In the developed world energy abundance is achieved through the consumption of cheap, high-energy fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. These non-renewable energy sources have improved the living standards of millions of people, but their rapid exploitation has had adverse effects on the planet. In addition, the inequitable access to energy worldwide has created political and social stresses resulting from an economic dependence on oil-producing regions. Future energy systems need to provide energy abundance while being sustainable and non-polluting. Energy production should be distributed, diverse, intelligent, and highly integrated into technological, industrial, and domestic systems. 

At Kadagaya, we evaluate energy systems based on their ability to efficiently and cleanly provide abundant energy, where open-source designs are preferred in order to provide equitable access. Energy is intrinsically linked to all systems (housing, agriculture, water and waste treatment, industry, and transport). Hence, energy production, monitoring, efficiency, and use need to be carefully considered during the design stage. The ideal scenario for a self-sufficient community is to produce as much energy as possible from waste products (human waste, food waste, waste heat), i.e. “energy recycling” and the renewable sources available at the location (e.g. solar, wind, hydro).  We evaluated various energy technologies with respect to the type of generation (base-load or variable), reliability, lifetime, cost per kWh of energy generated, ongoing costs of maintenance and consumables, whether open-source designs are available, and the impact of the manufacture (energy use, environmental problems).

At the Kadagaya campus, we are focusing on two main energy sources (hydroelectricity and biogas). Wind energy is not viable at our present location and small installations are expensive for the amount of power they produce. Solar power has inherent dependence on the market for purchase of the panels and a large amount of storage (via batteries) is required as energy generation is only during the day. The cost of photovoltaic panels continues to rapidly decrease and now the major cost over the lifetime of the system is the batteries (which have a much shorter life than the panels). Our electrical power is supplied by a vortex hydroelectric power plant on our river. An important part of off-grid and self-sufficient living is incorporating back-up systems. Currently, we have a small solar photovoltaic system, a petrol generator, and access to the electrical grid as back-up power systems. In the future, we plant to use pumped hydro as a back-up “battery” when the vortex hydroelectric plant needs to be shut down for maintenance. In addition to electricity, the other important energy source for cooking and heating is gas. This can be obtained using a biodigester system where methane (“biogas”) can be produced from organic (human, animal and agricultural) wastes. More information about these energy projects is given below.