Paint-On and Print-Out Solar Cells

Great news this week on ScienceDaily, picked up by Nanotechnology News and other outlets that researchers from Swansea University have developed a paint coating for steel buildings that will generate electricity even in low light situations.

Note that this isn’t solar panels on the roof, but the enameled coating on the siding itself. Meaning that metal buildings - including garages, barns, equipment sheds, airport hangars, outlying megachurches and community buildings could all be generating electricity (some from the infrared spectrum current solar cells cannot capture) while they’re just sitting there enclosing space. Put a few regular panels on the roof too and it could be generating more than it uses on a regular basis.

But when I went looking at just how innovative this development is in the overall scheme of things keeping affordable alternative energy options safely insulated from regular people who might just put them to work, I found that the idea isn’t all that new, and isn’t anywhere close to being marketed to consumers of things like metal buildings (commercial or residential). Why do you suppose that is, given the sheer amount of money being funneled into research and development, as well as into actual production?

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Energy Independence: Part II

There are more reasons to be energy independent than just to save money or avoid the hassles of what happens when the electricity goes out. The American Energy Independence organization lists some of them on their web page, that every homesteader should read for no other reason than to spur them into immediate planning and action.

As I write this post on the second day of 2008, oil has hit $100 a barrel on the NYMEX [New York Mercantile Exchange] exchange, sparked by concerns about violence in Nigeria. We’ve lost more than 3,000 of our brave young soldiers in Iraq, a war of aggression launched almost entirely over control of the world’s second largest petroleum reserves. Combined with news last week of a looming world-wide food shortage being pinned mostly on the eagerness of bare subsistence farmers to produce more lucrative energy crops (like corn and soy for ethanol and biodiesel), the more that we can do for ourselves, the better we’ll weather the coming storms of necessary change. We can lead instead of follow.

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Energy Independence: Part I

The Basics

We have all heard the litany… global warming, unsustainable consumption habits, the real human costs of petroleum dependency and the ever-rising cost of all forms of energy. When it’s difficult for regular middle class city and suburban dwellers to maintain their few hours of home down-time due to rising costs, the burden on rural homesteaders can easily be impossible to bear.

The smartest thing that anyone committed to sustainable and self-sufficient living should have already begun planning their off-grid strategies. Even though it may take years to accomplish the dream, the sooner you start moving in that direction the sooner you can hope to get there.

There are many things to consider before taking your homestead off-grid, and this series will take a look at some of those things as well as offer some resources so the homesteader can begin his or her own research. In this post we’ll examine the current and projected future costs of different on-site energy sources, energy storage vs. backwards metering, and best alternatives for your particular homestead.

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Making Your Own Natural Designer Soaps

…The Old-Fashioned Newfangled Way!

Once upon a time things like laundry soap, dishwashing soap, handwashing soap and ever-so gentle complexion soap was all nearly as cheap as potatoes, cornmeal and all-purpose flour. Nothing anybody thought about ever making for themselves, because what would be the point?

With some home-grown and home-preserved foods, a gardener/homesteader will of course do it anyway despite the fact that these things can be purchased from the grocery store from mass production companies for a lot less than it takes to grow, harvest and process at home. That’s done for taste, nutritional content and pride in self-sufficiency. But soap, a very much basic part of our general upkeep of cleanliness all around the homestead, has until recently been practically a lost art form.

Now it’s coming back, in favor of specialty soaps that go for a pretty penny at natural food and product stores, but sell fast. Part of it is the ever-rising cost of mass produced soaps, some of it is the trend toward avoidance of animal products, and some of it is an increasing number of serious allergic reactions to chemical ingredients in mass produced soaps.

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