For those who can't get any other type of power going on their own (should you want to), and don't have endless amounts of money (like this guy who uses solar panels to generator hydrogen to power a fuel cell), there is Pedal Power - or converting excersize bikes into power generators. You can also use generators build into bike-stands to run power off geared bikes. Both are good ways to get some muscle mass built for when you are going to need it or use the bike to teach a kid the meaning of electrical generation for that video game they play.

My favorite power is hydro and if you can take advantage of it - it runs 24/7 (when the creek isn't frozen). We can run it 8 or 9 months of the year depending on when we freeze up and when we thaw.

There are 3 types of hydro power- Waterwheel, Turbine and in-stream floating turbine.

The waterwheel is the old standard and you can get a lot of torque out of a wide stream if the water depth is fairly constant. The waterwheel can do additional work so though the deisn seems ancient - its uses are still valid.

A waterwheel can be used to raise water by creating more pressure than resistance (See otherpower.com ). Calculating Power can be found on: OtherPower.com

More waterwheel links - Floating Water Wheel , moving water uphill using a water wheel video, Electric Waterwheel (video) and Stainless Steel Waterwheel (video).

A waterwheel can be geared to grind grains as in the "old days", card fibers, spin fibers and much more. If you can use a waterwheel - then you have a source of endless power. The thing about the waterwheel - it can be made with nearly any scrap material - plastic barrels, metal or wood.

The turbine designs all require redirecting water to focus gravity pulling the water down. MicroPower has an example of a basic 1Kw system.

We happen to have 2 culverts under a road the stream goes through and would be perfect for the floating stream type system on ABS Alakska. Though they only have a small 100 watt floating system on their site, our stream could manage 2 - 400 watt units to fill our needs of about 1 Kw's a day. The achilles heel of the system is in the bearings and keeping water from getting to the generator. Parts for building hydro systems can be found on: KansasWindPower.com