So your siblings can mow the lawn, sheesh, 20 acres, that's an all-day event..
I like the private grid idea though, I'd still like to own an electric car with a small wind or solar collector so I could drive for free..
I'm with you, I hate mowing lawns! The trick to avoid the grass trap is to have half the land being trees, another acre for the garden, area for the house, a pole barn like structure for building stuff, throw in a spring fed pond to take up space etc. Been looking at myco-diesel were diesel is produced from fungus. I'm sure the neighbors would love a slime pond in the area but having one surrounded by trees would be nice. Pull all the leaves, scrub and that sort of thing out of the woods, mix with grass clippings and see what happens. Those slime ponds take up space but at least I won't have to mow it!
Solar-thermal is a very simple process, reflectors focused to a hot water pipe to feed the water tank in the house. The solar water heaters they used in Turkey were very simple devices so there is always that option. Alas, messing around with solar, solar-thermal, myco diesel slime and that sort of thing demands space but it is better to generate energy than mow grass. I've been watching a company that is building an electric tractor that uses a 48" deck with three electric motors (11.5 HP nominal 27 HP peak) it also has a plow attachment, roto-tiller attachment, disc cutter attachment and fork lift attachment to mounts on the thing. The perfect device for messing around on 20 acres and it can be powered by the wind/solar stuff.
The biggest issue is energy storage, a 50 KW/h LiFePO4 pack is expensive! My hope is EEStor gets those ultra-capacitors going at 40 to 60 bucks per KW/h in the next few years so electricity generation and storage for vehicles, tractors and giant LED flashlights would be viable.
Now for EEStor, EcoMotors and others to get their act together and start shipping product.
The EcoMotors two cylinder/4 piston opposed 2 stroke diesel looks promising and should be available about the same time when DARPA releases their special fungus. (2012?)
To see a very simple, very small, inexpensive diesel...check out this site and watch how the engine works. Bill Gates just invested 24.5 million in the project so it is moving forward. Not sure how they can get past the 2 stroke diesel pollution but I think the electric supercharger has something to do with pressurized venting during the exhaust phase.
http://www.ecomotors.com/
One of those would be very small, light-weight, small amount of parts and easy to work on. Mix it with 50 KW/h of EEStor capacitors and a serial electric vehicle would be viable, rather inexpensive and probably get 70 to 90 MPG on myco-diesel. Two strokes are so easy to work on but I wonder how they will stabilize the piston rings across the exhaust ports. We shall see.
With a 1,800 sq. ft. cement/rebar house that uses less than 50% of the energy--that saves a lot of money when it comes down to solar/wind required to run it. The issue is weirdness costs money--think LED flashlight mods on a grand scale. The plan is 2 KW of wind, 2 KW of solar and solar water heaters to start small. I figure the panels and wind mill should be in the center of the property with the slime pond. My house, my sister's house and brothers house will be on the corners. If my other brother wants to roll my way, he can have the last corner. They can build what they want on their corner but must add additional panels/mills and storage to the center for their power draw. Initial plan is to own the property by 2015, build my house by 2016, install the solar/wind by 2017, get the spring fed water system stable and be done with everything by 2018. My sister and brother will start construction in their corners by 2019 to be finished and operational by 2020.
It is a family project and I'm the technology engineering guy. The other siblings are the financial arm of the project so will release funds for initial land purchase, electric tractor, 4 KW/h of solar/thermal and battery or capacitor storage. Houses on the corners with the trees, ponds, gardens or an acre or two of switch grass in the center. Husqvarna makes an electric lawnmower that looks like a Roomba and operates in the same way. It is good for over half an acre of mowing, does hills and automatically mows. Since the one acre plots won't have more than half an acre of grass, those little robots will work well.
I've found 20 acre plots that are covered with trees, have spring fed ponds and are wired and plumbed for sewers for around $3K per acre. My hope is to find one with a spring on it for around $100K. Construction costs of the house and initial solar/thermal will run around $200K so it is not too bad at this point.
