Green and less dependent on "grid" corporations ...

It is on my list right behind the defeat of procrastination.Insulation insulation insulation. Seal it up tight and then keep a window open so you don't asphyxiate.I keep a wood stove going all winter mostly because I just love to see the fire burning. Even the sight of the smoke from the outside makes me feel warmer. The process of collecting wood helps to keep me in shape and is an excellent tool for the education of children. I am not sure how green it is but it sure feels good. Certainly not an option for everyone.I really like the idea of heating with your hot water heater. Sized correctly, it will easily meet both your heating and hot water needs. It is also easy to tie in other sources like solar and geothermal.I think that the key to efficient energy use is storage. The average house in Canada used 106 GJ of energy in 2007. There is 106 GJ of energy that falls in the form of sunlight on 20 m2 in a year. Assuming that you get 4hrs of full sun/day and 106 GJ = 29 444 kwh and sunshine = 1kw/m2. So if we could stick that energy in a bottle until we needed it then Bob's your uncle.The best bottle that I can see is the grid. Couple this with localized energy production and you have a highly efficient and secure set up that resists both grid corporations and the impact of grid failure.

You likely would want more storage if possible depending on all of your variables. Insulated 55 gallon drums full of iron pellets, ideally buried in the ground. Use a solar furnace (much cheaper than panels or evacuated tubes) to bring propylene glycol up to 170C and heat the pellets and then circulate to a heat exchanger in your hot water tank. You can buy them ready made.I think that this would give you the highest heat storage capacity for the least space without a pressure vessel or melted salt or something. Adds a little to your control side and glycol is poisonous. You could just use a barrel beside your hot water tank and skip the glycol but you lose a lot as it would max out at 100C.The plus side is that all of this uses really simple, robust and inexpensive low end technology to create a heat sink with huge capacity. All depends on your needs I guess but electric batteries still suck and are way too expensive and short lived and toxic. Hard to get away from.If you could throw in a Sterling motor driven generator running off of the solar furnace after your barrels are up to temp and send it to the grid. In fact you could probably heat the glycol with the waste heat from the motor. Of course a grid connection is pretty expensive to set up and Sterling motors aren't nearly as available as they should be. Easy to build though.Ideally, you could store all the energy as heat and convert it to electricity when you need it for back up or otherwise send it to the grid.