The drift for homes that are powered by alternative energy sources, ranging from wind turbines and solar collection cells to hydrogen fuel cells and biomass gases, is one that necessarily to keep on into the 21st century and beyond. We experience outstanding need of becoming more energy independent, and non having to rely on the provision of fossil fuels from unstable nations who are time and again unfriendly to us and our interests. But even beyond this component, we as individuals have to to get “off the grid” and also cease having to be so reliant on government-lobbying giant oil corporations who, altho they are not actually tangled in any covert plot, nevertheless have a chokehold on the populace when it comes to heating their homes (and if not through oil, then heat normally supplied by grid-driven electricity, another chokehold).
As Remi Wilkinson, Senior Analyst with Carbon Free, puts it, unavoidably, the emergence of distributed generation will lead to the restructuring of the retail electricity market and the generation, transmission and distribution base. The power providers may have to broaden their business to make up for revenues lost by domestic energy microgeneration. She is referring to the conclusions by a group of UK analysts, herself included amongst them, who call themselves Carbon Free. Carbon Free has been examining the ever-growing movement toward alternative energy-using homes in England and the West. This trend is being driven by ever-more government recommendation and sometimes support of alternative energy research and development, the increasing price of oil and other fossil fuels, fear about environmental debasement, and desires to be energy independent. Carbon Free concludes that, assuming traditional energy prices remain at their current level or rise, microgeneration (meeting all of one’s home’s energy needs by installing alternative energy technology such as solar panels or wind turbines) will become to home energy provision what the Internet became to home communications and data gathering, and eventually this will have untold effects on the businesses of the current energy supplying companies.
Carbon Free’s analyses also establish that energy companies themselves have jumped in on the game and try to leverage microgeneration to their own gain for opening up new markets for themselves. Carbon Free cites the instance of electricity companies (in the UK) reporting that they are sincerely researching and developing data for new geothermal energy facilities, as these companies see geothermic energy production as a highly profitable wave of the future. Another determination of Carbon Free is that solar energy hot water heating technology is an effective technology for reducing home water heating costs in the long run, though it is in the beginning rather expensive to install. However, solar power is not yet cost-efficient for corporations, as they necessitate too much in the way of specialised plumbing to implement solar energy hot water heating. Lastly, Carbon Free tells us that installing wind turbines is an effective way of reducing home electricity costs, while also being more independent. However, again this is initially a very costly thing to have installed, and companies would do well to begin slashing their prices on these devices or they could discover themselves losing market share.
