I can’t see more than 100 feet this morning on account of a heavy and foreboding fog that has enveloped our hilltop. It’s a pretty normal January day here in San Diego with the high temperature expected to be about 60 with the morning starting out in the low 50s. There is really nothing to complain about weather wise. That’s not the case for most of the rest of the country, where the temperatures have plummeted and a big winter storm is working its way across the midsection of the country from middle south to northeast. Yesterday I saw that the Times had composed a tool to allow you to put in your location anywhere in the country and it would project the weekend snowfall you should expect. I did that for the three places where my kids live, Denver, Delaware and Brooklyn, as well as our old standby wintery spot of Ithaca. What I got back was that Denver was in the best shape with 1-2 inches of snow likely, a mere dusting for this Rocky Mountain High city. The other spots were not so lucky. They all have anticipated snowfalls of 8-12 inches, except for Ithaca, where the most likely outcome is more like 12-18 inches. That is one epic snowstorm blanketing a very large swath of the country. It makes my soupy morning seem pretty lame in the complaints department.
I just glanced at the weather app and it looks like the storm is just now cutting through Tennessee on its way to the northeast. The brunt of the storm is expected to reach most of my clan on Sunday while we on the hilltop bask in weather that may well reach 70 degrees tomorrow. While I do not miss the idea of shoveling snow or scraping windshields, there is a certain envy for the coziness of stocking in a a few days of groceries and planning on just hunkering down in front of the proverbial fire for a weekend of simply staying warm. I have just spoken to Delaware, Brooklyn and Ithaca (it’s too early for Denver) and the status report is that it’s frigidly cold in all three spots, but only Ithaca has the beginnings of snowfall. They are all stocked up and feeling like they are as prepared as they can be. The only cause for real concern is whether there will be power outages due to the storm. Modern life allows us to have ways to stay warm and feed ourselves during a winter storm, but cut us off from the grid and we are lost. What will we do with ourselves if we do not have WiFi, internet access, streaming and all the other good things that electricity brings into our homes? I know that we think about that a lot out here in Wildfire Land. Our solar generation gets dumped into our Tesla batteries, but that only gives us 13.5 kWh of juice per battery (we have 2 for a total or 27 kWh). That gets us through a day of essentials (assuming no A/C given that its winter time), but then we are dependent on the sun shining to replenish the batteries if the grid stays down.
In the six years we have lived here full time, five years of which we have had the batteries installed, we have had only perhaps two meaningful outages, and only one that was multi-day (three days, as I recall). Luckily, there was a reasonable amount of sunshine during those days, so we kept things like the refrigerator running and the internet and TV functioning. One of the things I am considering is installing a fuel cell to fill in when and if the sun don’t shine. This device is sort of like a generator except that it works off propane and only kicks in to replenish the batteries when needed. It’s a technology that’s been around for more than a decade and I happen to know a guy who runs a company in the business. These units are about $10k to install and while, theoretically, they could allow you to cut the cord from the grid altogether, you still need propane deliveries for when the sun isn’t shining. They are much more energy efficient than generators, but its unclear how much that matters if you are using them just for emergencies when the grid goes down. I’m not enough of a survivalist to think that I want to live in a world that has us fighting each other for scarce resources if and when the grid collapses. I tend to think there will be bigger problems for us all in that eventuality, so I really do wonder if a fuel cell qualifies as a reasonable and necessary expenditure. It might be nice to have for that once in a decade event, but is that really a necessity? I tend to think not.
The other factor in my thinking about installing a fuel cell is my age. I turn 72 next week and while I’m feeling healthier than I have been in years, who knows how long we will want the rigors of home and property management on this hilltop. We are not people who are uncomfortable with the notion of downsizing to a smaller condo or apartment. When that time comes, will anyone understand or be willing to pay for an upgraded emergency energy stop-gap like a fuel cell? I wonder. I just went through an analysis of installing more solar and that taught me a bit about this issue. It seems that I have a grandfathered deal with SDG&E for them to buy my excess energy from my solar, but I am not allowed to increase my generation capacity without losing that grandfathered deal. Therefore, the only way to expand my solar generation is to do it offline on a system that either has to be drawn from synchronously with generation (i.e. during the daylight hours) or it has to be on its own battery storage system that cannot link to the grid. The only energy consumption that we have that is big enough to warrant that is my EV truck and Kim’s plug-in hybrid car. We would literally have to charge them during the daytime rather than have them programmed to recharge at night during the super-off-peak times. The cost differential to us would be minimal and the payback for installing a system (not to mention a bigger hurdle if we added independent batteries) would be decades long. In other words…it ain’t worth it. And then, if and when we sold the house, trying to calculate that value and get it back in the sales price would be unrealistic.
So, back to my Soupy Saturday, I have concluded that just like we do not have a fallout shelter or store three years’ worth of canned chili in case of the apocalypse, we will take our chances with the grid (including our solar and battery cost-mitigating tools) and our 500 gallon propane tank (that’s at least 6 months worth with normal usage, and more if I shut down the hot tub…which an emergency would likely induce me to do). At this age, staying confident that the world we know (even during a snow storm) will continue to support our basic human needs, seems like a safe bet. Then again…given the events this week in Minneapolis…counting on life as we know it, may not be as safe a bet as it used to be…