Tomorrow the county will begin receiving public testimony on whether to add a .5% surcharge on the GET to fund road construction and repairs (and some token money towards public transportation).
As bad as traffic Kaua'i is-- this isn't a solution.
If you're interested in the rest of my 1300 words on the subject-- please check out this piece published by Civil Beat.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Off-Grid
As I mentioned briefly in my last post, I recently wrote a piece for KIUC's monthly magazine. While I was embarrassed that I forgot to shave (I didn't realize that my face would be on the cover) and that the only viewable books on the shelf in the background are the Twilight series, it didn't occur to me how offended people would be at what I had to say. There was a mini barrage of emails, texts, and even a blog post criticizing me of going "to the dark side."
The article, which you can read here, was an honest look into my experience going off-grid. If you've read my blog over the last few years, I've said it all before. We went off-grid because we were idealists looking for simple solutions. While we learned the true value of electricity, going off-grid exposed my own logical fallacies.
We can't solve climate change as individuals, we need our local utilities.
I originally hoped to be able to inspire others to go off-grid, because I thought that that would be the solution to climate change and environmental degradation.
But, I was very, very wrong.
There are a few issues with this.
1) For even a small system, you need to have $15,000 to pay for PV panels, an inverter, and a battery bank. Yes, it quickly pays itself off over time, but many people don't have the access to credit or upfront cash to make it feasible. So, some people are stuck with the utility. But, imagine that the 50% of people who can afford to go off-grid end up leaving the utility structure. KIUC is now left with the same overhead for half of the customers. If overhead accounts for about half of each customer's bill (the other half being the variable price of fuel) and half of the customers leave, then the average utility bill will have to go up by around 25%.
Further, as the pool of customers paying for grid-overhead shrinks, rates will continue to steeply rise-- which leads to ever increasing numbers of people defecting from the utility which leads to higher and higher rates. Until the only people left footing the extreme bill are those without the financial wherewithal to get off-grid. This is what is referred to as the utility death spiral. It would rapidly increase the level of inequality on Kaua'i and ensure that KIUC can't invest in utility scale renewable energy solutions.
Granted, there is a very similar issue for people who oversize their PV systems. Imagine if half of the island oversized their PV system so that they no longer pay anything to KIUC. The other half of the island (notably, the poorer half) are now stuck footing the bill for the overhead that everyone benefits from. As even those with massive PV arrays still rely on the grid at night or on cloudy days.
However, the difference between these two scenarios is that the second one (where people stay on grid) is solvable with market forces. Most equitable is time of use pricing. Which I've written about before and won't repeat.
But, what would happen if we could figure out the equitability part? Imagine that Mark Zuckerberg decides to give everyone on Kaua'i an off-grid set-up.
2) Because solar panels are entirely dependent on the sun, we will always need some type of baseline energy to make up the difference at night and on cloudy days. On Kaua'i, right now that's naptha, diesel, bio-mass, and hydro. As we head towards a future of 100% renewable energy, that will increasingly turn to bio-mass, hydro, pumped hydro, and battery storage. Other than batteries, those utility scale solutions are not possible at a household scale.
Either we would each need massive battery banks and oversized systems to get us by, or we would all be running our generator on cloudy evenings. Both options are environmental villains.
The fundamental problem with being off-grid.
The bigger a system gets, the more energy it is wasting in the middle of a sunny day. If I size my PV array so that I have 100% of my power needs on a rainy winter day, then I will have upwards of 300% of my power needs on a sunny summer day. If I were on grid, that power would be fed back into the grid. Being off-grid means that I'm simply shunting that power. Those electrons are being lost, while fossil fuels are being burned at Port Allen to make up the difference.
In a scenario where the entire island consists of isolated off-grid households or communities, then we would need vastly more solar panels to make it work than we do if we are all interconnected.
The other option is to undersize the system. So that I'm wasting less energy on a sunny day but have to run the generator on rainy days. Imagine if everyone on the island were running their household generators every cloudy evening... That results in an incredibly inefficient use of resources and we'd still be burning excess energy on sunny days.
But wait, how am I wasting energy if I'm off-grid and self sufficient? As long as the world isn't running 100% off of renewable energy, than every available solar panel should be contributing electrons at its full potential. Imagine an island where everyone is starving to death because there's not enough food. I own a farm with unusually fertile soil, and am able to provide more than enough food for myself and my family, but I throw the rest away. People are starving all around me while I just throw my excess harvest to the birds. Sure, I'm self sufficient, but that would be morally reprehensible.
With the threat of climate change from carbon emissions, we can't afford to waste any energy produced by the finite amount of solar panels on planet Earth.
Truly going off-grid is impossible.
I went off-grid because I liked the idea of self sufficiency. Yet, my hypocrisy is thrown in my face everyday. As I discussed in the article, I use propane sourced from hydraulic fracking, I consume organic coffee from foreign dictatorships, and most of my furniture and electronics were produced in China. We are part of a global community, and the solutions to climate change and environmental degradation are just as global. I can't just cut my cord to the water department and the electric utility and self righteously claim to be doing my part. If we keep looking for simple solutions, then we'll never find the answers.
