RAINWATER HARVESTING

Now, this is touchy, especially considering how ridiculous California is. Before you start doing this, you need to check into the legality in your state, county and neighborhood. That's my disclaimer.

Rainwater harvesting varies for what you want to use it for. Some people harvest rainwater just to water their gardens, so they keep it in a separate barrel outside. Some people tie it into their home grid and use it for flushing toilets and washing cars. Some actually purify it and use it as their their main water source... though they're usually off-gridders.

Check out this link if you're interesting in learning about rainwater harvesting:
An Introduction to Rainwater Harvesting

And purifying rainwater:
Slow Sand Filter
How To Pedia: How to Filter Water With a Sand Filter

And, this might just be me, but once I'd filtered the water with a slow sand filter, I'd probably use something like a Berkey Water Filter (which we use at Zombie Con) which is then drinkable. Course, me being me, I would then completely over do it be putting that through a Brita Water Pitcher Filter.

WOOD BURNING STOVE

Been going over ways to heat the home without using electricity, or at least reduce the heating cost. Decided to go old school and check out wood burning stoves. I know this isn't some dramatic discovery, a lot of people have them, but I was surprised at how cheap they were and that most models are designed with a flat top for cooking (as long as you have cast iron pots and pans). Even cooler, some are designed to heat water and help you lower your water heating bill some like Outdoor Furnaces. There are a few companies that make them, I only linked to the one, but this link should help you understand more about them if you like the idea of heating your house and your water with a wood stove.

If you don't like going outside to reload the stove, they have indoor stoves and I think some have water heating accessories, but I don't know for a fact. Here's a couple others that I found that may be useful. I plan on checking out the tent stove for a tiny cabin, once I do, I'll update this one.

Tent Stoves
Deluxe Barrel Wood Stove Kit

HOME MADE SOLAR

I figured I better bring up the obvious stuff I've neglected for crazier things I was researching. You know you can make your own solar panels? Really inefficient, but maybe you can find a use for this. Since it's so inefficient, I'm not gonna talk about it, but you might be able to incorporate it into a light sensor for something.

Here's something I came across and I like it. It's a tutorial on How to Make a Solar Power Generator. You're talking a yacht panel and a deep cycle battery. There's a few other things that are real cheap to add and I would consider adding a some sort of charge controller. Great tutorial and he mentions some additional stuff to control amperage and change from DC to AC current and all that as well.

With a topped off battery, he claims it'll run things like radios, fans and low-wattage lights (LEDs) all night or 5 continuous hours at 115 volt AC, which is pretty impressive for one small panel and a deep cycle battery, and then it takes 3-5 hours to charge an empty battery. I'm curious about what 5 batteries and 3 large solar panels could accomplish... only one way to find out.

HUMAN POWERED ELECTRICITY

While looking up info on the Permanent Magnet Alternators, I thought about hamster wheels for dogs and people to generate power. Human powered electricity. I think the bike machine is my favorite idea, especially considering you could hook up a gearing system to it and really get that SOB moving. I haven't read of anyone that's geared one yet, but I have an extra bike that I might pull the tires off of and try this with. I mean, it's a workout and it generates energy.

I was joking about the dog wheel thing, but after thinking about it a little bit, it actually wouldn't be a bad idea if your dog likes to run. Like Huskies are bred to run their asses off and it's hard for a person to give them the proper amount of exercise... which could be said of most dogs. But, you create a wheel where they can run to their hearts content and you solve a few problems at once. They get exercise, you get some of their energy.

You could really do the same thing with a hamster wheel for a phone charger if you're nerdy enough.

VERTICLE WIND POWER

I was trying to find something that was more compact than your standard windmill/propeller type wind generator cause I'll be honest, I don't really like the propeller kinds of wind turbines. They're noisy and that bothers me. In looking, I came across the Savonius Wind Turbine. It's not very efficient, but it produces consistent torque and is self-starting which is pretty useful for things like grinding grain and what not. Their big benefit over the prop-driven wind turbines is stability in high winds.

Researching improvements in the Savonius models lead me to the Darrieus Wind Turbine, which incorporates the Savonius ideas and in many cases uses a separate Savonius Turbine to create the power to start a small motor that helps get the Darrieus rotating. While not self starting, it's more efficient at generating energy than the Savonius.

That lead me to the Vertical Air Wind Turbine (VAWT) that incorporates both Savonius & Darrieus designs and streamlined them to be quieter and more efficient.

I've seen another variation of this somewhere that uses curved surfaces, similar to those roof vents that uses the roof line as directional plane surface to direct more wind into the turbine. I wonder if you could use the rising heat to turn the item as well? Probably not unless it can get the turbine moving over 5 mph, cause I don't think it starts generating storable energy until that point.

They all use Permanent Magnet Alternators (additional link), which benefit from a Regulator of sorts as well as something that will cut the power generation so you don't overcharge your battery bank.

Hopefully you find this shiz useful.