Energy Needs

I'm going to steal a page from "Mad Engineering" today, and try to think creatively about one of the big problems that's facing Rural AK: Power. Renewables are good, but you still need diesel power for covering all the spots where there's no wind blowing, or sun shining (Yes, Solar Power works in AK). You can't effectively tie villages together in a grid so that wind energy from one village can help a village having a calm day - the cost of running power lines between villages is very high! And the cost of running powerline from the railbelt grid is even bigger.

What could be a steady power-producer for the villages? Orbital Solar. It sounds crazy, but the idea isn't that futuristic - you put a solar array in space where solar power is much more efficient (because we lose a lot of energy to the atmosphere). It's then beamed down to earth as radio or microwaves, where it's collected by antennas. You can position the satellite so it's always in the sun, even at night. Each village would have a microwave dish to collect energy from the power station being beamed to it.

Surely something like this is expensive, but there's a chance you could get a partner to help you develop this - the Military is very interested in the idea because it will allow them to have electrical anywhere in the world, and shipping diesel to Afghanistan might be the only place more expensive than the bush! Collaborating with the Air Force to test-bed this technology would be a great way to bring it to the bush.

So: How crazy does this sound? :)

Does DST save energy?

Does Daylight's Savings time save energy?

Unambiguously, no.

And that's in the states. Here in AK, there's almost no energy savings even possible unless you live deep in the Southeast. Southeast AK has some of the best access to power.

Down with DST!

Useless

I'm very disappointed in our elected state officials right now. The legislative session is over, without any progress on the big issue that affects everyone in our state: energy. Energy is choking our industry. Energy is killing bush Alaska. Energy is causing emigration from even our `large cities.` Many people in the legislature were elected on platforms of energy reform. It's stuff we all care about.

They had one job. Just one. And that was to do something about energy. And they managed to screw that up.

What the heck are we paying them for?

Spam drain

Now here's a neat fact for the day: a report by the IFC international says that in total, spam - you know, junk email trying to sell you prescription drugs, or make your unmentionables larger, or trying to scam you out of your bank information - consumes 33 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year. That's equal to the electric consumption of 2.4 million homes in the US.

That's a lot of power for emails titled "Boost Stamina Today."

I wonder how much power people consume on producing late night TV ads for diet drugs...

Article via slashdot.

Down with DST!

I wrote the following letter to my state rep, Mike Kelly.

Dear Mr. Kelly,
As one of your constituents, I'm writing you in support of a bill in the house titled "Exempting the state and its political subdivisions from daylight saving time."

As anyone who lives in Alaska knows, the bulk of the state experiences massive shifts in solar periods, in our district, from 24 hour daylight to a bare 4 hour peep this time of year. Daylight Savings time is an effective strategy in temperate latitudes, where seasonal solar variation is moderate, between N42 degrees and N35 degrees. Alaska does not qualify on any of these points, and so it gains no energy savings by switching to Daylight Savings time. Additionally, national statistics show that the transition to and from Daylight Savings Time is associated with an increase in car accidents and human mortality. It seems that Alaska is incurring all of the consequences of Daylight Savings Time, without reaping any benefits.

It's for this reason we should exempt our state from Daylight Savings Time. I urge you to support this bill so to rid ourselves of this unfortunate relic.

Best Wishes,
[Name censored]

Y-K fuel

I wasn't going to blog any this weekend (bit of a chore list to get through), but I saw this article in the Village Telegraph that had a really nice table of fuel prices in the Y-K in it. Kotlik was highlighted because I was doing a bit of math using it, and didn't notice I forgot to unhighlight it until just now.

Geek fight!

Rarely do I see the intellectual equivalent of a fist fight in person. Today, at our department seminar, I got to see one. A gentleman we invited from Argentina to be a guest lecturer decided to talk about sustainable biofuels production in interior Alaska, and the crowd turned hostile. Some people got so upset they walked out - a big no-no in a seminar.

That... was interesting.

Need a power plant?

I doubt this person has it right. Who knows, maybe they have a three MegaWatt generator there. I'm inclined to disbelieve.
Still looking for a cheap, ~5CF freezer. Not many good deals, thus far. Looking to get one on the cheap, though.

Utility Prices in Bethel

I thought I posted this last night, but turns out I forgot to write it. That makes it hard. There was a story on the NPR radio about electricity prices in Bethel, and how rates have doubled - tripled for utility subscribers. Really, it's par for the course; everyone's prices are going up, just some increases are more absurd than other people's increases. What hit me though is that some of the stated rate increases were so large that that kind of money could pay for a big commercial wind/solar system, with a little left over to burn diesel on bad days. Even if you didn't take your home entirely off the utilidor there, that would really quickly evicerate your power consumption.

It's not for a lack of wind resources. God knows that. And it shouldn't be for a lack of exposure. They had that big wind conference for the YK down there, where a lot of villages sent people to talk about what they could do to set up systems in their own place. Presumably some people from Bethel attended their own conferance. It could be that most people think electricity is the pervew of utilities, so it should be them putting up the systems. Which is like waiting for river to boil.

It's probably a capital problem, for most people who've considered it. Yeah, it makes finacial sense later, but while making the switch, you have to pay for both the equipment and the continued ultilites until you have it up. I wonder if small loans for just getting the project started would help.