How much energy can you collect and store on a one half-acre lot that is shared with a single family dwelling.

Question

Be specific, creative, a little wild. The lot must contain a home for a family of three. Feel free to speculate, but be honest with yourself. For the sake of simplicity, there are no trees on the lot unless you put them there.

Answer 1

The average home requires about 2watts of solar energy per square foot. But the more energy effeicient the home, the less solar energy required.  But enough solar panels can be put on that single family home's roof to provide 100% of it's electric needs without even taking advantage of the rest of the property or the wind.  

I guess if you devoted your entire 1/2 acre to energy production, you could probably produce enough electricity for a half dozen homes?(this is just a wild guess with no mathematical calculations to support it)

Answer 2

Is it near a stream or other flowing water? You could add a water-wheel to the list if so. Instead of photovoltaic cells for solar I'd look into solar thermal generation, you focus mirrors on an overhead pipe filled with water, turn it into steam to turn a turbine that produces electricity. You can store the heat for nighttime power generation without the cost of batteries, a company called Ausra is doing this in the Nevada desert right now. A wind turbine may work but it will be costly and won't work if there is too much or too little wind and the noise may bother you as much as the blades bother local birds.

You can also use the sun to heat your water for showers as well as using it to make local water sources safe to drink. Energy efficient appliances can make a big difference, too.

By building the house with energy savings in mind you can reduce the cost to heat and cool it, use natural light instead of artificial for most of the day unless it's too cloudy, and still not live in a yurt or grass hut. Adobe is a good and inexpensive building material that is time-tested and a good insulator. You can also put the trees around your house to act as both a windbreak in cold weather and to help cool your home when it's hot.

You can find an Instructable that shows how to make an exercise or regular bike into a generator but it's not going to give you much power. If you're going to be on the bike anyway it might make sense but until battery technology gets more advanced it's expensive and inefficient to use them to power your home.

Answer 3

I agree with big nickel, but  I would add a thing I thought of the other day. If you could somehow hook up a turbine for collecting wind to an exercycle/ stationary bike so that the bike generated electricity in the same manner a windmill would. That way, when you worked out everyday, you could generate power!

Answer 4

heat the home with a ground source heat pump

solar panels to collect suns energy

wind turbine(small one for a home not industrial one)

as for collecting the energy each day would be different depending on how windy it was and how sunny

storing the energy how many batteries do you have to store the power you have generated or do you hook up to the grid and sell the excess