To: The editors, contributors and readers at the Oil Drum
Re: Electricity
I would like to make a pitch for one or more threads on the electrical grid, primarily in the United States, but also worldwide. Consider the following:
Arguably even more than automobile transportation, electricity is fundamental to the way we live and work today
Electricity has been gaining in share of all energy consumption since its inception
Many of the peak oil mitigation solutions being proposed at the Oil Drum and elsewhere involve electricity, for example electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs, PHEVs), light rail, certain renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, and of course the rebirth of nuclear fission
Electricity is relatively agnostic as to how it's generated and as such is a good energy exchange format between a wide variety of sources and sinks
Electricity is in the news during the hot summer months as usage strains capacity
Fossil fuel-based electricity generation, particularly coal, is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions
For these reasons and more, I for one would be quite interested in learning more about how the electrical grid works, not just technically, but economically and politically as well. I know there is a lot of information readily available, (http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html, for example), but it would be nice to see the topic discussed here. I don't have the expertise to write about the grid, but it's likely that qualified and willing contributors can be readily found amongst the Oil Drum community and their friends, professional colleagues and family members.
I think many folks here agree that electricity is one of the best mediums of energy from primary source to end user. It's flexibility and vast infrastructure make it a natural fallback from liquid fuels in many areas like rail transportation. I would be interested in know more about this as well.
Maybe we should contact these folks and see if they have an expert to help lead a discussion on the topic.
I think you meant www.epri.com. They appear to still require the redundant "www" subdomain. Not including it can lead to problems under some browsers, like Safari, apparently.
Calorie, I agree with you. The getting from where we are today to an electric future is a not so easy when you look at all the things that have to change.
I am reposting my response that was near the bottom of the Khosla ethanol thread.
Here are my thoughts again.
1. Reduce consumption everywhere, particularly liquid fuels, via drive for efficiency of motors and conversion of fuel energy to work.
2. Eliminate waste everywhere. All waste will be some one elses raw material. Stop sending everything to Land fills. Ames Iowa has one of three Resource Recovery plants in the nation (built in the 1970's) that sorts metals, glass and others and and provides refuse derived fuel, RDF. The RDF is sent directly to the coal fired generating plant and reduces coal consumption very significantly, electric rates haven't changed for 25 years. We need more of this approach country wide.
3. Mass transit should be funded massively to reduce use of cars for work commuting. This can be electric, hybrid diesel or other and can be light rail buses or other. The goal is lots of bodies moved per btu's consumed.
4. Raise CAFE standards (double?) now with built in increases yearly. Make sure these can't be reversed if things improve in the short run.
5. Do not pick winning transportation strategy (hybrid, electric, hydrogen, NG, etc.) but allow 3) to crank up innovation.
6. Each state must identify the correct mix of alternative low fossil fuel energy to chase. This needs to be fostered with incentives provided nationally to holistically reduce energy consumption and start capturing renewable energy.
7. I live in Iowa and see ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans as viable for the midwest. Good EROEI in these states where irrigation is not needed. This technology should not be exported to all 50 states.
8. For the midwest it makes sense to maintain a liquid fuel supply to farm and transport agricultural commodities. Biofuels can meet this need with waste streams feeding animals or used for industrial purposes.
9. The loop on biofuels can be closed in the midwest. Percent of crop used to make fuel which is used to plant and harvest next crop with distillers grains and glycerine being used locally to make more food. If this can be done other places with other raw material it should be pursued. Energy must be captured and used locally, don't make ethanol from cellulose in New England and send it to Arizona for consumption. All the efficiency is lost in transportation.
10. The goal is for each state/region to manage their energy balance, gaining as much non fossil energy as possible from appropriate sources. Every southern state is a natural for solar cells on every roof surface.
11. Push solar, wind and micro-hydro at the individual consumer level. Facilitate a distributed grid for electricity production and storage. Lots of small generating sites rather than a few huge generating sites. Big companies can manage the maintenance and distribution system.
12. All of above should be set up to allow people to track their consumption and production of energy so that feed back loops get created.
13. Once people are more responsible for having to maintain more of their balance of energy they will hunt for ways to use less and make more on their own because it has direct financial benefit to them.
I believe in the silver BB's approach to reducing reliance on fossil fuel. Government and investment capital needs to stop trying to replace oil, NG and coal with technology X. Isn't going to happen. Invest instead in conservation approaches and on site energy capture.
This needs to be a 50 year, minimum, retooling of the United States. The Interstate highways took 50 years to build. The new transportation and energy system will take just as long but will be self sustainable when complete.
Over the 50 years it takes to get off oil and coal world population has to be allowed to decrease through lower birth rates matched with natural die off of elderly. If we stop having lots of children in 30-50 years 6 billion people will be die naturally at the end of their life span. At that time a smaller population can use the energy capture system that will have been built to maintain a stable population.
That's the vision. How do we convince moneyed and political interests to buy into that long term view at the expense of short term gain?
Those are all good suggestions...but I have two problems:
Essentially, your thrust is to maintain the status quo. It seems to me that what is needed is a new societal paradigm, that is, one that leads away from a growth-based economy. Were this to occur, appropriate, necessary change will follow from it.
A time-frame based upon change over a generation+ is unrealistic. I'm not even sure we have five years. My optimistic outlier is ten years.
Well, that's the problem really. I do see many possibilities - things we could do. But the time difference between how long it would take to implement them (not to mention money and other resources) vs. how quickly the old paradigm falls apart leaves a very big hole to fill. It's the "transition" period, and how can we make it across that worry me.
Further, if we should really have a hard time before we can complete our investment in new infrastructure, then it will make finishing it that much harder. I think after the fall of Rome, civilization fell too far too fast, and look how long it took to dig its way back out.
"One cannot leap a great chasm in 2 bounds" - You either get to the other side in one, or you fall in the hole.
I agree with both of you. Population is the problem because it drives consumption and we might be in overshoot already.
My approach might ( I stress might) if we really reduce fossil fuel consumption immediately. We can't go cold turkey the infrastructure won't allow it.
The problem I see is there is no real proactive plan to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Until we try and power some things with renewable, and prove how little energy will be available, there will be no target for energy consumption per person to shoot for. I see too many people voicing the concept of using all the fossil fuels we want until it is well past peak and then we will shift to "the new energy sources". That approach is dangerous.
