Some said they had bought wood-pellet stoves to supplement oil heat; others said they had looked into installing solar panels or even living off the grid, with no reliance on public utilities.
When combined with a building's hot water and heating systems – which together with cooling account for around half of the global energy consumption in buildings – solar cooling can drastically reduce reliance on grid energy and improve a building's sustainability credentials.
Solar desiccant air-conditioning is an emerging technology that offers the promise of reducing reliance on grid connected electricity for providing comfort air-conditioning.
And, second, this will also require the use of a so-called "smart grid," so that greater reliance on intermittent sources of electricity, such as from wind farms, can be balanced with cuts in consumer demand when power is scarce.
First, we would severely worsen the nation's carbon footprint, by locking the electricity grid into a continued reliance on coal, just at the moment when we are best positioned to break coal's hold.
In the past decade, the number of small businesses and consumers substantially reducing their reliance on grid-based electricity has risen over 33% annually.
The reliance on grids in the details that follow, where different locations can have different properties, is reminiscent of CA. However, the ISWBC is not a CA, nor is it similar to extensions of CA, such as hybrid CA, lattice-gas CA, and Potts models.
If it works, the novel batteries could energize efforts to add renewable power to the grid and curb society's reliance on fossil fuel-generated power.
A more interlinked and better grid is needed for increased reliance on renewable energy sources, which will be needed to address climate change.
Another problem was its reliance on the electrical grid.
