Showing posts with label sabotage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sabotage. Show all posts

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 3: When The Lights Went Out, Part 2

Will Harper, Thursday, July 20, 2028

In the middle of the night Will woke up with a full bladder. As usual he took care of that without needing to turn on a light and disturb Sue, but on the way back to bed he realized the attic fan wasn't running. He flicked on the bathroom light, just to confirm his suspicion. Nothing—the power was out again. But he was only half awake and said to himself, fuck it until morning, it's probably just a hiccup in the process of getting the provincial grid pieced back together, anyway.

In the morning the lights were still out. Coming back from the bathroom, Will sat on the edge of the bed, picked up his cell phone from the night stand and called Joe.

"'lectrical Maintenance. Joe speakin'."

"Hi Joe, it's Will Harper again. What's up with the power outage?"

"You won't believe this one," Joe replied, "All but two of the tower lines leaving the Bruce site fell down in the wind last night. Several towers down in a row on each line, just a couple of miles off site. Hell of a mess."

"I didn't think it was that big a wind," said Will.

"It wasn't," said Joe, "it appears that all the towers that went down were sabotaged so they'd fall in even a moderate wind."

"Shit!"

"It gets worse," said Joe, "same thing happened at Pickering and Darlington, and at three of the ties to the US. And the event in Quebec that started yesterday's outage now appears to have been sabotage too."

"Wow, you folks have got your work cut out for you," said Will, "any guess as to when you'll be turning the province back on?"

"Well, some areas are going to be out longer than others," said Joe. "And with all those 230KV and 500KV lines out and the nukes disconnected from the system, we'll be relying mainly on hydro power and at this time of year there is a limited amount of water available. So we're asking all industrial customers to stay shut down for the duration and there'll be rotating black outs for many residential areas.

"The good news is Unit 8 at Bruce B didn't trip off and is running on condense now, heating the lake while waiting to be connected to some load. The tower lines to Owen Sound and Hanover are still standing, and there are ties to the rest of the system from there. That nuke unit can't respond quickly to changes in load, so we need to get some more dispatchable generation on line as well before we can turn any lights back on. Combustion turbines, natural gas units and/or hydraulic units would do. Even then, though, there still won't be enough generation to carry much load, so we'll have to leave most people turned off, and the system, such as it is, will be pretty unstable. It'll stay like that until we get some of the big lines back up to connect more nuclear units to the system."

"So, what are we talking here—days... weeks?" asked Will.

"For this end of the province, where the load is light, probably a day or so," replied Joe. "But expect random interruptions for weeks after that, until we get the downed lines back in service. As soon as the power does come on, I'd stock up on gasoline for that generator of yours."

"Sounds like a good idea, Joe," said Will. "And other things as well—this is going to play hell with supply chains."

"That's not in my wheelhouse," said Joe, "but yeah, things are going to be a mess for the next few weeks."

"Well, I guess I should let you go," said Will, "try not to work too hard."

"Right now I'm just sitting here in my Hydro truck, looking at the mess," said Joe, "but before long we're going to get real busy. Talk to you later."

"Later."

Will was outright shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and it blew his feeling of having things under control right out of the water. He got dressed in something of a daze, joined Sue down stairs in the kitchen, and told her the news.

"Wow, that's quite a disaster, if I read it right," she said.

"I think you do," said Will. "Gas stations and grocery stores are the first worry. The minute the power comes back on, we need to get out and get stocked up on quite a few things."

"OK, sounds good. You think any of the stores will try to open up without power?" she asked.

"Maybe so, or they might have generators," answered Will. "We should scare up some breakfast and then go see what's what with Inverpen's retailers."

"You want to set up the Coleman stove out on the deck and I'll cook us some breakfast or do you plan to start up the generator right away?" she asked.

"I'll get the generator going and cool down the freezers and fridge. The generator will run the microwave too, and oatmeal is good enough for me." Will said.

"OK, I'll get the oatmeal ready to go and check on the ice in the fridge. Maybe put some more bottles of water in the freezer to freeze."

A repeat performance of the afternoon before ensued. Will had just gotten the generator running, and was wondering what to do about his neighbours when Rick Brown from across the street showed up, with an extension cord in hand.

"Mornin' Will," Rick said.

"Mornin' Rick," said Will. "Can I lend you some electrons?"

"You'll just want me to give them back right away."

"That is the way it works," said Will with a chuckle. Rick was a retired highschool shop teacher, one of the few people around that Will could swap electrical jokes with. "You hear what's going on with the power outage?"

"They've been talking about it on the radio," answered Rick, "sabotage, lines down just outside all the nuclear stations?"

"Yeah, that's about it," said Will. "I've been thinking that I probably should be taking steps to make the gas I've got stored in my shed last longer."

"Hell, it's your generator, I'm just along for the ride, and glad to get it." said Rick, "What are you thinking of?"

"Well, if we only run the generator for a couple of hours in the morning and the same in the evening, it would help a lot," said Will. "That would keep the freezers cold and allow us to use them to make ice to use in our refrigerators. Normally a fridge warms up in a couple of hours after the power goes out, but if you put a few plastic jugs of ice in it, it'll stay cold while the generator is off in the middle of the day and at night. If you don't stand around with the door open, anyway."

"Sounds good to me," said Rick. "How long will your supply of gas last if you do it that way?"