Better to force consumption now, and start using alternatives now, giving us some emergency stored fossil fuel to make the 50 year transition. This approach is really for the developed countries to implement. The third world doesn't consume that much fossil fuel except as food. The world needs to know there isn't the carrying capacity for 6.5 Billion people. Not enough energy, not enough food without the energy. What is the carrying capacity using renewables? I haven't a clue but we better find out soon.
Sorry - above should say "Better force conservation ..." - not consumption.
The goal needs to be a planned steep decline in use of energy and population. The alternative is dropping off a cliff. Both energy and population will crash. We will end at the same place wether we engineer the decline or we crash. The difference is what is left of civilization via the two paths.
"The world needs to know there isn't the carrying capacity for 6.5 Billion people. Not enough energy, not enough food without the energy. What is the carrying capacity using renewables? "
Renewables can provide more than enough. Wind in the US could generate twice the electricity we use now. The earth receives 100,000 terawatts of solar energy continously from the sun, and humans use the equivalent of 4.5 terawatts on average.
It's late so you may not see this before this thread goes to thread heaven.
We all want to believe that there are alternatives that will work. But, the reality is that homo sapiens are sucking every resource dry - water, aerable land, gas, oil, the sea, minerals, forests; everything.
It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers. I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago. I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives.
I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience.
"the reality is that homo sapiens are sucking every resource dry - water, aerable land, gas, oil, the sea, minerals, forests; everything."
Well, I agree that there are serious problems with all of these. I haven't had time to research all of them thoroughly. But TOD is dedicated to peak oil, and I have had time to research PO and energy thoroughly, and as far as I can tell peak oil is NOT peak energy. I find that encouraging.
"It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers."
I'm not sure what you mean by this. It sounds a little...err...faith based. This seems unclear and fuzzy. I respect the role of intuition, but I find that I don't understand something in a clear way I get in trouble.
"I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago."
I've been interested in these things for more than 30 years too, ever since I read the Club of Rome's report.
"I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives. I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience."
Well...talking about this, and learning from each other, is what we do here. I know there are people feeling pessimistic, but that alone doesn't really tell me whether that makes sense, or give me a chance to change your mind. I think you shouldn't give up on things, and that includes not giving up on communication - we can't come to a consensus on things unless we talk about them.
"Renewables can provide more than enough. Wind in the US could generate twice the electricity we use now. The earth receives 100,000 terawatts of solar energy continously from the sun, and humans use the equivalent of 4.5 terawatts on average."
One thing that interests me about renewables is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that, because they're renewable, they don't have a significant downside to their use.
All that solar energy being dumped on the Earth isn't going to waste, for example. Much of it heats the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, which makes conditions amenable for life. I wonder what environmental changes would result if humanity were to capture a significant chunk of solar energy, say 10 or 20 percent (20,000 terawatts), and redirect it through technological infrastructure. Sure, waste heat would contribute to keeping things warm (perhaps too warm!), but it would be distributed through the atmsophere in a different way. Could be detrimental.
I wonder what harnessing 4.5 to 9.0 terawatts via wind energy would due to local environments? Wind turbines tap into fluid momentum, and must produce a lot of friction on airflow. On a massive scale, wind "farms" could, perhaps, alter local wind-climates (at the surface), which may also have some interesting effects on local ecosystems.
Just some ideas. I would like to see more deep thought on just what the true ramifications may be for a full-scale "power-up" on renewables.
On a massive scale, wind "farms" could, perhaps, alter local wind-climates (at the surface), which may also have some interesting effects on local ecosystems.
The main conclusion of the article seems to be that wind power would help with global warming, both by reducing CO2, and by shifting the balance between the poles and the middle latitudes.
The question you're asking is: how will using solar energy change the earth's albedo? IOW, how will reflection change vs absorption? The answer is, not much, and if it did the result would be much smaller than the effect of heat engine waste heat, and global warming.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that the solar energy is typically absorbed as heat now. The likely places for solar panels is existing structures. PV might change the albedo a little, but not a whole lot. There are a lot of buildings with dark roofs, which absorb a lot already - PV might actually absorb less.
Heat engines (coal, nat gas, gasoline ICE's) throw
off 3 units of heat for every unit of electricity generated. IF solar absorbed an additional .1 unit for every unit generated, that would be a 30 to 1 difference, and that doesn't even include the reduction in CO2 and global warming.
If you were really concerned, it wouldn't be a big deal to make some human structures a little lighter to compensate for a little more absorption at the solar panels. Really, the whole effect is negligible.
However, I think the change of albedo would become significant if the goal is to collect a high percentage of insolation. If, for instance, an attempt to collect 80-90% of total insolation was successful, then the Earth's albedo must change from it's estimate of around 0.30.
" If, for instance, an attempt to collect 80-90% of total insolation was successful, then the Earth's albedo must change from it's estimate of around 0.30."
Sure. Of course, that would be about 20,000 times as much energy as we use now. I think it's safe to say that human energy use will level out a long time before that.
Looking just at gasoline, there are some things we can do immediately to decrease consumption:
I think Americans could learn to drive about 10% less by carpooling, combining trips, vacationing closer to home, and god-forbid maybe even taking some trips on foot or bike.
Reinstitue the 55 mph speed limit.
Use the A/C in the car less.
These three steps could bring an immediate 10 to 20% reduction in gasoline use and could buy us a few years to make longer term and more dramatic changes such as:
increased electric rail in cities and towns.
dramatic reductions in personal automobile use.
returning to rail and river as the main means of shipping.
slowly migrating out of the suburbs and megalopolises and back into our small cities and towns. My little town alone (pop. 15000) has 500,000 sq ft of unused space above the shops of our 6 or 7 block downtown retail district. In the 19th century, these were used as apartments. Today no one lives there bc/ of the lack of parking, but they could very easily be converted back to 500 or so housing units without any new construction. These floors are literally just sitting empty or maybe store the owner's junk. On several of our streets, the rails that haven't been used by electric trolleys in 60 years are still in place.
I see the "powerdown" as a return to a late 19th century standard of living. Lots of walking, mass transit, a substantially increased percentage of people working in agriculture, less cross country and international travel. more river and rail transport.
