Preparing for Infrastructure Lapses...

[AC_Hacker]

Rob,

I hear you.

When I started this thread, I already understood the uncharitable potential of the topic... I got into plenty of that zeitgeist with Peak Oil. I really want to avoid it.

But I thought, and still think that it is quite reasonable to develop fall-backs for those times when our utilities are off line.

I greatly appreciate suggestions I got from Steve Ormsby for the 12V UPS. In fact it was precisely what I was looking for, and it is so great to have a forum like EcoRenovator, where multiple minds can share information.

And Rob, I also really like your perspective, being semi-remote, such as you are, and finding solutions that fit technically, and ethically to solve your problems. I applaud what you are doing.

All that being said, I do think that there is a cleavage point that needs to be recognized. That cleavage point has to do with the constellation of values that favor community, and fairness and dignity.

Without these simple elements, all the comfort and security and technology really don't amount to much.

-AC

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by bennelson

For example, many people who are interested in a whole house solar system first do an energy audit, and realize how much heat and electricity can be saved simply by changing light bulbs and adding some weather-stripping.

And check out the wind-electric.com forum. They advocate the energy audit for everyone and their mods and contributors aren't so diluted that they believe solar is the answer to everything.
According to their contributors and people who install these systems, their general rule of thumb to budget for going off grid is to take your average monthly power bill and add 3 zeros to that dollar amount. Also to expect the average pay back time to be never.

[Robaroni]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

And check out the wind-electric.com forum. They advocate the energy audit for everyone and their mods and contributors aren't so diluted that they believe solar is the answer to everything.
According to their contributors and people who install these systems, their general rule of thumb to budget for going off grid is to take your average monthly power bill and add 3 zeros to that dollar amount. Also to expect the average pay back time to be never.

I think it's more than payback time. I buy a car and it's a total loss. My alternate energy system provides a service just like my car does.

My PV system has several hidden benefits. First, it gets me through the grid outs we get several times a year that last from a few hours to over a week. It reduces my carbon footprint and makes the planet cleaner for everyone else, maybe not by much but imagine if many people did it and if you look into ALEC you'll see the utilities are worried about all the PV going in. I talked with the CEO of my electric coop and they're preparing for all the new installs by customers.

I have no electric bill, in fact I make money, no water bill and no sewer bill. Everything is covered here. Next will be an electric car, I really admire Mark's (pinball) Volt and what he has done with.

The 6.4 Kw intertie was a grant from the NY Power Authority, because I did it myself I actually made over $1,000.00 on it complete.
Next I'll put up windmills and microhydro. Once those are in I'll have much more power than I'll ever use 24/7 including heat. The batteries will only come into play for surges like my metal lathes or table saw.

Not only that I can, strictly using the power I generate, make parts, weld, fabricate, make printed circuit boards, run freezers with a couple of years of food in them and lots of other stuff.

Personally I can't put a price on that. When I started this journey 25 years ago it was with the mind set that money isn't power, land is. When you have land you can grow food and generate power. As money came in I added it to the plan until one day I was ahead of the curve and we live really cheaply but don't sacrifice.

I grew up with Popular Mechanics and people in their basements doing all sorts of things, it seems to me we've lost that, we want someone to grow our food and generate our power. I don't want that, the thing that made this country great was independent thinking, I live in the spirit of that. If it makes me a kook so be it but payback never enters into the equation for us, we feel we made the right decisions.

Rob

[bennelson]

Due to this thread, I actually checked the flashlights in our drawer, and when I was out doing errands, I bought a pair of new LED flashlights (on sale) that came with batteries.

I replaced the batteries on one other flashlight, fixed another, and made sure I have spare, fresh batteries.

I now have FIVE working flashlights in our "junk" drawer, which is conveniently located by our front door.

None of this was hard, it just simply has to be done. I think that that's exactly what a LOT of preparedness is. It's not hard, it's not expensive, it's just simple ACTIONS that need to get done.