"Well," said Will, "that will be interestng to see. The gas tank on this generator holds 20 liters, and it's rated to run 8 hours at half load on those 20 liters. It's a 5500 watt generator, so half load is 2250 watts. I'm talking about running it 4 hours a day, and I don't expect to every use close to that much power, so let's assume we get 12 hours from a tank, at a guess. That's 3 days per tank of fuel. I've got 3 jerry cans full of gas, 20 liters each, and an empty one I hope to fill up today. So, along with the gas that's in the machine, that would be 15 days altogether. More if we don't use too much power."

"OK, how much power does a fridge or freezer use?" asked Rick.

"Depending on the size, between 100 and 150 watts, running" replied Will. " Quite a bit more while starting, but that surge only lasts for seconds. I've got a fridge and two freezers, which use around 350 watts if they are all running together. But they don't run continuously, of course—they shut down once they get cold enough and start again when they warm up. And Sue's using the microwave right now, which is 900 watts, but it'll only be on for a few minutes."

"We've got a fridge and a freezer," said Rick, "and I may hook some lights up in the evening."

"Me too," said Will. "One thing—be sure not to try to liven up your whole house, say with a double male extension cord. If you forget to open your main breaker, you'll by trying to liven up the whole system. Probably trip my generator off, but it can be pretty hard on any linemen who happen to be working at the time."

"And if I don't forget?" asked Rick.

"It's still against code, but on your head be it," said Will. "Really though, anything you want to run, just unplug it from the receptacle it's plugged into now and plug it into the end of that cord. I see it's a triple ended cord, so that should be good enough. Anything that's wired in solid rather than plugged in, I can show you how to put it on a plug and receptacle so you can easily switch it over to the generator. Someday down the road you might want to get a transfer switch installed."

"Yeah, this'll be fine, for now" said Rick. "So you're expecting to be without power for over two weeks?"

"Well, you know, my buddy in the switchyard crew at Bruce says they might have power back to this area in a day or two. He doesn't think it will be very stable though, lots of random outages, and maybe weeks until things are completely back to normal. How many weeks—who knows."

"Pretty hard to plan a response when you have no idea what's coming," said Rick.

"Yep," said Will, "in many ways, this situation poses more of a challenge than a long term outage. And with power out all over the province, I have some concerns about supply chains, like how long local supplies of fuel and food will last."

"So many relatively short outages, but no chance to top up your fuel supply in between?"

"Something like that. Groceries may be a problem too, and possibly water and sewage" said Will. "Anyway, why don't you plug that cord into my ground fault receptacle up front, just like we did yesterday."

"OK," said Rick, "and you just go ahead and shut down when you figure the time is right."

A few minutes later Will had cords run to his other two neighbours' houses and grabbed his empty jerry can from the shed. He went up front and got the spare, and currently empty, propane tank from the side deck and put them both in the back of the car. He then joined Sue inside at the breakfast table. She had a steaming bowl of oatmeal with chopped dates and a cup of coffee ready for him, just the way he liked it.

"Thanks, Sue," said Will, "as my bother Tom would say, you are a gem! What's on the radio?"

"Talk about the outage, mainly," she answered, "all kinds of speculation about who is responsible for the sabotage. Based on exactly zero facts."

"But no word of anyone actually being caught in the act, eh?"

"No, and no one claiming credit for all the damage either," answered Sue.

"It's early days yet," said Will, "pretty hard to keep anything this widespread secret for long."

"You got that right," said Sue. "So you want to drive around town and see what's open?"

"Yep. At the very least, I'd like to fill up the empty jerry can, the propane tank and the car too," answered Will. "And if any of the grocery stores are open, we should stock up on any basics we're short on. I guess we should do a quick inventory before we leave, and grab the emergency cash stash...."

They had no problem getting gas and propane at the Co-op Gas Bar on the corner of Broadway and Queen, cash only. The Gas Bar was operated by The Country Depot, situated in back of them, which was also open, generator purring away in the background. The Circle K convenience store, kitty corner across from the Gas Bar was open too and glad to take cash for a 4 litre bag of milk. As long as supplies lasted. And they too had a generator running, so the milk was cold.

A short cruise down the main street revealed no open stores, so they headed out to the mall. Nobody there was open either. It sounded like No Frills had a generator running to keep their coolers and freezers working, but their doors were locked, and a hand lettered sign said they weren't ready to try selling anything without a working internet connection.

Out on the highway, Sobies, Inverpen's other supermarket, was also closed, as were Canadian Tire, RONA and Home hardware, along with all the other retailers and restaurants in that part of town.

Back home an hour later, Will sat on his side deck and mulled over the mixed results of their retail survey. It occurred to him that none of Inverpen's three pharmacies were open. Fortunately neither he nor Sue had an prescriptions that need to be filled right away. But it would no doubt be a problem for some people. Still, if the power came back on in a day or two, with the stores open and deliveries coming in from out of town, none of this would be insurmountable. That's a pretty big if, though, thought Will.

His brother Tom always said, "the only question you ever have to answer is what to do next."

Well, he needed to shut off the generator soon, and then put up some sort of tent over it so he could leave it out and running if it started to rain. Then he felt an urge to organize some sort of get together with his neighbours, maybe a pot luck or "stone soup" supper. But first, it would be good to see what Tom thought about all this.

Tom answered on the third ring, "Hi Will, how's it going?"

"To hell in a hand basket, seems like," replied Will.

"Maybe so," said Tom, "but are you and Sue OK?"

"Oh, we're fine," said Will, "you and Karen ?"

"We're good," said Tom. "we talked to the kids and they seem to be coping. The power is off, but our generator is working, we've got lots of gas and food—we're hardly even inconvenienced."

"Same here. Most of the stores are closed for now." said Will. "But Joe Manelli at Hydro One says they should have the power back on in a day or two around here."

