Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

 

I’m often asked how long a residential solar electric system takes to “pay itself back.” I usually say, “Do you eat healthy and exercise? You might live to see it. Not more than 72 years.” But as I see it, beyond the fact that it’s in reality probably five to eight years for the average Western home (which might as well be 72 years for all the average Western mind is told to plan ahead), there are at least three other legitimate ways of looking at solar investment pay-back time.

You’ve got your Rugged Individualist reasons for being off the Grid (“what if there’s no Grid to be on some day?”), your Environmental Sensitivity reasons (most Grid power since the Industrial Revolution has been generated by burning Earth-destroying coal, or with natural gas or dangerous nuclear power, though this, we must all hope if we care about our and a lot of other species surviving more than a few more generations, is changing). And you’ve got your Human Rights reasons (the moment you stop using fossil fuels, you help the life of people in — to pick one of a score of places — the Niger Delta, you help worker safety in coal mines, and you work toward the shutting down of rickety, ill-maintained pipelines in places like Alaska and the Caspian Sea).

So let’s say you’ve picked one or more of the above reasons to wean from the Grid. Excellent. The even-more-good news is, contrary to the short-sighted views on anything new of those lingering, conceptually, in the Twentieth Century, you’re actually creating jobs and being patriotic (no matter what your country), since a retrofit to a sustainable power Grid will involve a societal superstructural re-tooling on close to a scale of the original Industrial Revolution itself. Not bad economic stimulus in a depressed world economy. Only this time, it can be clean, right down to the trucks on the highways. The sun and its sister, the wind, are battery chargers that are free, healthy, and not going to run out for several billions years. No mountain ranges get decapitated to harvest them, no estuaries defiled, no groups ethnic cleansed.

Power. It’s such a basic part of our lives. Except for us weirdos who live in untidy places like Alaska and New Mexico, we expect electricity without question when we buy a home. It’s one of the things you’ve been allowed buy as a monopoly since the 1930s – the Electric Utility. The very notion of a Grid implies an interconnectedness that makes the paranoid Libertarian in me bristle. But, of course, as organisms in this tiny ecosystem called Earth, we are all interconnected, even if we have individual rather than Grid solar panels. Same air, same water, same circulating climate. As a result, I believe that the most effective political activism one can practice today is encouraging government at all levels to retrofit to sustainable power. (The way to do this is to call your representatives weekly and let them know that you vote on sustainability.)

As of 2008, a majority in my country’s Congress either didn’t get it or was bought off not to get it. Eight times renewable energy tax credits and incentives failed to be renewed in the U.S. Senate last year. These only finally passed in the grab bag of the Bush swan-song financial bailout bill. My suggestion? Let’s make sure that this time they get it: the U.S. automakers want our tax money to survive? Congrats, you can have it. Only you no longer make SUVs. You make plug-in hybrids powered by the wind grid we’re also gonna build, and maybe some algae-powered diesels. No more funding for coal. Tell your curmudgeonly uncle and your representatives: there is no such thing as clean coal technology.

But who is the Grid? How does this magically pre-installed power get to our homes? Where is the power plant? How does it work? We should ask these questions, even though electricity (unless you touch it, which I have, and in which case it becomes all the colors of the spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared) is invisible. A fun way to spend an afternoon is to wade around in the voicemail/transfer maze of your utility company’s customer service planet, trying to get answers to some of these inquiries. In my region, the power company uses nuclear, natural gas and coal (the Big Bad Three), unless you pay extra for some kind of carbon offset bullshit (which I do). Thankfully, very rarely (maybe three times in as many years) have I had to switch the Ranch from solar to the Grid for a day or two for high-load uses like multiple power tools or heat lamps for duckling incubation.

“The stereo just doesn’t sound as clean on coal,” I like to joke to friends when this happens. “Just listen to it.” But of course we can’t tell. It’s not like organic avocados or local apples that obviously taste better. The danger is more indirect, manifesting in the long-term effects of coal mining and oil exploration. And rallying an entire planet of Homo sapiens to suddenly care about re-building the source of this magical and invisible power, which unless you live in Baghdad basically works now, is no easy task. Still, I sure hope it’s a successful one. I think our lives depend on it.

I have it somewhat easy here on the Funky Butte Ranch since I live in a Banana Republic where almost no “standard” services are reliable. My solar power is so much more reliable than the local Grid (especially during the daily lightning assaults of monsoon season) that instead of folks coming over to borrow the traditional cup of sugar of times past, I get them coming over to borrow a cup of Internet when the Grid power is out, again. I gotta admit, for a kid raised not to ask where the electricity, water or politicians come from, this rugged individualist pride is where it’s at for me: if the Grid goes away, I‘ve still got juice. At least as long as my batteries hold out. But lately I’ve been realizing that I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the perimeter secured should hoards of former Wal-Mart shoppers also come to recognize this about three days after the supply trucks stop coming in.

“What about community?” a saucer-eyed young woman asked me at a recent speaking event. “Aren’t we all in this together?” We are, indeed. The Great Tomatoes-For-Eggs Barter Escapade is evidence of this for me — timeless community behavior of the finest kind. But I hardly have any neighbors and I’m either mad at a good portion of them or they’re mad at me, over the most banal and easily-resolved issues. So I don’t see the world’s masses suddenly holding hands in spontaneous “communities” just because times get desperate. In fact, breakdowns in order often lead to the people with guns getting hold of the resources. Ya know, if you bother to look at a little thing like history. So I guess if I were granted a wish as to what I’d like to see as the ideal human social set-up should Globalization fail and things get decentralized, it’d be “a community of people I like.” Using our regenerating, sustainable power supply. And the national anthem would be something bluegrassy.

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