129 comments on Our World Is Finite: The Implications of Resource Limitations
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Gail,
On discussion question number 4, How can businesses prepare for interruptions in electrical service?
A growing number of businesses are installing solar power. These include Alcoa, Walmart, Costco, Khols, FedEX, GM, Macys, Gap, Frito-Lays, Hall's Warehouse, and others. You can follow some of the developments at environmentalleader.com.
Chris
Those solar installations are probably grid tied, no battery storage...so if the power/grid goes so does their solar power.
Most of the time businesses are open is during the day time. If the solar panels would help keep the lights on and cash registers working then, they would be helpful.
I have seen pictures of programmers in India doing their work using computers with a solar panel attached .
The businesses are installing solar to save money on power but if grid reliability becomes an issue, I'd guess they would make any modification that might be needed to avoid losing business. We expect to have a manual switch that allows operation when the grid is down (but the Sun is not) for our residential systems. A three phase setup might be a little more complex, but likely a smaller cost relative to power output.
Chris
I think before plugin hybrid cars we might see homes and offices with large UPS (uninterruptible power supply) batteries. The talk is they will be able to get 20 kilowatt hours into a suitcase sized battery. That will keep the puters and CF lights going but not the AC.
The talk is they will be able to get 20 kilowatt hours into a suitcase sized battery. That will keep the puters and CF lights going but not the AC.
Consider a smallish well-insulated suburban house with an 18,000 BTU air conditioner (1.5 tons), 16 SEER (you can get more efficient units these days), that runs 8 hrs/day during the worst of the season. That works out to 9.0 kWh/day, so that suitcase-sized battery could run it for a couple of days. If we're talking about lots of short outages, such a battery could carry you over; if we're talking about days-long outages, that's a different matter.
A patent for such a battery that can be sold at a reasonable price (say, less than $3K just as a point to talk around) that can be made reasonably rugged is going to make someone very rich. One such battery gives you roughly a 60-mile all-electric range in a hybrid auto (assuming you don't want to run the battery below about 25% charged); three of them give you a two-day backup for the typical 30 kWh/day suburban household; three days if that household has done the easy things like CFL and reduced their load to 20 kWh/day. In at least some parts of the US, four such batteries, split between the house and cars -- if deployed ubiquitously -- would be enough to allow local solar/wind to power home and personal transportation needs.