[Catfish]

re Skybird

I do not like those wind turbines, for a lot of reasons, from area consumption to the looks of it, to killing birds flying into the props' paths, but they do work energy-wise. There were already a few days where countries were entirely fed with alternative energy systems for a short time, it is not enough to support all the factories and single households under any but perfect (for turbines) weather conditions; but then wind turbines are not really smart when it comes to providing energy. They are a solution for flat lands, if you have mountains you can use hydrooelectric power, but even then you have long distance wiring with the resulting power loss.

Energy consumption can be reduced by building smarter technology and a change of basic and insular solutions, like using hot water and sun collectors instead of roof tiles, combined heat or other small insular power plants feeding the general electrical net when the single household is idling and so on, but it takes time and the will.
You do not need 220 or 110 Volts, most can be run with 12, but of course you need the power I, the Ampère. A good idea would be to use nuclear energy maybe in very small facilities, or even better switch it all to hydrogen. The latter can be stored or produced in quantities you temporarily need via fuel cells. You could even use your 100-year old Otto engines in cars without major changes, with only warm, water-saturated air leaving the exhaust.

But you need the will, and the human will ist still to exploit everything, to use it up to the last drop, to sell and distribute energy centrally and controlled by companies or lobbied government, casually ruining the environment. They always speak of the "environment" as if it only concerns something around humans are not a part of, but you should know better. You destroy the "environment", you destroy yourself.

Building and maintaining insular solutions is also not cheap, but so is maintenance and feeding of coal plants. You do not need big overland wiring, so not much power loss expected due to electric resistance over short distances. And nuclear energy produced in large reactors is also again the old centralising of energy hat has to be distributed over long distance, being also susceptible to terrorism or strikes in a war. Why all that? The future is the present, you have the solutions.