Electricity, Two hours a day. Could you cope?

[amicus]

Several weeks ago on a newscast, I heard that the residents of Baghdad, a city of about six million,(correct me if I am in error), was limited to two hours per day of electricity.

Although I am aware of the war damage and the generation long neglect of the infrastructure in Iraq, that news item rather startled me; two hours a day of lights, air conditioning, cooking and heating, not to speak of television and computers going dark most of the day and night.

It couldn’t happen in the US, now could it?

Unless of course, the ‘brownouts’ and blackouts in California are harbingers of really bad news in the future?

For environmental reasons and to protect the little fishie’s, we no longer dam rivers and build hydro-electric generating plants, a source of clean and cheap energy.

Again, for political reasons, environmental protectionists have blocked construction of any Nuclear Plants for almost 35 years.

For that same length of time, no exploration or drilling for new oil wells or natural gas wells has occurred and natural gas pipelines and refineries are also in hiatus.

But the population keeps increasing, thus the demand for electricity continues to rise and is reaching a critical point of supply and demand across the board and will one day come up short.

Supposing there is a natural disaster that shuts down part of the generating system or the grid system that brings power to urban areas. Or another Katrina, that closes wells and refineries in and around the Gulf Coast? Or even a terrorist attack targeting electrical generating plants or the grid network.

There is currently, just today, a tropical storm developing that has already closed down twenty-five percent of the producing wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

What or who, is responsible for the precarious situation in the energy producing industry?

Guess you know what I think, but, should it come about, who would you blame and what would you recommend to remedy the situation?

Amicus…

 

[MaeveoSliabh]

I've coped, and have dealt with worse. It's not so bad. It's just... different. It takes a completely different set of skills that most Americans have in this day and age.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'd blame myself if I didn't have solar panels and thus electricity for at least the daylight hours. It's the batteries in those setups that are always the real sticking point; the cells themselves have made immense strides in cost and efficiency.

 

[amicus]

[QUOTE=MaeveoSliabh]I've coped, and have dealt with worse. It's not so bad. It's just... different. It takes a completely different set of skills that most Americans have in this day and age.[/QUOTE]

~~~

So have I, Mae, for three full months alongside a lake in Florida, near Gainesville, without electricity and just recently for three days on the Oregon coast during and after a storm. My kids, however impressed with my ability to cope, were lost without video games and television and microwaves...sighs...

Ami

 

[neonlyte]

Lifestyle changes evolve out of necessity. In the right climate, showering, doing the laundry, etc, when the suns warming the water is a simple shift. Changing work patterns to fully utilize daylight hours and implimenting energy changing measures are all easy steps when need demands.

It's the big things that change, inconvenience can be tolerated for short periods, e.g. the three day week in UK in the early 70's, we only had power three days a week, charged batteries and worked under low voltage flourescent tubes the other two days. But you couldn't do that without knowing it was a finite period.

Social change can have positive outcomes... if you're community minded. Travel is restricted to essential journeys, you travel with the notion you might be staying a while, a bit like travelling in Iceland in winter. If the weather closes in, you make the best of it.

I doubt it will come to that, catastrophic energy loss would be accompanied by massive loss of life and I'm optimistic we've moved beyond that end-game. However, dwindling energy supplies may result in man-made intervention to secure energy supplies, that might have an equally catastrophic outcome.

 

[JamesSD]

I'd read a lot more, and probably excercise more if I only had electricity for two hours a day.

Hmmmm... this doesn't sound so bad...

 

[amicus]

I'd blame myself if I didn't have solar panels and thus electricity for at least the daylight hours. It's the batteries in those setups that are always the real sticking point; the cells themselves have made immense strides in cost and efficiency.

~~~

Dunno where you reside, Shanglan, but sunlight is necessary for solar energy and many parts of the country have very limited sunlight in the winter months.

I am slightly familiar with the mechanics of solar cells and their output and the energy available is very limited.

Amicus...

 

[amicus]

Perhaps premature to say, but do I detect what I have asserted is the anti industrial thrust of this forum...that you really don't like modern society and would almost welcome the privations of a more pastoral existence?

Assuming that you understand two hours a day is for everyone? Factories, industry, jobs, computer networks, banks, all the things you utilize and take for granted?

Perhaps the authorities and hospitals would have generating equipment, but no traffic lights, no water being pumped, no water being distilled, grocery stores open two hours a day?

All of that and more you can do without?

Hmmm...


amicus...

 

[only_more_so]

The brownouts and blackouts in California are because of very different reasons than the problems in Iraq. In Iraq terrorists are constantly blowing up power plants, transmission lines, transformers, etc. Not to mention making it very difficult to get fuel from the oil fields to the power plants in the first place. If the terrorists allow the utilities to do their job, Iraqis will have ample electricity.

In California, it is caused by stupidity, short-sightedness and environmentalists. I know at least one of those is redundant (I would argue for two). Anyway, California has ample generation capacity for even the highest load days, except when plants are down for maintainance or are off-line because of environmental reasons. There are power plants in California that are only allowed to operate something like 2 days a year because they produce too much pollution. When the brownouts and blackouts were rampant a few years ago, all of these auxilliary plants had blown their wads (er... watts) for the year, and a few other plants were down for maintainence.

Oh, and forget about increasing the capacity of Californias power grid. Dams kill the fish, windmills kill the birds, coal/oil/gas pollute, and nuclear power is icky.

Several weeks ago on a newscast, I heard that the residents of Baghdad, a city of about six million,(correct me if I am in error), was limited to two hours per day of electricity.

Although I am aware of the war damage and the generation long neglect of the infrastructure in Iraq, that news item rather startled me; two hours a day of lights, air conditioning, cooking and heating, not to speak of television and computers going dark most of the day and night.

