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The problem is more than local. Flick your switch, and the lights may be the result of power generated throughout the West by coal, oil, gas and nuclear power from many places. We are part of a huge power grid with three independent regions—east, west and Texas—and some 3,000 generating plants nationwide. Why would Texas have its own region? We’re told they have the world’s largest concentration of hot air and methane gas, both renewable resources.
In California, we import hydroelectric and other power from Canada. Our northern neighbors are now making up for a decade-long inferiority complex about their dollar being 75 percent of ours by charging a gazillion dollars for enough wattage to run the rotisserie on your Mike Tyson Grill. Los Angeles, which has excess capacity generated by capturing heat from 5 million Angelenos trapped for four hours daily on local freeways, exports power into the grid at huge markups.
There is hope. California, thanks to laws enacted by former governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, has alternative energy, such as the low-wattage power from the semifunctional windmill farms on the rolling hills near Palm Springs, Altamont and elsewhere. The profit potential has caused a new gold rush as entrepreneurs leap into new ventures, like neighborhood turbine farms and pet facilities, where muscular gerbils and assorted vermin race away on treadmills (generating a few volts a week while in endless pursuit of dabs of cheese spread). And the California prison system, where 7 million inmates rub balloons together inside static-electricity–capturing rooms in hopes of adding a few watts to the grid (and getting extra cigarette and cannabis money). If the concept works, it will be applied at other places where people gather with abundant free time and little to do, such as the legislature, Libertarian Party meetings and Chargers games.
Entrepreneurial engineers are seeking other energy breakthroughs throughout the Golden State, like harvesting the 41 billion metric tons of methane gas emanating annually from the growing mountains of manure on cattle and dairy ranches in the Central Valley and near Riverside. (It’s just a 10th of the daily output of Texas, but it’s a start.) Huge generating facilities and tourist destinations could follow. Kettleman Junction on Interstate 5 may become the Niagara Falls of California.
San Diegans are exhibiting a plucky spirit while trying to conserve. We haven’t tried a unified power-free day with protest marches on Sempra Energy, City Hall and the Board of Supervisors. But Del Martians are running their hot tubs just four hours a day (at 10.5 cents an hour, according to Sempra Energy) instead of 24 hours, saving about $2 a day and $60 a month. La Jollans have gone to shaken drinks instead of blended, eliminating five hours of blender use and some 50 cents a day or $15 a month. Lakesiders are saving 60 cents an hour by turning off air-conditioning and lowering body temperatures by daily showering—but offsetting the savings with increased purchases of iced drinks and other beverages at the corner 7-Eleven.
Powegians are creating swimming pool cooperatives where neighbors rotate to one of 10 to 20 different designated households each day, cutting 38.5 cents an hour off pool heater costs on individual electricity bills. In theory, they will reduce costs by a factor of 10 or more—although some may resent the somewhat crowded conditions when the block all gathers in the shallow end on the hotter evenings or weekend days. But some may like it.
Alpinians expect to save $2.45 an hour and several hundred dollars a month in each household this winter by turning off their central heating systems and burning parts of the Cleveland National Forest when the thermometer dips below 55 (some will resort to electric blankets, at 3 cents an hour).
If we stop ironing (22 cents an hour), cooking (30 cents), sleeping on heated waterbeds (8.9 cents a day) and using our refrigerators ($1.04 a day), we could personally save some $2.25 a day, or more than $60 a month. The protest may leave us wrinkled, hungry and cranky from a cold bed and warm beer, but we will be sending a message to the utility.
Several other potential household culprits don’t contribute that much to the consumption problem: television or stereo (3 cents per hour) and computers (4 cents an hour). So we can at least be entertained by drinking our warm beer and room-temperature wine, nibbling on sashimi and steak tartare while bundled up in Arctic trekking gear from L.L. Bean.
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