The only thing worse than paying $5,000 per year to the electric company and accelerating global warming…

by philg

I have discovered that there is only one thing worse than paying $5,000 per year to the electric utility and thereby accelerating global warming… not paying anything for electricity because there is none to be had. Our house lost power for about 24 hours, which meant no heat, no water (it depends on a pump from a well in the backyard), and no landline (Verizon FiOS helpfully includes a backup battery that is exhausted after 8 hours)).

Perhaps it is time to adopt a 30-year-old friend’s philosophy: “I don’t understand why people are worried about global warming; the Earth needs to last only 50 more years.”

Public mourning continues for the loss of Steve Jobs, who brought us a touch-screen interface for our phones. Perhaps those of us who live in the Northeast should set aside a moment of thanks for the minds who brought us practical electricity: Maxwell, Volta, Orsted, Ampere, Faraday, Ohm, Tesla (Mr. AC Power). Their achievements may have been minor compared to those of Jobs, but without their early work, how would we charge our iPhones?

21 thoughts on “The only thing worse than paying $5,000 per year to the electric company and accelerating global warming…”

  1. Thought it interesting, more sad than interesting, really, that the same week Mr. Jobs died also brought the passing of Dennis Ritchie. The little I know of his work (and computing in general) makes it seem massively obvious that his was the greater loss. Would bet the average person couldn’t tell you who Tesla was with a thousand dollars on the table and ten to one odds.

  2. My grandmother lived to be almost 100. She married and moved in to her home in a small Texas town at the age of 16. She lived her life in that house and never traveled more than 250 miles from home in her life.

    I once asked her what the biggest thing that ever happened in her little town. She answered with a second’s hesitation:

    “The day we got electricity!”

    (In her attic to this day is the original bare wire with glass insulator wiring. Long since disconnected of course.)

  3. I’m surprised to hear they include any battery backup. I don’t think any home-user ISP here in Germany does that. OTOH, I believe power outages happen less often over here, and don’t last long when they do. So there’s probably much less demand for the feature. I keep my home connectivity stuff behind battery backup, but I’m not aware of anyone else here who does.

  5. @tekumse Yes, I understand. Still, even with types of access where phone calls will not work without power, battery backup is not included here. You have to get your own.

  6. I’m thankful for smokers. Without them, I’d have no way of charging my cell phone in my car since there would be no cigarette lighter in the console.

  8. A generator? The house currently does not have natural gas. I called the gas company and they said that they would be pleased to run a pipe for $13,000. I liked the idea of burning domestic gas rather than imported oil so I was about to agree. Then they continued “but your driveway runs next to a pond, which means it is wetlands and we would need to get approval from the Conservation Commission” [i.e., the Millionaires for Obama]. How much would doing the wetlands paperwork cost? “That would be another $13,000”.

    I also talked to one company that does generator installs. They said that, assuming the existence of a gas line, they would put one in with an automatic switch for $27,000.

    So the total project would be over $50,000 (though I guess the gas line would have other uses, such as switching to gas heat). The house loses that much value every 6 months! Or I could buy an airworthy airplane for $50,000 and get into it and fly to some part of the country with power.

  9. I’m guessing generator boy may have been referring to something smaller and less permanent, for example a portable 10 kW gasoline generator:
    (http://www.amazon.com/DuroMax-XP10000E-Portable-Generator-Electric/dp/B0018C6BDE) in the $1,000 range.

    It’s obviously not going to power the entire house, and it would require going out and buying gasoline every once in a while. But it would be better than nothing, and useful for powering the necessities (water pump, water heater, refrigerator in the summer).

  10. It may be a good idea to get an LP heater (like the soapstone gas stoves) or a wood stove as a backup heat source. For generators, you can look at Honda EU series – they’re really very quite compared to their standard models, if noise level matters. Even their smaller models, rated for 2000 watt (about $1k), can run your modem, router, laptop, etc., and I had a full size fridge, a separate freezer, and some lights running on it for about a day. The larger models in the EU series are equally quite – and have inverters, so you can power your electronics without a UPS.

  12. Joseph: The house has a Viking range with an LP tank that serves as a backup heat source to some extent (though of course it says not to use it as a heat source). My main issue with a portable generator is that I don’t understand how one hooks it up. You run a bunch of extension cords out windows? And then re-plug everything once the main power comes back on? For this house, the main issue is the well water pump. It doesn’t plug into anything except the main panel (and I think it requires 230V). So there is no obvious way to unplug it and plug it into a portable generator.

  13. You can get a manual transfer switch that will let you power an electrical subpanel from either generator or mains power. There should be a mechanical interlock to ensure that your generator remains isolated from the utility lines (e.g. you do not want to energize the utility lines.) Something like http://www.reliancecontrols.com/ProductDetail.aspx?TRB0605C. You would put essential circuits in this subpanel and run one cord to a 240V plug outside your house. When the power goes out you start the generator, plug in the 240V cord, and switch the subpanel from mains to generator power. You can still run extension cords from the generator if you want.

  14. Some Honda models can be switched between 120V and 230V. The EU line has a separate outlet which can be used for hard-wired outlet plug-in. So you would hard-wire selected circuits on your main switch panel to an outside outlet, and then plug the generator into that outside outlet when needed. The power intake for those circuits can be toggled between the utility and the generator. I’m sure your local electrician could explain it better, but from what I understand, it’s a pretty standard setup that should cost less than a tenth of the cost of paperwork alone for your gas line.

  15. A portable generator is used in conjunction with a transfer switch. It’s another panel installed along with your main panel. You have an electrician wire the breakers you want to support during an outage from the main panel to the transfer switch. The transfer switch then runs to an outlet you can install on the side of your house. When the power fails you plug the generator into the side of your house, flip a switch on the transfer switch and go back to normal. Depending on the size of the generator you’d need to be selective about what you want to power at the same time. The whole set-up installed, including generator, would run less than $3K.
    http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/generators/content.aspx?asset=gg_connecttohome

  17. For a quick connection without hard-wired outlet, you can just run a single heavy-duty extension cord through the window, and then daisy-chain however many power strips it can support. For around $2k for a 3000 watt model (or $1k for 2000 watt model), you can power your computer equipment, some lights, a fridge, possibly a space heater, etc. At these prices, it may make sense to buy a separate unit just for the well pump and hard-wire it individually to an outside outlet.

    As a bonus, the smaller portable models can be used for camping – they weigh just about 50 lbs. The “companion” models allow to connect two of them together if needed.

  19. Any generator you’d be interesting in would have 230V output. You can hook your generator into your houses electrical panel and use your homes wiring normally, however you need to install a transfer switch to do it legally. The issue arises that you need to disconnect your house from the power lines before firing up your generator. If you don’t, your generator will in essence be sending power down the lines and to anyone they’re connected to. This poses a safety issue for linesman, etc. who are expecting the lines to be dead and not energized by your generator.

    This can be accomplished in theory by simply throwing your panels master disconnect. To do it legally, apparently you need a fail-safe device such as a transfer switch which does not rely on a person remembering to throw a switch to disconnect your main power line connection. This might run you $500-$1000 installed.

  21. Another option to go with a whole-house propane generator is to rent the propane tanks from a company like Eastern Propane (http://www.eastern.com/) – this way you don’t need to run that gas line to your house, and the propane generators seem to have some pretty significant price / power advantage over gasoline-based, at least the Hondas.

    As an added benefit, you could switch to gas heat (a soapstone gas stove like this http://www.woodstove.com/fireside-franklin does not rely on electricity at all), and LP water heater (a tankless water heater can be installed to feed your electric tank heater), which can offset the installation costs with lower operating costs.

    Both of these should cost much less then just running that gas line to your house, and even if you did that, you’d have to switch your appliances anyway. So might as well just use LP tanks instead of natural gas line.

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