I just arrived at my cousin's house. He makes his own lamps and things. He uses batteries and circuits and lightbulbs, basically, living in a battery-lit home. Being ridiculously green, he claims its more energy efficient than using the city grid. We got in an argument about global warming, and in short he claimed he was helping by using battery power rather than electrical power. I said that wasn't accurate because batteries, lightbulbs, etc use more power than the grid does because they have to be made using electrical equipment in an electric factory. Am I right? What uses more power?
This debate depends on a few things such as how are the batteries charged, the cost of building the ciruits that operate the devices, the cost of electricity and other factors which I cannot think of right now. Also, are the batteries rechargeable? I would assume so in this case. I suspect that it would take a indeterminate period of time (at this point) for there to be a payoff for a battery run home to be less expensive that a conventionally powered home. Part of a conventionally powered home possibly being cheaper in the beginning would be the mass production of devices. When your cousin says things are powered by batteries, is it a battery bank supplying a converter of DC to AC or are his devices running soley on DC supplies? The best way to resolve the answer is to calculate all the electrical costs that go into powering his home and then also calculate how much it would be to run a similar home on the grid. There might also be a few costs that are left out due to their choices of what to leave out of their home or how they accomplish or forego the luxury of in their home. At this point, there are probably not enough studies available to get a general consenus of which is cheaper. There is also another point to consider which is how often do they have to replace their batteries?