It couldn’t happen in the US, now could it?

Unless of course, the ‘brownouts’ and blackouts in California are harbingers of really bad news in the future?

For environmental reasons and to protect the little fishie’s, we no longer dam rivers and build hydro-electric generating plants, a source of clean and cheap energy.

Again, for political reasons, environmental protectionists have blocked construction of any Nuclear Plants for almost 35 years.

For that same length of time, no exploration or drilling for new oil wells or natural gas wells has occurred and natural gas pipelines and refineries are also in hiatus.

But the population keeps increasing, thus the demand for electricity continues to rise and is reaching a critical point of supply and demand across the board and will one day come up short.

Supposing there is a natural disaster that shuts down part of the generating system or the grid system that brings power to urban areas. Or another Katrina, that closes wells and refineries in and around the Gulf Coast? Or even a terrorist attack targeting electrical generating plants or the grid network.

There is currently, just today, a tropical storm developing that has already closed down twenty-five percent of the producing wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

What or who, is responsible for the precarious situation in the energy producing industry?

Guess you know what I think, but, should it come about, who would you blame and what would you recommend to remedy the situation?

Amicus…

 

[amicus]

Oh, and forget about increasing the capacity of Californias power grid. Dams kill the fish, windmills kill the birds, coal/oil/gas pollute, and nuclear power is icky.

~~~

Heretic...you may be flogged with wet limp liberals on this forum...chuckles




ami

 

[R. Richard]

~~~

Dunno where you reside, Shanglan, but sunlight is necessary for solar energy and many parts of the country have very limited sunlight in the winter months.

I am slightly familiar with the mechanics of solar cells and their output and the energy available is very limited.

Amicus...

In the western US, where I love, the use of solar cells is very trendy. This despite the fact that the cost of the solar panels over the predicted life of the solar panels is a greater cost than the electric bills from the local power company. Also there is a debate as to whether the power required to make the solar panels is greater than the power they will ever produce.

Even if solar panels do get cheap enough to build and efficient enough to produce more power than it takes to build them, there is another problem. Solar panels only work during the daylight hours. In the winter, most of the demand is during the non-daylight hours. Thus, as has been pointed out, you need to have batteries. Batteries are not free. Batteries need to be replaced. Batteries are terribly destructive to the environment when tine comes to dispose of them.

If all of the cost and technical issues are resolved, you still come up with te question what do you do when you have a week of heavy overcast, rain and snow? The only current answer is to use your hookup to the grid. They don;t maintain the grid just incase someone might want to use it sometime. The grid is built to produce enough power to satisfy normal demand and just about normal demand. The citizens of California are now learning what happens when you get a few weeks of very high demand, perhaps due to hot weather.

 

[BlackShanglan]

~~~

Dunno where you reside, Shanglan, but sunlight is necessary for solar energy and many parts of the country have very limited sunlight in the winter months.

I am slightly familiar with the mechanics of solar cells and their output and the energy available is very limited.

Amicus...

My point: more than two hours.

 

[oggbashan]

When young I used to visit a relative who didn't have electricity or what she called "company's water".

Each morning, whoever was up first had to pump water by hand from the well to the roof tank.

The toilet was a hut on wheels somewhere in the garden. Each time it was used a trowelful of earth was thrown down the hole. Every two weeks the toilet hut was moved along the trench. Next year the earth covering that trench would be planted with vegetables.

Lighting was by paraffin lamps or candles. One of my cousins rigged up an old bicycle so that the dynamo could power a couple of lights but no one was willing to pedal for more than about 20 minutes so that others could read.

The radio was powered by a car battery that had to be recharged at the local garage once a month. My relative originally had a small handcart that could be loaded with the battery for the mile-long walk to the garage, but the garage decided to deliver batteries by motorcycle with a sidecar.

In the 1960s she installed propane gas heating and lighting, and after she died the new owners installed a generator to power electric lighting. The cottage still does not have "company's water" but the pumping is now done by an electric pump powered by the generator, solar panels, windmill and a large bank of batteries.

Some of us in the UK still don't have electricity at all...

Og

 

[Guest]

I'd just get me one of those Gilligan type bicycle generators. My kid would be the fittest one around!

 

[BlackShanglan]

In the western US, where I love, the use of solar cells is very trendy. This despite the fact that the cost of the solar panels over the predicted life of the solar panels is a greater cost than the electric bills from the local power company. Also there is a debate as to whether the power required to make the solar panels is greater than the power they will ever produce.

*nods* The most successful projects I've heard of generally involve one of two things: a net-use meter that allows the consumer to sell power to the grid when the cells are generating and the consumer isn't using the energy, or complete disconnection from the grid coupled with unusual levels of insulation and planned architectural support.

But the thread's question wasn't whether solar cells were useful under current circumstances. It asked what we'd do and who we would blame if we could only get two hours of power per day. Under those circumstances, I'd be looking to make my own power.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

[QUOTE=MaeveoSliabh]I've coped, and have dealt with worse. It's not so bad. It's just... different. It takes a completely different set of skills that most Americans have in this day and age.

~~~

So have I, Mae, for three full months alongside a lake in Florida, near Gainesville, without electricity and just recently for three days on the Oregon coast during and after a storm. My kids, however impressed with my ability to cope, were lost without video games and television and microwaves...sighs...

Ami[/QUOTE]
My kids would die....I'm getting them to read more. Nothing is more painful to a writer when their children have little desire to read, thankfully that is turning around.

I've recently been without gas.....had water and electric shut off. We lived.

 

[Pure]

who would i blame:

leeches, secondhanders, looters, parasites, liberals and socialist vermin.

i would be forced to turn to the self made, the independent thinkers, the creative geniuses, of whom the only living example since Frank Llyoyd Wright is Mr. Amicus.

there, how did i do?