It's time to drill for oil....NOW!!!

[Baphnedia]

U26, I should thwap you. I am talking about PV for homes. However I'm not talking about 'Solar Panels' since the cheapest I can find them are for $3.00/Watt of power they can provide. The cells that can be painted on could be applied to almost any surface (not sure if the paint is available in different colors besides grey), and you could get electricity from a grey picket fence as much as you could from the siding on your house.

As for other mechanisms, (this is a mostly an idear paragraph...) most of what could be done in the home would be very minor. Imagine using your toilet to generate hydro power (installing a small set of turbines between the tank of the toilet and the bowl). Air displacement from opening and closing doors could be captured by very, very sensitive windmills. Foot falls on carpet could capture energy simply by having one magnetic 'sheet' opposing another magnetic 'sheet' one at the top of the insulating pad beneath carpet, one at the bottom. When weight causes the sheets to get closer together, I'm still at a loss for how that magnetic friction could be transferred into electricity. Similar concept to tidal generators.

On another note, it finally makes sense: Big Oil Companies could be treehuggers. The way that they're forcing society to change their habits is by making the cost of oil too high to afford otherwise. With that random thought, I'm off!

[Uniform Two Six]

Imagine using your toilet to generate hydro power (installing a small set of turbines between the tank of the toilet and the bowl).

*Knock, knock, knock, knock* Hey! What are you doing in there?
I'm... uh... just... uh... producing hydro power. Y'know, saving the planet.

Must... resist... temptation... to... make... more... toilet... jokes... Arrrrgh...

*THWAP*!!! Owwwww... Baph!

Seriously, though. It would probably be easier and cheaper to just hook an exercycle to a generator and do an hour of spinning every night.

[Baphnedia]

U26,

Two things, toilet humor always has a place in conversation.

Secondly, you would get more from spinning an hour a night. However, this is America. I agree, too that an hour of spinning would do good - perhaps stick a generator and a rechargeable power cell on my bicycle and let it provide power to the house when it gets parked... a few of us eccentrics could save the world and all that because Hell will freeze over before the average American would get that much exercise in a day.

[Uniform Two Six]

Hell will freeze over before the average American would get that much exercise in a day.

True, sadly.

Anyway, if and when I ever get the resources together to pull it off, here's my little plan to reduce my energy dependency:

If I ever get a house, fill every square foot of roof space with PV panels. There's a new PV panel design in which the roof shingles themselves are PV cells. The shingles interconnect and allow you to use as much roof space as possible while ignoring obstructions like vents. Ordinarily companies which deal with selling and installing PV recommend only installing enough panels to cover your peak load so that you don't wind up spending more than you need. I'd go the other direction and max the whole thing out, and here's why: The other part of my little dream system is to get a plug-in hybrid (either assuming GM actually gets its act together and begins marketing them or by taking, say a Toyota Prius and getting it retrofitted as a plug-in).
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Hey Two-Six, if you're driving around to and from work during the day, you'd have to recharge the thing at night. PV doesn't work then. That's stupid". Well, hypothetical you, there's method to my madness. True, if you recharge the car at night, then you're actually drawing power from the utility grid (which is for the most part, coal-fired in the U.S.). However there's some important things to keep in mind. Most of that "baseload" energy gets wasted at nighttime. Here in California, PG&E and SCE use the excess baseload to pump water from lower elevation hydro reservoirs to higher elevation ones. Essentially it's like using the reservoir system as a huge rechargable battery. It's also very inefficient and wasteful (but the baseload would have been wasted anyway since there's not much demand at night, so it makes economic sense). So charging at night isn't really wasting fossil fuels (since it would've been wasted for the most part anyway). The PV system would serve an important function, however. It would provide clean energy usually right at the peak times when the grid is under the most strain (midday) and wouldn't put any significant strain on the transmission grid since it would be in the middle of an area (a suburban neighborhood) that is a net consumer of electricity (no need to transmit it any further than a block or so). The generation would offset the costs of charging at night.
The whole setup would (in theory) let you use very little gasoline in your car, and would have the added benefit (and eco-snob factor ) of reducing the strain on the grid (if only by a tiny little bit) while doing it without burning fuel nor producing any pollution.

Now all I've got to do is get to the point where I can actually afford to buy a house and do all of this stuff. Why does reality always have to intrude on my little utopian vision for a brighter tomorrow?