They're building a new home in Vermont that will create its own heat and will

never need fuel oil. $80,000.00 this system will add to the home. There are many wonderful, sustainable systems such as geothermal that come with a hefty price tag. Some have multi such as wind, water, and solar, but also that costs money. In my area, 30% to 40% can be reimbursed to a home owner. An educational facility can have 50% reimbursed. The problem is not the interest or the desire, the problem is the initial amount of money. The smallest systems for a modest home start at $10,000.00 In this economy, not many people have that. But somebody must because we have a solar company starting up in our area. We have 3 wind energy companies in our area (one had to shut down due to the economy), but I haven't seen or heard about anyone recently starting up hydro. Years ago, during the 70s and the gas/oil/fuel crisis, I've heard of a few. One place here sells wood, pellat, and wood/corn cob stoves while at least three places sell pellats. I overheard one person say they sold pellate stoves one year, but couldn't get the pellats and people were angry. A friend of mine has a Prius Hybrid car, I asked him how much it cost, he said $25,000. I would like to get into alternate energy, but everything seems to be too much money to start with. My friend makes about $40 thousand a year, so he's not really worried and I'm sure he took incentives or tax deductions. But unless you make inferior power things from scraps or junk like pvc pipe and bicycle motor wind mills with a car battery or something, it seems like it's impossible for middle class to lower class people in my area to do anything alternative energy (average income in my area is $25,000 for an entire year, I'm not talking the President's definition of middle class being under $250,000 dollars a year, unless they're running a business and most of that is cost outlay for things they're selling, we call 3 figurres or better before lower upper class, not middle class here). So do you have alternative energy anything? We have a part-time wood stove, if my husband cleans up the porch before winter and anyone is home to watch it (since he's unemployed, we may get some use out of it). If we get the projects we need done for winterizing, we might try some of the "junk" alternate energy projects, but we're having all we can do to just winterize. So how about you? What can you afford, what do you wish you could afford? I wish we could afford the geothermal, wind, and solar. Our swamp isn't running water, so hydro would be out. But I wish we had running water and could afford that, too. I'd like the power company to owe me so much that I could live on it. Now that's really wishful thinking. How about you?