"OK, so what does Joe say about the sabotage?"

"You've heard about the sabotage?" asked Will

"Yeah, I have my sources," said Tom.

"Joe says most of the tower lines are down just outside all of our nuke plants, and at the main ties to the States, as well" said Will.

"Yes and I understand something similar is happening in the States, and that some of the oil and gas pipelines in both countries have been hit as well," said Tom.

"That so? Sounds like it's even worse than I thought," said Will.

"You've always been an optimist, little brother," said Tom, "so, yeah, probably."

"Ha, ha," replied Will, "what's this all about anyway—why the sabotage, and why now?"

"Looks like some people finally lost patience with the lack of action on climate change and other environmental problems," said Tom.

"And this is going to solve those problems?" said Will, his voice rising with disbelief.

"Well, there is a lot of money sunk in the infrastructure for fossil fuels and consumer culture, and it's still making the owners a lot of money, even though it's fucking up the planet in the process," said Tom. "The argument goes that we'll never change until we're forced to abandon that investment. Like by having it sabotaged repeatedly, and eventually rendered unprofitable."

"Repeatedly?" ask Will, "you mean this is likely to happen again after we get things pieced back together?"

"There are lots of targets that haven't been hit yet, so it seems likely that it will keep on happening," said Tom, "and then, yes, when stuff get's fixed it's likely to be hit again, and again. Maybe until we give up on fixing it. Not my idea and not something I support, but there are a lot of people who have had it up to here with business as usual."

"That sounds pretty extreme," said Will, "isn't there something that could be done to stop the sabotage?"

"You spent your whole career in the utility business, Will," said Tom, "you know how spread out and exposed all of our energy infrastructure is, and how many people it would take to post a guard on all of it, right?"

"I'll give you that Tom," replied Will, "And I guess if you can't guard the whole length of a pipeline or power line, there's little point in guarding it at all. The saboteurs would just find an unguarded section and do their thing there. Tough and expensive to find competent guards, too."

"Exactly," said Tom, "If there is any hope of stopping this, it's in finding the people who are doing the sabotage and putting them in jail. Eventually they'll trip up and give themselves away, but who knows how long that will take."

"So far they have been pretty quiet," Will said. "which unfortunately is a good first step towards not getting caught."

"Not much we can do about that anyway," said Tom. "I am more worried about how the economy is going to react the shock."

"You're be thinking that this is going to lead to a recession?" asked Will.

"Damn right," said Tom, "more likely a depression, and a long one. We've been teetering on the edge of one since the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think this may push us over the edge. The economy runs on energy and energy systems are what's being hit."

"Yeah, I can see that," said Will, "So the economy will slow down and businesses will close. Lots of people will lose their jobs, and have no money to spend, and it will snowball."

"Yes, all that will likely happen," said Tom, "but you know what really scares me?"

"No," said Will, "what?"

"The system we've set up to supply us with the necessities of life. Energy for sure, but also water, food, medicines, clothing, housing, you name it. There's two issues really. One is the fragility of the production facilities and supply chains. All highly exposed to sabotage. And also hugely dependent on a reliable supply of electricity and diesel fuel at a reasonable price. Not too say raw materials and spare parts that come from far away...."

"Isn't that enough of a problem?" said Will. "What's this second issue?"

"Well, we've let capitalism take over the responsibility for supplying us with all this stuff," said Tom. "The whole system is owned and operated by capitalists. Even though we are totally dependent on them, they aren't in business for our benefit—their only goal is profit. During a depression, as business becomes less profitable they will do a poorer job until finally they just quit. With no thought as to the consequences for the rest of us."

"The 'poorer job' consisting of higher prices, lower quality, less variety and worse service until they finally shut down altogether," said Will, "I've been reading your blog for years, Tom. And I think you've got things figured out just about right. But as you always say, the only thing that matters now is what do we do next. So, uh, what do we do next?"

"Well, what we need to do is adapt to the changes that are coming," said Tom. " First we need to cope with capitalism in crisis, as it gradually crumbles. While we're living through that, we need to be planning ahead for when they finally give up, and have something ready to replace them."

"A bit late to start preparing at this point, isn't it?" asked Will.

"No, I don't think so," said Tom."Fortunately, things aren't going to fall apart all at once, not everywhere, and not for all people. Some particularly unlucky people will be hit really hard—some already have been, for years now, in some parts of the world. But most people not so much. Their power will be out for a few days, they'll be scraping the bottom of their pantry before the grocery stores open, and their gas tanks will be empty. And then it will be back to something like normal for a while.

"For the sharp ones this will be a wakeup call—the incentive they need to get them working on adaptation. I intend to be one of those people and I imagine you will too. Those who don't catch on during this first pass will be given repeated opportunities to do so. And of course there will be some who, years from now, decades maybe, are still saying, 'just another year or so and everything will be back to normal.'"

"All that's pretty abstract," said Will. "what the hell can I do today?"

"Well, the power is off and most stores are closed," said Tom, "so for the moment you're stuck with the preparations you've already done. You can put those preps to work, take notes on how they work, and what you'd like to change or add when you can. I imagine we'll all decide we need deeper pantries, more gas on hand for our generators, maybe some solar panels. So far the municipal water and sewage are working, but we should probably make sure we are ready for those services to fail as well."

"We've still got the composting toilet you left when you sold us this place," said Will. "And the jugs of water in the root cellar. I even change out the water regularly. We've got a small stash of cash, but so far hardly any place to spend it. So I'm thinking that maybe not so important..."

