Hey all- hoping Andy, Gordon,Downsteamer ,etc. will offer an opinion.... We are a typical suburban family dependent on the status quo for energy. Oil heat, gas oven, dryer, and hot water, woodstove downstairs now thanks to Y2K. One decent income, kids, not a lot of extra money with college costs on the way. We happen to live in Pennsylvania; your answer might differ for sunny Arizona. Reading this material about the future problems with oil supply, looking at the overall potential military situation with Islam's great love for the holy USA, thinking of the decaying infrastructure re. gas and water mains, bridges, and so on, what might be the best way to go to be better ready for things in 10 or 20 years? A wooded location with plenty of firewood? Stay here and expect to live on a budget where oil will cost double or triple? Covert to natural gas heat? Propane? Solar panels? ( we can get cloudy weather for a couple weeks at a stretch winter and spring). Just thinking about it all. Be curious to hear opinions about best long range strategies. Thanks.

-- carolyn (carolyn@luvmyhub.com), January 24, 2000

Answers

solar panels - YES plenty of firewood - YES

our family - here in upstate NY - is preparing itself in other ways also. being able to provide all or most of our food & water is 1st on the list. water via lots of roof gutters and a huge cistern (maybe putting in 2nd soon). we are *extremely* concerned about future (and present) draughts. if there's no water, there's nothing.

next is food. we're learning how to grow sizable quantities of vegetables. get a book called Solar Gardening to learn how to use solar 'appliances' to extend the growing season by 3 months in colder areas. get a book called the 'chicken tractor' to learn how to make the BEST soil in the world (quickly) AND get great eggs and chicken meat too.

its not easy, but if you feel, as many of us do, that the future might be tough - and - you have a family to provide for, these things must be done.

any other thoughts welcome.

-- lou (lanny1@ix.netcom.com), January 24, 2000.

Carolyn

I live in Western PA and a couple of weeks of "grey weather" sounds familiar. Are you just interested in heating costs or overall energy concerns? If heating, the first thing I would recommend is insulation. This gives you the biggest bang for the buck. If you can think of anymore information such as your homes heating load, furnace efficiency, heating degree days or what have you I might be able to make some site specific recommendations. A high efficiency natural gas furnace may not be a bad idea.

-- PA Engineer (PA Engineer@longtimelurker.com), January 24, 2000.

WTE Market Poised For Expansion By 2010 By Maria Zannes, Integrated Waste Services Association

The 105th Congress promises to prioritize legislation that restructures the electric utility marketplace, and in the process highlight waste-to-energy (WTE) as a source of electric power.

Power plants that convert trash into energy by combusting waste in high-temperature furnaces frequently are mentioned as a disposal option for communities. However, with Congress and numerous states focusing on the power market -- and how to assure consumer choice -- the energy in waste may rise in importance.

There are 114 WTE plants, operating in 32 states, that convert about 15 percent of the trash generated nationwide into 2,650 megawatts of electricity. This electricity meets the power needs of 1.2 million homes and businesses; meanwhile the facilities themselves serve the disposal needs of more than 40 million people, and generate enough energy to replace about 30 million barrels of oil annually.

WTE long has been considered a renewable source of power. Trash is both sustainable and indigenous -- two basic criteria for establishing what is a renewable energy source. Also, approximately 80 percent of municipal trash is biomass -- a fancier name for organic material.

Last year, Congress began reviewing the electric utility market by holding a series of hearings to determine the status of the electric industry and its need for change. After a year of deliberation, Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-Colo.), the Subcommittee Chairman of the House Energy and Power Subcommittee of Commerce, introduced comprehensive legislation that included provisions supporting renewable energy sources such as WTE.

Schaefer's bill contains a provision that requires electricity generators to demonstrate that 2 percent of all electric power generated comes from renewable sources. Currently, renewable energy generation totals slightly more than 2 percent nationwide, including sources from geothermal, biomass, solar and wind. But this bill envisions growth by calling for the renewable requirement to rise to 4 percent by the year 2010.

The Schaefer bill likely is just a starting point for further discussions on electric utility restructuring that will take place throughout the next session of Congress. The stakes in this debate are high. The utility industry represents about 5 percent of the Gross National Product.

Ultimately, the WTE industry may be a relatively small player in the debate. WTE facilities generate less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the nation's total electricity generated. However, the industry has some important selling points, such as its environmental controls.