Sorting the home junk drawer is a good start.

[Robaroni]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Due to this thread, I actually checked the flashlights in our drawer, and when I was out doing errands, I bought a pair of new LED flashlights (on sale) that came with batteries.

I replaced the batteries on one other flashlight, fixed another, and made sure I have spare, fresh batteries.

I now have FIVE working flashlights in our "junk" drawer, which is conveniently located by our front door.

None of this was hard, it just simply has to be done. I think that that's exactly what a LOT of preparedness is. It's not hard, it's not expensive, it's just simple ACTIONS that need to get done.

Sorting the home junk drawer is a good start.

Ben,
Before I got all this fancy stuff I had a rechargeable flashlight that sat in an outlet and came on when the power went out. It gave us time to find things and was always fully charged.

Something like this might work although I don't have this exact model:

Emergency Automatic Power Failure Outage Rechargeable 16 LED Light Plug in Lamp | eBay

Rob

[oil pan 4]

If you need flashlights or have ones with burned out bulbs try to get LED replacements. The battery life difference between LED and regular bulbs is pretty huge. Also you don't really have to worry about the bulb burning out.

Originally Posted by Robaroni

When I started this journey 25 years ago it was with the mind set that money isn't power, land is. When you have land you can grow food and generate power. As money came in I added it to the plan until one day I was ahead of the curve and we live really cheaply but don't sacrifice.

Wise decisions, planning for the future, forethought.
Don't expect it to catch on.

[stevehull]

Without the "Rob's" of the world we go nowhere (solar/independence advocate). Without the "oilpans" (PV/renewable skeptic, we get stuck down dead end roads. The oilpans force the Robs to validate and the Robs push the oilpans to see what is possible.

As an engineer and scientist, I value both perspectives.

I grow my own beef (grass fed/grass finished, no steroids/drugs), eat what I grow and sell the rest. My alpaca herd allows me to market super high quality all natural fiber. My gardens give me produce, my chickens eggs. But I still buy milk at the supermarket as a dairy cow is WAY too much trouble (grew up on a dairy farm)!

I put in the most efficient means to heat/cool my homes (geothermal heat pumps) and insulate/seal it up to the best effect (with HRVs to ventilate). I look at embracing technologies that have a return on investment (ROI) that allows me to double what I can get in the fixed financial markets.

If I put in a PV system with a simple ROI (payback time) of 6 years then I am getting the equivalent of 12% on my money ("rule of 72"). That is about double that what equities will safely get you in this market (~6%). My rule of thumb is to use energy solutions that get at least twice the return of the equities market.

A 10K grid tie, solar PV system (wholesalesolar) will cost me about $8 K after the 30% federal tax credit and my farm one year depreciation (self install). My payoff time is about 5-6 years. This will allow me to reduce my electric consumption by about 60% and opens lots of energy doors (like a Nissan Leaf, etc).

I just built a shop, oriented due south, with all the electrical and roof infrastructure to easily do this. I would love to net zero out the farm, but I start with conservation, energy efficiency and THEN renewable technology.

But I also have obligations like a child in college and that also sucks capitol. Building independence is a process and at times a frustrating slow one at that.

Just as I love standing in front of a wood stove in the winter, feeling the warmth of the wood that I have cut down, dragged, limbed out, cut to length, split, stored and aged, there is also the intangible but VERY real satisfaction of a PV system (or taking a shower with a solar hot water, etc). But I no longer cut wood as I choose to use other more efficient technologies that are not so hard on my back!

Great discussion. Keep it going!

And Merry Christmas!

