Renewable Energy Options For Your Tiny Home

For many, the reduction of our carbon footprint goes hand in hand with downsizing to a tiny, and naturally moving into a smaller home will reduce it. For those looking to go off-grid, an understanding of your energy source options, and whether they are feasible in your area, are necessary to decide if the costs outweigh the benefits.

Ultimately, it's the weather that lets us down here in the UK as there are several options for renewable energy, but sadly the majority require heat and/or sunlight daily. Nevertheless, we are going to list the most common renewable energy options and methods of making them work here in the UK.

Solar PV System For Tiny Homes

We'll start with the most obvious, a Solar PV System. We've all heard a thing or two about solar panels (full name Solar Photovoltaic in case you ever get asked at a quiz, now you know! You're welcome!) but, how much do you know about energy generation per panel, and your energy needs for your family?

An Overview Of Solar Panels

A general system will provide an average of 2KW (kilowatt) of energy (under optimum sunshine) for a year in a tiny home. This converts to 3000KWH (kilowatt-hours). Compare this to the current UK household that uses 3700KwH of energy per year, and you can see that you'll have plenty of power for your tiny home. 

But what about the weather? Well, yes that is a very good question. If there is no sun, then there is no solar power unless you have batteries. Batteries are far more advanced than they used to be and can hold up to 3-4 days worth of energy. That means a couple of batteries would be enough to keep you going for a week or two until more light filters through the clouds. Better still, lets say it’s December and we have grey clouds for two weeks and your energy runs low, you can take a battery and charge it to full at a friend or families home with far less costs than ever being connected to the grid.

If you’re thinking of opting for solar, we do recommend that you look into your local area for weather all year round and to work out how many batteries you may require. Next, if you think you wouldn’t get enough sunlight, especially for those living in the North West (yes I spent half my life there and its grey almost every day!) you may want to consider less appliances such as a smaller fridge without luxuries such as washer/dryers etc including a switch over to gas for cooking and heating. This allows you to always remain warm and fed, even if the lights go out!

Costs: A general system for a family of three would set you back £4000-£6000 and can last for up to 15 years.

Solar Thermal Systems For Tiny Homes

While solar panels use the sun for energy, solar thermal systems use the sun for heating water. The way it works is by absorbing heat from the sun via its collecting panels which heats the hot water within the collecters. This then runs to your hot water taps with free heated water. 

It would be obvious to say that solar thermal energy is not for everyone. If you just so happen to be in the sunniest spot in the country, then congratulations, you'll be able to get at least 60% of your hot water via a thermal system. Sadly for those who live in cloudy, rainy, cold areas, your chances of benefiting from them are rather slim. 

Cost: For an average household thermal system, it will cost between £4000-£5000

PVT System (Photovoltaic Thermal) 

Did you guess that a PVT system is a mixture of the two above? Tops points if you did! Yes, that's right, it not only provides you with energy for your home but also heats your water, amazing! Another positive for using a PVT system is the extraction of heat increases the performance of energy production, which may be useful for those who have a larger family and need a higher amount of annual energy. 

Again, the only downfall for this system is its weather dependent. Therefore the running costs and production of energy may not be beneficial in grey areas of the UK. 

Biomass 

Biomass is a relatively new concept providing you with free gas from your food and human waste. It's a simple set up and can offer up to 2 hours of gas per day. All you need to do is to place your food waste into the shoot daily (also connect your toilet directly to the system) and you'll have a regular supply of gas. 

A system like this requires a continuous temperature of around 25 degrees which is near impossible to attain. However, if you plan on purchasing a heat pump, you could build a shed next to your tiny home and pump heat inside to maintain this temperature (and your home temperature too!)

The system is super easy to set up (looks a little like a two-person tent) and takes three weeks to activate using manure or a fertilizing starter. For more information, check out our full article on Homebiogas.

Eco Heat Pumps 

A heat pump works like a reverse fridge. Instead of taking air from the outside to make it cooler, a heat pump takes the air from the outside and heats it as it enters your home. It can be connected to underfloor heating, water pipes to heat water or directly into rooms to keep a steady temperature. 

The only downside to a heat pump is that they require electricity to run. Therefore, you will need to calculate the amount of energy it requires for the job you want it to do to ensure you have enough sourced renewable energy to run the pump and your household. 

Wind Energy | Small Scale

Now, this is something that we have a LOT of in the UK! This is thanks to us being an island allowing us to be surrounded by windy shores in almost every direction. Did you know that a third of UK runs off comes from renewable energy and the wind powers half of that? 

If you live in a windy area, you could get yourself a wind turbine for £800. When the wind is 20mph, you'll roughly be able to generate 1KW per hour, which is enough to run the average tiny home. The remaining energy can be stored in an energy bank (up to 3KW) which can be used all year round. 

Reducing Energy To Make Way For a Greener Future

Reducing your annual energy consumption will help to live on renewable energy more feasibly. This is where we can look into our current lifestyle and work on methods of reducing the need for wasteless energy such as Your Food Footprint. 

Have you stopped to think about the amount of energy required to put your food on the table? Imagine a tomato being picked in a field in Italy, then driven to a factory to be washed and packaged using machines, then flown to the UK and driven to its shop. You then drive to the shop to collect your tomatoes and drive back only for them to be eaten within seconds! 

When you think about it, we all have rather large food footprints and shopping local or growing your food can reduce the waste of energy significantly. Cycling rather than driving is another great alternative or work with a neighbour to produce a vegetable patch to share, splitting the responsibility while you both reap the rewards of organic, nutritious food. 

That's it from us! Do you have any ideas on how to reduce your carbon footprint? Get in touch as we'd love to share your thoughts with our community!