I'm not saying people will make these changes willingly, certainly not at first. They'll do so when energy becomes expensive enough. My point is, there is some slack in the system- some very easy ways to reduce consumption- and this could buy us some time. If in the meantime people start realizing the true nature of our predicament, then maybe we can make the transition to a new paradigm.
This looks like every day at any of the train stations around here.
I remember sharing rides being fairly common in the 70s when I was a kid. If one person had a car, there were several people who knew them and a ride for the one person into town often ended up being a ride into town for a couple of their pals too. In fact a person would be considered standoffish, greedy/cold if they always drove by themself. We'd have really been hurting without welfare though. As 'rough' as my memories of the dirty 70s, are, they'll be nothing compared to the 2nd great depression coming up.
I actually heard that driving with your windows down uses at least as much energy as driving with your A/C on. Especially at highway speeds.
Also, reinstating the 55 mph limit will not necessarily make people drive 55 mph. I actually think the limit has little bearing on how fast people actually drive.
I use quite a bit more gas driving with my windows down at moderate speeds compared to running my AC. I'd hate to think what kind of gas I'd waste doing it at freeway speeds.
My car's a darkish color and heats up quite a bit, I have to run the AC once the outside temperature exceeds 75F! I could avoid using the AC a lot more if it were a much lighter color, and didn't have a huge expanse of black dashboard under the sloping windshield. Anyone who has a Prius knows what I mean.
Since I have long hair, I prefer a car with a closed cabin. With summer in progress, the gas mileage has dropped from 28mpg to around 24.5mpg. Not that damn bad, but I sure would like better gas mileage.
The A/C unit aboard a car will use up energy if for no other reason being that it causes the engine to have a faster idle. That causes the gas mileage drop. With my Kia Rio of Year 2001 the car has the mpg as above. 28 in winter and 24.5 in summer. Aggressive driving is no help! :)
I already have a tendancy to combine trips. The problem of commuting isn't combining missions but the damn commuting mission itself. By moving closer to a workplace, you get to save on the gas. I plan on moving 5 miles closer to work - and I'll get to save on a fifth each way of gasoline.
It's easy to combine trips on a commuting mission. You can stop off at this or that mall on a mission home but you still use that damn gas for the mission home. That is the problem for the commuter. I use 3 fifths of gas each way as of now. I will use two fifths each way once I move. In a push-come-to-shove case, I will be able to use a bus as a "booster rocket" to get a bicycle toward where I work.
It's plenty about time that suburbanitic people think in terms of gas use instead of "minutes". That is, "gallons away" or "liters away". See above, and I think in terms of a "fifth" with the gas! Just yesterday, I saw a gas station with a sign of $3.76-and-the-9 a gallon. One penny short of a buck a liter. That was for the premium stuff. Buck a liter gas is coming, like it or not.
That with suburbanitic people thinking in terms of "minutes away" has always escaped me. The assumption is always that you use a car. If you don't always use a car, miles (or kilometers) becomes the better measure of distance. Time will depend on distance and transit use, and your walking. If you walk fast, you get to reduce travel time.
i would venture to guess that the grids are contructed as inexpensive as possible. That being said, during the aftermath of hurricane Rita, we lost power at 1pm each day and it came back on at approx 11pm, for about a week after the hurricane had passed. I was not affected by the hurricane, but apparently i was on a grid, that stretches from lower Louisiana, along the Texas east coast, and just north of Houston. And they (the electric company) were making repairs along the grid, and they would shut down a section to repair it.
I would imagine the grids are contructed whereas to spend as little money as possible to keep it going. Just my thoughts! It's all about the money!
I think the grid is suffering from the same problem the highway system is. Basically, it's Tainter's diminishing returns.
When we first built it, we never imagined the load we would one day put on it, nor how dependent upon it we would eventually be. That makes it hard to rebuild and repair the system.
I think the 60:s generation of US grid builders had no problem at all to imagine todays load. They planned that the load would be even higher and where in a little to great a hurry to get the first generation of nuclear powerplants on line and thus dident get them standardized thru competition or cooperation.
What they could not imagine were probably that the electricity distribution companies would neglect to continue invest and build upon their exelent system and that people at large would stop necessery investments due to NIMBY.
There is an old Swedish farmers saying for this that litteraly translates "To live on rust and rot", that is neglecting to maintain and reinvest in your houses and equipment and letting them wear down. An existance for retiering people withouth heirs, for people who dont care much about the future.
A lot of our power grid was built in the 1930s. The population is almost three times as large now, never mind the increase in the size of the homes, the number of gadgets, air-conditioning, etc.
Then there's the Internet. I doubt anyone foresaw today's giant server farms in the '60s, let alone the '30s.
The 130-150 kV level dates roughly from the 30:s in Sweden and is very common as a regional distribution voltage with significant new lines in growing areas. It were soon superseeded by a 220 kV grid that I think where most important in the 50:s, built to get power from far away hydro powerplants. And that in turn were superseeded by a 400 kV grid to get lower losses from far away hydro powerplants and higher capacity. The 220 kV level has then slowly been shrinking with lines scrapped or replaced by 400 kV lines. My impression is that the biggest limitation for this process are the 220 kV lines in our capital Stockholm where it more or less is used as a regional distribution voltage and there is not much room for 400 kV overhead lines and 400kV cables are significantly more expensive the 400 kV. This might mean that we will have 220 kV lines for manny more decades since they already exist and gives more redundancy then only a handfull of heavy transformers in the Stockholm area.
The 800 kV level were proposed and planned for in the 70:s to interconnect the nuclear powerplants in southern Sweden and it would then probably have started to replace 220 kV and 400 kV lines. The proposal died in the general technology scepticism following the nuclear power debate. There are rumours that a lot of the 400 kV poles installed in the 80:s are prepaired for lenghtening for a future conversion to 800 kV.
There must surely have been a simmilar development in the USA for your numerous coal and nuclear powerplants built in the 60:s and 70:s. It would be quite odd if the backbone of your grid were fromn the about a 100 kV era.
The building of main grid lines have been a slow addition of DC-links, upgrades of old 220 kV lines and a few new short 400 kV lines for better redundancy after the building boom during the height of our nuclear investments. Investments are planned to increase to facilitate more power trading and more redundancy. I have heard no rumours about 800kV upgrades but it is undecided if a new major link in southern Sweden should be 400 kV overhead line or a HVDC cable. There is also a major reworking of the Stockholm power distribution underway. But we are not especially different from you, this would probably not have happened if we not had had a few major outtages showing that that the redundancy were incomplete and the grid did not deliver the expected quality of service. I am afraid that proactive maintainance and investment needs an accident now and then, hopefully one can learn from others mistakes.
In America transmission lines are held up in the air on towers with plenty of space between the conducting wires. They likely could handle a megavolt or two. In any case, as you step up the grid's voltage, you will need to upgrade the transformers on both ends. You could add transformers and wire them in series with existing ones, but that cuts reliability. The old transformer is liable to conk out from insulation breakdown. Not only that, as you put transformer outputs in series, you must keep them separated to keep conductors apart.
As I drive home on my commute, I get to see (and marvel at) a substation. You have the "extreme" voltage transmission lines go to it, then it feeds huge transformers and it has giant capacitors to even out power factor. The conductors between the parts are exposed pieces of pipe.
In downtown Chicago, the extreme voltage power is carried underground. But that takes heavy-duty insulation on the wiring. Possible all right, but not cheap. Even a "mere" 4,200 volts takes some impressive insulation on the wires. It's way cheaper to have exposed cable on towers for long range power transmission - despite lossiness.
AC overhead powerlines insulated with air have lower losses and higher capacity then long AC cables insulated with plastic or oil filled paper.
This is due to a cables higher capacitance to ground. During a period this capacitance is charged and if the cable is long enough it is time to reverse the current flow when the cable is fully charged leaving no power to extract for doing work at the other end. (Not a very good explanation :-( )
An overhead cable also have better natural cooling then an insulated cable making it possible to run a higher currant thru the same gauge of conducting metal.
Making it possible to use long cables and to exchange power between unsyncronized AC grids were the original reasons for developing HVDC. It is also more efficient for very long overhead power lines due to the same unsensitivity to the lines capacitance.
Not just the transformers - also breakers, instrumentation, etc. I doubt that those towers could be upgraded to support a transmission voltage of 2X without replacement - the devil is always in the details, and there's a reason those towers were built the way they were.
The voltage rating of a power transmission is largely determined by the insulators on the towers. The stacks of glass disks must be long enough not to track over even when wet. They are expensive and are not normally made longer than needed for the rating.
Also as the voltage goes up so do the corona losses (the slight crackle you can hear and the blue glow on wet nights). The extent of corona lines depends on electric field strength near the conductors and the smaller the conductor the higher the field strength at its surface. Very high voltage lines use multiple strands on each phase separated by spacers to approximate a larger diameter conductor and so lower the electric field strength.
The number of strands is increased as the voltage rises. This shows a four strand conductor. You would need to upgrade the conductors as well as the insulators if you increased the voltage.
I doubt data centers use radically more power than any other industrial installation. Industrial energy users that suck electricity off the grid have been around for a long time.
I think you'd be surprised. A server farm can use the electricity of a small city. Indeed, many of them have their own power plants, which has added to the natural gas crunch.
Yeah, the raft of 1U servers I have in the Portland Maine colo all have 450 watt power supplies. I've never understood what that means in terms of real power draw - except that power draw in not something the manufacturers want to reduce - they would rather bragg about it.
I'm in process of replacing all the servers in my local office with laptops and mean to get John Howe to spec me out a solar system to keep them going on 12v. I'll be able to sleep at night knowing all the servers in the colo are backed up with honking diesels. Grrr.
Lots of local electronics ought to run quite nicely on 12 or 24 vdc.
I do NOT know what the load of a 24x7 server with a 450 watt power supply really is. Except that to it one must add a lot of air conditioning. Does anyone have good numbers?
Knowing the power of the power supply doesn't tell you the power the server is using. It would be best to get one of those kill a watt devices and measure the power consumption. I know my newest 1.8 Ghz computer with 3 hard drives and LCD monitor uses about 150 watts. Laptop computers tend to be be sluggish compared to servers. It depends on what you are doing. Do you need the speed? Surfing the net with a laptop is a big energy saver.
Huh? Manufacturers do very much care about power usage issues, the AMD vs Intel war is largely being duked out over exactly that right now. See how the new Core chips are being sold as ideal for data centers.
I've gotta admit, I never heard of a data center having its own power plant and I know a few people working in the colo industry. Nearly all of them have their own backup generators running off diesel though, which can often keep them online for a few days or so (at best). That's not really a power plant though.
But for standard operational use they're almost always connected to the local electricity companies. Some are connected to several, with redundant feeds coming in at opposite ends of the building.
I was skeptical too, but did a little web searching and their huge power draw is basically true, at least for the largest server farms. However, there has been some confusion with the numbers, even by the New York Times.
It was an uphill battle for U.S. Dataport, a company in San Jose, Calif., that planned a $1.2 billion server farm that would be the world's largest data center. It called for 10 huge air-conditioned warehouses on 174 acres that would constantly draw 180 megawatts of electricity--about enough to provide energy for all the homes in a city the size of Honolulu.
Wow! However, consider that this is the "world's largest data center." Census.gov says the population of Honolulu was about 380,000. So by their estimate, each person in a city draws almost 500 watts. They don't say exactly how many square feet the installation was, but assuming the warehouse area was half the land area, it would be roughly 3.75 million sq. ft. This gives a power draw of almost 50 watts per square foot.
Relocating server farms to rural locations shaves pennies per kilowatt-hour. But because server farms can consume as much power as a city of some 35,000 people, even modest reductions in electricity rates can save millions of dollars a year.
OK, but vague with no mention of the size of such a farm.
Known as telecommunications hotels, server farms or data centers, these warehouses for computers, operating 24 hours a day, are also huge power guzzlers.
Developers are planning more than 46 of them in New York City and Westchester County over the next four years, according to Consolidated Edison. Dozens of similar projects are planned for the New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs, according to real estate firms and power companies.
But while the explosive demand is good news for an industry that needs some lately, it is alarming to some others -- most notably to energy providers. Con Edison officials say that the growth of server farms in coming years could contribute to already-looming power capacity difficulties in the New York region.
A single low-rise installation planned for the South Bronx would draw 180 megawatts all by itself when it is operating at its peak. By comparison, the World Trade Center, with its twin 100-story towers and underground shopping mall, draws 87 megawatts.
This sounds questionable, if the "world's largest" farm draws only the same amount. Where can you find 174 acres in the South Bronx??
Con Edison engineers say they have been taken aback by the fact that the 46 server farms have asked for a minimum draw of 500 megawatts of electricity -- roughly the amount of power required by 500,000 homes. The requests would increase the load in Con Edison's service area, all of New York City and Westchester County, by 4 percent. The peak load, the maximum power used at the height of consumption, is now about 11,850 megawatts.
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The average data center consumes 60 to 100 kilowatts of electricity per square foot, compared with 6 to 8 kilowatts per square foot in an average commercial office building, said Tom Uhl, the project manager for Con Edison's telecom hotel team.
This last number is obviously an editing error: 100 kilowatts per square foot would set the installation on fire in seconds! They meant 60 - 100 watts.
Q&A: Amory B. Lovins
Energy Expert Talks About California's Crisis
Don't the big Web-hosting facilities such as Exodus consume a lot of power?
You will often read in the press that they use 100, 200, even 300 watts a square foot, which would mean that they look like an office but act kind of like a small smelter. They don't actually use that much -- the measured intensity is typically around 30 to 60 watts per square foot. However, even that could be very much lower.
In our own office last year, we replaced four Windows NT servers with a little Linux box the size of a book, called a Rebel NetWinder. It peaks at about 15 watts, and normally pokes along at a few watts. It's faster, cheaper and more capable than the four NT boxes put together. It doesn't take up much space, and it uses 98 or 99 percent less electricity than the four boxes it replaces.
So 60 watts/sq. ft sounds like a reasonable ballpark number. What would an "average" data farm be, though? A 100x250 foot building filled with computers sounds pretty darn big to me, but by these numbers it would only draw 1.5 megawatts - a "city" of about 3000 people.
Depends a lot on what the machines are doing. But I mean compared to an aluminium smelter for instance, data centers are nothing new. The fact that they've suddenly got press attention is because there aren't many other big industrial complexes being built right now. Also because they sometimes feature household names like Google, MS, Yahoo etc ...
Yes, the Swedes knew about this, and folklore abounds with warnings about penny wise and pound foolish. There is a wonderful old Temperance song: Shingling the Rumseller's Roof that pretty well sums up the mess we are in due to energy addiction http://polleymusic.lincolnlibraries.org/TemperanceRallySongsPart4h.pdf
Repairs and upgrades cost a phenomenal amount more.
I've run an internet service provider since 1994. Every year new competition would come online with new boxes that at half the cost and twice the power. I'd be supporting existing clients with legacy technology. Every upgrade was difficult and pissed off existing users. New clients would wonder why our system didn't work out of the box like new systems.
Ultimately, we realized it was cheaper to break and fix, just like the grid repairs. Shut down, redo, restart. Put the phones on hold and do it as fast as possible. There is no way to migrate everyone smoothly. From day 1 we thought internet access was a telco or cable job, so we went after the online commerce. But the same thing happened. We're on version 3 of our catalog system and may never get to version 4 because the transition will be impossibly complex and expensive. Too many interdependencies. And our competition is running on commodity sofware and hardware. Less capable but decoupled. I wonder how google deals with the Tainter problems?
Whether it's the highway system, the grid, just-in-time grain supplies, our economy as a whole - less energy (which is same as less expense) is going to force decentralization. So when the grid goes down, it won't be as much of it that goes down. A lot of the internet is like that, but the new COPE act, CALEA and surveillance provisions are driving it into a much more complex - and therefore unreliable - position. How human!
Our oil infrastructure underlies everything; it's highly complex and modern economics has stripped all the redundancy. One tanker taken out by a rocket on the high seas - what would that do to the system?
It seems impossible to replace oil with another more costly alternative at a lower EROEI point that will require an even larger, more complex and more costly infrastructure. The expense of alternatives and conversion to them is nearly unthinkable; the only real alternative is to back down the complexity. Anything that depends on building more technological infrastructure is not going to work until we decouple and decentralize.
Boy you should read Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies". The situations you describe are exactly like the problems evolving societies face as they become more complex (small problems that would be easily handled at a lower level of complexity become disruptive and insurmountable at a higher level of complexity) and the solutions you describe (decentralized, less complex) is what Tainter says is what is the inevitable final result.
Unfortunately, the transition periods can be very violent and wrenching, and a smaller population is ultimately supported.
50 countries? Don't feel bad. Read this "pledge of allegiance":
I pledge allegiance, to the flags,
Of the Divided States of America,
And to the Republics, for which they stand,
50 Nations, under Greed, further divisible,
with poverty and injustice, for most.
I developed that not-such-a-pledge back last century!
my version was always:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stood, one nation under the almighty dollar, divided, with liberty and justice for those who can afford it.
I pledge allegiance to the United States of Adam Smith and to the Republican Finger which they obey, one global economy, under Gold, indivisble, with profits and corporate liberty for those who can afford it. Amen.
Re: Electricity
I would like to make a pitch for one or more threads on the electrical grid, primarily in the United States, but also worldwide. Consider the following:
- Arguably even more than automobile transportation, electricity is fundamental to the way we live and work today
- Electricity has been gaining in share of all energy consumption since its inception
- Many of the peak oil mitigation solutions being proposed at the Oil Drum and elsewhere involve electricity, for example electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs, PHEVs), light rail, certain renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, and of course the rebirth of nuclear fission
- Electricity is relatively agnostic as to how it's generated and as such is a good energy exchange format between a wide variety of sources and sinks
- Electricity is in the news during the hot summer months as usage strains capacity
- Fossil fuel-based electricity generation, particularly coal, is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions
For these reasons and more, I for one would be quite interested in learning more about how the electrical grid works, not just technically, but economically and politically as well. I know there is a lot of information readily available, (http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html, for example), but it would be nice to see the topic discussed here. I don't have the expertise to write about the grid, but it's likely that qualified and willing contributors can be readily found amongst the Oil Drum community and their friends, professional colleagues and family members.Maybe we should contact these folks and see if they have an expert to help lead a discussion on the topic.
I am reposting my response that was near the bottom of the Khosla ethanol thread.
Here are my thoughts again.
1. Reduce consumption everywhere, particularly liquid fuels, via drive for efficiency of motors and conversion of fuel energy to work.
2. Eliminate waste everywhere. All waste will be some one elses raw material. Stop sending everything to Land fills. Ames Iowa has one of three Resource Recovery plants in the nation (built in the 1970's) that sorts metals, glass and others and and provides refuse derived fuel, RDF. The RDF is sent directly to the coal fired generating plant and reduces coal consumption very significantly, electric rates haven't changed for 25 years. We need more of this approach country wide.
3. Mass transit should be funded massively to reduce use of cars for work commuting. This can be electric, hybrid diesel or other and can be light rail buses or other. The goal is lots of bodies moved per btu's consumed.
4. Raise CAFE standards (double?) now with built in increases yearly. Make sure these can't be reversed if things improve in the short run.
5. Do not pick winning transportation strategy (hybrid, electric, hydrogen, NG, etc.) but allow 3) to crank up innovation.
6. Each state must identify the correct mix of alternative low fossil fuel energy to chase. This needs to be fostered with incentives provided nationally to holistically reduce energy consumption and start capturing renewable energy.
7. I live in Iowa and see ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans as viable for the midwest. Good EROEI in these states where irrigation is not needed. This technology should not be exported to all 50 states.
8. For the midwest it makes sense to maintain a liquid fuel supply to farm and transport agricultural commodities. Biofuels can meet this need with waste streams feeding animals or used for industrial purposes.
9. The loop on biofuels can be closed in the midwest. Percent of crop used to make fuel which is used to plant and harvest next crop with distillers grains and glycerine being used locally to make more food. If this can be done other places with other raw material it should be pursued. Energy must be captured and used locally, don't make ethanol from cellulose in New England and send it to Arizona for consumption. All the efficiency is lost in transportation.
10. The goal is for each state/region to manage their energy balance, gaining as much non fossil energy as possible from appropriate sources. Every southern state is a natural for solar cells on every roof surface.
11. Push solar, wind and micro-hydro at the individual consumer level. Facilitate a distributed grid for electricity production and storage. Lots of small generating sites rather than a few huge generating sites. Big companies can manage the maintenance and distribution system.
12. All of above should be set up to allow people to track their consumption and production of energy so that feed back loops get created.
13. Once people are more responsible for having to maintain more of their balance of energy they will hunt for ways to use less and make more on their own because it has direct financial benefit to them.
I believe in the silver BB's approach to reducing reliance on fossil fuel. Government and investment capital needs to stop trying to replace oil, NG and coal with technology X. Isn't going to happen. Invest instead in conservation approaches and on site energy capture.
This needs to be a 50 year, minimum, retooling of the United States. The Interstate highways took 50 years to build. The new transportation and energy system will take just as long but will be self sustainable when complete.
Over the 50 years it takes to get off oil and coal world population has to be allowed to decrease through lower birth rates matched with natural die off of elderly. If we stop having lots of children in 30-50 years 6 billion people will be die naturally at the end of their life span. At that time a smaller population can use the energy capture system that will have been built to maintain a stable population.
That's the vision. How do we convince moneyed and political interests to buy into that long term view at the expense of short term gain?
Those are all good suggestions...but I have two problems:
- Essentially, your thrust is to maintain the status quo. It seems to me that what is needed is a new societal paradigm, that is, one that leads away from a growth-based economy. Were this to occur, appropriate, necessary change will follow from it.
- A time-frame based upon change over a generation+ is unrealistic. I'm not even sure we have five years. My optimistic outlier is ten years.
ToddFurther, if we should really have a hard time before we can complete our investment in new infrastructure, then it will make finishing it that much harder. I think after the fall of Rome, civilization fell too far too fast, and look how long it took to dig its way back out.
"One cannot leap a great chasm in 2 bounds" - You either get to the other side in one, or you fall in the hole.
My approach might ( I stress might) if we really reduce fossil fuel consumption immediately. We can't go cold turkey the infrastructure won't allow it.
The problem I see is there is no real proactive plan to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Until we try and power some things with renewable, and prove how little energy will be available, there will be no target for energy consumption per person to shoot for. I see too many people voicing the concept of using all the fossil fuels we want until it is well past peak and then we will shift to "the new energy sources". That approach is dangerous.
Better to force consumption now, and start using alternatives now, giving us some emergency stored fossil fuel to make the 50 year transition. This approach is really for the developed countries to implement. The third world doesn't consume that much fossil fuel except as food. The world needs to know there isn't the carrying capacity for 6.5 Billion people. Not enough energy, not enough food without the energy. What is the carrying capacity using renewables? I haven't a clue but we better find out soon.
The goal needs to be a planned steep decline in use of energy and population. The alternative is dropping off a cliff. Both energy and population will crash. We will end at the same place wether we engineer the decline or we crash. The difference is what is left of civilization via the two paths.
Renewables can provide more than enough. Wind in the US could generate twice the electricity we use now. The earth receives 100,000 terawatts of solar energy continously from the sun, and humans use the equivalent of 4.5 terawatts on average.
It's late so you may not see this before this thread goes to thread heaven.
We all want to believe that there are alternatives that will work. But, the reality is that homo sapiens are sucking every resource dry - water, aerable land, gas, oil, the sea, minerals, forests; everything.
It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers. I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago. I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives.
I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience.
Todd
Well, I agree that there are serious problems with all of these. I haven't had time to research all of them thoroughly. But TOD is dedicated to peak oil, and I have had time to research PO and energy thoroughly, and as far as I can tell peak oil is NOT peak energy. I find that encouraging.
"It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers."
I'm not sure what you mean by this. It sounds a little...err...faith based. This seems unclear and fuzzy. I respect the role of intuition, but I find that I don't understand something in a clear way I get in trouble.
"I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago."
I've been interested in these things for more than 30 years too, ever since I read the Club of Rome's report.
"I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives. I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience."
Well...talking about this, and learning from each other, is what we do here. I know there are people feeling pessimistic, but that alone doesn't really tell me whether that makes sense, or give me a chance to change your mind. I think you shouldn't give up on things, and that includes not giving up on communication - we can't come to a consensus on things unless we talk about them.
One thing that interests me about renewables is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that, because they're renewable, they don't have a significant downside to their use.
