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May 28, 2006
BFEO home electric loads
One of many things we have to think through as we plan for a post-petroleum economy is the amount of electric power our houses will use. The past several years - particularly the years since home internet connections have become common - have seen large increases in electric power loads in American residences. A builder friend tells me that 400 amp services are not too unusual anymore (200 amp seemed like as much as any home could possibly need in the predigital age.
Here's the scenario: centralized electric power becomes less reliable as increasingly costly liquid fuel disrupts preventive maintenance programs for power distribution. Our BFEO houses have been either equipped with rooftop photovoltaic panels, or they have been made for simple retrofitting.
Now for an excursion. If I install PV panels in pre-BFEO days, I will do so to offset the power I draw from the centralized system, or to sell power to the system if I am not using all that I generate. More on this later, as I believe it will be cost-effective in only a few more years.
But post-BFEO, I am going to want to power essential loads in my house with power that I can generate (or power that I have stored in batteries). (Another excursion: I'm not crazy about batteries. I wonder if and when there will be a practical hydrogen storage system; perhaps a chemical salt to which hydrogen could be attached and disattached. I sure don't want to handle hydrogen gas in my home. The hydrogen, of course, would be used to generate electric power in a fuel cell)
OK, back to today's question. What are our essential electric loads in a BFEO home? I put the refrigerator at the top of the list, and I would like to be able to power my computer. Some essential lights, of course. What else? A related question is, "How are we going to heat the house?" Making hot water, for instance, will not do us much good if we cannot power the pump to move the hot water through the heating system.
Speaking of heating, a heat pump would seem to be impractical in the BFEO home, but I sure do like ground source, boosted by solar hot water, in pre-BFEO times. OTOH, the ground source heat pump could run when we have central electric power - which is likely to be most of the time. I want to be able to get along for a few days on self-generated or stored electric power. Not forever.
So my list is the refrigerator, maybe 50 watts of lights (high efficiency fluorescents), whatever load my computer draws, my hot water circulation pump. Speaking of pumps, I also want to be able to treat rainwater captured on my roof for drinking, so I need a pump for the cistern and a point-of-use disinfection device - say an ultraviolet unit. These are available today.
Another related question is, "How are we going to cook?" Electric stoves would seem to be impractical during the central power system outage - they would rapidly exhaust the power we could store from a home PV system. But natural gas might be costly and prone to disruption, too.
Back to the question of electric loads during the power outage. Do we wire the house with two distribution systems, and then turn the nonessential system off when the power goes down? Or do we shed loads with a controller, and is such a controller available today?
One final excursion. When we discuss renewable electric energy, we need to factor in significantly lower power demands than we see in modern American homes. We've all seen the "good news" assertions of new wind energy projects: "Enough electricity to power 5000 homes!" That's good, for now, but we need to move toward that same amount of electric power serving the needs of 25,000 homes. Just as we need to move toward using 1/10 the liquid fuel we use today to move around, I think we need to aim at 1/5 the electric power.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
Buy local or buy organic?
I have read a number of articles lately about the food consumer's dilemma - do I buy local, or do I buy organic that comes from a distance. My blog-followers will guess that I will leap for the local, but we all know things are not that simple. I feel it is important to help local farmers to stay in the farming business, but we all have to live with the current, petroleum-fueled economy.
That economy insists on moving food long distances. A couple of days ago, Grist magazine http://www.grist.org/ (you should bookmark Grist and read it regularly) ran an article http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/05/18/fromartz/index.html about the personal conflicts involved in grocery shopping. I like the message at the end of the article: take it easy; shop as sustainbly as you can, but don't go crazy.
One of the precepts of Building for the End of Oil is that we have to live in the current economy, while we prepare to transition as smoothly as possible into the post-petroleum economy. Farmers have to do the same. If keeping the local farm going requires a farmer to work with Whole Foods in a petroleum-fueled supply chain, what's the problem? The goal is to keep the local farm going, so that it is there to provide local food when the supply chains fall apart.
There's a related issue -- biofuel feedstock production -- that I will address in the next entry.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
Ethanol efficiency concession
I guess blogs are intended to allow us to drag out discussions forever, so I'll kick the sleeping dog and add another caveat to the point I made a few months ago (that point being the limit to the amount of arable land and agricultural effort we can afford to put into biofuel feedstock production)
Today's news included an article on the mileage efficiency concession (relative to gasoline) that seems to come along with ethanol use.
E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) use in flexible fuel vehicles seems to result in as much as 25% decline in mileage efficiency. This effect is admitted by GM, which is hitching its wagon to flex fuel vehicles.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2006
Have we reached the tipping point?
I have been thinking a lot about where we are on the climate change trend line, and I think we have exceeded the point at which we can avoid some drastic changes in global climate. Several factors have brought me to this conclusion.
The past year has brought a number of announcments by earth scientists along the line, "This is happening more quickly than we had expected." Antarctic ice loss; Arctic ice loss; Greenland ice loss. All more rapid than had been predicted from climate change modeling. I am also concerned with the past couple of extremely hot European summers, and this past extremely cold European winter.
Besides, how plausible is it that developing nations, which are yearning to achieve the American standard of living, will quell their desires to avoid adverse climate change impacts. The rich world certainly isn't doing much to control its release of global warming gases.
I have a powerpoint file by John Holdren, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that asks the questions, "What Do We Know? What Can We Do?" The file is too large to upload, but I will send it to you by email dsheridan@aquacura.com
I read a subtext in the presentation that supports my concerns that we have passed the point of avoiding very unpleasant effects. I suppose we need to keep stressing the importance of decreasing global warming emissions, and perhaps there is some merit to continuing to try, but I believe it is time to switch gears and begin to adapt to the likely effects of climate change.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:46 PM | Comments (1)
May 13, 2006
Nugget Nectar
I've been neglecting my beer advice for far too long. In the early part of the year, Troegs Brewery in Harrisburg brought out Nugget Nectar, a triple-hopped IPA. It stands with the very best. If you like hops, find this beer.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
BFEO debut
Last Saturday, I presented my first seminar on Building for the End of Oil at a Wellness Through Healthy Living conference at the Harrisburg Area Community College. It's a work in progress, but I am beginning to define some of the details of the way we should build and equip our homes. Here is a link to the presentation.
As you can see, I am pretty much convinced that global society (forget about U.S. society) is not going to be diverted on its beeline for the edge of the cliff, and that petroleum depletion and climate change are not going to slow down or be turned back.
So it is time to adapt. I believe we need to expend our intellectual energy on preparing for the adverse impacts of these two factors, which will alter our way of life more significantly than anything that has happened in several generations.
I am in the planning stage for my first development - 12 affordable, green housing units on a 1-1/3 acre site in Carlisle, PA. I plan to incorporate many of the features I discuss in this blog into those units, and will describe my thinking as the project takes shape.
Posted by aquacura.com at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)