I live in the northwest. I started thinking about green energies as a way to reduce the money that goes out of our household to pay for the commercially produced energy that we use. I drive a diesel vehicle. I have two other vehicles that consume gasoline. My home uses electricity and natural gas. The alternative energies that I would like to incorporate into my home are solar, fuel cell, bio diesel (production from waste oil and algae production).
Solar is pretty straight forward as far as how it works and the methods of consuming the power produced by this type of alternate energy. For those of us on a grid the cost of a solar power can be reduced using net metering. Net metering allows the solar power producer to store the power not used during the day on the grid. Of course it is not really stored but the metering takes into account the the surplus power. The power company then uses that to reconcile how much you owe. There are many other configuration of solar power setups that can be implemented.
Natural gas can also be used to produce electricity. Fuel cells can be utilized by converting natural gas into electricity. Now I am not sure if this economically viable. I have not run the numbers and I am not sure of what numbers to use. I have seen a commercial fuel cell product that does not use the electricity as the main output. The main output is heat with a secondary output of electricity.
more to come...
