Electricity

Solar storms, EMP and the future of the grid

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Today, the world we live in might be thought of as one big telegraph system composed of computer chips, telephone lines, fiber optics, cellphone towers, satellites, undersea cables and an electrical grid that supplies energy to the terrestrial parts of that system. An event as severe as the 1859 solar storm–called the Carrington Event after the respected British astronomer Richard Carrington who detected it as it developed–could cripple vast areas of the world, shutting down entire national grids not just for days, but possibly for months or years.

Profligacies of Scale

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Promoters of big centralized power generation schemes often justify their plans by invoking economies of scale. That logic made sense at a time when economic expansion and abundant resource supplies defined the framework for all economic activity, electricity generation very much included; in a post-abundance world, what were once economies could very easily turn into something else.

Your renewable energy path

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Get energy independence (and help the climate too!) Two interviews with off-grid authors who have walked the walk, living outside the power grid, with a minimum of fossil fuels. Where to start with solar, heat pumps, hot water heat, wind or wood. Cam Mather from aztext.com, living in comfort – off grid 14 years. From the UK, Nick Rosen author of “Off the Grid” at off-grid.net.

A bridge to somewhere

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Recent suggestions that the current boom in natural gas will be a bridge to a future of sustainable energy are highly reminiscent of similar claims from the past — claims that turned out to be entirely wrongheaded. A bridge is only useful if there’s somewhere to get to on the other side, and in the future ahead of us, the other side will inevitably be defined by much less energy use. With the help of a photovoltaic panel, the Archdruid explains.

Germany exits the atom

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Chancellor Angela Merkel surprised many with her May 30 announcement of a complete shut down of all Germany’s reactors by January 1st, 2022 and the shutdown of 14 of Germany’s total of 17 reactors well before that date.  The German chancellor has, in nine months, gone from touting nuclear plants as a safe “bridge” to renewable energy and easing regulatory constraints on extending reactor lifetimes, to pushing the biggest and fastest nuclear exit strategy in any country using nuclear power.

Can renewable energy outshine fossil fuels?

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I’m not popular with environmentalists when I tell them that renewables can only provide a small fraction of the energy that fossil fuels do in powering industrial civilization. In fact, I was recently called a liar at the screening of an anti-nuke film for suggesting so.

Pedal powered farms and factories: the forgotten future of the stationary bicycle

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If we boost the research on pedal powered technology – trying to make up for seven decades of lost opportunities – and steer it in the right direction, pedals and cranks could make an important contribution to running a post-carbon society that maintains many of the comforts of a modern life. The possibilities of pedal power largely exceed the use of the bicycle.

Offshore wind energy: The benefits and the barriers

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Clearly wind power cannot immediately replace the energy we still must generate from the oil and gas produced on the outer continental shelf. But America’s unwillingness to clear the way for permitting a proven, commercially scalable, clean source of energy is a major black eye for a nation that purports to be a leader in technological development.

In The World After Abundance

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Most discussions of the future of electric power start from the assumption that maintaining a grid of the modern kind, designed from top to bottom around ample supplies of cheap fossil fuels, is the only option there is. It’s long past time to revisit that notion. Are our current ways of electricity production, distribution, and use merely the extravagant habits of a temporary age of excess, and what might an appropriate system for producing and using electricity look like in an age of scarcity?