GridFeeding  

Going as green as possible may be more expensive than living a more oil dependent lifestyle (for now), but it seems to me that if you can afford to do so you will at least not be competing with everyone else for energy.

One thing I've been wanting to do for a while is experiment with the ability to feed power back into the grid by generating it locally and selling the surplus. Unfortunately I lack the most basic pieces of equipment (ie. a house or piece of land), so it isn't going to happen for a while, but I thought I'd look into it anyway.

The most common means of doing this here is by putting up solar panels. There seem to be plenty of suppliers around who will help you do this, and organise the relevant rebates from the government for you while they do so.

How gridfeed solar power systems work

An array of solar panels is mounted on the roof. These panels generate DC electricity from the sun’s rays and send it to an inverter which is mounted inside the building in a convenient location. The inverter converts the DC power into 240 volt AC electricity – identical to the power drawn from the grid. The AC electricity is then used to power appliances that are in operation during the day, such as dishwashers, washing machines, computers and other electrical equipment.

If you are losing less power than your system is generating, the excess is passed through a meter (which records the amount as a credit) and fed into the electricity grid for others to use. If you are using more power than your system can supply, you draw power from the grid as normal and use your credits to help pay for it.