Old King Coal, a Filthy Old Soul

Back in June I posted a disgusted ode to King Coal’s most outrageous method of extracting the combustible black rock from these most beautiful and abundant Appalachians. In that post, Desperate for Fossil Fuels, I described the environmental horror known as “Mountaintop Removal” and offered a bunch of useful links for further information, environmental coalitions and direct actions aimed at stopping this crazy rape of the earth.

Just six months later on December 22, an earthen dam gave way at a coal ash holding pond in Kingston, Tennessee, spilling more than a billion gallons of the sludge into a neighborhood as well as into the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers. Three homes were completely destroyed, many others within the 300 acre sludge zone had to be evacuated, dead fish littered the banks of the rivers and the people of eastern Tennessee as well as the rest of the nation suddenly became familiar with what this waste product of burning coal contains. It’s not pretty.

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Yet Another New Energy Source

Putting the vortex to good use!

As the world economy continues its wide swings mired in uncertainty as well as hope that the necessary changes in the way we energize our world will finally get a real chance for development, scientists at the University of Michigan, funded by the US Department of Energy, have developed a new technology inspired by the way fish swim that can harness the power of slow-moving water.

Most hydropower technologies rely on the action of waves, tides or faster currents caused by dams, and need the water to move as fast as five or six knots in order to operate efficiently. This new system can generate electricity in water that flows less than one knot (about 1 mile per hour), and does not require placing obstructions in or on top of the water as other methods do. Rather, this new system uses cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs beneath the surface of the waterway. As the water moves past the cylinders, it creates vortices which push and pull them up and down on the springs. It is the mechanical energy in the vibrations that is converted into electricity.

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Water As Precious Resource

People used to think about water as an infinite resource. They could use it, abuse it, pollute it and sink their garbage into it with impunity, it would never run dry and would somehow clean itself of sewage and chemicals and industrial waste. This short-sighted view of life’s most precious and necessary resource justified the great post-war “turf boom” expansion of the population into designed suburbs of cookie-cutter houses with neat green lawns and homeowners’ associations that decided they could dictate what residents were allowed to plant, whether there could be a few weeds in the mix, and how often those green expanses of useless grass had to be watered and dosed with chemicals in order to maintain the cookie-cutter expanses of identical expanses of useless grass.

Now that we know water is a lot more precious than we thought, that climate change is imposing long-term droughts on entire swaths of the earth, that unwise allocations have drained ancient aquifers, and that a lot of the water people have to drink is polluted by things nobody really wants to know about, it’s a good time to re-think our entire approach to water. This is yet another necessary change in humanity’s relationship with the natural world that must start in the countryside and outer ‘burbs with motivated individuals who will commit to doing things differently, and educate their neighbors about how it’s done and how great it can be made to look.

Most of the surface and groundwater on the planet is salty. Shortages of fresh water have led to conflicts and open warfare through history. In Bolivia the American corporation Bechtel has attempted to corner the water market in order to privatize it, even making it illegal for individuals to harvest rainwater from their own property. Their model for this ridiculous legislation comes from Colorado, where it’s also illegal to harvest rainwater (because it diminishes downstream supply).
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25 Alternative Energy Strategies – 4

For homestead and/or community independence

We’ve looked a bit at on-site electrical generation, transportation fuels and building technologies. In this installment we’ll look at some ways of putting things together into overall strategies for homestead independence.


Part 4: Hybrid Energy Systems

In a previous post a short video was offered about as small, 1Kw hybrid energy system using solar and wind offered by a company in Canada. Whether you’re planning to go off-grid with storage batteries or negotiate a price for your excess production with the local utility (and get a “backwards meter”), the same thing is true of energy supplies as is true of general homestead success – diversify. So Here are five hybrid systems, some good links and some cool ideas for planning your alternatives…

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25 Alternative Energy Strategies

For homestead and/or community independence

This series will provide an overview of the most promising energy systems and strategies for homestead or rural community independence. Most of these are available right now, some can be put together by the handy homeowner or community action group, and some will be available in the near future. Combined with common-sense conservation practices these can contribute a great deal to the independence of individual homesteads and rural communities willing to work together.

These technologies and ideas will be divided into particular technologies and presented together – 1. Electrical production; 2. Transportation alternatives – vehicles, fuels and power to operate the kind of equipment necessary to a rural lifestyle (trucks, farm and garden equipment, remote generators, etc.); 3. Building technologies and direct alternatives for heating/cooling and their applications; 4. Hybrid systems that can even out production and tie together for constancy of supply; 5. Collective strategies for small, cooperative communities striving for self-sufficiency and willing to invest together for alternatives that benefit all.

Part 1: Electrical Generation

We use electricity to light our homes and outbuildings, refrigerate our food, wash and dry our clothes, prepare our food, provide our in-home entertainment (music, television, computers), and sometimes to heat or supplement our heat during the winter. The “average” electricity use per home in the US (this is something we can personally adjust downward by conservation and appliance/heat alternatives) is ~900 Kilowatt hours per month. Get that down to ~700 for your home/homestead, and we’re talking less than 8,500 KwH per year.

What are the best alternative sources for that much on-site electrical generation?

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