[ozkrenske]

John
Personally I think your right, loud, a little caustic , but right all the same. The US is not going to be seeing systemic longterm blackouts for probably the next ten to fifteen years, the electricity is even more important than oil and is not directly convertable.

What will happen is that other smaller places and countries will start having longer and longer power outages. For example there are several Island nations now that are so poor they can't keep the power on. For example Naru, has effectively been turned into an Australian immigration detention station for very little money, but the clincher was the guaranteed Diesel fuel supply for the island generators until 2010. They were already having day to week long blackouts due to scarce fuel supllies etc. This will happen all over the world in third world and poor nations.

I suspect though that power in the US will start to get quite expensive especially due to NG costs and then with the pass on of operational costs from higher oil costs and also from growing demand for some electrical vehicles etc. (Plugging a car in and charging it is probably going to boost the power bill a bit.) Eventually the costs will rise so high that power past a basic allowance per household will be so expensive that demand will be forced down. For example Air con, clothes driers, wasteful lighting and wasteful conveniences will effectively never be turned on. For example when the Air con is going to cost you $10 an hour and the clothes will take $5 to dry a power bill, etc, a non conserver could easily break $200 a week on their power bill. Once hotels start to charge extra for the use of Air con I believe that is when the electricity price crunch has hit.

Certain luxuries of today are going to go away, EG, Air conditioned indoor footbal domes will be opened up if only to save the power, personal heated pools in winter, gone when it starts to cost major money. A lot of people are going to start throwing up their own power generation facilities that will quite possibly generate enough power for themselves or at least lessen their bills. For example filling localised water storage off peak and having micro water turbines at least spin the power meter backwards while you have a shower/bath/flush could start to be installed. Solar and personal wind power will grow in use and in hot climates vertical hot air turbines could well be installed. Here in Aus we have many houses factories and public facilities that have devices specifically designed to let hot air out of roof cavities, these could well be used to generate at least some power.

Personally I believe electricity rationing will be easier to apply in such a way with cost increases, most people will start to conserve especially when they do have obvious luxury high consumption items they don't truly need. Oil or fuel on the other hand, most people have one maybe two vehicles and the capital cost of buying a much more efficient one is potentially higher than the cost of just buying the fuel, also a lot of travel is effectively mandatory.

A one hour commute from a suburb is likely to remain a commute from a suburb for a long time, of course driving for the hell of it could well diminish a lot. For example the kids are going to start riding to school, the younger kids may well be taking the buss, long trips to multiple extra curricular activities are going to go away.

Anyway those are just my thoughts

[Permanently_Baffled]

This 'electrical epidemic' spreads nationwide, then worldwide, and by ca. 2007 most of the blackouts are permanent.

I have to agree that the US (and others) face a serious problem maintaining electrical grids for the reasons mentioned( eg natural gas shortages etc etc). However it is hard for the warnings to be taken seriously when people make loony predictions like worldwide permenant blackouts by 2007. There are still a lot of countries that are self sufficient in fossil fuel/nuclear, and will be for decades. So to come up with such outlandish statements damages the credibility of people trying to raise legitimate concerns

PB

[nocar]

Countries that have a lot of hydroelectric power will be well off. Norway, and perhaps Austria, get all their electric power that way. Sweden gets half, the other half is nuclear.

Of course, if people start charging car batteries from the grid in a major way, that will cause blackouts. Although in Norway and Sweden the problem will likely be cold spells, because so many houses have electric heating, and when oil is expensive, even more houses will be converted to electricity.

Solution in Scandinavia can be wood burners - lots of forest here.

[cmlek]

I guess I read the original question in a more technical sense, but here's my explanation:

Power grids are an interconnected network of high voltage transmission lines that allows the system to be fed by multiple generators at once, allowing power companies to buy/sell power at least cost. This also allows for places to shift "extra" power around during seasonal fluctuations and that sort of thing. However, if too many people are drawing on the system, and it does not have the capacity to serve them all, then the system will shut down, like a blown circuit breaker. Lines may break, transformers may short out, and some things may need fixing.

Where the problem comes in is the massive consolidation of power companies in the last decade. There used to be several power generators all feeding into the system, but the smaller ones have been run out of business, bought out, consolidated or otherwise removed, leaving a very small number of power providers actually currently servicing the system. If one provider should fail, for whatever reason, the power grid they feed can collapse if they can't grab enough swing capacity from another group. Rolling blackouts occur when a failure in one grid adds to much additional drain on their interconnected neighbor, who fails, falls on his neighbor, and so on.

Honestly, I can't really imagine a permanent blackout for a long time. There may come a point after which the constant repairs are unprofitable, or the grid may have to be made smaller (fewer homes served) to accommodate fewer power generators feeding into the system, but there will always be the option to re-introduce smaller generating sources, like those people who have solar cells on their roof that produce more than the needs of the house.

