demand side power management

This is a thought experiment on how a local community might utilize electricity on a completely solar powered resource.

The obvious changes and limitations from our current arrangement are radically less energy available, and much restriction on when the power is even available.

But let's say that we want to ( or simply must) power our village, town, or neighborhood with only solar power. Till now, it seems all focus is on how solar could replace fossil energy as we are currently used to using it. That ain't going to happen.

Rather than figuring out matching power output to demand, what if we matched demand to supply? Individual off gridders already do this, and seem to get by fine, though with different habits and patterns than the rest of us. What if a neighborhood or small town did this collectively?

It might look like this.

The power grid gets divided up into many microgrids, with optional connections to the wider grid.

All homes have solar panels if homes are situated correctly.

Some shared solar farms could also be part of the generation mix.

All energy users have smart meters, as well as smart disconnects, meaning a central coordinating function controls where and when available energy is routed if needed.

Someone(s) in the collective could manage and maintain the system. There doesn't have to be help from some distant on call utility office. This will be a big step toward self reliance.

Some sort of equitable allotment scheme would be created, and then schedules and rules would be followed which basically gave each household a turn at the power so the generation does not get overloaded by demand.

This really goes against the normal individualistic mind set and culture of America, but when the end of easy energy looms, compromise and collaboration may well be forced on us as the alternatives would likely be even less palatable.

The thought experiment gets interesting when you try to imagine what the fair rules and scheduling might be. How to share cost, how to allocate power- by size of family? Strictly by ability to pay? Some mix? What about medical needs? How might time slot trading work? What about time of use pricing, or peak use pricing?  Lots of questions come to mind.

How would you rearrange your life to use electricity only for certain stretches, and in only partly predictable patterns. Maybe  a collective choice to spend on more storage would improve flexibility and access, but would it be worth the ongoing cost? Each microgrid might decide for themselves.

I guess the first thing I personally would do is ruthlessly eliminate waste and inessential loads. Find new ways to do things without electricity, or don't do them at all.

Another big one for each house would be water use. In rural areas, everyone is on a well here in the midwest, with an electrical pump at the bottom of it. Increase or create aboveground storage? Have an extra large pressure tank and even a cistern? What about homes in an urban neighborhood on city water? How will local utilities power themselves and still provide sufficient water? I can see water bills going up. Less and very quick showers would become the norm.

Home heating is a whole other can of worms I won't go in to right  now.

Next would be learning how to time shift, and how to get household chores arranged so they are prepped and ready to go as soon as a sunny day occurs. Lots to think about.

Electricity will become very expensive, and thus husbanded like the unique resource it is. Could this concept even be affordable?

But at least we'd still have it for a while.

top down or bottom up

In responding to the unfolding environmental crisis, I am torn about what the best personal and societal response(s) should be. Sure seems like we are in new territory, there are so many variables in flux, with human hierarchies and psychology making it murky as to what are realistic options.

Top down solutions are not likely to be forthcoming, and bottom up change needs a great amount of anger before it explodes, and the results might not be optimal or as intended. Our collective brain wiring doesn't respond well to the diffuse, long term threat we have created.

It's an ongoing internal debate on how to proceed. 

For me, the choice is how much effort to spend on either personal, local change, or to put myself out there and advocate for wider, systemic change. One is direct and at least partly achievable, but the other is more daunting, and seems less likely to be of any significant impact, seeing how things are trending.

One can advocate by being an example, but sharing your example to more than the neighbors turns in to public advocacy.

( Gore was of course the poster child for the hypocritical inverse of this)

I recently read about the Christian dilemma which has a similar fork in the road to consider. Prolific writer Rod Dreher, has written a book and blogs a lot about the concept he calls "The Benedict Option". The concept is a bit tricky to grasp in terms of religion, but the base question it tries to answer, is how to respond to a world that is going in a direction that you feel is wrong? Do you hole up in a monastery, or redouble efforts to advocate/evangelize for your faith?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Dreher#Benedict_Option

So the analogous situation for those who are  to the attuned to our unfolding environmental crisis is how to act? Should one hole up in a bug out getaway, eating foraged foods and going off grid, or joining forces and taking to the streets to demand the oligarchical political system change and react rationally?

Many options between those two poles exist, and as Chris has shared, some sort of split, parallel  effort could be managed by some.

 So is there a way to describe a sort of Benedict Option for environmentalists? Some way to be in the world but not of it, to borrow biblical phrasing. This is a sort of middle path, though how it could be lived out would vary considerably, depending on ones situation and personality. 

As I've mentioned before, for now, I plant trees.

And one more thought.. Are we truly at this epochal a turn, or does it always feel thus for people getting rushed along in the tumult and torrent of history?

A permaculture gathering

There is a young organization here in Wisconsin that is promoting perennial agriculture. Since I am trying to informally use a permaculture approach to our land, I decided to go see what others in the area are doing. The Savannah Institute hosted a gathering for permaculture approaches to food production couple months ago, so I signed up. ( I'm just now posting this!)

My first impression was, there are a lot of people here! Sometimes, when we chose an interest or specific path in life, it might seem eclectic or lonely, but the internet has enabled a lot of people to connect with their tribe(s). We are of course a tribal species. And let's face it, alternatives to conventional agriculture have been ascendant lately, so I thought the showing was good.

Second impression, since I knew no one there, was that there was a kind of "look" to the assemblage. Kind of farmer hipster look? Not suburban, but not full on bibs or clodhoppers? Or maybe I'm just out of touch on fashion for younger generations who also happen to be drawn to the land. Dunno.

I saw mostly young folks, but a few grey hairs sprinkled though the group. The oldsters were  pioneers, early adopters of sustainable food production methods. Good on them. The younger folks seemed to be very networked, and of course, full of enthusiasm, but short on resources to see their plans come to fruition very quickly.