Going off-grid taught us the value of electricity, and it's a lesson that I will value for the rest of my life. I will never again do laundry at night, leave a fan on on a cloudy day, or leave the lights on in an unattended room.
But, as long as I'm wasting electrons on sunny days and burning fossil fuels on cloudy evenings, then I am part of the problem. And, I'd prefer to be part of the solution.
So, as soon as I can-- I'm getting back on the grid.
The article, which you can read here, was an honest look into my experience going off-grid. If you've read my blog over the last few years, I've said it all before. We went off-grid because we were idealists looking for simple solutions. While we learned the true value of electricity, going off-grid exposed my own logical fallacies.
We can't solve climate change as individuals, we need our local utilities.
I originally hoped to be able to inspire others to go off-grid, because I thought that that would be the solution to climate change and environmental degradation.
But, I was very, very wrong.
There are a few issues with this.
1) For even a small system, you need to have $15,000 to pay for PV panels, an inverter, and a battery bank. Yes, it quickly pays itself off over time, but many people don't have the access to credit or upfront cash to make it feasible. So, some people are stuck with the utility. But, imagine that the 50% of people who can afford to go off-grid end up leaving the utility structure. KIUC is now left with the same overhead for half of the customers. If overhead accounts for about half of each customer's bill (the other half being the variable price of fuel) and half of the customers leave, then the average utility bill will have to go up by around 25%.
Further, as the pool of customers paying for grid-overhead shrinks, rates will continue to steeply rise-- which leads to ever increasing numbers of people defecting from the utility which leads to higher and higher rates. Until the only people left footing the extreme bill are those without the financial wherewithal to get off-grid. This is what is referred to as the utility death spiral. It would rapidly increase the level of inequality on Kaua'i and ensure that KIUC can't invest in utility scale renewable energy solutions.
Granted, there is a very similar issue for people who oversize their PV systems. Imagine if half of the island oversized their PV system so that they no longer pay anything to KIUC. The other half of the island (notably, the poorer half) are now stuck footing the bill for the overhead that everyone benefits from. As even those with massive PV arrays still rely on the grid at night or on cloudy days.
However, the difference between these two scenarios is that the second one (where people stay on grid) is solvable with market forces. Most equitable is time of use pricing. Which I've written about before and won't repeat.
But, what would happen if we could figure out the equitability part? Imagine that Mark Zuckerberg decides to give everyone on Kaua'i an off-grid set-up.
2) Because solar panels are entirely dependent on the sun, we will always need some type of baseline energy to make up the difference at night and on cloudy days. On Kaua'i, right now that's naptha, diesel, bio-mass, and hydro. As we head towards a future of 100% renewable energy, that will increasingly turn to bio-mass, hydro, pumped hydro, and battery storage. Other than batteries, those utility scale solutions are not possible at a household scale.
Either we would each need massive battery banks and oversized systems to get us by, or we would all be running our generator on cloudy evenings. Both options are environmental villains.
The fundamental problem with being off-grid.
The bigger a system gets, the more energy it is wasting in the middle of a sunny day. If I size my PV array so that I have 100% of my power needs on a rainy winter day, then I will have upwards of 300% of my power needs on a sunny summer day. If I were on grid, that power would be fed back into the grid. Being off-grid means that I'm simply shunting that power. Those electrons are being lost, while fossil fuels are being burned at Port Allen to make up the difference.
In a scenario where the entire island consists of isolated off-grid households or communities, then we would need vastly more solar panels to make it work than we do if we are all interconnected.
The other option is to undersize the system. So that I'm wasting less energy on a sunny day but have to run the generator on rainy days. Imagine if everyone on the island were running their household generators every cloudy evening... That results in an incredibly inefficient use of resources and we'd still be burning excess energy on sunny days.
But wait, how am I wasting energy if I'm off-grid and self sufficient? As long as the world isn't running 100% off of renewable energy, than every available solar panel should be contributing electrons at its full potential. Imagine an island where everyone is starving to death because there's not enough food. I own a farm with unusually fertile soil, and am able to provide more than enough food for myself and my family, but I throw the rest away. People are starving all around me while I just throw my excess harvest to the birds. Sure, I'm self sufficient, but that would be morally reprehensible.
With the threat of climate change from carbon emissions, we can't afford to waste any energy produced by the finite amount of solar panels on planet Earth.
I went off-grid because I liked the idea of self sufficiency. Yet, my hypocrisy is thrown in my face everyday. As I discussed in the article, I use propane sourced from hydraulic fracking, I consume organic coffee from foreign dictatorships, and most of my furniture and electronics were produced in China. We are part of a global community, and the solutions to climate change and environmental degradation are just as global. I can't just cut my cord to the water department and the electric utility and self righteously claim to be doing my part. If we keep looking for simple solutions, then we'll never find the answers.
Going off-grid taught us the value of electricity, and it's a lesson that I will value for the rest of my life. I will never again do laundry at night, leave a fan on on a cloudy day, or leave the lights on in an unattended room.
But, as long as I'm wasting electrons on sunny days and burning fossil fuels on cloudy evenings, then I am part of the problem. And, I'd prefer to be part of the solution.
So, as soon as I can-- I'm getting back on the grid.