"Now you're getting closer to the crux of this — you can't rely on capitalism so much for what you need," said Tom, "Get more skeptical about any solution that consists mainly of buying things. Get used to living without shopping and most of the other forms of canned entertainment the we've all grown so used to."

"That will be a big change, and a hard one," said Will.

"Damn right. I know old collapsniks whose houses are full of 'preps'. Prepping is what they've been doing for fun for years now. That stuff might last them a year or two at best," said Tom. "Then what are they going to do? They don't even know the people next door to them."

"I guess it's time to reach out to our neighbours and start working on the mutual aid thing," said Will. "I've been thinking about inviting some of the people around here to supper tonight. Also got to put a tarp over the generator."

"Is it going to rain any time soon?" asked Tom.

"Doesn't look like it," answered Will.

"Then I'd say talk that supper over with Sue and if she's keen, go do the inviting first," said Tom. "When you've got a crowd gathered, and you've just filled their stomachs, you can probably get some help with putting that tarp up. Might be the start of a more long term solution."

"You know, I think you're right. I should get going on that," said Will, "And I should let you go so you can do something similar. 'Bye for now."

"'Bye Will."

Will Harper, Saturday, July 21, 2040

"Anyway, we did have a big pot of 'stone soup' that night, with a dozen of our neighbours contributing. The start of a mutual aid project that is a whole other story," said Will Harper, wrapping up the story he'd been telling Alan.

"Well, I'd like to hear that story," said Alan, "but it will have to wait for another day, if you're going to get that tour."

"We can get to the tour in a minute," said Will. "But first, I've got to ask you a question."

"Yes?"

"The sign over your gateway out there—it looks like a cave painting. What's that all about?"

Alan laughed out loud, "It's a reminder of something that happened when we'd only been here a few weeks, and many of us think we ought never forget. The first bunch of us were all moved in, the truck unloaded and taken back to the rental place, and we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out where we were headed. I guess you could say I stuck my foot in it and Dad kinda flipped...."

Coming soon, The Porcupine Sage, Part 4: The Sign Above Our Gate, Alan Harper, Tuesday, April 9, 2030


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Sunday, 30 April 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 2: When The Lights Went Out, Part 1

Will Harper, Wednesday, July 19, 2028

Another drop of sweat ran off Will Harper's brow and into his right eye. He straightened up and leaned on his hoe while running a finger tip through the eye to get rid of the sweat, reducing the stinging to a tolerable level.

It was as hot as Will could remember it ever being in Inverpen, with not even a hint of a breeze off Lake Huron for relief. He still had ten feet left to weed in the row of beans, and as Co-ordinator for the Community Garden, he felt he had to set a good example, keeping the weeds down in his own plot. So damn hot, though.

He set the hoe down and walked to where his water bottle sat in the shade by the fence. He took a good swig of the not very cold water and splashed the last of it on his face. Somewhat refreshed, he picked up the hoe again, did a quick and dirty weeding of the remainder of the row, and decided that the rest of the plot could wait for a cooler day, hopefully soon to come. He locked the gate behind him, put the hoe away in the barn and set off up the hill for home.

Normally he would have taken the walking path along the river, but he had his heart set on a colder drink than lukewarm water, likely available at a coffee shop downtown. So instead of the path under the bridge, he continued up the park's laneway and turned right onto Queen St. It wasn't far to Inverpen's four block downtown. Something didn't seem right and it took Will a moment to figure it out. The town's main street boasted four traffic lights, all visible from where he stood, and none of them were on. A power outage of some sort was in progress, it seemed. The Community Garden didn't have power, so he had no idea when this had started.

He continued up the street to the second intersection and first traffic light. Traffic wasn't heavy and people seemed to be doing a good job of applying the "treat a dead traffic light like a four way stop" rule, but he paused anyway and then crossed gingerly, not wanting to be the first exception. Huron Beans, a coffee shop that he frequented regularly was only a few doors down on the west side of the street, and he stepped inside.

"Any chance of getting a cold drink?" he asked the young woman behind the counter.

"They're in the cooler behind you," she replied, "better get one while they are still cold—the power's off. And we can only take cash, nothing else is working."

"OK." He picked a bottle of still icy cold Diet Coke from the cooler, and fished in his pocket for some change. "How long's the power been off?"

"Since around three, about half an hour ago," she answered. "And that'll be two fifty nine."

She looked up from the calculator app on her smart phone and opened the cash box that sat nearby on the counter.

Will handed her a looney and a twoney. She put them in the cash box and handed him back his change, then noted the sale on a pad that sat next to the cashbox. "The radio isn't working either," she said, indicating a battery powered radio on the shelf behind her. "Or rather, it is, but there's nothing but static on AM and FM, no local stations transmitting. Nothing from farther away either. Must be a pretty wide spread outage."

"Sounds like what happened in 2003 and 2025," Bill replied, dropping the change in the tip jar. "Which is good, since if that's the case, it shouldn't take long to get things back on, at least around here. Power was only out about 4 hours in 2003 and 3 hours in 2025. Do you know if phones are working?"

"The landline here is working—I talked to the boss about how to set up to take cash and keep paper records," she said. "Haven't tried my cell phone yet."

"I'll try mine, and see if I can find out what's going on." Will pulled his smart phone out of his shirt pocket and called Joe, foreman of the crew at Hydro One that Will had worked on before he retired.

Joe answered quickly with " 'lectrical Maintenace. Joe speakin'."

"Hi Joe. It's Will Harper, what's up with the outage?"

"Hi Will, can't talk long, we're just arranging to turn things back on. Another system stability outage, like in 1965, 2003 and 2025. Way too much air conditioning load, and we're connected directly to Quebec now. They had a hiccup and it took out the whole of the northeast. Gotta go."

