Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power | AI and manufacturing booms are pushing the US power grid to the brink and utilities can't keep up ( www.washingtonpost.com )

The future of power in America is obvious. State governments will make corrupt deals with data centers and factories to keep their electricity costs low, and raise prices on residential users to compensate until poor families are priced out.

Buy your solar panels now. Before electricity changes from a right to a privilege.

qjkxbmwvz ,

Hopefully these public goods can at some level be priced in a progressive --- as opposed to bulk discount/price break --- fashion...

confusedpuppy ,

I used to work in automation and it's amazing how much waste is created just in the process of creating an automated assembly line.

My company built lines that required power to motors and devices than used up to 600 volts of power. Computers and sensors everywhere. The newer lines tend to have so much more crammed into them to increase production of units. More robots and tools means more power required. Power was usually not shut off during any downtime unless we were working on something that needed to be disconnected.

The automation field is pretty amazing until I stepped back to really notice how wasteful and unsustainable automation is.

I had to leave the industry. It's become clear to me that automation is far too destructive to the environment. Corporations and businesses have no care to make automation cleaner or more sustainable.

I don't know how people can expect automation to create more green energy equipment when automation itself is so dirty and demanding.

force , (edited )

My company built lines that required power to motors and devices than used up to 600 volts of power. Computers and sensors everywhere.

... how do you use 600 volts of power? power is measured in watts (joules/second, volt-amps, whatever), not volts. although i'm not questioning that you know that, considering that your job involved it, i'm just confused at the wording

confusedpuppy ,

I probably meant up to 600 voltage. After I went out of my way to get fired from that awful place, I quit my apprenticeship and left the absolute toxic culture of the trades world behind.

Also found it hard to justify being an electrician when electric cables need plastic insulation. Hard to separate electrical needs from the oil industry when the insulating material comes from the oil industry.

alleycat ,

Also found it hard to justify being an electrician when electric cables need plastic insulation. Hard to separate electrical needs from the oil industry when the insulating material comes from the oil industry.

That's a pretty extreme take. Industrial plastics are one of the better uses for oil. It's fossil fuels and single use plastics that we have to eliminate.

confusedpuppy ,

If I was only focusing on the end product, industrial plastics would seem logical. The issue I have is that it takes an incredible amount of resources it takes overall.

Extracting, refining, forming, shipping, and right down to installation requires a lot of energy and waste. Forming a wire requires heat for the metals and plastics involved. Metal and plastics are heavy and require more fuel to transport it around. Often shrink wrap is used in transportation. Shrink wrap is worthless after a single use and it takes a lot of plastic wrap to safely secure a load cables on on a skid. Installation creates a lot of waste that rarely gets recycled.

Any electronic devices involved are always shipped in single use plastic wrap. This is to ensure no moisture damage in storage and transit. All those devices are likely to be shipped with other devices that require even more plastic wrap.

Often when a line becomes discontinued, many of those dirty and used cables do not get reused. The new assembly line that comes in to take it's place will be built with new cables. A company does not care about reusing old material, they want as little downtime as possible and so installing from new materials will be preferred.

This is all just one trade within many trades that help create and automated assembly lines. Each trade has their own use of fossil fuels. It adds up really quickly.

I strongly believe that we can not technology our way out of this situation. I believe it's a completely unsustainable path to continue on.

Rarely do I see talk of doing less as an action for dealing with the climate crisis. Less work, less transporting, less consumption, less expectations. