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Page added on November 18, 2014
The Coming Blackout Epidemic
Industrialized countries face a future of increasingly severe blackouts, a new study warns, due to the proliferation of extreme weather events, the transition to unconventional fossil fuels, and fragile national grids that cannot keep up with rocketing energy demand.
“We need a fundamental re-think about how electricity is generated and distributed and who controls this,” said lead author Prof Hugh Byrd of Lincoln University, a specialist in international energy policy and urban sustainability. “It is not in the interests of the privatized power industry to encourage less electricity consumption.”
Every year, millions of people around the world experience major electricity blackouts, but the country that has endured more blackouts than any other industrialized nation is the United States. Over the last decade, the number of power failures affecting over 50,000 Americans has more than doubled, according to federal data.
The looming power failure epidemic
The paper published this September in Routledge’s Journal of Urban Technology points out that 50 major power outages have afflicted 26 countries in the last decade alone, driven by rapid population growth in concentrated urban areas and a rampant “addiction” to high-consumption lifestyles dependent on electric appliances.
Study authors Hugh Byrd and Prof Steve Matthewman of Auckland University, a sociologist of disaster risk, argue that this escalating demand is occurring precisely “as our resources become constrained due to the depletion of fossil fuel, a lack of renewable energy sources, peak oil and climate change.”
Blackouts, they warn, are “dress rehearsals for the future in which they will appear with greater frequency and severity,” they find. “We predict increasing numbers of blackouts due to growing uncertainties in supply and growing certainties in demand.”
The problem is that industrial era grids simply cannot keep up. Average electricity use by US households increased by 1300 percent from 1940 to 2001, and is forecast to rise by a further 22 percent over the next 20 years.
According to Byrd and Matthewman, we are in the midst of a proliferating, global blackout epidemic that is likely to worsen. “Throughout our study, we observed a number of network failures due to inadequate energy, whether through depletion of resources such as oil and coal, or through the vagaries of the climate in the creation of renewable energy,” said Prof Byrd, who specializes in international energy policy and environmental performance in urban areas.
Extreme weather and climate change
According to a little-known report last year to the Executive Office of the President by the Council of Economic Advisers and Department of Energy, between 2003 and 2012 the US saw 679 blackouts due to extreme weather events, costing on average $18-33 billion a year. In 2012 alone, the US suffered eleven “billion-dollar” weather disasters.
“The number of outages caused by severe weather is expected to rise as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, blizzards, floods and other extreme weather events,” the report found.
The growing prevalence of extreme weather including droughts due to climate change could also significantly undermine coal, gas and nuclear production, all of which require large inputs of water, to spin and cool turbines in thermal power plants.
The amount of fresh water consumed for world energy production could double in the next 25 years according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In that fossil fuel-centric scenario, over 50 percent of demand would come from coal-fired power plants, 30 percent from biofuel production, and 10 percent from oil and natural gas production.
But as this year’s UN World Water Development Report pointed out, the era of global fresh water scarcity is already here, with 20 percent of all aquifers having been overexploited. By mid-century, 2.3 billion people will be living in regions of severe water stress, which in turn will undermine the capacity to generate energy through traditional means.
Although fracking for gas is more efficient than coal in terms of water use, it is still deeply problematic, say critics. In an ongoing research project, biogeochemist Dr Ted Auch of FracTracker Alliance shows that fracking in Ohio is likely exacerbating water challenges, and could in itself lead to drought. This is already happening in Texas and California.
Your air conditioner and clean car could be killing the grid
One side-effect of higher temperatures due to climate change is a dramatic increase in energy use. As climate change brings warmer summers and more intense rains to regions of North America, people resort to more air-conditioning to stay cool.
Byrd and Matthewman point out that the US is currently “the undisputed champion” of air-conditioning, which accounts for a whopping 20 percent of the country’s domestic electricity consumption, and 13 percent of the commercial sector’s. This is equivalent to the entire electrical demand of Africa. By 2035, the use of air-conditioning in just the US commercial sector will rise by another 22 percent.
Worldwide, overall energy demand for air-conditioning “is projected to rise rapidly to 2100,” to as much as 40 times greater than it was in 2000. New York alone will need 40 percent more power in the next 15 years partly because the city will contain a million more people, aided of course by electrical appliances, elevators, and air-conditioning.
