permaculture

["Michael Murphy" <mmurphy@ctsl.com>]

The obvious, democratic, worldwide energy source is sunlight, which can be 
captured as:
biomass (wood, biodesiel)
heat (hot water)
electricity (photovoltaics)
hydrogen (using electricity)
In our house, we have a woodstove.  We've looked at an outside stove to heat 
water and the house, and concluded we don't want to create that much free 
carbon (even though we grow way more carbon-fixing trees that we would ever 
use). On our farm, we have a diesel tractor and are about to trade the pickup 
for a 3/4 ton diesel.  These will run fine on biodiesel.  I tried to get a 
diesel outboard for the boat, but they cost $8,000.  In the next boat, we're 
thinking of using a diesel genset to drive a double trolling motor - that 
also would run on biodiesel.  (Not just reclaimed french fry oil, which is 
fine but not scalable, but also on oilseed we can grow).
We have a solar hot water system waiting to be installed.  Very cost 
effective.
We've had 4600 watts of photovoltaics tied to the grid for about seven years. 
 Works great, and even with electric heat we never get an electric bill.
For transportation, though, electricity doesn't work.  We have a US 
Electricar AC Chevy S10 pickup that has about a 40 mile range, and a Ford 
Ranger converted to DC electric that has about a 25 mile range.  They 
recharge from the grid (our battery) at night, but 40 miles just doesn't cut 
it.  I finally decided to get a Toyotas RAV4 EV, after renting one at LAX 
from Budget.  It claims a 125 mile range and actually gets 85 to 90 miles, 
which would handle 80% of our driving.  For the other 20%, I figured we could 
rent a car or use a biodesiel truck (which would have to refuel with 
petroleum desiel on the road).  But Toyota recently killed the RAV4 EV.  So 
we got a Honda Civic Hybrid and will wait for fuel cells.
The only long distance, portable, sustainable version of sunlight is going to 
be hydrogen.  I think you are going to find hydrogen enthusiasts will be like 
PC enthusiasts in the 1970s, and hydrogen will follow the PC model of 
distributed power.

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