Steve

[oil pan 4]

Yes steve, a simple grid tie system made of panels that are bolted to your roof, feeding DC power into a simple dumb grid tie inverter can pay for its self.
I never claimed it wouldn't.
The only thing I don't like about grid tie is you spend thousands of dollars on it and when the power goes out, its useless.
When some one severs their grid connection and goes completely off grid that does not pay for its self. First you should have around double the solar panel capacity you need if not more or expect to run your backup generator a lot (diesel generator power is at minimum 5x more expensive than grid power counting fuel cost only) (and yes you should have a backup generator). Then right about the time it starts to pay for its self, you have to replace tons of warn out lead acid batteries, which is great for the environment. It is recommended that you have many times more battery capacity than what you use in a typical day so that you can run for 2 or 3 days with overcast and not run your batteries below 50% charge, which shortens their life quite a bit.
I have not studied the hybrid systems much yet. They do seem interesting, not nearly as expensive as full off grid, but still useable when the power goes out, unlike a simple grid tie and you use a small much cheaper battery that holds maybe a day worth of power as opposed to a huge multi day battery.
I am an independence advocate too, I can admire when some one like rob has the forethought to invest so much in goods for the future. It is not money wasted.

When I ran the production numbers for world solar output and compared it to power consumption of an actual country the prospect of powering the US off solar was looking really bad.
Its not the technology cant do it there just isn't enough of it. Current solar production can barely keep up with growing power demand and that's with tons of government subsidies and grants propping it up.

The problem with wind, is you don't want to put it around lots of people. Everyone seems to want them built in the middle of no where. Problem is in the middle of no where is there are few places to tie in to the power grid, that also have wind conditions ideal for building a wind farm. If you build a dedicated transmission line then being far away from civilization you end up with huge power transmission losses and you could easily double or triple the cost of the project. And no, you cant put them underground.
I am very familiar with the noise they create, being under, in, on and around GE and mitsu 1 and 1.5 MW turbines.
Trust me you don't want your house near them and you would be surprised how much noise they make when they are not turning.
My grandpa has three 1MW mitsu wind turbines about 1.5 miles away from his house, that is about as close as I would want to be to a small number of them and that's coming from me, some one that doesn't mind them.

[jeff5may]

I am again struck with awe at how yet another thread has strayed from its topic toward its polar opposite. This discussion that has emerged about the virtues of mass-produced power has nothing to do with this thread. Power massively produced by any viable means is what this thread is planning against.

The founding premise is that the public power source will lapse. Wherever it came from, for some reason or another it stops sometimes.

As such, the original post by AC asked for input from fellow members as to what steps, precautions, or measures they actually have in place to deal with these inevitable lapses. What have you done that works for you, and how did or does your solution do what it should when the lights go out?

While I understand that the public utility grid has an addictive stranglehold on 99.99% of the population, and that everyone has an opinion on the nature and mechanics of this vicious cycle, I would beg you all to please stick to the topic of preventive or proactive measures you are employing. What is practical for you?

This seems to be a growing issue among a decent portion of the threads within this forum. There is a massive amount of intellect gathered in (and gravitating towards) this group, and with it we can further these topics quite well. But when the original topics get watered down by users preaching and debating opinions on the inherently connected (and not so connected) subject matter, the threads get bloated with "fluffy stuff" and lose traction and consistency.

I hate to sound like a cop (or your choice of authority figure), but I have to ask everyone to please try to hold down the noise. Before you type out a 100 word essay and press submit, please ask yourself "How relevant to the original topic are these words?" It would really save us all a lot of nonsense.

[natethebrown]

My wife and I are still young (I will only be 30 next year), so we are starting off slow. Right now, the biggest concern of ours is Tornadoes. With that in mind, we have slowly stocked up non-perishable foods like beans and pasta and other things.

Unlike bennelson, I like free flashlights. I am on the Harbor Freight mailing list and get quite a few free flashlight coupons in the mail. Sure the flashlights are not robust but for emergencies, with 3-5 laying around, one is bound to find one that still works. Harbor Freight is great for things you only plan on using a few times (or once) and for starting an emergency box.

I have had a garden in the past and plan on having one this coming summer. Eventually, we will progress to having chickens as well. We are heavy into recycling so any veggie waste with either go to chickens or composted. Ultimately, a net zero house, in every way, is our goal.