alternative energy and a sci fi prison

Some questions to consider before someone responds....

1. Will your sci-fi project use fictional forms of energy; if yes to what end? The Ghostbusters used a nuclear accelerator proton pack with nuclear energy as its power supply.

2. Are you just looking for renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, other) or any kind of "alternative" energy?

3. Did you do a Google search for "alternate forms of energy" and "forms of renewable energy" ?

4. Will generators be used?

How far in the future are you?

The one thing I'd suggest is not going down the EMP rathole. It's actually not difficult to shield equipment from EMPs, and given that your society appears willing to spend a lot on prison security, I'd absolutely expect them do this. On top of that, actual EMP effects can be somewhat unpredictable, and making them more reliably destructive tends to involve things like nuclear bombs.

For storage the solution is already available - Tesla are marketing batteries for domestic and industrial use that can be charged by solar panels.
If they have a river or stream near the prison then a turbine on that could generate plenty of power.

A turbine would be in addition to solar panels. If you have a leat off a stream or river nearby feeding a pond (this is often how old watermills worked) there would be a sluice gate that controlled the flow. Close that off - no flow, no power.

Our house doesn't have any mains-connected power and we've lived here for over twenty years now. In that time we've not seen much change in how renewable energy systems work, so your 2032 world isn't going to be much different to the current one.

Solar power only works when the sun is shining so you'll need battery backup if you want overnight power. That usually comes as a bank of batteries, with various bits of kit to control the system--we have inverters, and some other things. Note, too, that some locations are better than others: our neighbours who have PV cells don't get anything out of them from November to February, because the sun is too weak and low.

Windmills grind corn into flour. Wind turbines generate electricity. We have a wind turbine, as our house is in an area where the wind resource is far better than solar.

All off-grid installations have to have a backup power generator, or they risk having no power at all when the wind drops or the sun fails to shine. We have a couple of diesel-powered generators--they sound like HGVs when they run, and are essentially just a large diesel engine. When our battery bank drops to a low level of charge the generator comes on automatically. It's mostly seamless. Unless something goes wrong.

You're going to have to consider how to deal with the restrictions of renewable energy: it's important to keep your power usage down to as low as possible, so you don't squander what little you have. We don't have electric kettles, or an electric cooker, for example, as they'd soak up all our power and kick the generator on. And you're going to have to consider the opposite: what do you do when you're generating more power than is needed, and the battery bank is full? Our system dumps excess power to heaters.

If you want to disable our system it would be possible to do it remotely: we control the inverters using a control panel that connects to the internet, so that when the manufacturers update the software it downloads automatically. It would be relatively easy for someone to hack into this and take over control of the system. Or you could just disconnect some of the cables in the power system; if you want to disable the backup generators, put a lot of sugar into the fuel tank and it caramelises when the generator next runs and cokes up the machine.

This is a huge subject and it's very easy to get things wrong, so do your research and perhaps get someone to fact-check the relevant chapters.

Old Hack said:

Or you could just disconnect some of the cables in the power system; if you want to disable the backup generators, put a lot of sugar into the fuel tank and it caramelises when the generator next runs and cokes up the machine.

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What a totally brilliant, old-school, low-tech solution to a high-tech problem!

All alternative energy systems for prisons have backups. All fossil fuel energy systems for prisons do too. Heck, a wall, massive oak doors, locks and a moat full of deadly dragons worked for centuries before there was power at all.

Jeff

rosehips said:

Should I use them?

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As per using generators....

Power, for a prison, is a must. The computer systems, electronic monitoring, lights, food refrigeration, heating, AC, ventilation, security systems, and so on, all must have energy. You need to have energy that is....

Reliable (solar panels on cloudy days won't generate any, new power).
Scalable (do you have enough incoming energy for all operations and if operations expand or shrink).

Backup energy is critical (for the continued operation of housing dangerous felons. Whatever backup energy you choose, make sure it is: reliable, suits the needs of the current operation, and is scalable.