Our two largest challenges are pumping water and
refrigeration.
My preferred solutions would be a water tower, a steam
engine, and biogas.
I'm aware of several dairy operations that generate huge
amounts of biogas and convert it into electricity. There
is a Hutterite community in Northern Alberta that sells
excess biogas generated electricity to the local grid.
As far as lighting goes. We've started using strontium based phospholuminescent tape
Check this out.
http://www.identi-tape.com/phosphor.htm
These techniques can work. No pie in the sky here, and
steam is tried and true; a perfected technology.