New Clean Air Act rules for municipal waste combustors ensure that waste-to-energy is one of the cleanest sources of power in America. Energy can be produced from trash about as cleanly as from natural gas, according to a recent booklet released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Since modern WTE plants usually replace older oil- and coal-burning technologies, they can actually improve the air quality in the communities where they operate.

Organic pollutants such as dioxin also are no longer an issue with the addition of more sophisticated pollution control equipment to existing facilities. As older plants are retrofitted in accordance with the Clean Air Act rules over the next few years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that WTE as a source of dioxin will fall to less than 1/2 of 1 percent. Similar control is predicted on mercury emissions, with waste-to-energy contributing about 3 percent of all man-made mercury into the environment, according to EPA.

In addition, WTE reduces greenhouse gas buildup in the air, since combusting biomass does not add to the buildup of greenhouse gases. Waste-to-energy, as opposed to landfilling as a disposal option, actually reduced greenhouse gases last year alone by 130 million tons.

Other significant advantages speak well for WTE. For example, the residue ash left after combusting trash had been an issue for both regulators and the courts. Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that WTE ash must be tested for its toxicity. Since that time, the ash has consistently passed the test and has proven safe. Communities across the country now are considering the beneficial uses of the ash for roadbed material, landfill cover and building material.

As the congressional debate on utility reform wages next year, environmental concerns and renewable sources of power will be just two of the many topics open for discussion. Certainly, WTE is poised to play a greater role in America's energy supply.

World Wastes January 1997

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), January 24, 2000.

Carolyn,

Wow. There are so many options!

What are your minimum energy requirements? What is your environment like? If your energy needs are great, are you willing to relocate? Are you willing and able to alter your living environnment to make it more energy efficient?

These are a few questions I'd ask if I were you to help determine what is gonna be right for your alternative energy program.

There is one big thing that one can do, regardless of what kind of alternative energy system you put in:

Conserve energy.

Turn off the lights when they're not in use, put on sweaters in the cold instead of burning fuel for heat, wear lighter clothing(or go native if that can be a viable option) during the warmer months instead of A/C. Change out your lightbulbs with compact flourescents, put in light pipes/skylights where you can and take advantage of the free sunlight to light your home. Insulate your home as much as you can; reflective barriers against heat(or to conserve heat) are economically viable now.

Do as much as you can to cut your energy uses, and go from there in developing your alternative energy sources. Get creative! I read on the 'net a great idea, and built one myself just for the heck of it. A refrigerator/water heater combo! Turn waste into an asset! Use the waste heat from the heat dissapation coils on your refrigerator to heat up water in a hot water tank! Groovy! (This works only fair in the hot climate of Texas; solar water heaters are much more efficient here. However, something like this might be far more viable in your climate.) My next project like this is to try to rig up a home A/C unit to a hot tub; should get pretty warm down here in Texas...

Good Luck!

Don

-- Shimoda (enlighten@me.com), January 24, 2000.

Don, where did you find the plans for heating water from the refridgerator waste heat? Mousie

-- Mousie (mousie@mymousehole.com), January 24, 2000.

According to recent press releases, "residential fuel cell" technology is just a few years away. The utility companies are nearly hysterical about this, as people will start dropping off the grid permanently, thus driving their blood-sucking profits down.

Estimate is that a residential fuel cell will cost about $10-15k, about the price of a small car. Pretty good investment, if you ask me. Quite energy efficient.

SCREW THE UTILITY COMPANIES....

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), January 24, 2000.

carolyn,

First, you're looking 10 to 20 years down the road, by your own admission.  None of us have that good a handle on what is going to happen tomorrow.........but I'll bet that you are right about energy being a concern.

You have some time -- given that 10 year horizon -- to do some solid groundwork.  There are a lot of questions, the answers to which may change in 5 to 9 years.  It's my opinion that you would be best served to learn all you can now, then develop a plan and follow it as best you can.

