If you live in a rural area they have to drill holes and put up telephone poles and maintain them from trees and ice. They put up meters and security lights, just to get you some electricity. They have to mine coal or drill wells to power this stuff.
Meanwhile you can go and buy an RV that runs or can run much of its appliances on 12 volts. I have heard of 22in flat screen tvs on 12 volts. We have 12-18-24 volt power tools. If we had propane tankless water heaters and maybe 24 volt very small load washing machines, Why do we need utilities?
The technology seems to be there to go to DC, just look at RV appliances or truck driver appliance stores.
I think one wind farm in the midwest could power the entire nation if homes went to DC. I have no expertise in this stuff but was looking for comments from hubbers that may have expertise in these fields.
Think you need lots of batteries, a generator and recharger, and the fuel to run the generator.
About 20 years ago or so, I wouldve laughed at the idea of battery operated /cordless drills, reciprocating saws, etc etc. I wouldve been right to say they would have no torque or power and would only last a couple minutes tops. Today some of these 18 volt power tools can break your wrist and run all day.
We have been trying to get 110 volts out of wind generators and solar panels,: to match our appliances- while the DC powered stuff has risen to the challenge.
What I am saying is we have spent a lot of effort trying to make wind generators and solar panels more efficient and cheap, but if they put more effort/technology into the actual devices and appliances the wind generators and solar panels are enough.
Yes I have read some about it and saw it on 60 minutes. It seems like they have been powering a large "plant " for some time. The stories are always sketchy and rare.
Kind of the point of this whole thread also. Are we being sold utilities that we dont need , but they aint gonna tell us?
Bloombox is the best thing I have seen.
Powers any number of places like maybe Sisco and whatnot. Problem is the patent.
He wants to keep it to himself, where is where the big chokehold to these things is.
Got company got to go.
Theres a few obstacles to overcome as far as I can tell.
Like driers, water heaters and heat in general. I think we have the technology to overcome them.
The houses we build today however are energy hogs. I have seen new 1/2 million 1 million dollars houses that an old lady could kick and punch her way through the bay window walls.
As newlyweds on a very tight budget we were met with this challenge ourselves and although we haven't completely gotten off the grid we're doing a lot of research on how to do it as quickly as possible. What we have done is found alternative ways to do some things. For instance by hooking up a rocket stove to your water heater you then have basically free hot water with twigs. If you can't have one in your house due to mortgage issues a simple connection could be made from one outside the house to the inside.
We dry our clothes on lines next to our woodstove in the winter and outside on lines the rest of the year. By removing the water heater and clothes dryer that alone has saved us a lot of expense over the past 1.5 years.
Forget about operating a refrigerator, air conditioner, water pump or even a fan with 12V.
Solar panels that can generate 110V or 220V are still quite expensive. And batteries are the worst part of this system, that need replacement more often than you may like.
by Aya Katz 12 years ago
Which alternative energy source is more efficient and cheaper to maintain: solar panels or windmills?
by lime light power 13 years ago
Would you install solar or a wind at your home if it cost the same as power from the utility?
by russellwnentwich 13 years ago
I recently came to the conclusion that no new house should be built without solar power, and solar water heaters installed.Currently solar power cells cost more per kilowatt hour than conventional power does. But, what if the EPA manned up and pushed for new buildings to derive a certain percentage...
by Ken R. Abell 13 years ago
Are solar panels & wind technology affordable for the average homeowner?
by Arthur Russ 3 years ago
Having just had solar panels and a wall battery installed I recently published an article about our experience on HubPages, but with the comments section no longer available, by popular demand I’ve created this forum.In summary:-The system we’ve had installed is 10 x 380w solar panels (5 panels...
by Jeremiah Simpkins 12 years ago
If there's anybody using solar panels to generate electricity, how long have you had them installed and what is your total installed capacity (in watts or kilowatts)?
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |