Modern life and civilization depends a great deal on easy access to electricity — everything from transportation, to food production, to medical care, to crime management, etc, depends on it. So what happens when disruptions occur, when the electric grid is no longer reliable and there is no longer easy access to cheap electricity?
This may all sound like nothing but a thought experiment to some, but this is in fact the future that we are facing, according to a new multi-university study — blackouts and power cuts will become increasingly common and increasingly severe in the coming years as the result of resource constraints, rapidly growing demand, and aging and crumbling infrastructure. The report notes that, if we don’t want these soon-to-be-relatively-common occurrences to be too debilitating, we should start adapting now, while we still have the chance.
Credit:Blackout via Flickr CC
The new research — headed by Hugh Byrd, Professor of Architecture at the University of Lincoln, UK, and Steve Matthewman, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand — has found that the electricity supply is “less robust than commonly supposed” and that power cuts will simply become a fact of life throughout much of the world as the “electrical supply becomes increasingly vulnerable and demand for technology continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.”
Professor Byrd states: “Electricity fuels our existence. It powers water purification, waste, food, transportation and communication systems. Modern social life is impossible to imagine without it, and whereas cities of the past relied on man-power, today we are almost completely reliant on a series of interlocking technical systems. Our research therefore explores what happens when the power goes off, and explains why the security of fuel supply is such a pressing social problem.”
The main drivers for this decreased reliability (according to the research) will be the increasing depletion of (economically recoverable) fossil fuel reserves and the transient nature of renewable energy sources. Another very important factor, though, is the reliance that we have on rapidly aging systems — as an example, almost three quarters of all American transmission lines are more than 25 years old.
faults, the researchers reveal that network
failure due to inadequate energy is also a
growing concern. The study explains that
US household electricity usage increased
by 1,300% between 1940 and 2001, and
looks ahead to the future when demand
for electric vehicles and air conditioning
systems is expected to rocket.In the last few decades, air conditioning
has been the greatest factor in increased
electrical consumption and one of the
greatest sources of systematic strain,
with considerably more blackouts
occurring in the summer months than
during winter. The electricity used to
fuel America’s air conditioning is
currently a similar volume to its entire
energy consumption in the 1950s, and
countries such as China and India are
following a similar pattern.
prevalence of electrical appliances in our
homes, work places and social
environments.…Research shows that in America power
outages cause annual losses of up to $180
billion, but economic cost is not the only
concern. We should also consider issues
of food safety, increased crime rates,
transport problems and the environmental
cost of diesel generators; which are all
matters that come to the fore during a
blackout. Our research aims to show how
important it is to consider these issues, as
our increasing demands continue to place
a
dditional strains on already struggling
systems of generation.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/01/power-outages-become-much-common-severe-coming-years-better-start-adapting-now-research-finds/
No comments:
Post a Comment