Thu 30 Aug 2007
I live in an apartment shared with two other guys. One of them pays the utility bills and then we write checks to him. Or at least that is how it is supposed to work. This roommate, whom I’ll call “S” to preserve his anonymity, forgot to pay the power bill last month. and the month before that. and the month before that. Then yesterday a representative from Rocky Mountain Power stopped by while S was home and told him that, due to our delinquency, they would be shutting off the power unless we payed our bill. I guess S thought they were bluffing.
They weren’t. They turned off the power today. I arrived home to a dark apartment. S was dumbfounded, “I didn’t think they would turn off the power so quickly,” he stammered.
I am typing this blog entry on my battery powered laptop, hooked to the Internet through my Verizon phone all by the light of a head-lamp and a camping lantern. Careful review of the photo will show that I also have a battery-operated, small fan on a cord around my neck. It will also show that my room is a mess. It’s not that I’m a messy person, per se, but just that I have other things on my to do list above cleaning stuff.
But all this lack of alternating current electricity got me thinking about our over-dependence on it. How long would modern society function without power? If, for example, the Hoover dam, which supplies electricity to several western states, broke in the middle of the winter (or summer), what would happen?
Could you survive for a month without electricity?
August 30th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
If something huge and life altering happened to our power source, there would be mass panic, and I’d find a new appreciation for weapons and batteries.
You?
August 31st, 2007 at 1:52 am
Lol, does this mean you’re gonna be doing a one month experiment sans electricity??
August 31st, 2007 at 8:22 am
We went through something like this in the Puget Sound area last December. A huge windstorm knocked down trees throughout the sound, many of which fell on power lines. While most were without power for 3 or so days (including our home) there were customers who were without power for 10 days and more. And it even snowed during the period, odd for the Puget Sound. PSE had 500,000+ customers without power in the immediate aftermath.
We learned that fireplaces are pretty bad for heat sources. They suck the heat right out of your house and throw it up the chimney. Very inefficient. After the outage we bought an inexpensive kerosene heater that can be used indoors (with some ventilation) and a Coleman stove for cooking and heating water that can be used outside. Much of the food in the fridge and freezer were of course bad after 3 days with no power but for us I don’t think a generator passes the cost-benefit analysis for now. It also would have been nice to have a gas water heater (we’re all electric in our home) so we could have taken a warm shower after day one. Of course some were without gas when trees uprooted the gas line but only a small fraction compared to those affected by the power.
Also, just FYI, the power company generally can’t legally shut your power off after a certain point in the year when it gets too cold. Wait until then to skip the power bill if you must
August 31st, 2007 at 8:24 am
Oh, one other thing. Gas stations can’t pump gas without power. So mobility can be affected well if you let your tank run close to empty on a consistent basis.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Spig, good comments; i think i’ll got out and buy a kerosene heater now.
Janet, I don’t think I could make it a month without electricity. i do think i could work off the grid, however, but that would require generating my own power. i could:
1- use solar panels to charge a battery (or spin up a flywheel)
2- dam a small creek
3- hook up a few stationary bikes to charge the batteries
4- use wood/coal to boil water to power a steam engine
what am I missing here?
September 1st, 2007 at 12:27 am
Ryan:
A small amount of diesel fuel and a large amount of used oil from McD’s or any other fast food place.
Startup a diesel generator then use the oil as it’s fuel source.
That’ll keep you going for quite some time, so long as you can figure a way to keep the oil heated so it remains fluid and doesn’t clog up the generator (which is why you run it on diesel for the first few minutes and for the last 15 minutes or so, to clean out the oil before shutting it off). You could do this to charge batteries which you would then run off an inverter to power many household appliances.
Hmmm??
September 1st, 2007 at 1:44 am
I heard Uranium works pretty well…
September 1st, 2007 at 11:24 am
good points guys, I left out bio-diesel and nuclear power. I guess windmills were omitted as well. and nobody mentioned harnessing the power of potatoes! http://www.ehow.com/how_18637_make-potato-clock.html
September 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Wasn’t the original question regarding whether you could live WITHOUT electricity? Why are ya’ll trying to find alternative power sources ? that’s still electricity.
If I had to live without it, I probably could. But why would I want to?
PS: time to get a new roommate…