Buy Renewable Energy for people living in Rented Accomodation

I love the idea of having my own renewable energy, from cases when the electricity goes out (say during a storm) to the hight cost of electricity bills having some way to get electricity independent from the company providers is important to me. So what's the problem? Well I live in rented accommodation. This means I have to get permission from the land lord to do any installing of solar panels or wind turbines etc. My land lord is not the sort who wants the hassle of complaining neighbors or anything above collecting the monthly check.

This is not an ideal situation but I have found a few ways to supplement my energy needs. I am an avid outdoors person and some of the solutions I have found have actually come from things I got for camping. The solar rope lights to the right are one item I bought for the tent but use in the flat as well. The light is not enough to say read a book but its a great way to have a night light. Walking into a dark room is much easier with this lovely light (its a bit like star light) and the solar charger is fixed to a window so never adds to my electricity bills.

Another favorite of mine is this wild grass solar garden light. It is designed for the outdoors but I use it close to potted plants next to the window. They make for a great conversation piece when people come to visit, especially if we all come back to my place and its after dark. These little lights are pretty useful and a lot of fun to have. It may not be the ideal, having a wind turbine for example but it does make a difference if I don't have to turn on a main light when passing through a room. It has always seemed silly to me to turn a light on for a few seconds and I usually just walk through the dark but these give me just enough so that I don't trip.

From TV remotes to my cell phones I have quite a few batteries to keep charged. In my searches for a solution to recharging batteries like my cell phone and for the various remotes I have come across two very interesting bits of tech.

The first is the free loader. This advanced bit of kit charges any hand held device anywhere, anytime. The way it works is to charge its internal battery using the solar panels (it can also charge via a USB charging cable). It will then recharge your favorite devices such as your MP3 player from its internal battery.

The appeal for me is that I can strap it to the outside of a back pack and be able to charge my batteries as I am out and about. I do not need to find a power source or go home because my cell phone has died. You may not need it but the USB charging capability is a real bonus because it means you are not limited to charging from sun light alone and gives you real options.

I really love this one, something about being able to manually generate electricity myself feels liberating. I actually have several different sorts of hand crank lights, my husband and I both have small ones that we use as simple flashlights around the house and out camping. We have a larger unit with a lot of LED lights that are bright enough to act like a spot light, it also has AM/FM radio built in. We are currently waiting to receive one with both solar charging option and cell phone charging option.

Winding up one of these may seem like a bit of work at first but its not really that big a deal. I sometimes wind up the larger one while watching TV in the evening and the smaller ones I charge for a minute of less when I need to actually use them. When we went camping last summer these wind up flashlights came in really handy and the job of winding them up when to the kids! If you have kids I would highly suggest that they get the job of winding your flash lights as our kids were fascinated with the fact that they could create light. They did tend to want to keep the light on while winding the lights but after dark this was not a problem at all.