But with the persistent rise of global primary energy costs, especially for oil as cheap conventional sources decline, the World Bank forecasts that by 2030, a smaller proportion of the world’s population will have access to electricity than do now.
Belgium is already set to selectively switch off electricity in parts of the country this winter
Adding further pressure to future electricity demand is the rise of the electric vehicle, driven by efforts to mitigate climate change. Byrd and Matthewman note that in higher-income regions, switching entirely to electric cars would increase electricity demand by 15-40 percent. Even if we replaced all our petrol-guzzling cars with “highly efficient” electric cars, the new models would still consume about “twice as much electricity as residential and commercial air-conditioning combined.”
Of course, there are precious few countries which have come anywhere near scaling up electric cars to a degree that could destabilize national grids, which are largely under threat from expensive fossil fuels and evermore frequent extreme weather episodes.
Byrd and Matthewman also concede that the demand challenge could be addressed, or at least mitigated, by upgrading the grid. A smart grid combined with better energy storage mechanisms could handle the intermittency and decentralized nature of renewable energy sources in a way that can overwhelm today’s industrial era grids.
But in a slow-growth global economy hell-bent on austerity, the prospects for large government investments in grid resilience look slim. According to the global insurance company Allianz in an extensive report on blackout risks in the US and Europe, “privatization and liberalization” have contributed to “missing incentives to invest in reliable, and therefore well maintained, infrastructures.”
“Blackouts during the last ten years in Europe and Northern America have demonstrated an increasing likelihood of supra-regional blackouts with accompanying large economic losses,” Allianz observed. “Large-scale, supra-regional blackouts are increasingly a realistic scenario.”
Power overhaul
Byrd and Matthewman are thus hardly lone voices. Their research adds to a growing chorus of experts who foresee a dark future without overhauling power grids, securing stable, cleaner energy supplies, and reducing consumption.
By failing to upgrade power infrastructures, the shift to renewables can create new problems.
Belgium is already set to selectively switch off electricity in parts of the country this winter with its energy capacity at a low of 2 percent. The UK, at a seven-year low of just 4 percent capacity, is also cutting it fine. Similar concerns of blackouts or enforced power outages (‘brownouts’) have been raised for Germany, France and elsewhere in the EU.
A new report by the French multinational technology firm CapGemini warns of a heightened risk of blackouts across Europe this winter due to the shut-down of gas-fired plants, competition from cheap US coal, and the big shift to wind and solar. Ironically, electricity surpluses from renewables have led to a fall in power prices and crippled fossil fuel utilities, which in turn has reduced the “electricity system’s margin to meet peak demand in specific conditions such as cold, dark and windless days,” according to the report.
The increasing, haphazard shift to renewable energy sources has therefore exacerbated the blackout risk not because renewables are bad at generating power, but because of the difficulty in integrating such volatile, decentralized energy sources into old power grids designed half a century ago around the old fossil fuel model.
From blackout to breakdown?
The practical consequences of all this set out by Byrd and Matthewman sound like a checklist for the dystopian endgame. “Blackouts affect pumps, refrigeration, traffic lights, trains, and cell phone towers,” all of which will therefore have “serious consequences for water, waste, food, transportation, and communication systems.”
Blackouts can lead to massive economic losses, food supply shortages, and increased crime
Surveying the impacts of past blackouts in the US, China, Canada, Italy, Africa, and many other regions, they show that blackouts can lead to state-rationing of electricity, massive economic losses, the breakdown of manufacturing, food supply shortages, degradation of water purification and waste facilities, and increases in crime rates and civil unrest. Yet they are not fatalistic about the inevitability of such an increasingly dark future.
“There is a possibility of mitigating, but not eliminating, the risk with improved technology,” said Hugh Byrd. Major investments in self-healing ‘smart grids’ and ‘smart metering’ “can assist in reducing demand by providing feedback to users,” but some technologies can also create new risks like “cyber-espionage of the control systems of generators and distributors.”
Careful management will also be essential, according to Byrd: “The increased use of electric vehicles also needs managing carefully to avoid peak demands in evenings – recharging one EV is similar to the demand of about 4-5 houses.”
Ultimately, though, the power sector as a whole will need a radical overhaul if we are to minimize the dangers. That means a combination of smart grids, decentralized renewables and much more modest consumption, Byrd told me: “There is a general trend emerging of the re-municipalisation of electricity supply. Distributed generation of electricity from renewable resources, as opposed to centralised, in a post-industrial society is an important issue.”
Not everyone agrees, though, on the risk of blackouts. Prof Ugo Bardi, the author of a landmark Club of Rome report this summer on the global depletion of cheap fossil fuel and mineral resources, dismissed the idea that the factors identified by Byrd and Matthewman would necessarily lead to increased blackouts:
“Interestingly, in Italy we had a major blackout in 2003, with the whole country without electricity for about 12 hours… At that time, a lot of people in Italy were expecting blackouts to become a big problem. They didn’t. The 2003 blackout took place in a moment of rapid growth of electricity production but, later on, market factors forced a reduction in consumption, the pressure on the grid system was strongly reduced and no more blackouts were seen.”
According to Bardi, this is the scenario playing out in the UK, where “electricity consumption peaked at around the same time as Italy—although in the UK peaking was not accompanied by blackouts.”
Growth of global electricity production, Bardi told me, is undergoing “a marked slowdown in many industrialized countries of the west,” due to “increasingly high prices of energy that are squeezing demand. Now, the question is: would that lead to blackouts? In short, I think not—not in the short run, at least… Right now, the industrial sector of several western countries is rapidly contracting and the result is reduced consumption. So, right now, as long as things evolve slowly, I would say that I don’t see a blackout danger anywhere in Europe. We should see a gradual reduction of consumption as people become poorer and poorer, and less and less able to afford to pay the electricity bill.”
So whether we face a future of increasing blackouts or declining consumption, the climbing costs of keeping the lights on means more of us might be switching off. But clearly that doesn’t need to be the final verdict: increasing investments in installing smart grids now could prepare us for increased electricity demand in the future.
“This means that serious questions will have to be asked at both the individual and collective level concerning what we want and what we need,” conclude Byrd and Matthewman in their study, “balancing what is good for us with what is good for others and ultimately what is good for the environment.”
Perhaps, then, the biggest threat to the grid is us—and our insatiable appetite for more.
Nafeez Ahmed, Ph.D. is an investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and the sci-fi thriller, Zero Point.
23 Comments on "The Coming Blackout Epidemic"
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 8:09 am
I have preached this idea grid instability over and over. The author does not mention financial corrections and liquid fuel rationing but should. His mention is growth based stresses and climate caused disruptions. These are important issues but combine these normal corn issues with the doom issues of systematic contraction of economic activity and liquid fuel reduction issues and you have real issues.
The grid and its connectivity to all aspects of life is an extension of liquid fuel availability and the systematic support system that runs the operation. We are close to a slowdown in economic activity. The best words for it is limits of growth and diminishing returns. This is both at the level of liquid fuels with quantity of energy value to the economy diminishing and at the systematic level with a global system with growth stagnation. Problems cannot be managed if growth is stagnating. We have predicaments when problems can’t be solved. Our grid is an extension of these issues. If economic activity drops at the same time our transport fuels are less effective we are sure to have the knock on effect to all other sectors that supply the grid. The introduction of smart technology and renewables magnify the risks.
What we need now is an effort towards sustainability and resilience with end user renewables. We need low cost, low tech, reliability robust systems, and basic low power supply to homes and businesses. We need this to cover basics like lights. We need AltE for heat/cool systems. We need efficient applications of heating and cooling with insulation as an example. There is little we can do for the grid at the top until a crisis focuses changes to lifestyles and attitudes. People will have to learn to live seasonally different. We will have to live with variability of actions. We should not have people using high draw power appliances whenever they want. Should people be heating their swimming pools? We have to go much further but that is a start.
We must have a top down plan for grid instability. How are we going to triage the grid and be most efficient with resources? How is triage going to be fair? It will really come down to a change in the growth paradigm to a descent paradigm. This may not happen until it is too late. In the meantime you on a personal level can prep for these events. The prep actions are many and varied depending on your local but they all revolve around food, water, shelter, security, and value exchange. This value exchange is currency, gold/silver and barter items. Do something because when the grid destabilizes everything else will along with it including food supplies.
ghung on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 8:45 am
Agreed, Davy. The grid is just one segment of the collection of inter-reliant systems built out with ~$20 oil, and while all of these systems may be managed separately, their maintenance and operational costs are all paid for out of the same basket of capital that is the economy. Virtually all of these systems have been leveraged and highly optimised for economic efficiency rather than for resilience and redundancy. Was it Greer who said efficiency is the enemy of resiliency?
