Could Microgeneration Be as Powerful as Nuclear Energy?
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 06. 9.08
You may have missed this one: According to The Guardian a new report shows that expanding microgeneration could generate as much energy as five new nuclear plants.
Commissioned by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), the report on growth potential for microgeneration details how by increasing the number of buildings with microgeneration units in place though incentive programs from the current estimate of 100,000 to some 10-million over the next twelve years—admittedly no small undertaking—30-million tonnes of CO2 emissions could be saved and energy equivalent to five nuclear power plants could be generated.
Heading the recommended methods for spurring this expansion is the development of a feed-in tariff system—people who install a microgeneration unit on their building would be paid a fixed rate for the energy they generate and feed into the electric grid, with the costs of tariff being distributed over all electric consumers. Similar systems are at the heart of many renewable energy incentive programs across the EU, but have yet to be employed in the UK.
Though UK-specific in focus, the principle behind the report has much wider implications. If we concentrate efforts at expanding renewable energy technologies into centralized production and distribution we may be missing a significant opportunity for displacing fossil fuel generated energy. What would you rather have, every third building with a small wind or solar unit, or five new nuclear plants?
More on Microgeneration from Treehugger:
Brits Bringing Micropower to the People!
Home Wind Turbines Are A Worthless, Dangerous, Wasteful Vanity
Image courtesy of Windsave.
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If we could make a combination satellite dish/microgen unit, it could get done in half the time.
Definitely want to see widespread residential solar and wind power generation.
Except for the short term cash outlay, definitely no reason to hold back these days.
There will only be more and more reason to invest in this stuff as time goes by.
Hopefully some day you would be looked at funny if you didn't have some sort of residential power generation going on... like not having a telephone or something.
vsk
Remember all the micro generation systems will actually turn out to be worse for the enviroment if they never produce energy that went into making them. They are likely to be significantly less efficient to their big brother commercial systems. Many of the solar cells that were installed on peoples roofs in the 90's will never reach the energy neutral level due to the poor technology used yet their owners are probably blissfully unaware of the damage they have done to the enviroment.
Maca, I'm sure you've got some research or references to back up your claims, right? Care to share with the rest of us?
Manufacturing new stuff definitely requires lots of materials and energy, hurting the environment. However, there is solar watter heaters that work for 20 years now heating water for free! I think it is a matter of starting from the simple stuff and paying attention in energy savings. If we produce more energy with green methids but keep consuming more and more it would be a real dead end.
http://electronrun.com/
Where and who can I get one of those for my house here in the US?
Problem is that it is not cost effective at this time. Solar cells cost around 4 $/Wp and NaS batteries cost 500 $/kWh. I live in a all electric house in Phoenix that uses 100 kWh per day in the summer and 30 kWh per day in the winter.
Assuming improvement in efficiency reduces the power requirements by half (more installation, better heat pump, better refrigerator, heat pump water heater), and assuming a 20% solar production factor, then I would need 10 kW of PV cells. This would cost 40 k$. Add 20 k$ for 40 kWh of battery storage, and 10 k$ for power electronics. The total cost of the system would be $70 k$.
Finally, assuming that I can sell back any excess power and that electricity costs 0.15 $/kWh (I am currently paying 0.11 $/kWh) I would save $2737 (356*50*0.15) per year. Assuming no interest on the original purchase the payback time would be 25 year and with %4 interest rate it would never pay for itself.
If the cost of cells drop to 1$/Wp and batteries to 200 $/kWh, may be cost effective although there will be an environmental impacts due to the massive amount of batteries.