Field trip

We had a field trip last week, to the house of a local eccentric entrepreneur called Tony Marmont who lives just outside Loughborough. He’s what my friend Dave would call a ‘survivalist nutcase’ as he’s got a totally off-grid power system, but makes it reasonable by having constructed it a very long time ago and explaining that he wanted to see if it was possible. Tony is 70+ and still full of ideas and very active in the world of renewables.

The system consists of:
- two boreholes that supply water
- a big lake with two little water turbines
- a huuuuuuuge hydrogen generation and storage unit (this is a way of storing power, like batteries, but needs very expensive kit to use)
- two 2-blade wind turbines
- three 20-tube solar water heating arrays
- a massive bank of solar power modules
- a water source heat pump

Solar power

Electric car

Electric car 'petrol cap'

Tracking solar power

All this runs a house for two people, a farm and some offices. It’s a bit overkill :) However, it was great to see because it’s basically what everyone on my course would love to do. As a piece de resistance, at the end of the visit we were greeted by the man himself who presented his idea for replacing aviation fuel to us (combining hydrogen and carbon dioxide to make hydrocarbons) and as a special treat showed us his helicopter. Yes, helicopter.

Tony's helicopter