Anyway, the ongoing process of declining systems and increasing costs will continue while economies and consumers are forced to rob Peter to pay Paul’s ever higher costs of maintaining these hyper-complex, top-down interconnected systems, even as consumers gradually lose faith in them.
CNN ran a story this morning: “Hackers attacked the U.S. energy grid 79 times this year”; just another aspect of being a gridweenie that will have to be dealt with.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/18/technology/security/energy-grid-hack/index.html?iid=Lead
I’m just glad I dealt with this ‘disconnection’ early on. Paying off in more ways than I expected. It’s mostly about a ‘longage of expectations’ anyway, and paying the full costs (or at least trying).
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 9:30 am
G, quick question my cabin is 900 ft from my barn and my solar system. Is that too far to run a wire to tap into that system. I put cabin in after the barn. My options were limited for cabin locations.
paulo1 on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 9:39 am
Individuals need to make their own preps in addition to jurisdictions getting rid of private energy (for profit) producers.
Here, in BC, our rate is 7.5 cents per kw/hr for an amount able to run a home provided reasonable conservation practices are used. The calculation (averaging) takes place over a rolling 2 month period. The higher useage rate is charged out at 11.5 cents. In our home we use approx. $50/month for power during the winter. We have super insulated our home and heat mostly with wood using small electric heaters if we are away or when the temps really drop and the back bedroom gets really cold. The extra heat would be on for maybe 30 minutes while we read in bed and the room is kept cold the rest of the time. We have no heat in our bathrooms but they are well ventilated and have never had damp or mold problems due to the dry wood heat keeping the air quite dry in the house. Due to the nature of winter air not able to hold as much moisture as warm air, our biggest problem is the house being too dry when the outside air is heated by wood. 40% humidity in the house is common as opposed to 90-100% outside.
BC Hydro is presently refitting and earthquake proofing their dams and have received approval for site C on the Peace River. If these dams were private, as the newer run of the river projects are, our rates would be far higher. Our ideaological conservative Govt mandated private run of the river projects be subsidized by BC Hydro rates to cover construction costs and inherent profits. Some of these projects receive over 40 cents per kw/hr. Their same right wing buddies decry the union wages paid to Hydro workers and constantly press for deregulation which would mean taxpayers pay the development costs and individuals reap the profits of any new projects. When this Govt 12 years ago broke BC hydro in three entities , (power production, transmission/distribution, and administration) and managed to contract out much of admin to a large US multi-national, and has now contracted out distribution/transmission to mostly private power line companies, and made moves to privitize generation (and did with these new run-of-the-river projects) there was an absolute upswelling of anger by our population and the Govt was forced to back track.
It took a concerted effort to stop these pricks from stealing our power. The Govt also raids the accounts of BC Hydro and adds money to general revenues in order to look better at election time. Protest and exposure was spearheaded by the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and the Union that once represented the inside clerical workers. Once regular working people realized our energy crown jewel was being split up and parted out to insiders, the jig was up and the initiatives were stopped. Unfortunately, many run of the river contracts werer already signed and they cannot be simply torn up.
We lose power several times per winter during big wind storms or when snow brings down trees across lines. Often, speeders on the highway lose control and take down poles and lines when the roads are icy. In 2012 we lost power for almost 4 days when hurricane force winds and heavy snow/rain hit our area (March 12) The highway actually washed out that runs along the sea and drift logs floated across the highway into homes and businesses. We were well set up at home with heat, lights, lots of food, and a small generator to occasionally run the well pump for showers. The hot water was provided by the woodstove water jacket that pre-heats our incoming water!!
Paulo
ghung on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 10:50 am
Davy: It’s all a matter of voltage/amps and wire size. If you wire your panels at high voltage (e.g. 100+ volts DC) and use an MPPT (step-down)controller at the house, your losses will be minimised. Or put the inverter at the barn and run AC to the house.
I did a system for friends who moved the array, battery and inverter about 900 feet away and buried 10/3 UV (the gray stuff) directly in the ground. They’ve been quite happy with the performance since. I limited the AC amps at the battery shed to 20 amps (breaker) because of the distance; fine for lighting and small appliances. Of course, this system wasn’t inspected; NEC has some pretty over-the-top requirements for such installations. We put a manual transfer switch at the main panel so they can switch certain loads from grid to off-grid. They generally keep the refrigerator and lights running on the inverter.