"Thanks, Joe. Take it easy," replied Will, but Joe was already gone. To the woman behind the counter he said, "The whole of northeastern North America is out. Should be back on in a few hours, though."

"Good to know. We close at 4, do you think the power will be back on by then?"

"I wouldn't think quite that soon." Will responded, not wanting to make promises his former employer couldn't keep. "Well, I'd better be getting home. See you later."

"Yep, see you too," she replied as Will turned and went out the door.

He headed north along Queen St. and then turned left onto Durham St. The heat was starting to get to him and he felt a little shaky, so he stopped for a rest in the shade on the bench in front of the Post Office. Heat waves had grown much more common these last few years as global warming really started to take hold of things, but usually cold, deep Lake Huron moderated things quite a bit.

But not so much today, thought Will. He fanned himself with his wide brimmed hat and drank his Coke. In a few minutes, he felt better and continued on his way.

"Hey Sue, I'm home," Will called out as he came in the front door. He proceeded through the kitchen and into the living room, where his wife Sue was relaxing on the couch reading a book. "The power is out. Another system stability outage."

"Yeah, I know the power's off. I brought some of bottles of ice up from the freezer and put them on the top shelf in the fridge to keep things cool," she replied. "I would have got the generator set up, but it's just too heavy to get it out of the shed."

"No problem," said Will, "I am heading in that direction now."

But first, he stopped at the fridge. A little mechanical thermometer hung from the bottom shelf and read nicely within its green zone, a few degrees below 40 Fahrenheit. Sue had rearranged things so that the three bottles of ice were on the top shelf and everything else was closer to the bottom. The temperature seemed to be holding well, but the ice would have to be changed regularly if he couldn't get the power on.

"Hey Sue," said Will, "that ice is really working well in the fridge."

"Thanks, Will," replied Sue, "even better if we can keep the door closed."

Will chuckled at that and headed downstairs to the basement, where he opened the disconnect switch for the electric water heater and pulled the plug for the electric clothes dryer. That finished the short list of loads too heavy for the generator. It wouldn't handle the kitchen range either, if the oven and all four elements where on at once. But he preferred to keep open the option of using one or two elements at a time.

Will continued through his workshop and out the back door. He smiled a little, pleased once more that house was built into the side of a hill, the main floor at the level of the front yard and the basement at level of the back yard. A few steps put him in front of the shed where he stored the generator. The wide single step in front of the shed wasn't attached and could be turned 90 degrees and used as a ramp for rolling things in and out. Will turned it around, then opened the shed's double doors and set the near end of the step/ramp up on the door sill.

It being summertime, the lawnmower sat at the front inside the shed, and Will had to roll it down the ramp and set it aside before he could access the generator. Then he lined the generator, which was significantly heavier than the lawnmower, up with top of the ramp, rolled it carefully down onto the grass and over to the concrete pad under the back deck. He checked its gas tank and found it, as expected, full of gasoline. He turned on the fuel valve and the on/off switch, and set the choke lever to "start". In the afternoon heat the generator started on the second pull. He backed off on the choke and it settled down to run smoothly.

Will went back inside and grabbed the heavy, 240 volt, 30 amp extension cord. He plugged the male end into the generator and then the female end into the male receptacle on the wall next to the door. Then he went back inside, closed the generator disconnect switch on the other side of the wall, walked to the far end of the basement and moved the transfer switch next to the main panel to its "generator" position. The lights came on without so much as a flicker and Will smiled in satisfaction. The big freezer sitting against the north wall of the basement, between the laundry area and the shop, hummed quietly.

Will mused that he could have had a permanently installed generator, with automatic start even. But it would have cost a lot more and wouldn't have been nearly as flexible. On occasion he used the generator elsewhere, such as at the Community Garden. With the back seats folded down it would just fit in their little hatchback.

Back upstairs, he found the small freezer working just fine, but the fridge was cool enough it hadn't even come on yet. He adjusted the fridge's temperature controller down a bit and it started. "Everything looks good, Sue," he said to his wife, "Do I need to get the Coleman stove set up to cook supper?"

"No," she replied, "I was just going to cook burgers on the barbeque anyway. How long do you think the power will be off?"

"Joe says another two or three hours. Since it's not going to be a long outage, I think I'll just leave the generator running until the power comes back on. Doesn't use much gas unless we load it up, anyway. The next thing will be how to tell when the power comes back on, since we're running off the generator."

Sue got up and came into the kitchen. "I'll just turn on the radio."

Will turned to watch her switch on the battery operated radio, which was always tuned to the local FM station. There was nothing but static. Oh well, thought Will, they'll probably be back on not too long after the outage ended. But before he could open his mouth to say so, the announcer's voice came from the radio with a crackle and pop.

"Shoreline FM is back online. We finally got our generator hooked up and running. We'll keep you posted on the power outage as soon as we know something more. For now, let's get back to our usual musical programming."

The sound of 80s rock replaced the announcer's voice and Will asked, "Can we trust them to let us know what's going on?"

"Hope so," said Sue. "I'll just finish this chapter and then get started on supper."

"Sounds good to me," said Will, "I'm gonna go check on the neighbours."

Will went out through the front door, and headed south across his lawn and his neighbour's and up to her front door.

He knocked and after a moment she opened the door and said, "Hi Will.The power's out. Any idea how long it's going to take to get it back on."

"I'm guessing before sunset, Joan. You OK in the meantime?"

"Except for the fridge. I hear things start to go off in a couple of hours?"

