Going Off-Grid In Scotland  

The Guardian has an article on a green house on a Scottish Island that is attempting to go 100% renewables - The island house that powers itself - with a little help from 100mph gales.

Life on the most northerly inhabited island in Britain can be very tough indeed. On Unst the winters are harsh, and the winds brutal and relentless, regularly sweeping across the treeless landscape at more than 100mph.

But Unst is the island chosen by a retired couple from Wiltshire to build one of the world's greenest houses - a "zero carbon" home powered entirely by the wind and the sun. It sits on the same latitude as southern Greenland, but will soon boast lemon trees, grapevines and green pepper plants in its greenhouse, an electric car powered by the wind, and floors heated by drawing warmth from the air.

The three-bedroom home designed by Michael and Dorothy Rea, near the shoreline of a secluded bay, has become a test bed for living "off-grid": generating all their power from renewable sources, growing most of their food at home, and running a car without a petrol station.

Their home - built for just over £210,000 from an off-the-shelf timber framed house - has quietly become famous. The Scottish executive in Edinburgh is using it as a benchmark for new sustainable house-building rules; officials in the prime minister's office watch its progress and Chinese officials are studying its innovative technologies for a new 5,000-home eco-town in Guangzhou, in southern China. ...

It is one of several pioneering off-grid projects in remote areas of Scotland, where communities such as the islanders on Eigg in the inner Hebrides and another living on Scoraig, a remote peninsula near Ullapool in north-west Scotland, have developed their own independent green power sources.

Around 80 people living on Scoraig, which is only accessible by boat or with a five-mile trek overland, power their homes and businesses chiefly using small hand-made wind turbines designed by local resident Hugh Piggott, a guru of self-sufficient off-grid living. Solar panels and diesel generators supplement the turbines.

In February, the islanders of Eigg, just south of Skye, switched on the UK's first independent "green grid". It provides power to all the 45 homes and 20 businesses by combining electricity from wind turbines, solar panels and two small hydro-electric dams into a single supply. For the first time, islanders can run fridges, electric kettles, satellite TVs and computers without using unreliable oil-powered generators.

Forced by their isolation to become self-sufficient, many observers believe these communities prove that micro-generation and home energy schemes are viable UK-wide.