Grid Lock in So Many Ways in Everyday Ramblings

I read about the electrical grid and look out the window at late fall.

Electricity is fascinating. It is very now. I am typing this on my precious slow laptop on the power cord and it is very likely running off wind power generated in the Columbia River Gorge this very minute. There is no storage; those wires out there do not have electricity running through them, they are electricity.

If the wind dies down, which it did in the Gorge last decade for three whole weeks, there is no power, they need to switch to an alternative source. If it is nighttime or there are clouds there is no solar. And what happens if demand peaks?

That is why that Flex Time program my power company is trying out is so interesting. Incentivize people to not use power during times of peak demand.

Mrs. Sherlock, who is on her second Prius, was talking to a knowledgeable fellow with a Volt (an all electric car) at a free charging station a few blocks from here at length on Sunday about his car and how he uses it. She is thinking about getting one.

I was not trying to rain on their parade but was saying what are you going to do if the electric grid goes down if you go all electric?

One thing every person who lives in this country needs is the ability to get from one place to another and although I am a big fan of walking and biking and public transportation I don’t think anyone is going to give up their own personal vehicle unless they have to.

So infrastructure is a place to start and something at least in general we can agree on. How much, where, what type and so on that gets a bit more complicated.

There is a plan here that I am actively against to put light rail down the big road next to my house. It is massively expensive, disruptive and folks are packed into those cars like sardines with no driver in most of them and people bring big dogs and do drug deals and… but there is one good thing about light rail…

Those literally, and I counted, ten people in a row, alone in their cars, I saw looking at their phones and texting in a turn lane on Tuesday night would be on the train instead using their phones safely to their heart’s content.

Even the best disciplined most conscientious of us is going to slip up in times when logistics get complicated, a family emergency is going on and look at the phone instead of the road. But 10 cars in a row? There is something going on here in the United States of Distraction.

And wagging our fingers and tsk tsking is not going to help. Same thing with all the drivers that crowd into the crosswalk of the big intersection I use practically everyday to get downtown. When they do this, my fellow pedestrians and me need to walk out into traffic to cross the street with the light. I don’t get mad anymore because it is clearly a problem with the intersection.

The drivers are doing what they do. It is the nature of drivers. Yesterday a woman actually apologized to me, which I thought was nice. Often they get mad at me because my existence is pointing out to them that they are doing something they are, umm not supposed to.

I had four distressed students in class last night. I was happy during this difficult shocking time to be able to do something practical to help them cope a bit better.

We will go on. And maybe if the stars are aligned we can all agree to work on the things we can work on, the roads and our aging amazing power grid.

Last updated November 10, 2016