The trend toward houses that are powered by alternative energy, sources, starting from turbines and solar collection cells to hydrogen fuel cells and biomass gases, is one that has to continue into the 21st century and beyond. We have great need of becoming more energy independent, and not being forced to rely on the supplying of fossil fuels from unsteady countries who are commonly hostile to us and our interests.
But even beyond this factor, we as individuals need to get off the grid, and also stop having to be so dependent upon government-lobbying giant oil corporations who, while they’re not truly involved in any secret conspiracy, however have a stranglehold on folk when it comes to heating their houses ( and if not thru oil, then heat usually supplied by grid-driven electricity, another stranglehold ).
As Remi Wilkinson, Senior analyst with Carbon Free, puts it, unavoidably, the expansion of distributed generation will lead to the restructuring of the retail electricity market and the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. The power suppliers may diversify their business to make up for earnings lost through household energy microgeneration.
She’s talking about the conclusions by a bunch of UK analysts, herself included among them, who refer to themselves as Carbon Free. Carbon Free has been studying the continually increasing trend toward alternative energy-using homes in Britain and the West. This trend is being driven by ever-more government recommendation and often backing of alternative energy research and development, the rising cost of oil and other carbon-based fuels, concern about environmental degradation, and wants to be energy independent.
Carbon Free concludes that, presuming normal energy prices remain at their present level or rise, microgeneration ( meeting all of one’s home’s energy desires by installing alternate power technology such as solar energy panels or air turbines ) will become to home energy supply what the Net became to home communications and info gathering, and at last this can have deep effects on the companies of the present energy supply firms.
Carbon Free’s analyses also show that energy firms themselves have jumped in on the game and try to leverage microgeneration to their own advantage for opening up new markets for themselves. Carbon Free cites the example of electricity firms ( in Britain ) reporting that they are seriously researching and developing ideas for new geothermal energy facilities, as these corporations see geothermal energy generation as a very lucrative wave of the future.
Another conclusion of Carbon Free is that solar energy hot water heating technology is an efficient technology for reducing home water heating costs in the long term, while it is initially quite expensive to install. However , solar power isn’t yet cost-effective for corporations, as they need too much in the way of specialised plumbing to effect solar energy hot water heating.
Finally, Carbon Free tells us that installing air 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 firms would do well to start slashing their prices on these devices or they could find themselves losing share of the market.
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