That said, when I was building my house, I ran a 1000 watt 24 volt array and ran it to the RV about 600 feet away with #6 wire (much cheaper back then). Performance was pretty good. That was before MPPT controllers were available. MPPT is a huge help. Two of my arrays are running at @120 volts DC and are charging a 24 volt battery; lets me use smaller wires. Outback FM80 controllers (luv ’em!) Be sure to use high-voltage DC breakers (but you’ll have lower amperage so they aren’t really expensive; EBAY has some good prices).
watts/voltage = amps.
Search old articles at Homepower.com for more on this stuff. Great resource. Many micro-hydro and wind systems have long homeruns.
tahoe1780 on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 11:10 am
http://www.fincabayano.com/wp-content/gallery/en_olduvai/civilization-e.png
ghung on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 11:11 am
Paulo: “We have no heat in our bathrooms…”
Our hydronic (in-slab) floor heat lets me move heat where we want it. We rarely heat the master bedroom in winter, but I dump heat into the bathroom floor whenever the big (1600 liter) water tank gets higher than 135 (F), or pump hot water somewhere else in the home. It was 15 degrees (F) this morning and my wife cracked a window in the bedroom sometime during the night(! hot flashes I guess), but the bathroom was quite toasty; very warm floor. Residual heat from the bath also warms the bedroom some (different zones). Nothing worse than a cold toilet seat in the morning :-0
The big water tank gets its heat from solar thermal, surplus solar electric, and the wood stove. If I had to choose between more-than-adequate electricity and plenty of hot water, hot water would be the winner. Of course, the pumps require a little electricity; easy to do with PV. The slab can store heat for a couple of days or more.
GregT on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 11:13 am
Paulo,
I attended a BC Hydro power-smart seminar back in 2010. We were informed that by 2020, 50% of all electricity consumption in BC will need to come from conservation. As I am sure that you are already aware, our Hydro rates are scheduled to be increased by 10% per annum for the next three years. Smart meters have been installed throughout BC. Time of use billing is just around the corner, most likely in 2015.
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 11:17 am
Thanks G, starting my research now based upon your summary.
GregT on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 12:17 pm
Tahoe,
The chart you linked is very sobering, and IMHO, paints a clear picture of where we are heading. The timeline may be off by a few years give or take, but the end result will be the same. Albert Bartlett was correct when he said:
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Kenz300 on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 12:36 pm
The large centralized fossil fuel power solutions of the past are now giving way to more decentralized, local power solutions.
Wind and solar solutions are now becoming more common and more affordable locally. This also has the added benefit of providing local jobs.
The old fossil fuel based infrastructure of the past is giving way to the new energy technologies.
The fossil fuel industry will not give up without a fight.
———–
The Worst Koch-Funded Lies About Climate Change in 90 Seconds • BRAVE NEW FILMS – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0v1DTp0a10&list=PLQ9B-p5Q-YOPOJ9sIfgJ5_XRHFz7IatXL&t=3s
Don on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 12:38 pm
Davy, It is very important to get the voltage high for power transmission. This is why we run high voltage transmission lines and put transformers near peoples houses to bring the voltage back down to 220. You lose more power when you have low voltage, high current lines. These are called (i^2)r losses. So the lower you can get your current (i) the less power you lose across the resistance (r) of your transmission lines.
paulo1 on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 12:42 pm
Greg,
Yes, I am aware of the increases and need for conservation if we want to generate solely (except for Burrard standby, I suppose)by renewable water storage. I do understand powerex trading about and back and forth with purchases/sales happening almost daily.
I am so pleased about the conservation aspect. I used to fly up in the Stikine when plans were afoot to dam it, and also flew engineers and consultants into the Liard in order to study/dam up the ‘rapids of the damned’, which is a jeezly scary canyon impossible to even raft down. It looks like none of those will go through, the Stikine for simply what it is and the Tahltans, and the Liard due to a 40 year lifespan (silt).
While the rate increases are compounded, the end result is still a remarkable reliant energy source for very reasonable cost compared to other locales. How much of that goes to offset run of the river projects?
