Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

I acknowledge the owners of the land upon which I write, the Kaurareg nation.

Living up here in the Torres Strait means that sometimes things take a bit of time to get done. On Friday night, just before the long weekend began, I lost both the lighting and the fans on my electrical switchboard. This happened as I turned on a light. The wiring is a bit worn and tired in our unit. Because a State government department handles my dwelling, I need to go through some paperwork to get things done. But, it's a long weekend, and I didn't feel much like trying to go through the effort of getting a sparky over here to do the work, let alone having to go through the bureaucratic hoops that one must go through to get something done without paperwork.

I viewed this as an opportunity to live with the lights out. Well, not exactly. I still had my powerpoints, so I've been able to set up a couple of lamps. Nonetheless, it's been pretty undramatic. I think that I would probably be able to get things done around here without any lights. It was pretty comical around 5 p.m. when I remembered that I still needed to fold laundry, clean the bathroom, and make a couple of dishes (yep, still have the oven circuit working too). I could have moved the lamps around, but didn't want to go through that trouble either. So, I ran around, got things done, then the sun went down.

Guess what? Things are fine.

To live without much light at night just means that I have had to adjust my schedule a bit. Not a huge drama. I am very very thankful that the powerpoints didn't go as well. Otherwise I would have had to find the sparky, pronto. You know, when I think about it, the only massive dramas that I would have around here without powerpoints would be refrigeration and the computer. OK, the stereo. The stove. The fans...the washing machine...hmmm...

Maybe it would be a little more daunting than I'd first thought.

So, let's think about powering down...could I do this western lifestyle on only one powerpoint?

Stove and oven? Well, it's pretty hot here - replace it with a solar oven. Or convert to gas.

Stereo? Might be able to get by (might have to get by) with an mp3 player and a set of headphones and/or small speakers that are powered by rechargeable batteries that get their energy from the sun. Keeping the music close to the ears requires less energy than cranking the speakers. However, it would be a drag when you want to get your groove on with others.

Ceiling fans? It would be a drag to be in the house without them. I refuse to use air conditioning even when it's 34 and 80% humidity, but the fans take the edge off. A solution to this is devising some kind of contraption that would use solar PV to directly power a fan to which it is attached through some kind of simple circuitry. It provides a relatively simple solution: when do I need the fans most? When the sun's beating down on the roof. Would probably want to connect a rechargeable cell of some sort so that I could turn it on when going to sleep in the summertime.

Computer? There are low power options out there. The 1 laptop per child program uses hardware that is power-pack free; battery charging is based on a hand crank.

http://laptop.org/

It may be possible that the myriad of laptop power packs in existence could be adapted to a portable solar charger that could augment or fully charge the battery. Who knows.

The washing machine? Hmmm...Without completely going back to the scrubbing board, it is possible that a few compromises could be made to improve chances of still using electric. Would a low-powered, smaller, front-loader do the trick? Could it do the trick on a power-point supplied by solar? Definitely no dryer!

These compromises could be managed, with growing pains, without the need for energy storage. Energy storage is one of the main factors confronting us today as we travel down the road to sustainability. Intermittency of renewables is often cited as an excuse for not upscaling them. Come on people, surely we can do better than this!

I'm not going to get into a debate about the power requirements of blowdryers, irons, and hair curlers or straighteners or whatever the heck we're doing to our hair these days. Quite simply, creased clothes and naturally occurring hair aren't going to send our communities into a tailspin (our nightspots, on the other hand, may never be the same). A real problem as far as our western civilization is concerned is a steady supply of energy for refrigeration. Yes, there are gas fridges, but these are still pretty darn dear, and gas won't last forever either. We may need to consider some adapting on this front as well. It may be beneficial for somebody out there to do some experimental work on refrigeration temperature profiles that reflect intermittent power delivery based on diurnal sunshine patterns (or a decrepit power grid). Could our food get by if we had a fridge that, say, could get down to 1 or 2 degrees whilst the sun was up and running a solar cell? Knowing that we lose a great deal of heat during the time that we open the fridge, do we as humans have the planning capacity to keep the door closed after the sun goes down? (I'd like to think so!) Maybe we wouldn't be able to keep our milk fresh for two weeks, but maybe it would still sort us out for 3 or 4 days? Still better than the alternative.

Power tools? This could be problematic. Many such tools are high-powered, just like the irons and blowdryers, meaning that they use a lot of energy in a short period of time. Sorry, but we might need to get used to going back to hand drills, hand saws, and screwdrivers, and community efforts. In my own opinion, we built a lot of great stuff before power tools anyhow. It just takes longer. What with inflation, mortgages, and rent being what they are, it is hard to say whether we're going to need many more new houses. I reckon that it's safe to say that some of us are going to be looking for somebody to rent out the second bedroom to help the mortgage. And that some of us are going to be asking around to see if we can stay on the sofa for a couple of days or years.

We are going to have to get used to things taking longer. We are going to have to become better planners in our everyday life. We are going to need to adjust our habits. We need to become consciously aware of the notion that instant gratification just isn't going to be there like there was. Things are going to slow down. I reckon that'll be a good thing for a lot of us anyhow.

The moral of the story is, this weekend without light has been a good, easy, thought-provoking exercise in peak energy. In the same way that a few empty petrol bowsers in Scotland in the last week was a good exercise for the UK.

Anyhow, I'm going to turn on the light in the oven to see if that potato bake is done.

Peace in our communities.