Surprisingly, with all the sun in Colorado (300+ days a year), the utilities in the Denver area don't offer help. There's a few places in the mountains that do, but the high plains don't. It's a mystery to me, especially with the National Renewable Energy Center just NW of Denver.

My neighbors have solar hot water and were looking at solar power as a supplement and the co-op out here wasn't very helpful, even resistant, to working with them. Only with the legal requirements to allow interconnecting and buyback would they do anything. I guess they think that they'll lose too many customers and their business. Instead I think it's an opportunity for them to grow their business by offering services and help.

The geothermal is interesting. I've got the space and I could go down 12ft and run 100ft horizontally instead of drilling 100 down. I heard a few people say it was a nice solution for them. If I get to build a workshop at some point, I'm thinking to go self-sufficient for everything except the tools. I'd need batteries to keep them going, which expensive, as Phil mentioned. However a combination of wind, solar, geothermal, should keep me warm and let me sell some power back to the companies.

On the manure, I'm just not sure how to manage the replacement over time (move out old, shovel in more). We used it to provide some insulation when we had a cracked pipe in Jan and had to dig up the yard. Also the flies. Need to find some way to keep it far enough from the house to manage the fly population. I've got enough as it is!