Power supply

I just yestereday saw on BBC the villager in India with the same problem using solar energy to light his house. It works fine with (relatively, about 2 sqft) small solar panel and one 12 V car battery (to be charged by solar energy).

<....man power, so like a bike pedal or with some kind of mechnism rotate the turbine and charge the 12VDC battery and supply the power to LED lights as required, or if it is possible to build a cheap inverter supply power to the AC lighting loads....>

Keep the power as DC! Charge batteries and use LED lighting!

Allowing for the maximum continuous output of an average human as 100W, and it is easy to see why humans gradually became dependent on horses (1hp ≈ 745W), and then power stations, etc.......

There is a strong correlation between [energy consumption per person] and [gross national product per person] across the world's countries.

Make that average power by human power closer to 40 watts unless your first name is Arnold. If you can crank out 100 watts for more than a few seconds you are Olympic material.

Well, maybe they can harness the power of

our commander-in-chief having another ADHD attack...

or perhaps the wattage of Dick Cheney's smile!

Then there's the Gilligan Generator (That Mary Ann floats MY boat!) and, apropo of nothing, where DID the HoneyBees get those boots and hiphuggers?

or maybe I'll lend out my dancing kitties

Perhaps some kind of water power would be efficient or even steam/solar, both would deserve a look at depending on availability of water/hydro. I think the solar making steam would be the best bet.

Check out youtube on solar Stirling and Brayton engines. Also google around with these keywords.

There are a lot of solar Stirling systems available, so if the need is very high, there are options.

I'm working on a Brayton system, preferably without solar tracking. Theoretically, it should be possible, but I'm still in concept/design phase.

You decline to say weather you have wind or a river nearby your required power producing plant. Nature energy is always the best in my opinion, but the capital investment is always a deterrent.

You can have a 12 to 48V battery bank to supply power to DC-based lighting and a small inverter for AC loads. The battery bank can be charged from one or more sources: solar, wind, small hydro. Solar is most likely the best option. Human-powered charging from a stationary bike is possible but only if your power requirements are low.

There are many examples of these systems on the web if you do some searching.

Check out this magazine www.homepower.com . They often publish articles describing such systems.

If you have a source of a combustible gas (i.e. Bio-Gas, Propane, coal seam gas, oil, wellhead gas, Diesel, Kerosene, etc.) you could try a micro-turbine like those made at Capstone. It is essentially a very small jet engine that has one moving part, creates 30 KW of energy and can operate off the grid. Grid losses can approach 30% loss, so localized (distributed) power is much more efficient. You could even have a coop with your neighbors, where everyone chips in and have your own neighborhood power company, not unlike sharing a well. These units have very low emissions and are about the size of a refrigerator. If you need more power you can just add another one. This is ideal for places where the grid is unreliable. In some countries, you can even sell your extra power back to the power company so the unit could pay for itself. It costs about 3.5 cents US per KWH to operate.