Presentations covered orchard and fruit production, progress of hazelnuts as a new midwest crop, business plans for starting farmers, marketing, research reports, collective efforts, and so on.

Other thoughts on reflecting on the two days: There was a lot of enthusiasm there, both in the younger set, but also in the older folks, who were happy to see others taking up the quest. Farming is hard work, and trying to step away from conventional food production is even harder, but it felt like many there were "mission driven", to borrow a phrase.

The system as it works right now does not make it easy to acquire access to land, either conventional or alternative ways of growing food and stewarding the land. So these young folks have a tough row to hoe, so to speak. I wish them well, as they are the future.

The road not taken

Just got back from a train trip from our home in Wisconsin to California and back. We took the route that goes through the Sierra Nevada mountains, and then on in to the bay area.

Sometimes we were next to the interstate, and sometimes, we were off on our own. Had a bit of trouble getting through the deep snow, ended up stopping in Reno, bussing the rest of the way.

Got me to thinking about the condition of the rail system, and what it could have been.

Its genesis could be said to have started with Dwight Eisenhower in 1919. He was part of a cross country Army convoy, to assess military mobility and status of the existing roads. It was a disaster, and the roads at the time were pretty bad, making quite an impression on him.

So, when he later was president during the cold war, the perceived need to easily evacuate cities and mobilize military forces prompted the creation of the Interstate Highway system. Signed in 1956, it took 35 years and almost $500,000,000,000 to build. ( that's with a B)

It created a lot of jobs and spurred economic growth, but what if he had championed another solution?

What if he had decided that the better choice was to upgrade the rail system, and overlay that on the nation's terrain instead of highways? After all, a lot of the right of ways were already secured.

It might have gone like this:
- a network of rails similar in arrangement to the interstate.
- upgraded rails, with a couple more tracks on each route, with beefed up bridges and rail-bed capacity.
-intermodal hubs to enable quick offload to trucking for the final miles to destinations.
-modified curves and bed stability to allow speeds up to 100MPH, maybe more.

And here would be the positive side effects if this option had been taken.
-more energy efficient freight hauling with large energy and money savings resulting.
-cheaper highway system, with much less semi truck traffic to tear it up, and lower load capacities, with cheaper construction and maintenance costs.
- a better infrastructure to piggy back passenger train travel, making for fewer car trips needed.
- probably less air travel, both for freight and for passenger travel.
- traffic in between towns would revitalize small towns, most of which now are bypassed by interstates.
A couple shots of our trip through the Sierras ( sorry for poor quality, overcast and through a train window)

Hard to tell scale, but these cuts through the drifts were done with giant snow blowers, and the cut is higher than my head in most places, and about ten feet in a few places.

half way there

Just finished burning half of the firewood I split for this winter. Since it is toward the end of January, I think we'll make it to spring.
(This does not include my contingency cord of wood in the old shed) A cord of wood is a volume four feet by four feet by eight feet. ( 3.6 cubic meters)

So I wondered, on a long term sustainable basis, how many acres of woods does one need to heat their home in our climate?

We are at roughly N43 latitude, with pretty cold winters. ( It got down to -18F (-27C) yesterday, and they are forecasting -26F (-31C) for Tuesday night, but these are about as cold as it gets)

Tending outside chores was not too comfortable.

I did some googling at forestry and wood heating forums, and a rough average is 1/2 cord of wood per acre that can be harvested in perpetuity. There is obviously a wide range, depending on soil, rainfall and climate. Since we have been burning around three cords each winter, I need six acres (2.4 hectares) to heat our home.

In the rural areas of America, and here in Wisconsin, there are no natural gas pipelines, so most people heat with trucked in propane, though some regions heat with diesel fuel. And what about the cities, where by far the most people live? Natural gas is relatively cheap right now, but it will not last. There is a lot more to sustainable living than this but just the one example of home heating shows how precarious things could get.

I've been fortunate enough to afford buying land which has around  15 acres (6 hectares) of woods, so this home will be ok if fossil fuels fade, especially after I get more good quality trees planted. But what about everyone else? Even if they could afford the land, there is not enough for everyone.

This is an old photo from last fall. It is about 1.5 cords, or half of our annual firewood use. We currently have around eight inches of snow on the ground.

top predator job opening

In southwestern Wisconsin, as in some other areas of the U.S., the white tailed deer has made quite the comeback in the last few decades, and is in fact a problem for the ecological balance in many areas.

We killed all the wolves.

Deer are overeating their terrain, preventing any new trees from taking over as older trees die, and generally affecting the "normal" plant community distribution.

I'm not sure it was quite the intent, but now we need to step up and take on the job of being one of the predators with a specific role in the ongoing predator prey balance that goes on at all scales in a complex ecosystem.

The new twist here, is that because of the overcrowding, CWD ( chronic wasting disease, a form of prion infection similar to mad cow disease) had been spreading through the herds, as there is more deer to deer contact. Hunters are actually encouraged to take more than one deer in specific areas that the Department of Natural Resources has determined need thinning. We need more predators.

So this winter, I did my part and took a nice buck, which we will be eating soon. I'm not what you would call an avid hunter, or very good or dedicated at it. If the deer were not wandering around in our woods, I would not go elsewhere looking for a hunting site. In fact, I get bored sitting in a tree stand for hours in the winter cold, but had some good luck and took a good shot.

This is the deer after I field dressed it and drug it out of our woods.

I view deer hunting as one more part of land stewardship. The DNR does annual assessment of deer populations, and sets deer harvest regulations to try to keep a good balance for the ecosystem health. In my area this year, one deer hunting license permits you to harvest one buck and four does. That is a lot!