a house are available. Some of them hardly use any energy at all if you have a wood stove in a central location natural convection may distribute warm air to all rooms.  My previous house was like that. As long as we kept doors open every room was heated. In fact despite closing the damper our biggest problem was too much heat and we spent most of the winter when indoors in summer wear.  Shorts and a tee shirt were ample.

Hydronic or geothermal heated homes   circulate hot water and the circulation pumps are typically 150 watts or so and run continuously.

Thermosyphon systems with roof mounted solar heat collector panels are another option. With careful design these will not require any electrical power.

Interior lights for rooms and spaces without windows can be illuminated in daytime with something called a light tube. They are much smaller than a skylight yet deliver adequate light without electrical power in daytime. 

The above are things that can be retro fitted to existing housing.  If you are fortunate enough to be building from scratch many more options are open to you.  In most cases you have the freedom to orient the house to take maximum advantage of sunlight and for placing solar heat or PV panels.

The property can be landscaped to provide shelter from prevailing winds. Windbreaks can be planted using fast growing trees. 

Rooflines can be oriented to deflect winds either for shelter in winter or to give cooling breezes in summer.  This could reduce any requirements for energy gobbling air conditioning.

If you are building, plan to include a root cellar. This will give you plenty of food storage that requires no electricity.  Adding a root cellar to an existing house is obviously also possible but usually involves more than closing off a corner of the new house basement.