MISSION

Renewables

Intro

Can I use renewable energy right now ?

The good news is that sustainable technologies are already advanced enough to make sure you need never suffer hardship during your lifetime. This is why it is a very exciting area for those of us who not only want to build our own homes but build them so that they run as economically as possible. At the least it can currently help cut our utilities bills, but better still, the more people that adopt these sources the less pollution we release into the atmosphere !

This website is not currently meant to be an academic resource on the subject of renewables (hopefully it will be at some point in the future). We have kept the descriptions of the sustainable technologies that utilise renewable energy as simple as possible just so that anyone interested can easily understand how each one works and what might be right for them if they want to integrate renewable energy sources with sustainable building techniques in their self-build project.

The Main Types of Renewable Energy

Basically there are six main renewable energy sources and sustainable technologies for exploiting them. Although news articles tend to concentrate on very large civil engineering projects like wind farms, renewable energy sources can also be harnessed by the humble self builder, provided they site their home in the right location.

The energy sources are:

Biomass
Ground Source Heat (GSH)
Micro Hydro Electric (MHE)
Photovoltaics (PVs)
Solar Water Heating (SWH)
Wind Power (WP)