Currently a major issue with green technology is storing the sustainably produced energy for later use in batteries, usually containing rare-earth metals, that are currently the bottleneck for many new technologies. For the home owner, a simple solution to this issue is being grid-tied, so that the excess you produce will go into the national grid and be credited towards anything you might take out in the future when perhaps your solar panels aren't producing as prolifically as they were before. But what about the original solar batteries? Trees and other other solid bio fuels like switchgrass store energy from the sun in a stable long term form that can be later burnt and have the energy release and captured. If you grow your own fuel, this is a carbon neutral process because the plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Depending on how you expend your fuel, the process may actually also be carbon negative if you have an efficient gasification process and a carbon capture system incorporating bio-char production. Bio-char acts as a long-term carbon sink by taking the carbon out of the atmospheric cycle and locking it into fertile earth.
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