"Yep. That's what I hear too. I've got the generator going and I could run an extension cord over here if you'd like?"

"If it's not too much trouble, that would be a big help."

"OK, back in a minute."

Will went down to his back yard and into his workshop and grabbed several long extension cords. It took only of a few minutes to hook one up to the outdoor receptacle at the back of his house and run it over to Joan's front door. She was waiting for him and said, "I guess I can leave the door open a crack and just run this directly into the kitchen and plug the fridge into it."

"It's only going to be for a short while, so yeah. I'll leave you to it while I go check on Vicky and the Browns. Come get me if you need help."

Half an hour later, Will had two more cords running from the outdoor receptacle at the front of the house. One to Vicky's place on the north side, and one to the Browns across the street. Traffic was pretty light on Mackenzie Ave., so he didn't worry about having a cord run across the street. The generator still wasn't working hard, even with his house and three others hooked up to it. He spotted Sue on the side deck working at the barbeque and went up the steps to join her. "Any news on the radio?"

"Nothing yet other than an endless parade of golden oldies."

"Anything I can help you with?"

"Could you throw together a salad while I watch these burgers?"

"Sure, no problem."

"I think we'd better eat on the little table out here," said Sue, "it's cooler in the shade of the awning than inside."

"OK, soon as I get that salad together I'll start hauling things out here."

"Things" had included the portable radio, and they were just finishing up supper when the announcer interrupted the music to say. "Word from Hydro One is that maintenance crews will be switching things back on during the next hour or so."

This prediction proved to be true and they had hardly finished cleaning up after supper when the announcer broke in again, "The power is on again. We'll be off the air for a moment while we switch back to grid power."

Standing on his back deck a few minutes later, Will could see clouds rolling in from over the lake, driven by a freshening wind. The temperature had already dropped, a welcome relief from the afternoon's heat. Sticking his head in the door he called out, "Sue, it looks like rain, I'm going to clean up the generator and extension cords before they get wet."

He went down to the basement and switched back to grid power, then put the generator back in the shed away from the threatening rain. He was about to start wrapping up the cords, when all three of his neighbours showed up, cords in hand, coiled up ready to be put away. They had a short chat about the weather and then headed home. Will put the cords away in the basement, then went upstairs to turn on the attic fan and bring some of the cooler air into the house.

Will went to bed that night feeling good about how they had come through the outage, short as it had been. The generator had worked well, and he'd been able to help out the neighbours. It felt like he had things under control. It had cooled down nicely by then, and he looked forward to a good night's sleep—a pleasant change from the sweaty nights of the heat wave they had just come through.

Coming soon, The Porcupine Saga, Part 3, When the Lights Went Out, Part 2,
Will Harper, July 20, 2028


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

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Wednesday, 17 July 2019

Responding to Collapse, Part 10: the future of the power grid

Sunset over Lake Huron

In this series of posts I've been advising my readers that moving to a small town remote from large population centres, in an area that can supply the basic necessities of water, food and firewood, is a prudent way of coping with the ongoing collapse of BAU (Business as Usual). With the caveat that some advance preparation will be needed to ensure successful use of those resources.

In the next few posts in this series, we'll look at some of the details of how BAU will collapse and how you can prepare to weather that collapse. In the immediate future infrastructure breakdowns will get more frequent and longer until finally it's no longer practical to rely on BAU for the necessities of life. It seems to me that supplies of electrical power, diesel fuel and money will be at the heart of many of the troubles that lie ahead, so I'll concentrate on those areas.

And while I'll mainly be talking about infrastructure breakdowns we should remember that interruptions of service can occur for a couple of other reasons.

The first has to do with the way our economy is organized and how we choose to provide vital services such as power, water, sewers, housing, food, communications, transportation, education, health care and so forth.

Today most of the world's nations are capitalistic, with a distinct neo-liberal flavour. Under such conditions, companies are operated to make a profit and other goals, such as the public good, are strictly secondary. So when a "for profit" company finds its business becoming less profitable they must find ways to increase their charges or to supply less for the same fees or to quit supplying customers in less profitable areas altogether. And if they don't do those things they will either be bought out by companies that will, or they'll suffer bankruptcy. If there doesn't appear to be much chance that another company could make a good profit in the same business then it will never be reestablished. And if the public was relying on that company to provide vital services, then we are just out of luck.

Of course there are other ways of organizing an economy, and in particular other ways of setting up companies to provide infrastructure services. But the argument is often made that for profit companies operating in a free market are more efficient. I would question if there has ever been any such thing as a free market, and whether it would function as predicted in any case. Efficiency in this case is defined as the amount of return on share holders' investments, and has nothing to do with providing a high quality and reliable service to your customers.

But perhaps we should set all that aside in order to focus on the really critical thing, which is the difference between the way such companies work in growing economies versus contracting economies. In a growing economy it is relatively easy to make a profit and do so while supplying a service for the public good. But when the economy begins to contract that becomes more and more difficult for "for profit" companies.

Governments can set up non-profit organizations whose primary goal is to provide services for the public good and they are likely to last longer in a contracting economy. In my experience, contrary to typical capitalist propaganda, they can also be quite efficient. But as the economy contracts so will tax revenues and eventually governments will have to cut back on the services they provide. With good planning though, they can do this in a controlled manner with lots of advanced warning, and give people time to adapt to the situation.

As the economy gets even weaker, co-operatives organized by the people who need the services hold considerable promise. I'll have more to say about this over the next few posts.

The second thing is that if you rely on BAU to make a living, you will find that your own economic circumstances are declining. When you can no longer afford the services you have come to rely on, you'll have find ways to provide them for yourself, and in the process learn how to get by with less, like it or not.

