Cooking appliances, power tools, cleaning devices, artistic equipment, water pumps, heaters, computers, drones, cars… electricity power is used in everything. We live in an age where the bloody hammers have USB connectors (maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much). One of biggest hallmarks of off the grid living lies in generating your electric power from home. Having your own power means no longer being at the mercy of energy extorting power companies. Unlike your neighbours, who can either pay a skyrocketing bill or be cut off, you have options. In fact, if you are still connected to the local grid unused power is automatically ‘sold’ back to the system. Rather than being a consumer, you become a provider and receive rebate checks every month. And as an added bonus, you don’t have to participate in black outs. So when a storm or earth quake knocks out the local grid, squirrels eat power lines miles away, or some one from the power company makes a mistake, you are not caught out in the cold. You got your own electricity, and better yet, you are in control of it.

Power companies promote the idea that generators cost millions of dollars and require specialized engineers to build and maintain. The underlying supposition is that the common home owner doesn’t have the resources nor the knowledge to consider an on site generator, so it is easier to hook up to the grid, pay the bills and let the professionals worry about the details. It is true that electrical generators to power a city may run into several millions and even setting up the infrastructure and relays to get the power evenly distributed to all houses would require several more millions. It is complex and requires specialized skill… when we are talking about a power grid for a city. But when it comes to powering a single home the story is quite different. No relays, no transmission stations, no miles of suspended cables. No specialized computer monitoring stations and no specialized equipment to figure out how much everyone is using so they can all be billed correctly.

Most generators are little more than a few magnets spinning on a flywheel with something to make it go. Power companies don’t want you to know generating electrical power from home can be done safely and easily even for a novice. If you can follow video instructions, if you can be careful about safety, and spend a few hours building, you can literally create systems which can save you hundreds of dollars every month and have peace of mind. Not to mention it becomes a valuable asset if you ever decide to move.

Given all the perks, I don’t know why everyone isn’t going green and producing their own energy from home. Oh yes… they don’t know how.

Below we are going to cover several different methods to generate electricity from home, with pros and cons for each system and links to where you can get detailed building instructions.