If you really think that the time may come when you will absolutely be dependent on firewood for heat, the easiest solution is to buy a wood lot.  It doesn't have to be connected to your house, as long as you can get back and forth to it to cut wood.  Some other things to consider:

1.  Don't use energy:

 use fluorescent lights instead of incandescent
 add insulation to walls, ceilings and crawl spaces
 use energy efficient windows and doors
 even consider adding an airlock entry on each door

2.  Use available energy to best extent possible  --  if you consider a different home, consider these things:

 passive solar techniques {more on this below}
 earth berm construction, partially underground housing, and totally underground housing
        (might make sense in a world of terrorist threats, biological and nuclear fears)

3.  Combine solar with wind power.  Where I live (one state south of you....WV) after I put in 4 solar panels it makes sense for me to put in a wind generator before I add more solar.  During the winter (as you mentioned) its often grey and clouded.  But the wind also blows here.  During the summer the sun is great, but we have little wind.  Also, a wind generator works day and night.  How much you get out of this depends on where you live.  A good site to look at wind energy is:

http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/

Browse the web pages of alternate energy suppliers.  Several, with good reputations, are:

http://www.windsun.com/
http://www.infoblvd.net/4windpwr/
http://www.jademountain.com/

These suppliers have information pages.  Read them.  Learn.

4.  Think about such things as solar preheating of water and point of use water heating systems

5.  Stay on top of new developments in energy.  Use the web and search, search, search.  Develop files, print out interesting stuff.  In the next several years it's probably that new techniques just being developed now will become economically feasible.

Finally, there is no one answer for everyone.  That's why it's important to stay on top of things and to use what works for you.

Passive Solar  Note

This doesn't cost much -- if you plan a house to use it.

When I built my current home I selected a lot that would give me a south facing hill.  I was going to bury the house a little, but hit shale and built on top.  Walls = 2 by 6's with full thick insulation, and then an additional 1" of extruded styrofoam over that.  Good insulation of the ceiling and crawl space.  In the master bedroom I set aside a space 6 feet by 12 feet, and put in a 12 foot south facing window wall.  The 6 foot depth into the room is floored with tile over concrete, and the concrete rests on 4 feet of gravel, all insulated from the earth.  The area is bounded with a 4 foot high knee wall, made of concrete blocks, running to 4 feet below the floor, and insulated.

During the day I open the shades, the sun shines on the floor and the concrete block walls.  These absorb heat.  At night I close off insulated blinds, and the heat sink gives off heat back to the room.  Works........after one storm, with no heat, but with a bright sky, the bedroom was a toasty 72 degrees when it was 20 degrees outside.  At night it dropped to 55 degrees (below zero outside), then warmed up the next day as the sun came out..

-- rocky (rknolls@no.spam), January 24, 2000.

Go to the Plug Power web site. They have just started marketing residental fuel cells. They are still pricey at $7K, but will come down in price over the next two years. These cells are about the size of a washer machine, produce 5-7k watts and enough heat to heat household water. They run off of natural gas or propane. They produce 1/3 the CO2 that would be generated by combustion of the fuel and no oxides. Payback would be about 6-7 years with a 40 year service life expected.

-- Surrounded (hiding@thefirststate.com), January 24, 2000.

In Canada there are a couple of companies, one of which just last month signed big contracts with Sunbeam and the other has been dealing with the US Army for 2 years. This fuel cell technology is in place already and will be soon available for the residential market. Their stock has been hopping.

Check out Global Thermoelectric

http://www.globalte.com/index.htm

Ballard Power Systems

http://www.ballard.com/default.asp

These can give a idea of what will be available ... 1-20 KW systems big enough for any home.

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), January 24, 2000.

Location, location, location...is everything. We wondered why the man who built our house built in what is the low spot in the yard, but came to realise that we feel no wind - literally - when we go out the door. Until we go around the side of the house it is still, and in summer it is 10 deg lower than in the sun with all the huge trees. We don't get the snow banking up at the front door as we have a natural protection. For those who live in treeless areas, maybe you can berm you house so the wind does not make the temps more severe.

We also have an air lock where the front entry is closed from the rest of the house, so we don't get drafts into the living area. Also we have windows on either side of the house and pull down heavy blinds to regulate the sun, cold whenever we want.

Also a heat pump is a good idea instead of an old furnace, but an even better idea is a heat line with fluid to circulate warmth from the ground into the house, at below the frost level. Have lots of info if anyone needs it.

-- Laurane (familyties@rttinc.com), January 24, 2000.

Plug Power (PLUG: Nasdaq) was already a hot commodity on the stock market, and last week's oil price news gave it yet another push (stock jumped 25% in one day!). An exciting company with a product we can all get behind. Wouldn't it be lovely to loosen your local utility's grip on your wallet?

BTW, I'm not long PLUG (or any other stocks for that matter.)