*shrug* Just my 2 cents.

[johnmarkos]

Thanks, cmlek. Your answer backs up my suspicion that we could have temporary disruptions but that permanent large scale blackouts are unlikely. I simply did not have the technical knowledge to articulate my hunch.

[tmazanec1]

Then we WILL have those temporary disruptions, because it is only when things get that bad that we will take the sufficient measures to prevent the permanent blackouts.

[TWilliam]

The "rolling blackouts" are already happening (how could I have not noticed -- DOH!!)

Hmm... maybe because you haven't been paying attention?

Anybody else here remember California in 2001? Apparently Southern California Edison does. They have a site here where their customers can see when their area is scheduled for power shutdown during rolling blackouts:

http://tinyurl.com/1tan

Incidentally their latest scheduled shutdown was in March of this year, so they weren't just a "2001 glitch"...

Appears to me that they expect the phenomenon to continue.

Oh yea... and wasn't there something about 60 million people or so being without power in the eastern US last year? Oh right... that was just a tree branch hitting a wire... NOT. It was a result of the demand hitting and surpassing capacity, triggering a cascade shutdown. Hence the claims that "everything worked just as it should"; it did, just as plugging too much into one outlet in your home pops the breaker...

Wake up.

On second thought, nevermind. You grasshoppers keep right on playing while us ants keep preparing for the winter ahead. Just don't come knockin' on my door when you're cold and hungry...

.

[Guest]

There aren't going to be any "permanent" black-outs in the US for a VERY LONG TIME.
Here is how the US get's it's electrical power:
56.4% from COAL
9.6% from Natural Gas
21% from Nuclear
3.4% from Petroleum (oil)
9.5% from Hydroelectric
.2% from other renewable sources (solar, wind, bio-mass, etc...)
I have seen similar percentages from a variety of sources.

So to be worried about black-outs, we would be worried about COAL supply (not natural gas, not oil). According to www.coaleducation.org:
"Coal represents the United States' most abundant energy source. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified 1.7 trillion tons of coal resources in the United States. If yet undiscovered, but likely deposits are added, potential reserves may be as high as 4 trillion tons. The World Energy Conference estimated that the coal reserve of the United States accounts for two-thirds of the free world's total and nearly 28 percent of the total world's recoverable coal. By comparison, Saudi Arabia has about 23 percent of the world's proven petroleum reserves.
The United States has about 490 billion short tons of demonstrated reserves, which by definition are potentially minable on an economic basis with existing technology. At current domestic consumption levels, this is enough coal to last 300 years."

To sum it up, we (most likely) have about 300 years worth of coal in the United States ALONE.

Anyways, we have WAY more than 4 years of oil left. According to the U.S. Geological Survey World Assesment 2000, the world's proven reserves is about 891 Billion Barrels of Oil. World consumption is about 28 Billion Barrels of Oil. Considering a world where we discover no more oil, and where growth in demand does not occur, AND where oil is extracted completely, and evenly - we have 32 years left to come up with an alternative. However, this is small compared to the USGS's Oil Endowment of 3,000 Billion Barrels of Oil. If we include Natural Gas, we have 1,758 Billion Barrels of Oil Equivalent, and 43 billion Barrels of Oil Equivalent consumption. Our new endowment including Natural Gas would be about 6,000 Billion Barrels of Oil Equivalent. Of course, logically, we aren't going to be able to access ALL of this oil, as we can not predict easily how technology will advance, and also how fast we will actually discover more oil. There are actually many alternatives to oil available to us all - it's just that nobody is willing to pay the higher prices attached with renewable fuels. After the oil peak, hopefully many corporations will make the transition to renewable fuels in time to recover from any damage caused by the oil peak.

[EnviroEngr]

Oops. Think we addressed this one already --->

To sum it up, we (most likely) have about 300 years worth of coal in the United States ALONE.

[EnviroEngr]

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic280.html

&

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... _peak.html

Confirm or Deny?

[Guest]

Hmmmm... I move to refute.
(does some research)

hmmmmm:

Sometime during the last half of this production life cycle, however, when one-half or a little less than one-half of the coal reserves (economically producible coal) have been exploited and the remaining, less desirable coal beds are being mined, U.S. coal production will begin a long, irreversible decline. A national decline in coal production, is not anticipated for many years, and perhaps will not begin until sometime late in the next century.