I can consume along with the best of them, and there are certainly all kinds of things that it would be useful to have as we try to become more self reliant. But don't worry too much if you can't afford some of the shiny toys I'll be mentioning in future posts. As well trained consumers we may feel that buying things must be the solution to the problems that face us, but it isn't. Actually, there is no solution to the fix the world is in at the moment, and the best we can do is adapt to the changing conditions. Part of that is learning to get by while consuming less. This is hard for me and I'll bet it's hard for you too. That's why I talked first about preparing by become part of your new community (in posts 7 and 8 of this series), rather that the less important preparations that involve accumulating "stuff".

Back 2012, when I started this blog, the authorities recommended that you be prepared to weather emergencies lasting for as long as three days (72 hours). They were basically saying, "don't rely on us to be there immediately—it may take as long as 72 hours before help arrives." In the meantime, this has been changed to two weeks in some areas. Is emergency response capability declining, or are they expecting more lengthy and severe emergencies? I suspect both. Of course serious "preppers" are laughing at this—they'd recommend that you have supplies on hand for a year or two. I don't disagree, but you have to start somewhere. And as collapse deepens those longer intervals to prepare for will come to seem more reasonable.


Power Outages

Power outages will probably be the most frequent infrastructure failure you'll have to cope with. Short outages have relatively minor impacts, but because electricity is at the heart of so much that goes on in modern civilization, as outages stretch out they start to effect more and more things.

Eventually, it seems very likely that the power grid in many, if not most, areas will cease to function. I encounter two different responses to this idea. Many people cannot conceive that their 24 hour a day, essentially infinite supply of power could every come to an end. Others are fixated on the idea of a sudden and hard crash which will bring the whole of industrial civilization to an end, including the power grid.

I'm somewhere in between, holding what I think is a more detailed and nuanced opinion. Most of the rest of this post is going to be spent talking about how the slow decline of the power grid will go, leaving the responses I would recommend for the next post.

Power outages can be as simple as a utility pole getting knocked over during a traffic accident, to as complex as the grid failures that happened in northeastern North America in 1965 and 2003. And to take it even further, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) from nuclear weapons or coronal mass ejections (solar flares) can do huge damage to electrical girds which may be very hard to recover from. But I think some of the most common and serious problems with the grid will come from three specific areas:

  • The first is equipment failure due to age and/or lack of maintenance, aggravated by overloads such as air conditioning load during summer heat waves. As the economy continues to contract power companies are going to find themselves short of capital and less able to invest in their own systems, leaving those systems more susceptible to failure. /li>
  • The second will be damage due to storms that are growing more frequent and more intense due to climate change—things like high winds, tornados and ice storms in particular. Lengthy outages will happen when there are widespread weather related problems combined with shortages of spare parts and limited manpower to install them. Those latter two problems will come mainly from cash strapped utilities trying to save money.
  • The third is sabotage. The grid is very exposed to a saboteur who knows what he is doing, and because of its geographically diffuse nature, very hard to secure. As collapse intensifies, there will be increased civil unrest—more angry people looking for easy targets that symbolize the establishment. The grid is certainly one such target.

Of course, these concerns apply to the grid as it exists today, using conventional generation. It seems there is going to be a serious attempt to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, primarily solar and wind. Those who are pushing for a "Green New Deal" are telling people that we can use wind and solar to replace fossil fuels, and that in the process more jobs will be created and we'll actually end up more prosperous. This is a very unrealistic dream and just off the top of my head I can think of four serious problems with it:

  1. What solar and wind produce is electricity. But electricity supplies only 18 to 20% of our current energy use. Most of the rest comes directly from coal, oil and natural gas, and those fuels are used in ways that will be difficult, if not outright impossible, to replace with electricity.

    The main issue is that a battery is not nearly as effective a way to store energy as a tank of diesel fuel. And there are definite physical limitations on how much better batteries can get— we can probably improve them by a factor of two, but that's about it. Despite what we keep hearing in the news, it simply isn't practical to use batteries to power airplanes or long distance heavy transport by road, rail or sea. The quantity of batteries needed, and the size and weight of those batteries, is the problem.

    There are many industrial processes that use coal or natural gas for heat. Replacing those fuels with electricity may be theoretically possible but we haven't, for the most part, even started to develop ways to do so, much less begun to implement them.

  2. Phasing out fossil fuels would require using renewables to supply much larger quantities of electricity than we are currently using. But there are fundamental problems with using renewables to produce even part of the comparatively small amount of electricity we use now.

    One aspect of running a power grid that the general public is largely unaware of is that generation must be matched exactly to the load. Since load is something the grid operator cannot control to any great extent, generation that is "dispatchable"—that can be turned on and off on demand and ramped up and down as required—is very important. Conventional generation is dispatchable to varying degrees but renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are intermittent and for the most part not under the control of the grid operator—the very opposite of dispatchable. As such, renewables only exacerbate the problems of running a grid, especially given the lack of feasible large scale storage technologies. Yes, I know there are a number of storage technologies available but none of them are economical to use on the scale that would be required for use in a power grid with intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

    The concept of a "smart grid" which gives greater control of both generation and load offers hope of addressing these problems to some minor degree, but only at the price of adding complexity to the system. And adding complexity never increases reliability.

  3. The immediate reason for switching away from fossil fuels is to reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere in order to combat climate change. But no one seems to be thinking of the carbon footprint of switching away from carbon. The switchover to renewables would be a massive undertaking powered mainly by fossil fuels, and the amount of CO2 being released would greatly increase during that effort.

