Money Matters

So, this post will more likely be a series of posts.

Earlier this last month I was reminded once again why I want to try to decrease my dependency on the Grid. Something happened here in Newberg, OR and about 1/4 of the city was without power. I do what I can to try to curb my use on the grid.  I am already on Time-Of-Use to encourage off-peak power usage, but I know that I can do a lot more.

My house has A LOT of surface area on the south side of the house, and even with all of the Rain that we get, supposedly we have an average solar gain of 4 for this area. One of the issues I have with current solar energy means is that, especially in a residential setting, they are very stationary.

I have been contemplating some ideas to try to harvest as much "Natural" energy as possible. Recently, especially with all of the rain and recently talking about Gathering Rainwater, I am trying to figure out a good way that during the "Collection" process, I can take advantage of some Hydro energy.

Ideally I would like to be able to take advantage of Solar, Wind AND Hydro energy, and being in Oregon, I do not believe that this would be too difficult to do.  We get mild enough of each condition that at bare minimum I should be able to come up with something that utilizes all three to get consistent power throughout the year.

A Friend of mine that moved to California last year, shared with me his blog as well, in particular, his ideas for a Bicycle Powered Washing Machine. I thought this was rather ingenious, and was wondering by combining exercise with energy what I could find.  Then I remembered when I was a kid: My Dad used to use a generator on my bicycle that was attached to a lamp for a headlight. It was great! He even had it so if it dropped below a certain power that it would kick over to battery power if it was turned on.

Surely I can use this same concept to build a small-scale generator... The difficult part I think will be regulating the output to make sure that it doesn't overload.

More to come.