In the past I was no Wacky Bennett fan. But as time marched by I really appreciate his vision in dam building. Christy Clark and her supporters are a pale imitation. LNG? Righttttt. Maybe in 2030-40? Never?
I guess Tumbler Ridge will shut down again. Soon. Maybe southeast coal as well? God knows coal is tanking. Pretty soon none of us will be working.
The only people I really know opposed to the smart meters are my in-laws who are afraid of the radio waves, all the while they run their wi-fi and radios, phones, etc….and a few who steal power being spliced in upstream of their meter to run a hot tub and some shops. They pay the $35/month fee, which seems to me is an invitation to investigators.
Anyway, I feel very lucky to have BC hydro for a supplier and have several close friends who work for them, still. They are very good jobs and Hydro has been a good corporate citizen in Campbell River. (Mind you, my house isn’t flooded on the Peace River, either).
It could be worse. As for conservation….it is a cold grey day where I live. I put in lots of good windows when I renovated the place. Looking around I see some vampire LEDs and a stereo on standby, but not one light is on.
Ghung, I thought about the floor heat with the wood, but we don’t always run the stove due to high insulation,and passive solar keeps the house quite warm, anyway. The tile floor is cold, but the can seems okay, especially if I let my wife heat it up, first. :-). When I built my place I kept all systems simple and quite risk free. We just have a lot of grey days on the west coast which has dashed my solar hopes, although I will be putting in a few panels for evening LED lighting in the living room. Last night I flashed up the thermocoupled led lanterns by Lee Valley which runs about 10 LEDs, each. Very cool and romantic. With a glass of Crown Royal, the stove crackling, and some sirius tunes, wonderful!!
regards
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 1:29 pm
Don, thanks for info. I am only running low demand items lights and small appliances. The high demand items will be via grid i.e oven, a/c, and winter supplemental heat. I Heat with wood but electric is handy when I leave on trips.
Don on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 2:28 pm
No Problem Davy. I’ll give an example so you can see how applicable it is. Let’s say you have a 1000W power source, and your voltage is 12v. This means your current is 83a. So if you want to transmit power over 900 ft the power is traveling 1800ft and lets say the transmission line is 10 awg. From the site.
http://www.cirris.com/learning-center/calculators/133-wire-resistance-calculator-table
We see that the resistance is right about 1.8 ohms. The calculation for your losses is then (83^2)*1.8 = 12,400W which is more than your input of 1000W so you wouldn’t actually see any power at your house.
However if you stepped the voltage up to 500V before transmitting, 1000/500 = 2a. and your loss calculation becomes (2^2)*1.8 = 7.2W or almost negligable.
G is correct here for sure. stepping up the voltage before transmitting is going to be necessary.
karle on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 3:37 pm
Davy, I agree with your first posting. It is many years ago now that I came to the conclusion low-tech is the way to go. It was too early though, and neither in Australia where I lived nor in Europe where I live since last year anybody was interested.
I am not a missionary, and when people are not interested I just shut up. Interestingly enough now 2 weeks ago I got an invitation to a group discussing blackouts. I could not believe it, in the middle of one of the highest hi-tech countries of the world.
Anyway, you said:
“In the meantime you on a personal level can prep for these events. The prep actions are many and varied depending on your local but they all revolve around food, water, shelter, security, and value exchange. This value exchange is currency, gold/silver and barter items. Do something because when the grid destabilizes everything else will along with it including food supplies”
Interestingly again, some days ago we had a visitor who sort of urged us to think about what we would do should the grid break down. Strange coincidence, or they are all waking up at the same time.
We discussed grid break down. The result was you cannot prepare yourself. You can only prepare the society.
First, how would you know it is a blackout that might last a few hours, or a complete grid break down for a long time or for ever?
Our visitor lives in a city of about 1 million and has a house in the country side a bit more than an hours drive. Should he decide, this is not a blackout but a long term break down he would head out to the country. Unfortunately 900,000 of the one million will probably want to do the same. So many people leaving a city that size would under normal circumstances take a few days. Without power, without traffic lights and so on, it would probably take, well I don’t know, a really long time.
For ourselves the situation is slightly better maybe, we live in the country, about half an hour from a city of 200,000. But should those people realize they have a broken down grid an no hope of power soon, they might try to head to the country, too. What do i do when they knock on my door, hungry and tired, and out of toilet paper?