    Much of this construction effort would also require large quantities of steel and concrete. Making steel and concrete involves the release of CO2, regardless of where the energy comes from—it's inherent to the chemistry of the processes involved.

    So it is by no means obvious that we can get off fossil fuels and onto renewables without creating an even worse climate crisis that the one we are currently facing.

  4. Renewables have a very low EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). A high EROEI is essential to the functioning of a modern industrial economy--money is just accounting, energy is really what makes the economy go. Any country which adds a large quantity of renewables to its energy mix will lower its overall average EROEI, making it more difficult to support a growing economy and a high tech industrial society. So even if we could somehow manage to switch over entirely to renewables, we'd have trouble sustaining a high enough level of technology to maintain and repair solar and wind generation facilities. And replacing them when they wear out would be a real stretch. Switching to renewables is something we might be able to do once, but then we'd be in big trouble.

All this is of course based on not having to change our lifestyles, not having to accept a lower level of prosperity and consumption. Indeed one frequently hears people talking about increasing economic growth in order to bring the poor parts of the world up to our level of consumption. It is clear to me that this is not going to happen and that what we really need to do is reduce our levels of consumption down to what can be supported without fossil fuels, using local, sustainable, low tech renewables. It is also clear to me that we will not do this voluntarily, that the majority of our efforts will go into maintaining business as usual regardless of the consequences.

Give all these factors time to work and it will become difficult to continue running the power grid as a whole. Some parts of the gird will simply quit working. Others that have proved unreliable, which place the grid as a whole at risk, will eventually have to be excluded from the grid. These islands will grow until the grid as we know it falls apart.

There will be a few areas where generating equipment will continue to function for a long time and will be able to supply local load. Again, the matching generation and load will be a problem since most such generation comes in large chunks and is a long way from large amounts of load. The most hopeful situations are small hydro (water) powered generators, which can be run at less than full capacity and adjust quickly to match varying loads.

Anyway, it seems clear that we can indeed expect more frequent and longer power outages. But what are the effects of these outages, and what can we do to mitigate them?


The effects of power outages

When the power goes out, you lose the lights, heat, cooling, cooking equipment, refrigeration and so forth in your own home. Even most oil, gas and wood heating systems rely on electricity for control, ignition and circulating fans. Then there are all the services that comes to you from outside your home, that you rely on to just work, but which need electricity to do that.

In general, the most critical services run off batteries which are kept fully charged as long as the power is on. When the power goes out, these services keep right on running as if nothing had happened, at least until the batteries are discharged. The batteries for the controls in power stations are rated for eight hours. The batteries in cell phone towers are rated for two to four hours.

Everything I'm finding on the internet says that the central switching stations for land line telephone service should keep working even during long power outages, which implies both batteries and backup generators. I have some doubts about this, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more detailed information.

Many slightly less critical services have generators that start automatically with only a brief interruption when the power goes out and run as long as there is fuel (usually diesel fuel) in the tank. If arrangements have been made to refill that tank, then this can go on for quite a long time.

Even less critical services than these can have a portable generator hooked up to them if need be. This would include facilities operating on battery power, if the power is off so long that the batteries need to be recharged.

Most service stations don't have backup power so you likely won't be able to get fuel (gasoline, diesel, propane) while the power is off. During long outages the many supply chains that are powered by gasoline and/or diesel fuel will be in trouble.

Natural gas pipelines have to be pressurized to keep to gas flowing through them. Some of the pumps used to do this are powered by natural gas, some by electricity. And I suspect that at least some of the controls for the gas powered pumps are electrical. So your natural gas supply, at least in some areas, will be compromised during electrical outages.

The pumps in municipal water and sewage systems need electrical power too. Some may have backup generators, but not all. If you live on a farm or in a very small town, your toilet is likely gravity feed into a septic system and weeping bed, and will work as long as you have water to flush them. Or perhaps you have already set up a composting toilet which requires no power at all. Your water supply is probably from you own well, with a pump driven by an electric motor that uses 240V AC (if you are in North America). Even if you have a generator, you may need an electrician to help you hook it up to that motor.

Refrigeration of food in grocery stores and pharmaceuticals in pharmacies and hospitals will be jeopardized. Fortunately our local hospital does have a backup generator.

Radio and TV can be important sources of information during emergencies. But you will likely find that only a very few of your local stations are set up to keep broadcasting during power outages.

It would also be great if internet service could continue during power outages. I understand it some areas it does, but we get our internet through the local cable TV company, and even short outages to their facilities knock out our internet connection and our cable TV service, even if the power is still on at our place. Your situation may be different—I hope so.

Oddly, or so it seems to me, most traffic lights aren't backed up in any way and stop working when the power is off.

ATMs won't be working, nor the systems that allows us to pay for things by credit and debit cards. Even if you do have cash in hand, you may find many retail outlets are unable to sell you anything when their cash registers and product code scanners aren't working. Many of them may just lock their doors for the duration of the outage.

Not all of them, though—I was quite impressed during a recent outage when I saw the guy behind the counter at a nearby convenience store beavering away with a cash box, battery operated calculator and a notebook to record sales in. It can be done, but one hopes the prices are marked clearly on items rather than encoded in UPCs. This is an example of an individual (or maybe his manager) taking the situation in hand and keeping things working rather than sitting back and letting them fall apart.

No doubt I am missing many of the potential effects of long power outages, but I think this gives you the flavour of what you'll be facing. Next time I'll talk about how you can mitigate the effects of power outages, both short and long, and what your community can do to cope when it finally finds itself permanently isolated from the grid.


Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

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