Lights Out

Darn wind! It’s out of the north and has been blowing hard 2 days now with no relief in sight till sometime on Saturday. And the ‘stuff’ that is being blown around is certainly causing some allergy problems. We were driving down tree lined Walnut Avenue yesterday when a gust filled the air with ‘stuff’ just like a fog. Pollen everywhere!

What we need is a little bit of rain to clear the skies, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. According to the weather service, we’ve already experienced the driest March/April in the past 100 years.

I’m close to finishing the book, Lights Out by Jason Makansi. It’s been a great read as the author has the talent needed to write an exciting book on the subjects of power plants, transmission lines and politics. Those wouldn’t be my normal choices for reading material. But the facts make the book…90% of our power comes from power plants fueled by coal, uranium or natural gas. Only 8% comes from hydroelectric. That leaves 2% for wind and solar. Not much. And not all power plants are created equally. Peakers are the plants that only come on-line when needed; peak demand hours. They are the most expensive to operate and so they are the darlings of investors. Investors who pay for new power plants. And with demand always growing at a rate of 2 to 3 percent a year, that’s smart investing, even though it takes about ten years from concept to the finish of construction for a plant to come on-line.

Reading the book makes you question the sanity of all connected to the power industry and especially the politicians…until you realize that the main goal of all concerned is to make money at every opportunity. Power is sold and resold many times before it ever leaves the plant and makes the journey to your coffeepot. If you realize, as you should, that power is probably the most critical element in our society; the glue that holds us together as a nation, you might wonder why it’s treated so shabbily. The power transmission grid is fragile and ancient. And it takes very little to disrupt it. It was a falling tree branch that took out a major portion of the ‘Rust Belt states and a large Canadian province a few years ago. The cost was in the billions. I was about halfway through the book when the realization came that it wouldn’t be surprising to see the grid fail…anytime! I started thinking about buying a generator. Seriously.