Efficency in the power grid.

[RichardEParson]

I has been said that generating your own power by use of a steam generator in your home will still not surpass the cheap price of energy per kilowatt that the local power plant affords us.

I think this is incorrect. We lose 50 percent of our energy from the power plant to transmission loss in the form of heat because of resistance in those very long cables connecting everything together.

We know that steam generation of energy is about 40 percent efficient. That bests a deisal by about 10 percent.

We know that solar panels can run a house during the day when people aren't using much electricity and that a battery supply can deal with the morning rush.

We know that we can run DC appliances more efficiently than AC. Why not run a mini steam turbine for the times when solar panels will not provide enough electricity for our needs? The solution I have come up with is possibly using a biodigester. This produces methane and could run a steam turbine. Also a gas driven generator could use any kind of combustable such as corn ethanol or perhaps biodeisal. I will add to this thread as I research but any comments are appreciated.

[SkywlkrSnd]

Is this something you're proposing at the individual home-level? About how much space would a system like this take up?

I believe a partially decentralized power system, where individuals are responsible for producing a good portion of their own power, will ultimately be the place we'll need to get to. (Transmission & distribution inefficiencies being one reason; and just generally lowering the central power system demand being the other.) But the first issues that come to mind regarding home power generation is that they will have to be systems that consume a small amount of space, are quiet and non-obtrusive to the homeowner's daily life, have zero emissions, and will have to be able to be maintained (to a basic degree) by the homeowner to keep functioning.

I suppose it would depend on how the entire system was designed and packaged, but could a biodigester be able to meet these needs? A common use for anaerobic digestion currently is wastewater treatment. Could this functionality be combined with the energy producing functionality?

Seems like a very interesting prospect, Richard. Look forward to hearing more about it!