[Paleopsych] Gaming the power grid

[Steve]

You may recall that a couple of years ago
we had a power crunch out here in
California- rolling blackouts and such.

The amount of power that was triggering
those blackouts was only about 1-2% of
the total.  People reacted by buying 
many household florescents and doing 
other micro-measures that the we got
under the trigger point.

For example, last year we looked into
buying a more efficient furnace.  Then
we found that our house had no insulation.
Now our first goal is to put on an insulating
roof.  In the winter our west-facing windows
make the kitchen to hot in the afternoon
that I use a fan to blow cool air from other parts 
of the house into it, storing the heat in the mass
of the building.

As I recall in economics this is called
working at the margin.  As the price
of petroleum slowly increases, more
and more drops will be added to the
flow of alternatives, and at some point
the political will to make structural
changes in the economy will emerge.


Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net