I’ve long been interested in the idea of power saving, and home power generation techniques.

If it were up to me, I have our whole roof covered in solar panels - however dearest seems to think that would make our roof look thatched, and thus give it the rustic look.    I’ve since learned that rustic is bad…..

So I was sitting outside this evening enjoying the blue glow of my solar powered garden lights (lame, huh?) and I thought how easy it would be to actually disconnect your house from the power grid andbe self sufficent.

And I don’t mean in A Good Life way, with Pigs and chooks etc!

With a few solar panels, a wind turbine, and a battery array under the house I rekon you’d be just about set.

Drop all the lighting down to 12 volts and add an invertor for those applicances that need to run on AC.

Switching your water heating to gas is a cop-out unless you want to generate your own LPG/CNG so I’d say:

Wrap the water cylinder in thermal blankets (times many), drop the water temp to around 65 degrees C.  Have separate generation and storage systems for high load devices like the water heater, and oven.

Time to tell the power company to shove it!

Of course, I were really to generate my own power with solar panels and batteries, I would most certainly have LPG cylinder as back up for cooking and heating