If we would have chosen wind as our off-the-grid system, we would have required a battery system more costly than the wind generator and tower itself. Batteries are not impossible to maintain and they can last years when properly taken care of but it didn't solve all our issues with declining future energy.
Conservation was driving us to our limits and the comfort level of living like that was getting to be more and more stressful, even though we prided ourselves on spending $25 to heat and cool our house in '09 (that was our cost for the year of wood cutting / splitting), it wasn't a level of comfort most people would want.
The wind doesn't blow all the time (only when you don't need more energy and your batteries are already charged). The same goes for solar. To net meter excess energy just doesn't pay (we would be paid $.10 per KWH and they would pay us $.08 for 1 KWH). And though both systems have been a part of our daily lives for a few years, they don't have a consistant storage ability liquid fuel does.
Enter Farm-Based Ethanol - this method even fills our fuel for vehicles, allows some flexible use and may one day have a resale value about the same as gas, though for now there is no method by which I can presently sell it - there a dozen or more ways I can use it! I can not only run a generator but I can take the heat from the generator to heat my house.
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First, lets get rid of some basics- Corn isn't a great ethanol feed stock. Sugar cane is grown in Brazil, Sweden is using sugar beets. Chances are we will be using maple sap in the spring and find other feed stocks as the seasons go on but anything is better than corn.
When properly done, ethanol is the cleanest of the fuels in that every un-used portion of the mash can go back on the land to improve the soil or be fed to the animals since it has all the proteins and nutrients of the plant PLUS micro-organisms are now involved and will improve our soil in the end - which ever way they get there. Also, the plants re-collect any carbon to off-set any carbon released from burning it.
Farm Based Ethanol production is legal and anyone (free of charge) can acquire a license to produce it providing you are not drinking it, mix it with some gasoline (which makes Alcohol ethanol) and it is being made a distance from any other buildings.
Many farm tractors were always ready to run on pure alcohol. John Deere small lawn tractors can run it without any modifications and pre-1950 tractors are ready to run on alcohol or gas-o-hol with pre-fuel heaters to warm it before the burn.
What is good for the farmer is good for the local economy. As communities transition from the oil based energy society and figure out the energy decline will mean less goods will travel less distances - the local economy must be ready to provide the energy and goods needed to sustain the people. Buy local will mean more and more in the coming years.
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