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

Chapter Sixteen: Inherently Resilient Energy Supplies 267sion pylon at the right time and place could black out a city or region. Likewise,blowing up a farmer’s alcohol still, though a calamity for the farmer, is only aprivate calamity—unlike blowing up Rhodesia’s central oil depot or Lebanon’sSidon oil refinery, where the damage disrupted the whole national economy.Certain of the dispersed plants could still be disabled by a catastrophicevent, such as the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb. But if the electroniccircuitry in, say, wind machines and solar-cell inverters had not beenhardened to withstand the pulse, it would not be too difficult to plug in new,standardized, cheaply stockpiled circuit boards to replace the burned-outones. (Moreover, the circuitry in these devices could easily be hardened towithstand EMP, since it has not yet been put into mass production.) In contrast,fixing the very large and complex devices which the pulse would disablein conventional power stations and transmission equipment, pipeline controls,and the like could easily take years—even if the factories which made thereplacements did not themselves rely on the power and fuel that would nolonger be available. Indeed, the relative smallness of the dispersed systemswould itself reduce the electronic damage they would suffer, since, otherthings being equal, the intensity of the electrical pulse induced in a device isproportional to its physical size. It is partly for this reason that electromagneticpulse would so severely damage the large components in today’s power grid.A simple example illustrates how much renewable sources can simplify theenergy system and get rid of its most vulnerable parts. One way (currently themost popular) to obtain light when one flicks the switch is to pay people hundredsof miles away to do the dirty, dangerous job of digging coal out of theground and shipping it by rail or barge to a power plant somewhere else.There the coal is burned, releasing the energy stored in it by sunlight whichfell on a primeval swamp millions of years ago. The flames make high-pressuresteam which spins a huge turbine which runs a generator. Giant transformersstep up the voltage for transmission over long aerial lines to one’s partof the country, where the voltage is again stepped down through several stagesof subtransmission and distribution, and eventually brought through a wireinto one’s home. Proposed “improvements” in the energy system would makethis delicate, skill-intensive, computer-controlled system considerably morecomplicated: for example, by converting the coal into low-quality gas in a synfuelplant before burning it in the power station.But, another alternative is to install on one’s roof a device which convertstoday’s sunlight directly into electricity, with no fuel, moving parts, noise,smell, or attention. In various ways which are described below, this electricitycan be used to provide light on demand. A still simpler method, for thosepeople who are turning on the lights in the daytime, is to use the sunlight even