BACKYARD POWER STATIONS

With growing demand and dwindling resources, there's only one direction fuel bills are going. But soon we could have power stations in our gardens

- WORDS DUNCAN GEERE

Energy prices are high almost everywhere in the world and are getting higher.

It's turned the cost of the fuel we use to power our homes into a political issue that's changing the course of elections. In the UK, household energy bills have risen by 34 per cent since early 2022. Meanwhile, everyone is trying their best to ignore the elephant in the room - the looming climate crisis.

But there's a point of light on the horizon. Technology is being developed that may release us from this monstrous mess by allowing us to generate our own clean, cheap energy at home. In ten years, many more of us may not only be generating enough power for our own needs, but also selling the excess back to the power companies. It's a win-win-win situation: pollution and emissions are reduced, energy efficiency goes through the roof and homeowners no longer need to worry about whether power company bosses fancy a new boat for Christmas.

The technologies that enable this vision of the future are known as 'microgeneration' because they permit the generation of electricity and heat on far smaller scales than traditional power plants. While a single big plant is often more efficient than thousands of small ones, a significant portion of what it produces is then lost between the power station and your house. But by attaching what is essentially a small power plant to your house, losses are minimised.

The options for homeowners, small businesses and communities to generate their own power are currently fairly limited. Today's generation of solar panels and wind turbines are effective when used en masse, but on a smaller scale they can take upwards of 10 or 20 years for the reduced energy bills to fully offset the upfront cost of installation.