Conservation and economy are key considerations, so begin by matching the immediate needs to the resources on hand. From there, plan to live comfortably within your energy budget.

The automotive industry has highly refined their 12 volt systems, supported by with a wide variety of equipment. In addition, the recreation vehicle industry provides a thorough inventory of 12 volt appliances.

The simplest form of charging system for a 12 volt battery would be solar panel and a simple regulator. 18 volts is a common standard among such panels, with an open circuit voltage of about 21V.

If you have some form of mechanical energy available to drive an alternator you could have a system that did not depend upon sunlight. With a few tools and a little know-how, an automotive alternator may be rewound with finer wire to produce higher voltages at lower rpm’s. At a lesser scale, often a small electrical motor such as powers a window etc. can be rigged to generate electricity. With the 42 volt standard being applied to some of the newer cars, automotive-based electrical systems will become even more practical.

In the absence of full-on modern electrical wiring systems, it would be wise to limit yourself to less than 50 volts to reduced shock hazard and regulatory attention. In cases where 117VAC is truly desired or important, use either a point-of-use electrical generator or inverter. The objective is to minimize or eliminate any higher voltage wiring.

I once had a shallow well served by a hand pump, which I used to water a small vegetable garden on an unoccupied scrap of land – you can do these things where people don’t notice or care, but permission is best. Filling the 55-gallon drum by hand was a significant chore however.

Although the mother of invention may have been necessity, the daddy of invention was most likely a lazy man. I was able to find a small 12V pump designed for pumping the bilge on small boats. By wiring a plug set so I could conveniently connect it to my car battery I saved a lot of work.

I also used 12V when camping out in a bolt-together geodesic dome. Why mess with liquid-fuel lanterns when you can just buy an automotive clearance light, remove the colored lens, and plug it in to your car battery?

I had a friend who actually made a post-hole digger by connecting an auger and handles to an automotive starter motor. Quite a bit can be done with an existing automotive system if you’re lazy enough.

I powered two stacked computer fans for a woodstove-based forced air system. Air was forced through a jacket surrounding a small high-efficiency stove and into a shed. The car battery used was charged by a solar panel.

Sooner or later you will want a community-scale power plant based upon locally-derived alternative energy. The volume of copper required to carry a given level of amperage, squares with the distance it must travel. Transmitting power for long distance is only made feasible by using transformers to elevate the voltage so the current can be lower for the same amount of power. This greatly increases the cost and complexity of our power systems, in addition to the losses within the step-up and step-down transformers, the wire required for transmission. Add to all this of course, the required poles or underground conduits .

By producing the power within the community itself, the transmission distances are kept short – hopefully short enough to eliminate the need for transformers entirely.

Although solar-electric is generally touted as the future in energy solutions, locally sustainability cannot afford to depend upon multi-misslion-dollar semiconductor foundries. Beyond that, practical solar-electric systems produce only daytime power, with no storage, and batteries are an expensive ecological disaster that needs to be replaced every few years. Battery expense alone makes electrical storage impractical for many applications.

Research should continue to seek more economical means of solar-electric generation, but in the mean time, other means can be employed. Any form of energy can be converted to heat, and heat is easy to store. A system based upon the collection and storage of heat, coupled with an engine that can convert that heat into mechanical energy could be designed to fit virtually any energy source.