Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

The notes for Chapter 14 appear on page 369 of this pdf.Chapter FourteenRethinking theEnergy SystemAt a recent conference of people from the Northern Great Plains who had harnessedwindpower for their homes and farms, Joe Jodduck reported that at hiswindpowered home,Once I was watching the [television] news and saw that my whole area wasblacked out. Sure enough, when I went outside I saw that all my neighbors’lights were off. Then I went back in and watched the rest of the news tosee when my neighbors’ lights would come back on. 1By using an autonomous local energy source—one that normally offered theadvantages of interconnection and exchange with the power grid, but could standalone if the grid crashed—Mr. Jodduck had protected himself against being turnedoff. Like the Tandem computer designers, he made his module of supply (a windmachine and battery bank) isolatable and independent. He gladly paid a modestextra cost for batteries as insurance against complete failure. His wind machinewas embedded within the electric grid, yet buffered from it, so that when thewhole grid crashed, his lowly level of the hierarchy could continue to function.In Finland several years ago, a general strike shut down much of the nationalelectric grid. In the industrial city of Jyvaskyla, however, the municipal combined-heat-and-powerstation (a common fixture in Scandinavian towns) wasable to disconnect from the grid and keep the city powered in isolation. Themoney saved by not having to shut down the local factories for the durationof the strike reportedly paid off the entire capital cost of the power plant.Similarly, residents of Coronado, California were not even aware that theSan Diego grid surrounding them was blacked out in March 1978; theirpower came from an independent congeneration plant. 2 And the city of214