Alternative energy is civil defense

So far as I can tell, George Mokray originated the phrase "Solar is civil defense".  I think this statement is just a bit too narrow.  I believe we should be saying alternative energy is civil defense.

As I noted elsewhere, "Sustainability is security.  A farmer who needs no diesel can't be forced out by rising fuel prices."  I believe this generalizes well beyond farming:

• A homeowner who cogenerates electricity from heating fuel can't be frozen out when the grid fails in ice storms.
• A homeowner who has some PV (firmly attached!) on the roof can run the refrigerator, the well pump and some lights even if a hurricane takes the grid down for a week... or a month.
• A farming operation which generates its fuel from crop or animal waste will not lose profits if fuel prices go up, and can continue to operate despite fuel shortages.

In short, alternate energy eliminates many of the problems which turn natural disasters and economic problems into crises.  Take the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma:  broad swaths of several states were emptied of motor fuel and had no electricity to pump what was left.  People may have had generators, but they only offered a temporary respite:  the ability to resupply them depended on the very infrastructure of roads, filling stations and electrical grid that had been blocked, emptied or disabled as a consequence of the storms.  In engineering terms, these elements are "single points of failure"; any one of them going out leads to the rest failing, either immediately or eventually.  Sustained outages lead to broader and more severe consequences.

Solar

I took a look at a solar site just the other day, and I found some large (300 watt) PV panels for sale for a breathtaking $4/peak watt.  Suppose that we were using these panels as post-hurricane backup power.  If this panel derated 10% due to temperature and got the equivalent of 6 hours of full sun per day, it would generate 1.62 kWh/day.  The Japanese have refrigerators which use less than 450 watt-hours per day, but suppose the refrigerator uses 750 Wh/day; that leaves 870 Wh/day.  3 CF lights at 15 watts each from 6 PM to 11 PM would consume 225 Wh/day, leaving 645 watt-hours/day.  This electricity could run a well pump to supply essential water (drinking, cooking, sponge baths) and any surplus could run radios, laptops or charge the battery of something like a Prius+ for a couple miles per day of driving without motor fuel.  Such an existence would be spartan, but these things plus some non-perishable food and cooking fuel (propane, charcoal or even firewood) would allow people to live more or less indefinitely without any health or welfare crisis.  There would be no civil-defense emergency.

All that for a mere $1200, plus inverter/controller and installation; produced and installed by the millions, that overhead might be small.  It could work during non-crises too, offsetting the electric bill and cutting peak demand.  Ten million such units might cost as little as $15 billion, and could generate perhaps 5.9 billion kWh/year.  This is a minuscule fraction (about 0.15%) of the total US electric generation of nearly 4,000 billion kWh/year, but great oaks from little acorns grow.

Cogeneration

Consider the other extreme, such as a winter in Maine or New York.  Most homes are heated with natural gas, LPG or fuel oil, but the heating plant does not operate without electricity; a severe ice storm means no heat as well as no light, no well water and impassable roads.  This quickly leads to crisis conditions for many people, and broken pipes and other damage which takes much time and money to repair.  Fuel shortages hurt too; the steep rise in fuel oil prices has caused a shortage of both firewood and fuel for pellet stoves.

This would be far less difficult with cogenerating furnaces.  If the typical oil-burning furnace was replaced with a cogenerator based on a Lister-clone 6/1 diesel (30% efficient, 4400 W mechanical output) driving a generator and/or heat pump, the only electricity required would be a starting battery.  Efficiency could leap:  the cogenerator could supply 60% of the fuel value directly as heat (10% losses), plus another 30% routed through a heat pump to multiply it 3:1 (another 90%).  Total heat supplied could be as much as 150% of the heating value of the fuel used to drive it, cutting cost by a third; the unit would pay for itself even when there was no grid damage.  If electricity could be used to charge batteries in a plug-in hybrid car, the net fuel use might actually be negative due to the greater efficiency of the diesel.

Improvised fuel

Let's not forget farmers and everyone else currently being squeezed by our shortage of diesel fuel.  During both world wars, fuel shortages forced many people to find substitutes for petroleum to run their vehicles.  One common substitute was fuel gas made from the partial combustion of wood or charcoal.  The devices to make this gas were called gasogenes.  More recently, the US government tested a wood-gas generator suitable for tractors and published detailed plans in case of a fuel crisis.

High-octane gaseous fuels can be co-fueled in diesel engines; the fuel gas is ignited by a small amount of diesel oil.  Power is reduced by the displacement of air, but the engine can still accomplish useful work.  Many farms have large amounts of crop wastes which could be used as fuel for a gasogene, and gas generators have been studied both as emergency fuel sources and as waste utilization systems relatively recently.  It seems safe to say that many farms could slash their fuel costs and remain profitable in times of high fuel prices (like now) using fuel gas made from crop wastes.  Yet banks are refusing to loan money for next year's crops rather than promoting self-produced fuels.

An acre of corn may yield 2.5 tons of biomass as stover (stalks and cobs).  At 15.8 million BTU per short ton and 50% gasifier efficiency, a one-ton bale of dry biomass could replace about 54 gallons of diesel fuel.  That's considerably more fuel than it takes to plant, cultivate and harvest a typical acre.  Corn farmers could be self-sustaining in fuel for their equipment, but fuel costs are putting them out of business.  Why?  Shouldn't we have a "victory fuel" effort instead of capitulating?

Conclusions

Moderate efforts toward efficiency and alternative fuels could yield huge dividends in fuel cost reductions and reduced vulnerability to energy-supply disruptions.  Our society would be better off both during and between disasters if we adopted some simple measures.  Our organizations from the federal government on down should be investigating to see what works and then promoting it.

We need a program of alternative energy as civil defense.  This has not happened; we need to start asking why not.

¶ 10/31/2005 12:14:00 AM