Ourpower Guides - Why generate your own electricity?

There are many ways to generate your own electricity at home or at your office.

You could install Solar Photovoltaic (PV) panels or fit a wind turbine to your roof or in the garden. If you have a stream or river in the garden, why not fit a hydro turbine?
Or, in the future, use biomass such as wood pellets or chips to fire a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) boiler.

How is our electricity produced?

The vast majority of electricity in the UK is produced in large power stations at various locations across the UK.
Typically, different fuels are used to turn water to steam. This steam (and in some cases exhaust gases from burning natural gas) turns turbines to generate electricity (by electromagnetic induction).
The vast majority of this electricity production is powered by fossil fuels: coal, gas and a small amount of oil. Nuclear makes up the other significant slice.

Fuel Used to generate Electricity 2004 by Output:

• Gas - 40%
• Coal - 33%
• Nuclear - 19%
• Other - Wind, Biomass, Landfill Gas - 3.5%
• Electricity Imports - 2.5%
• Oil - 1%
• Hydro - 1%' 

Renewables are growing their share - but greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels remain dominant.
All microgeneration technologies (apart from the gas fired Combined Heat and Power units that may emerge soon) use renewable power.
So, we can begin to shift the UK in the right direction, towards renewables, by beginning to generate more of our own power. This will reduce our carbon emissions. And help protect us against price rises and possible oil shortage in the future.

Where is our electricity produced?

Our electricity is generated within a centralised system - large-scale power stations provide vast quantities of electricity.
These plants achieve good economies of scale, but other aspects of this system are not so good. The most efficient Combined Cycle Gas power stations struggle to achieve a thermal efficiency of 60% (and on average less than 50%) - principally because excess heat is just wasted, lost up cooling towers, or into the sea.
What this means is that more precious fuels are burnt than are necessary, and excess greenhouse gases produced as well.
The problem is that Heat does not travel well. So if its not produced close to where it's needed, it is wasted.
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants redress this problem by producing electricity close to where Heat is needed, creating what is known as a Distributed Generation model.
Microgeneration also plays a part in such a Distributed Generation model. Although only CHP produces Heat, increased microgeneration will allow us to move away from such wasteful systems.

How does the electricity reach our homes and businesses?

The National Grid runs a high voltage network to transport electricity across the UK. This transmission grid supplied power to the Distribution network, a lower voltage system that distributes power to end customers, homes and businesses.
During the transmission and distribution process, further 'transmission losses' occur, amounting to up to a further 7% loss of electricity.
Distributed or 'embedded' generation is defined as electricity generation that is connected to a Distribution network not the Grid - microgeneration falls into this category.
Transmission losses are minimized by such types of generation - and increasingly a more distributed electricity generation landscape is being favoured by the government and power companies alike.

So why generate your own power?

Because you can play your part in making our electricity generation system more efficient, produce less greenhouse gases, and waste less precious fossil fuels.
In a nutshell:
- Most of our current electricity is produced using fossil fuels, which produce large quantities of greenhouse gases and may become more scarce and expensive in the coming years.
- Our large power stations are inherently inefficient, as generally the large quantities of heat produced cannot be used. However, distributed electricity generation (including microgeneration) either uses the heat produced (e.g. CHP) or uses technologies where heat is not a produced as a by-product of electricity production (e.g. Solar PV, wind or hydro).
- Producing electricity close to demand reduces the need to transmit that power large distances, reducing the transmission losses that are inherent in such a system.

The timing for a change is particularly good just now. The UK needs to make significant investment in its electricity generation equipment following years of uncertainty and lack of investment. The proportion provided by nuclear, for instance, will fall, regardless of whether building new nuclear plants is adopted quickly or not. Older plants will be closed before newer ones come on stream.
Substantially higher quantities of locally produced power, backed up by central production to guarantee sufficient supply makes sense. You can be a part of this evolving change.

For more information, go to:
- Association of Electricity producers, who have a very informative FAQ list