You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference!
This is the letter for week 169 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
For when the power doesn’t come back
Reaction Guidelines for Energy, pt. 2: When It Stretches On
This is a resource for when energy stops flowing into SF. The goal is to have procedures you can pick up off the shelf and start putting in place when it’s too late to avoid disaster.
We need the grid. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/appeals-court-sides-with-sf-over-federal-energy-commissions-decision-on-pge-power-hookups/2791187/ cause PG&E is not a force for good in any way, shape, or form.
Glossary of terms used
battery
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a device that captures and stores energy to be released for use at a later time
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generator
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a device to convert energy from one form to another, often electricity
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gravity battery
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an energy storage device that converts available energy into gravitational potential energy through displacement of mass (such as a block of concrete or pumped-storage hydroelectricity)
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grid
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a physical network used for moving electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s needed
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steam turbine
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a device that converts pressurized steam into rotational motion, often used in generating electricity
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This guideline is unfortunately easy
We need the grid.1
Without the grid, without sufficient energy generators in SF or shared capacity within the bay area region, there’s no way to get through losing power over the long haul without catastrophic consequences.
To repeat from the last guideline for short-term options during energy loss: Really, we don’t have more energy available given current infrastructure, funding, and priorities.
That leaves letting people die, burning things (garbage, trees, buildings) for temporary power via steam turbines until everything is burned up, and mass exodus to some place with power.
There are big quick-fix options such as rigging a bunch of buildings on the water’s edge to operate as gravity batteries (using tidal and/or wave action to hoist masses), finding and installing every solar panel around, and moving people into places where there is energy (abandoning single family houses and small apartment complexes) so we can best use the few resources that are available, but nothing so far has indicated that SF is interested in even easier energy fixes like this.
Rationing will be vital, obviously. And that means developing a hierarchy of delivery, better done before a disaster than during a disaster. Is there such a hierarchy? Is it publicly available so we all know who will be in the dark and who won’t? How was it developed and who had input?
Not good, right?
The only way to take care of the power needs is to do the work now. Reacting, instead of planning, only gets you so far. In this case, that so far is death, suffering, and exodus. Come on, folks. This isn’t the minor leagues and hasn’t been for a long time.
FOOTNOTES
1. ”Appeals Court Sides with SF Over Federal Energy Commission’s Decision on PG&E Power Hookups”. NBC. 27 January 2022. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/appeals-court-sides-with-sf-over-federal-energy-commissions-decision-on-pge-power-hookups/2791187/.