I know technically you can't 'create' energy but that's another story.
This website is my own personal way of helping others in their understanding of creating a dependable energy supply for their homes.
STEP 1
Work out how much power you use on a daily basis.
You can do this by either going around your property and checking the wattage rating on each appliance or by buying a power usage meter available at many DIY stores.
To work out the amount of power you use per day, you can do this calculation per appliance:
*wattage of appliance* divided by 1000 = so many KWH (Kilowatt hours)
E.g. 2000 Watts / 1000 = 2 KWH
Now you know your appliance uses 2 KWH per hour used.
Now do this for the appliances you wish to keep on during a power outage or permanently and add them up to find out how much power you need to generate.
STEP 2
Decide what system your going to use to generate your power e.g. wind / solar / a home generator or a combination of all 3.
All of these systems have their own advantages and disadvantages.
e.g. Solar is pollution free and quiet but it is only available up to about 9/10 hours a day at the most so requires a battery bank for 24 hour operation.
But a home generator can be run 24 hours a day but the disadvantages are its noisy and is not pollution free.
A lot of people use a combination of all 3 systems to power their homes, usually relying on a backup generator when wind and solar runs out of energy.
STEP 3
Work out what proportion of each type of generation your going to use to make up the total needs of your home that you calculated earlier.
if you calculated your total hourly usage is 9KWH you will need to work out how many watts of each system to use.
You can do this by finding out the generating capacity of your device e.g. a 4000watt generator.
Here's how to calculate how much your generating with each system.
HOME GENERATOR
generating capacity (e.g. 4000 watts) divided by 1000 = 4KWH
For the generator this is 4KWH PER HOUR, unlike with solar and wind.
WIND
you use the amount of hours of wind you have per day and multiply it by the wind turbines output.
e.g. 6 hours x 500 watts = 3000 watts
then 3000 watts divided by 1000 = 3 KWH.
Keep in mind that the 3KWH is for the entire day not per hour like the generator was.
so you can work out how much it is per hour by using the output e.g. 3KWH per day divided by 24 which gives you the hourly energy output.
3KWH divided by 24 = 0.125KWH per hour.
SOLAR
you do the same calculation as the wind turbine but use the amount of sunlight you have per day.
e.g. 8 hours x 400 watts = 3200 watts.
then 3200 watts divided by 1000 = 3.2KWH
As with the wind turbine this is for the entire day and not per hour.
We can also use the same 'per hour' calculation as we did with the wind to find out how much we generate per hour.
e.g. 3.2 divided by 24 = 0.133 KWH per hour.
With the solar and wind options they provide very little power output per day compared to the generator but on the other hand you do not have to provide fuel to either of them unlike with the generator.
STEP 4
This is the hard part, deciding if you want the system to provide power to 'essentials' during a blackout or totally replace your utility power.
completely generating your own power is extremely difficult just using renewable options and extremely expensive at the moment.
One option a lot of people do is to use utility power from the electricity grid and then just use their own generating capacity for blackouts.
If you do decide to go the way of cutting off the grid, good job. you will have more reliable energy from a source you control.
If you don't fancy going off the grid as of yet that's no problem, its hard to generate your own energy but if you slowly build up your 'home grid' you will eventually do it.