Solar panels/ domestic wind turbines. Your experiences...

[garrence]

Solar water - mature technology, works well, low cost.

 

Solar electricity - rapidly improving technology, quite high install cost. Personally I'm waiting for solar slates to improve and then I'll re-roof with those. My current roofing is at the end of its life and, rather than spend thousands on normal slates that will never "pay back", I'll go solar.

 

Windmills - I'd have thought these would make sense if you're out in the country with some exposed land. Otherwise presumably the grid-connected big windmills are the way to go.

[muddycoffee]

I'd like to develop maybe a small nuclear plant that would maybe live under the stairs of your property and generate all your heating and electrical needs and be self sufficient until it needed decomissioning.:hihi:

 

That really isn't so daft an idea.

It could easily come to pass that in the next 50 years each home has its own nuclear powered fuel cell which can provide all the on demand heat and power.

When that time comes along, the people will be utterly astonished that we were allowed to have tanks full of petrol in our vehicles. A substance which is extremely dangerous and can be made into bombs and simple weapons by the most incompetant idiot.

Or that we had gas supplies to our houses. That would sound like an accident waiting to happen.

[Linesman]

The photo of solar heating that I posted on #40 is taken where we lived up in the hills of Cyprus where it gets very cold and often snows in winter yet it provides hot domectic water all year round and does not use the expensive solar cell system.

[navitas]

if anyone wants any facts and figures on solar pv let me know and i can help, things have changed alot since the feed in tariff came in