Sustainable Practice: Sustainable energy independence – Press Herald
Could you imagine being independent of fossil fuel corporations and power companies, having the freedom to get all the energy you need from your own land? That’s the allure of off-grid solar living. From the humble owner of a camp in the woods with one panel and an old car battery to a millionaire in a mega-mansion on a mountaintop with a solar roof and whole-house battery bank, many of us have the opportunity to achieve sustainable energy independence today.
Most families and businesses became dependent on the fossil fuel industry and the monopoly power utilities because they had no practical choice. It’s estimated that the average vehicle burns between 400 and 600 gallons of gasoline every year. Even if you convert your vehicles to
burn ethanol (which you might be able to make yourself), that’s a lot of moonshine to distill!
But now, with electric vehicles and all-electric homes, you don’t have to make fuel for energy independence. You just need to generate electricity. In Maine, covering one parking space with solar panels captures about four thousand peak watts of power in full sun. Those panels produce about 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity year after year, which is about how much energy the average EV uses per year. In other words, a sunny driveway can be your own private EV “gas station” that can charge your ride for 30 years.
If you own property and a vehicle, I hope you’ll seriously consider a solar carport so you can drive on sunshine. But if you’re not ready for that yet, how about calling on sunshine? Instead of charging your cell phone from grid power, leave a solar charger outside during the day and use it to charge your phone at night. If everyone in America did that, we’d shrink our grid power demand by about 600 million kilowatt-hours per year. In the grand scheme, that’s a tiny drop in the bucket, but it’s a fun way to show how easy it is to go solar and be free of the power company for a miniscule but important energy need.
Solar chargers use a small solar cell to charge a small battery cell. That basic building block can be scaled up, allowing solar with batteries to meet all of a household’s energy needs. Large batteries containing hundreds or thousands of cells are still expensive, but with billions of dollars invested in building new battery factories, it’s not hard to predict that batteries will become way more affordable. Wealthy people today can consider big batteries that can store enough energy to power a home for a few days or a week. When much cheaper battery cells hit the market, the average homeowner will have a choice: use grid power, or collect and store my own power?
Worry about price increases and power outages, or invest in an endless reliable power supply?
While dirt-cheap batteries are still a couple of years away, super-affordable solar panels are already here. That made it financially viable for big businesses to build vast solar farms in rural areas to turn free sunshine into valuable electricity. Unfortunately, our antiquated public power grid is a bottleneck, preventing solar power from far-flung fields from getting to factories and families who need it. You can sidestep this chokehold with solar on your own roof or in your yard, so you don’t have to ask for permission to use a utility’s transmission and distribution system.
Even if you could declare your energy independence by going solar this summer, the fossil fuel industry and utilities do have two good arguments for keeping you dependent on them. First, China manufactures most electrical equipment, including solar and batteries. Second, the United States hasn’t built the recycling infrastructure that we’ll need by 2054 for the solar modules installed this year.
While more work remains to be done, many of us can start planning our sustainable solar energy future when we can declare our physical and financial independence from the corporations that control our access to energy now.
Fred Horch is principal adviser for Sustainable Practice. To learn how you can help your community achieve energy independence and other sustainable goals, visit SustainablePractice.Life and subscribe to “One Step This Week.”
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