~http://energy.er.usgs.gov/products/papers/PCC_96/production.htm

I tried to do some more research, but all I come up with are studies on coal quality - i.e. sulfer/ash content. When these professional studies calculate when production will peak, they use more advanced techniques than taking the amount of coal we have (in tons) and divide it by our current consumption. They take into account a variable amount of growth rates in demand. For example, consider Figure 3 in the following .pdf file (on page 5):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/pdf/itwos04.pdf
This figure shows how the peak production for oil varies depending on how demand for oil grows, and how much oil we are actually able to squeeze out of the Earth.
Anyways, according to the commercial site (which means it can't be used in my research paper than I'm writing about the need to research alternatives to fossil fuels) which was cited: "If we look at figure 6, it might seem that the Hubbert curve does not closely match the historic data but that is because of the variable nature of historic growth." This site actually admits that the Hubbert curve, their method for determining the peak production of coal, does not match historic coal production figures.

Well, anyways - in conclusion - I hold the opinion that we can rely on coal for electric power for quite some time. Hopefully enough time to develop new and better technologies that are cleaner, renewable, AND more efficient.

[johnmarkos]

Hardly more pessimistic than many of the scenarios discussed and defended here, and his extrapolations, while perhaps extreme in your view, are based on sound information. It's interesting that Duncan has grown increasingly more pessimistic in recent years in his discussions of post-Peak Oil developments.

Certainly the depletion numbers he cites in my original post are beyond question, since they're based on historical fact rather than his or anyone else's predictions. Duncan and Walter Youngquist, with Colin Campbell and Jean LaHerrere (sp?), have done some of the leading work in oil depletion analysis.

As you suggest, I do not doubt Duncan's depletion data but I do doubt his extrapolations.

The "cliff" is the final interval in the Olduvai schema. It begins with the 7th event in 2012 (Note 7) when an epidemic of permanent blackouts spreads worldwide, i.e. first there are waves of brownouts and temporary blackouts, then finally the electric power networks themselves expire. The 8th event in 2030 (Note 8) marks the fall of world energy production (use) per capita to the 1930 level (Figure 4). This is the lagging 30% point when Industrial Civilization has become history. The average rate of decline of ê is 5.44%/year from 2012 to 2030.

Duncan treats the decline he describes above as a foregone conclusion. I would argue that although the possibility of catastrophe should not be ignored, there are many possible ways to forestall and even avoid collapse. The Limits to Growth: 30 Year Update, which I am currently reading, exemplifies this less deterministic view. Rather than illustrating a single, ostensibly unavoidable future, this book presents many possible futures and explains in detail how they might occur.

It seems to me that Duncan does not provide enough supporting evidence for the Olduvai prediction as an unavoidable scenario. If he has written supporting arguments or posted supporting data for the Olduvai theory that I am unaware of, I would be interested in reading it.

[Cash]

John, I think you meant your post above to go on the "Swimming" thread, since it quotes my post there. I essentially agree with your opinion of Duncan's predictions. I occasionally wonder if he takes such a radical position more as an impetus for discussion than out of a firm belief in the predictions. I'm unaware of any supporting data or additional details he might have offered.

Cash

[johnmarkos]

John, I think you meant your post above to go on the "Swimming" thread, since it quotes my post there. I essentially agree with your opinion of Duncan's predictions. I occasionally wonder if he takes such a radical position more as an impetus for discussion than out of a firm belief in the predictions. I'm unaware of any supporting data or additional details he might have offered.

No, I posted here intentionally because I didn't want to divert the "Swimming" discussion from its opening question about efficiency. I linked to the other discussion in the "quote" tag -- that's a fun feature of this site.

[Cash]

Obviously I have to start spending more time over here. How did you use the quote function to move a post to another thread?

Cash

[Bandidoz]

I have believed the Olduvai Theory to be valid under the condition that no countermeasures are taken. Which is why it's on my signature.

However, the grid operators in at least the UK are able to "shed load"; ration electricity demand. On this basis a total collapse is unlikely, since there will be at the very least a trickle from renewables, pumped storage and whatever is left from nuclear and coal (combined with woodchip to keep the CO2 down) feeding through to critical services. The UK is in a better position than the US since there is still a single point of control (from the old CEGB days).

Oh yea... and wasn't there something about 60 million people or so being without power in the eastern US last year? Oh right... that was just a tree branch hitting a wire... NOT. It was a result of the demand hitting and surpassing capacity, triggering a cascade shutdown.

Nope. This was fundamentally a case of people taking the supply of electricity for granted. A landowner used the courts to prevent the grid company from getting access to his land to cut down trees (NG Transco calls this "tree management"). As a result of heavy load, the lines sagged, and flashed-over the trees. The grid controllers, unwilling to shed load, as well as having IT problems, didn't take corrective action. The additional load on the rest of the network caused more sagging of other lines - another flashed over, and beyond the double failure the domino effect kicked in.