Electricity Is Overrated

I googled "electricity is overrated" and found the worst blog post ever and it even had a comment saying how good it was. Well I hope to supercede them in the search results with a better post on the same subject.

In modern society we can't even conceive of having no electricity. But in reality it's not that necessary. Wall plugs do not occur naturally in nature.

I think of Tahiti where some islands around that area still have people that speak traditional Tahitian and carry on the old ways of doing things without electricity. This is so called "Paradise" but has no electricity. The Corona beer commercials have made money off of the notion of having nothing but beer and a beach and a chair.

In parts of Alaska there is no way to get electricity except through gas powered generators. So people in self made cabins often go without electricity, and instead use oil lamps and fire for heat, and fire to cook, and rag and soapy water for shower, and wash clothes in a bucket with a plunger. One person "Dick Proenneke" enjoyed this life so much that he lived this way in Alaska for 30 years until he couldn't live there any longer due to health issues. Although almost being blown up by a bearing in the military and then deciding that living in the city wasn't worth it, probably had a part to play in his decision to move to Alaska. Also batteries don't work in Alaska because the electrolyte freezes. Therefore cars don't work and instead they use snow mobiles with a manual ignition instead of an electrical ignition.

Electricity is fun but it only serves to power electronics and appliances, and lights. But how much do we pay for this modern gift of electricity. If you think about it why is it that gas prices are going down but electricity prices are going up? Why not just buy a gas powered generator instead of paying ever increasing utilities? Money could be made here. I myself could live with buying batteries every month for a headlamp instead of paying $75/mo or more for an energy bill.

Phantom loads on your energy bill have to be considered. All modern electronics have standby mode and I'm uncertain as to how much energy they consume. What I do know is that TV's never used to need a standby mode, and DVD players without a clock should never need a standby mode either. This could be considered a conspiracy theory of why we have to pay for this extra energy without us even realizing it. But to solve this problem all you need to do is plug in these devices like the TV and DVD player to any standard surge protector and then turn of the surge protector every night. Even if it's a hassle from the so called "modern convenience" of these phantom load devices.

You'll also find that lots of the energy that the energy companies pump out is wasted energy. Because when it is not consumed it doesn't get stored anywhere and is just lost. So this makes modern energy grids inefficient.

In the end you will always have to pay for energy until we have self made energy sources like "Mr. Fusion" from back to the future. Even if the government is successful with creating a fusion reactor with the "National ignition facility", we will still always have to pay for that free energy. Even though our tax dollars payed for them to build it, we will still have to pay an energy bill on top of that even though the energy is essentially free except for maintenance. This will go on indefinitely, and even your childrens children will still be paying energy bills. All until someday we have personal energy systems, or just choose to live somewhere without electricity.

Plumbing on the other hand I don't want to give up so readily.