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

Notes 41715 Butti & Perlin 1980.16 Hammond & Metz 1977.17 Lovins 1982.18 Hammond & Metz 1977.19 Foreman 1981.20 For example, see Bergey 1981. The goalis for the maintenance instructions to say,“Once a year, go outside on a windy day andlook up at the wind machine. If the blades areturning, it is OK.”21 Caputo (1981:29) points out that evenwith assumptions unfavorable to solar energy,energy output can be practically harnessedfrom an average square foot of land area atabout the same rate at which energy can beobtained by burning, over the course of a century,the ultimately recoverable oil and gasunderneath that square foot. In this sense, too,solar energy is not too dilute.22 Leckie et al. 1981.23 M. Lillywhite (Domestic TechnologyInstitute, Evergreen, CO 80439), personalcommunication, 1979.24 Simmons 1981:25ff. The Mason-DixonFarm is near Harrisburg.25 Department of Energy 1980; CaliforniaEnergy Commission 1980.26 OTA 1981; Yanda & Fisher 1980.27 OTA 1981.28 The municipal utility in Burlington,Vermont has already substituted some woodchips for oil and is currently building an entirelywood-fired fifty-megawatt power plant. Wedo not advocate such plants, however, as thereare usually even cheaper sources of saved andrenewable electricity which could reserve woodwastes for producing premium liquid fuels.29 Hollands & Orgill 1977; OTA 1978; Lovins1978:492; Ross & Williams 1981:170–179.30 Promoting Small Power Production 1981.The avoided costs so far set by state commissionsrange from more than eight cents perkilowatt-hour down to practically nothing.The Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionis supposed to ensure that the rates are fair,but shows no signs of wanting to do so.31 Sun*Up 1981; see also the technicalguidelines published by Southern CaliforniaEdison Co., San Diego Gas & Electric Co.,and others.32 Systems control 1980, 1980b.33 We are indebted to E.R. Baugh PE forcalling our attention to this literature.34 Shipp 1979; Linders 1979.35 For example, there is concern that thetransient torque loads on turbogeneratorshafts may be fatiguing them and reducingtheir lifetime: Jackson et al. 1979; Dunlop et al.1979; Walker et al. 1981.36 Daley (1982) gives an example from SeaWorld in San Diego.37 Various relays are also important for protectingthe generator itself: Breedlove &Harbaugh 1981.38 Conversely, flat car batteries could berecharged from the house. In the long run, ifcars using series hybrid drive trickle-chargedtheir batteries during the day through cheapphotovoltaic arrays on their roofs, the interconnectionwould benefit the householder stillfurther. Various opportunities on these linesare envisaged in Cullen 1980.39 Systems Control 1980:5–50.40 Ibid.:5–51. The same argument has beenmade in almost identical language (Falcone1979:4) for strengthening interregional powertransmission capacity. This approach has thedrawback, however, that it may increase gridinstabilities and propagate failures: “The morewe have interconnected, the more we have thechance that [the grid] will topple due to theinterconnecting effects” (Lewis 1979a:18).41 For example (Systems Control 1980:5–51),if the failure of a class of generators all at oncecaused the expected outage rate to rise fromone day per decade to one week per decade, astandby source with an annual cost of sixtydollars per kilowatt (about as costly as manycentral fossil-fueled power plants today) couldwell be justified, because the outage costsmight well exceed its break-even point of abouteleven dollars per kilowatt-hour.42 Ibid.:5–52.43 Ibid.44 Systems Control, Inc., is continuingresearch on priority load allocation for wholepower grids, but not on the scale on which a dispersedsource might be used and controlled; andthe work is very far from practical realization.45 Systems Control 1980, 1980a, 1980b,1980c; Boardman et al. 1981. The studiesassumed that new central power plants are farcheaper than they really are and that electricitydemand will be very insensitive to rising