Domestic Fuel Cells Make More Sense than Big Wind & Solar

Imagine if each home were able to supply its own electric power, hot water, and space heat from one simple appliance -- the domestic fuel cell? Such a development would go further toward "disaster-proofing" your home than virtually any other single change you could make. Whether you chose to go off the grid, or to remain grid-intertied, a home fuel cell along with a backup fuel supply, could keep your home warm and well-lit during even extended power outages.

More on domestic fuel cells:

According to The Japan Times, demand for the fuel cell units has grown since the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, which severely impacted the supply of power in Japan.

Toho Gas sold 220 units in 2009, the first year on the market, and a further 515 last year.

Now, having already delivered 283 systems, the firm expects to sell 900 units this year, according to the newspaper.

"Since the March 11th disasters, more people have been revisiting the way they use energy at home and paying attention to the combination of electricity and gas for their use," Hironari Tachi, senior manager for marketing, told the news provider.

According to its makers, a household with an Ene-Farm system can save 50,000 yen (£425) a year in energy bills, and reduce CO2 emissions by 1.3 tonnes annually.

"The co-generation system offers the superb functionality of fuel cells in a compact and easy to use form, and can even provide you with hot water from the heat it generates producing power," they explain. _PlatinumToday

This unconventional fuel cell approach uses your home wastewater to generate power and fuel

One reason why power utilities have not objected more to having big wind and big solar crammed down their throats, is that even though big wind and big solar are very difficult to deal with technically, at least the utilities will still control end-user access to power. With the rise of home-scale generation of power, the big utilities will begin to lose a lot of support.

More:

Fuel cells generate electricity and heat as a by product. The advantages over stirling CHP are no moving parts, less maintenance, and quieter operation. The surplus electricity can be delivered back to the grid.[2]

As an example, a PEMFC fuel cell based micro-CHP has an electrical efficiency of 37% LHV and 33% HHV and a heat recovery efficiency of 52% LHV and 47% HHV with a service life of 40,000 hours or 4000 start/stop cycles which is equal to 10 year use.

United States Department of Energy (DOE) Technical Targets: 1–10 kW residential combined heat and power fuel cells operating on natural gas.[3] _Wikipedia

As long as utilities can pass the exorbitant costs of unreliable green fairy dust power schemes -- such as big wind and big solar -- along to their customers, they will play along with incompetent and ideologically bound governmental bureaucracies.

But you, as a free citizen, can do what you want.