That said, I am not convinced any more that preparation on a personal level would help. If 1% did it, when it happens each of those 1% would have 99 additional people to take care of, or would have to have guns and be ready to use them.
I think our only chance consists of two things.
1. Spread the message. Yeah, I said I am not a missionary but I realize that has to change. It is just a numbers game. If 1% are prepared they will have to take care of another 99 persons. If 25% are prepared, each will have to take care of another 3 person. Might be feasible.
2. Get involved in your local community, as much as possible, and at the same time work on #1. You gotta know you neighbours, know them closer than now. If you really helped somebody like he is stuck in the snow with his car and you get him out in the middle of the night there will be a bond lasting for a long time.
The German army, the Bundeswehr, has published a szenario, not only about peak oil but also about a grid break down. All those professors and hi-tech gurus and scientists that have been working on the 150 page report, have finally agreed on one and only recommendation: Set up and get involveld in local communities that will be able to help themselves.
Please let me know what you think…
BTW, you said “We need low cost, low tech, reliability robust systems, and basic low power supply to homes and businesses. We need this to cover basics like lights. We need AltE for heat/cool systems. ”
I have been working on low-tech solutions for some years now, like heating with biomass/compost. Reading the original article above and the comments has reminded me to increase my efforts and not delay it any longer, thanks all for that.
Northwest Resident on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 4:02 pm
karle — Ultimately, I think we are all heading back to the “local community” settings that humans thrived in for thousands of years before the age of oil and industrial age started sucking everyone away from the communities and into the big cities. So, it doesn’t surprise me to learn that the German army and many others are saying “get connected” with your local community. My own personal belief is that the USA government has a plan to re-establish people in the local communities in which they live, or to set up new local communities for those that don’t live in one (big cities they’ll surround with barbed wire and machine-gun anybody who tries to escape, just like in the movies — or not). I like to think the government(s) have plans to quickly organize local communities, help them establish their own local economies, their own food markets, their own food production, their own specialty tradesmen/women. It’s all just a fantasy, but that’s what I hope.
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 4:03 pm
Karl, very interesting comment on pop migration in a crisis situation. I think it will matter again on the variables of degree and duration. I also feel being in the countryside near a mega population area will be problematic.
I would not take it as a given a migration will occure without the details. Most people are loathe to leave home and will only do it in extreme situations.
Your statement on community prep is dead on especially long term. I disagree on personal prep short term. Crisis do not turn on and off like a light they evolve and modulate. If you are prepped short term you have time to consider and plan for the medium and long term.
Davy on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 4:08 pm
Don, I have put your info in my notes. I greatly appreciate your help. I feel at this point it is time to call someone to help me get the cabin hooked up. Electricity calculations are fascinating I just wish I were more competent. It takes some math and physics I guess. I understand concepts better than the mechanics.
Makati1 on Tue, 18th Nov 2014 7:53 pm
For those complaining about their electric prices…
Makati electric = P11.7/KWh or $0.26/KWh.
But growth here keeps the power companies on the edge and more power plants are in the works, just not online. They use hydro, geothermal, wind, and hydrocarbon systems. No nuclear, and for that I am thankful.
Kenz300 on Wed, 19th Nov 2014 8:45 am
Around the world alternative energy use is growing…….
Asia Pushes Hard for Clean Energy
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/business/energy-environment/asia-pushes-hard-for-clean-energy.html?action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article
Speculawyer on Wed, 19th Nov 2014 6:39 pm
Meh. More overblown doomerism. If there is money to made supplementing and stabilizing the grid then it will be done. These black-out fear-mongering stories are ridiculous. At worst, some places that neglect matters could suffer some blackouts due to poor planning and stupidity. But it would be quickly fixed within a few months. Look at Japan . . . they turned off ALL of their nuke plants and they did just fine. (They reduced usage and they fired up some old decommissioned fossil fuel plants.)
Speculawyer on Wed, 19th Nov 2014 6:44 pm
“Your clean car could be killing the grid”
Pffft. What garbage. All the modern EVs come with programmable charging systems wherein you can tell your car when it should charge itself. So through the use of Time-of-Use metering that provides cheap electricity at night (when the grid has huge excess of capacity), EVers can charge up when there is massive amounts of extra electricity. A US lab studied this issue and found that we could replace some 73 million cars with EVs without single new power plant as long as they charge up at night.