The wind is roaring, the temperature outside is below zero and fuel bills are going through the roof, but woodsman Ben Law is not bothered. The timber house that he built three years ago in a Surrey forest is warm and bright and the heating and lighting is completely free.
Mr Law's house is "off grid" - not connected to mains services. It needs little heat because it is so well insulated, but he has a log fire, a solar water heater, four wind turbines, and an array of batteries and photovoltaic panels that generate electricity from light. If it gets extremely cold, he admits, he goes to bed.
Mr Law, who has lived in the woods for many years, is part of a new social and political trend which is seeing people aspire to turn their homes into mini power stations. While there are around 500 people in Britain living like Mr Law does, the idea of people generating their own electricity is now backed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, as well as most environment groups who see it as a way of reducing carbon emissions and even avoiding building nuclear power stations.
Last week Greenpeace and London's mayor Ken Livingstone unveiled a report showing how the decentralisation of power to households could generate the electricity for much of the capital.
Research by the Energy Savings Trust suggests that home generation of power is developing so fast that it could potentially provide 30%-40% of the UK's total electricity needs by 2050. "Generating your own power makes economic and environmental sense. I think people are becoming scared about becoming too reliant on the system that we have," says Mr Law.
But unlike in the 1970s when it was first popularised, the new drive is mainstream and has been rebranded as "hi-tech", "intelligent" and "sustainable". Scores of micropower companies now offer solar panels, rooftop wind turbines, heat pumps, solar thermal panels, photovoltaics, hydropower turbines, woodfuel boilers and fuel cells, while large companies such as British Gas are offering gas boilers that generate electricity.
Last week plans were submitted to Brighton council to build a small estate of 16 off-grid "earthships" to be made mostly out of waste rubber tyres. If built they will be self-powered by solar, wind and other renewable micropower technologies. The developers, working with a housing association and a building society, are confident they will be able to sell them for £250,000 to £350,000 each.
"I detect a real shift in public attitudes, a desire to do something because of climate change," says Daren Howarth, who built a prototype earthship last year.
Off-gridding is most advanced in the US where an estimated 300,000 homes are now independent of utility companies. In Britain the emphasis is on cutting energy use to the minimum and, where possible, "exporting" excess energy.
"We'd love to go off-grid completely eventually," says Roger Osborn, who lives on a Swindon suburban housing estate and has installed solar water and PV panels. "We have got our electric bills down to about £4 a week, and gas to just £7 a quarter. To get totally off-grid would cost about £10,000 which is too much now."
"Getting homes to generate their own power is now mainstream. There's big money in it. It used to be hippies, but it's now seen as aspirational," says Jim McClelland, editor of Sustain magazine.
"The trend is definitely going towards people becoming more energy self-sufficient," says a spokeswoman for Solar Century, which provided 7,000 solar panels to supply 180,000 kWh of electricity a year for the CIS tower in Manchester. "There are widespread security of oil and gas supply fears, and as prices increase these technologies become more viable."
One of the most ambitious off-grid projects in Britain is at Woking, where the council has used windpower and other renewable technologies to halve power demand in its buildings. The council saves £1m a year and has cut CO2 emissions from its buildings by 77% .
The Department of Trade and Industry is expected to report on the potential of micropower in the next few weeks and is thought to be cautiously supportive.
"Government is drawn to large scale solutions, but microgeneration gives people the chance to find solutions to climate change at the household level. It could play a huge role in tackling climate change and meeting our future energy needs," says Guy Thomson, of the Green Alliance.
But costs are still high, warns a team from the University of Southampton, the University of Sussex and Imperial College who reported recently.
"The technologies hold great promise, but are fighting on an uneven playing field. Our research shows that some basic changes in regulations could make a significant difference," said Jim Watson, from the University of Sussex.
