Unless you live in a flat, you always have access to some form of home power generation technology – wind, solar or hydropower. Solar power is the most versatile – large solar panels can go on most roofs and generate massive amounts of power. Wind turbines can go on roofs, too – even if they don’t do very well there. Any home with a yard can take a wind turbine on a tall mast. As long as the house is in a part of the country that gets a steady breeze, the wind turbine should work. Hydropower is the least accessible of these three home power generation methods. You need to live out in the country, with a stream running through your property. You also need to have permission to dam the stream up to generate energy-saving hydropower for the home.
Assuming that you do live out in the country and have access to all three energy sources – the sun, the wind and a flowing stream, which would be the best way to generate your power for free? Here’s a quick comparison – hydropower compared to solar power and to wind power.
Comparing hydropower generation to solar power
Both hydropower and solar power are important alternative power generation methods that help take pressure off the environment. Each power generation method has upsides and downsides.
Cost: If you have access to a flowing stream, you should go with hydropower, rather than solar power. Solar panels are still expensive. A typical 2.5 kW domestic solar power installation can cost as much as £25,000 . For the same amount of money, you could have much more energy-saving hydropower for the home – as much as 5 kW. Hydropower, then, costs only half as much as solar power.
Ease of use: Solar power and hydropower are exact opposites when it comes to ease-of-use. All you need to do with solar power is to have an installer screw a few panels on your roof. It could even be a simple DIY project. The system is modular, too. If you can only afford a couple of solar panels today, you can continue to add to your system over time, for more and more power. Solar energy is easy to capture everywhere, too.
Hydropower, on the other hand, is hardly available anywhere. You need to live out in the country with access to a stream right on your property. You need planning permission to dam up the stream and route the water through a turbine, too. If the stream on your property is a very small one, you won’t get much power out of it.
Environmental impact: Solar power has no perceptible environmental impact. You simply need to buy solar panels and place them on your roof. With hydropower, though, damming up the local streams can cause considerable disruption to local wildlife. People living downstream from a hydropower installation will experience difficulties, too.
Reliable power: In countries like Britain, the sun isn’t a reliable source of energy. Constant rains can make solar power generation a difficult proposition. The fact that you lose solar power is a problem, too. Hydropower can be a very reliable way of generating power, the other hand. When a river or stream is in flow, it tends to be constant.
Comparing hydropower generation to wind power
Reliability: While every place on earth does get a bit of wind, you need steady, dependable wind to generate power. This isn’t available in every location. Many parts of the country get windy for only part of the year. In this way, wind power is quite similar to hydropower – both only work if you happen to have the resource where you live.
Cost: A 5 kW wind turbine would be massive, at up to 200 feet high. The blades could be between 20 and 30 feet in diameter. Wind turbines, though, cost less than solar power hydropower installations. A 5 kW unit can sell for as little as £10,000 on eBay. You would need to spend more than twice as much on a hydropower build.
Ease-of-use: Wind power is certainly more easy to install than hydropower. It only needs a quick professional installation. It doesn’t even take up much space. A hydro installation, on the other hand, can take up a vast amount of space and can require difficult installation work. For more on home hydro-power visit the uswitch – official site.
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