All that solar energy being dumped on the Earth isn't going to waste, for example. Much of it heats the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, which makes conditions amenable for life. I wonder what environmental changes would result if humanity were to capture a significant chunk of solar energy, say 10 or 20 percent (20,000 terawatts), and redirect it through technological infrastructure. Sure, waste heat would contribute to keeping things warm (perhaps too warm!), but it would be distributed through the atmsophere in a different way. Could be detrimental.
I wonder what harnessing 4.5 to 9.0 terawatts via wind energy would due to local environments? Wind turbines tap into fluid momentum, and must produce a lot of friction on airflow. On a massive scale, wind "farms" could, perhaps, alter local wind-climates (at the surface), which may also have some interesting effects on local ecosystems.
Just some ideas. I would like to see more deep thought on just what the true ramifications may be for a full-scale "power-up" on renewables.
-best
Yes, I provided that link a few days ago :
Sow the Wind, Reap the Drag Coefficient (Dept. of "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it")
The thing you have to keep in mind is that the solar energy is typically absorbed as heat now. The likely places for solar panels is existing structures. PV might change the albedo a little, but not a whole lot. There are a lot of buildings with dark roofs, which absorb a lot already - PV might actually absorb less.
Heat engines (coal, nat gas, gasoline ICE's) throw
off 3 units of heat for every unit of electricity generated. IF solar absorbed an additional .1 unit for every unit generated, that would be a 30 to 1 difference, and that doesn't even include the reduction in CO2 and global warming.
If you were really concerned, it wouldn't be a big deal to make some human structures a little lighter to compensate for a little more absorption at the solar panels. Really, the whole effect is negligible.
However, I think the change of albedo would become significant if the goal is to collect a high percentage of insolation. If, for instance, an attempt to collect 80-90% of total insolation was successful, then the Earth's albedo must change from it's estimate of around 0.30.
Anyway, I'll keep thinking...
-best
Sure. Of course, that would be about 20,000 times as much energy as we use now. I think it's safe to say that human energy use will level out a long time before that.
- I think Americans could learn to drive about 10% less by carpooling, combining trips, vacationing closer to home, and god-forbid maybe even taking some trips on foot or bike.
- Reinstitue the 55 mph speed limit.
- Use the A/C in the car less.
These three steps could bring an immediate 10 to 20% reduction in gasoline use and could buy us a few years to make longer term and more dramatic changes such as:- increased electric rail in cities and towns.
- dramatic reductions in personal automobile use.
- returning to rail and river as the main means of shipping.
- slowly migrating out of the suburbs and megalopolises and back into our small cities and towns. My little town alone (pop. 15000) has 500,000 sq ft of unused space above the shops of our 6 or 7 block downtown retail district. In the 19th century, these were used as apartments. Today no one lives there bc/ of the lack of parking, but they could very easily be converted back to 500 or so housing units without any new construction. These floors are literally just sitting empty or maybe store the owner's junk. On several of our streets, the rails that haven't been used by electric trolleys in 60 years are still in place.
I see the "powerdown" as a return to a late 19th century standard of living. Lots of walking, mass transit, a substantially increased percentage of people working in agriculture, less cross country and international travel. more river and rail transport.The future may look a lot like the past:
I remember sharing rides being fairly common in the 70s when I was a kid. If one person had a car, there were several people who knew them and a ride for the one person into town often ended up being a ride into town for a couple of their pals too. In fact a person would be considered standoffish, greedy/cold if they always drove by themself. We'd have really been hurting without welfare though. As 'rough' as my memories of the dirty 70s, are, they'll be nothing compared to the 2nd great depression coming up.
Also, reinstating the 55 mph limit will not necessarily make people drive 55 mph. I actually think the limit has little bearing on how fast people actually drive.
My car's a darkish color and heats up quite a bit, I have to run the AC once the outside temperature exceeds 75F! I could avoid using the AC a lot more if it were a much lighter color, and didn't have a huge expanse of black dashboard under the sloping windshield. Anyone who has a Prius knows what I mean.
The A/C unit aboard a car will use up energy if for no other reason being that it causes the engine to have a faster idle. That causes the gas mileage drop. With my Kia Rio of Year 2001 the car has the mpg as above. 28 in winter and 24.5 in summer. Aggressive driving is no help! :)
It's easy to combine trips on a commuting mission. You can stop off at this or that mall on a mission home but you still use that damn gas for the mission home. That is the problem for the commuter. I use 3 fifths of gas each way as of now. I will use two fifths each way once I move. In a push-come-to-shove case, I will be able to use a bus as a "booster rocket" to get a bicycle toward where I work.
It's plenty about time that suburbanitic people think in terms of gas use instead of "minutes". That is, "gallons away" or "liters away". See above, and I think in terms of a "fifth" with the gas! Just yesterday, I saw a gas station with a sign of $3.76-and-the-9 a gallon. One penny short of a buck a liter. That was for the premium stuff. Buck a liter gas is coming, like it or not.
That with suburbanitic people thinking in terms of "minutes away" has always escaped me. The assumption is always that you use a car. If you don't always use a car, miles (or kilometers) becomes the better measure of distance. Time will depend on distance and transit use, and your walking. If you walk fast, you get to reduce travel time.
I would imagine the grids are contructed whereas to spend as little money as possible to keep it going. Just my thoughts! It's all about the money!
When we first built it, we never imagined the load we would one day put on it, nor how dependent upon it we would eventually be. That makes it hard to rebuild and repair the system.
What they could not imagine were probably that the electricity distribution companies would neglect to continue invest and build upon their exelent system and that people at large would stop necessery investments due to NIMBY.
There is an old Swedish farmers saying for this that litteraly translates "To live on rust and rot", that is neglecting to maintain and reinvest in your houses and equipment and letting them wear down. An existance for retiering people withouth heirs, for people who dont care much about the future.
Then there's the Internet. I doubt anyone foresaw today's giant server farms in the '60s, let alone the '30s.
The 800 kV level were proposed and planned for in the 70:s to interconnect the nuclear powerplants in southern Sweden and it would then probably have started to replace 220 kV and 400 kV lines. The proposal died in the general technology scepticism following the nuclear power debate. There are rumours that a lot of the 400 kV poles installed in the 80:s are prepaired for lenghtening for a future conversion to 800 kV.
There must surely have been a simmilar development in the USA for your numerous coal and nuclear powerplants built in the 60:s and 70:s. It would be quite odd if the backbone of your grid were fromn the about a 100 kV era.