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 24, 2000.

thanks to all of you.. a LOT to think about here. Pa Engineer....we are very well insulated already.....I think sometimes about big problems if there is war in the middle east, earthquakes( ruptured gas lines), etc. My folks live in the Philly suburbs and a quake on the Huntington Valley fault a few years back split their steps from the walls and cracked local living room walls, and you could see the fault line drop as a line running through yards. From my biblical viewpoint I'm expecting increases in earthquakes and wars and famines. I'd like to be less dependent on the infrastructure, as well as better able to bear vastly increased energy costs in the future...don't know if you saw that posting about the imminent peak of World Oil production. You think natural gas would be better now, not just down the road? The fuel cells mentioned here sound worth looking into. I REALLY appreciate these replys. A real service to readers. Some of you ought to go to Michael Hyatt's new discussion forum on long term survival ideas and post this information.

-- carolyn (carolyn@luvmyhub.com), January 24, 2000.

While we are in a tropical area, with good trade winds (no need for either cooling or heating), we still have $100+ electric power bills monthly. And that is with gas for both cooking and water heating! So we also are looking for ways to cut our power consumption. Some ideas:

Solar exterior lighting. (Some local plantations use solar street lighting...)

Low power light bulbs.

Auto off (motion sensing) light switches in areas where lights get left on...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), January 24, 2000.

Lots of great ideas for carolyn and for all of us.

In contrast I'm interested in what will work best in the desert southwest. Many of the ideas that have been mentioned will work anywhere.

Just prior to Y2k I purchased 5 acres of natural desert land an hour south of Phoenix. I hope to build a straw house much like the one at this link.

Others in the SW might want to think of the advantages of this type on construction.

-- tc (trashcan-man@webtv.net), January 24, 2000.

In central PA you shouldn't overlook coal as an alternative fuel source. Around here, many people are using tri-fuel furnaces; fuel oil in one burn chamber with wood and coal in the second chamber. And these furnaces can either be forced hot air or hot water systems.

Although the PA coal industry has slowed dramatically since its peak, there's still lots of coal available at very low prices. In fact within twenty miles of me, there are spots where someone with a shovel and a pickup truck can go load their own coal from the roadside. Not somebody's property but the highway right of way dug into the coal seams.

And if heating oil gets out of sight I expect to see lots of people out "landscaping" the local roadsides. Of course I've got my eyes on a sculpture of solid coal at the entrance to the Scranton Expressway. It must weigh a couple of tons and should heat a house for at least a year. ;)

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 24, 2000.

Get hold of me offline (email below)....I've got some options for getting off the grid that let you take it in stages, not too expensive to start.

I don't plan on moving everything completely off the grid (AC in the summer is simply too big a load!) ...but by moving almost all of the daily household loads to the panels/invertor/cross-connect, I can get big savings in the suimmer (when electric rates down here go up tremendously) and still save modest amounts in the winter. (Winter bills rarely exceed 100.00, summer bills usually exceed 225.00)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 24, 2000.

I have a combination of solar and wind power which gives me all I need in a 2500sq ft house. I started with 8 solar panels, an inverter and a large battery bank...and a good sized generator that a corporation in town was going to junk! Eventually I added 8 more panels and the windmill.

I have 2 wood stoves and a wood cookstove. I also use oil/hot water but keep the thermostats at 50. The only time the heat comes on is when the stoves die down in the middle of the night. I've only used 1/4 of my oil tank in the last 4 weeks...pretty good considering the frigid weather!

My cookstove is a real old fashoned gem. I also have a gas stove but cooking is so much better on the woodstove that I only use the gas in the summer.

Toasters, vaccums and irons are big energy users so i toast on the woodstove, vaccum when REALLY necessary or when there's lots of sun and wind, and well, I hate ironing anyway! I'm wired part AC and part DC...7/8 of my lighting is DC and I use flurescent bulbs or DC candescent.

I've also got some chickens and a veggie garden. If you do a garden, be sure to fence it in so your chickens can be free range, otherwise they'll clean you out!

Because I'm located at the juncture of 2 rural towns, the grid from neither stretched to me so making the decision was easy. I figure I'll break even in another 5 years and then it's easy street!

Email me if you have any questions...good luck!

-- Eating Crow (suzan@monad.net), January 24, 2000.

Carolyn,

This book will get you started in the right direction.

The New Independent Home by Michael Potts

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), January 24, 2000.

You may find these articles on my website useful to the evolution of your thinking on this subject:

Necessary Action Summary

Serious Voluntary Relocation

Y2K Prep Supplies You Probably Don't Need

Heating a Dwelling

------------------------------------

Hope this is useful to you. Yours in preparation.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), January 25, 2000.