The building of main grid lines have been a slow addition of DC-links, upgrades of old 220 kV lines and a few new short 400 kV lines for better redundancy after the building boom during the height of our nuclear investments. Investments are planned to increase to facilitate more power trading and more redundancy. I have heard no rumours about 800kV upgrades but it is undecided if a new major link in southern Sweden should be 400 kV overhead line or a HVDC cable. There is also a major reworking of the Stockholm power distribution underway. But we are not especially different from you, this would probably not have happened if we not had had a few major outtages showing that that the redundancy were incomplete and the grid did not deliver the expected quality of service. I am afraid that proactive maintainance and investment needs an accident now and then, hopefully one can learn from others mistakes.
As I drive home on my commute, I get to see (and marvel at) a substation. You have the "extreme" voltage transmission lines go to it, then it feeds huge transformers and it has giant capacitors to even out power factor. The conductors between the parts are exposed pieces of pipe.
In downtown Chicago, the extreme voltage power is carried underground. But that takes heavy-duty insulation on the wiring. Possible all right, but not cheap. Even a "mere" 4,200 volts takes some impressive insulation on the wires. It's way cheaper to have exposed cable on towers for long range power transmission - despite lossiness.
This is due to a cables higher capacitance to ground. During a period this capacitance is charged and if the cable is long enough it is time to reverse the current flow when the cable is fully charged leaving no power to extract for doing work at the other end. (Not a very good explanation :-( )
An overhead cable also have better natural cooling then an insulated cable making it possible to run a higher currant thru the same gauge of conducting metal.
Making it possible to use long cables and to exchange power between unsyncronized AC grids were the original reasons for developing HVDC. It is also more efficient for very long overhead power lines due to the same unsensitivity to the lines capacitance.
Also as the voltage goes up so do the corona losses (the slight crackle you can hear and the blue glow on wet nights). The extent of corona lines depends on electric field strength near the conductors and the smaller the conductor the higher the field strength at its surface. Very high voltage lines use multiple strands on each phase separated by spacers to approximate a larger diameter conductor and so lower the electric field strength.
The number of strands is increased as the voltage rises. This shows a four strand conductor. You would need to upgrade the conductors as well as the insulators if you increased the voltage.
Yeah, the raft of 1U servers I have in the Portland Maine colo all have 450 watt power supplies. I've never understood what that means in terms of real power draw - except that power draw in not something the manufacturers want to reduce - they would rather bragg about it.
I'm in process of replacing all the servers in my local office with laptops and mean to get John Howe to spec me out a solar system to keep them going on 12v. I'll be able to sleep at night knowing all the servers in the colo are backed up with honking diesels. Grrr.
Lots of local electronics ought to run quite nicely on 12 or 24 vdc.
I do NOT know what the load of a 24x7 server with a 450 watt power supply really is. Except that to it one must add a lot of air conditioning. Does anyone have good numbers?
cfm
But for standard operational use they're almost always connected to the local electricity companies. Some are connected to several, with redundant feeds coming in at opposite ends of the building.
From News.com:
Wow! However, consider that this is the "world's largest data center." Census.gov says the population of Honolulu was about 380,000. So by their estimate, each person in a city draws almost 500 watts. They don't say exactly how many square feet the installation was, but assuming the warehouse area was half the land area, it would be roughly 3.75 million sq. ft. This gives a power draw of almost 50 watts per square foot.
Then from a Charlotte newspaper:
OK, but vague with no mention of the size of such a farm.
The New York Times wrote in April 2001:
This sounds questionable, if the "world's largest" farm draws only the same amount. Where can you find 174 acres in the South Bronx??
This last number is obviously an editing error: 100 kilowatts per square foot would set the installation on fire in seconds! They meant 60 - 100 watts.
This is confirmed by Armory Lovins:
So 60 watts/sq. ft sounds like a reasonable ballpark number. What would an "average" data farm be, though? A 100x250 foot building filled with computers sounds pretty darn big to me, but by these numbers it would only draw 1.5 megawatts - a "city" of about 3000 people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14search.html?ex=1307937600&en=d96a72b3c5f91c47& ;ei=5090
Repairs and upgrades cost a phenomenal amount more.
I've run an internet service provider since 1994. Every year new competition would come online with new boxes that at half the cost and twice the power. I'd be supporting existing clients with legacy technology. Every upgrade was difficult and pissed off existing users. New clients would wonder why our system didn't work out of the box like new systems.
Ultimately, we realized it was cheaper to break and fix, just like the grid repairs. Shut down, redo, restart. Put the phones on hold and do it as fast as possible. There is no way to migrate everyone smoothly. From day 1 we thought internet access was a telco or cable job, so we went after the online commerce. But the same thing happened. We're on version 3 of our catalog system and may never get to version 4 because the transition will be impossibly complex and expensive. Too many interdependencies. And our competition is running on commodity sofware and hardware. Less capable but decoupled. I wonder how google deals with the Tainter problems?
Whether it's the highway system, the grid, just-in-time grain supplies, our economy as a whole - less energy (which is same as less expense) is going to force decentralization. So when the grid goes down, it won't be as much of it that goes down. A lot of the internet is like that, but the new COPE act, CALEA and surveillance provisions are driving it into a much more complex - and therefore unreliable - position. How human!
Our oil infrastructure underlies everything; it's highly complex and modern economics has stripped all the redundancy. One tanker taken out by a rocket on the high seas - what would that do to the system?
It seems impossible to replace oil with another more costly alternative at a lower EROEI point that will require an even larger, more complex and more costly infrastructure. The expense of alternatives and conversion to them is nearly unthinkable; the only real alternative is to back down the complexity. Anything that depends on building more technological infrastructure is not going to work until we decouple and decentralize.
cfm
Unfortunately, the transition periods can be very violent and wrenching, and a smaller population is ultimately supported.
oops.
-marku
I pledge allegiance, to the flags,
Of the Divided States of America,
And to the Republics, for which they stand,
50 Nations, under Greed, further divisible,
with poverty and injustice, for most.
I developed that not-such-a-pledge back last century!
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stood, one nation under the almighty dollar, divided, with liberty and justice for those who can afford it.
I pledge allegiance to the United States of Adam Smith and to the Republican Finger which they obey, one global economy, under Gold, indivisble, with profits and corporate liberty for those who can afford it. Amen.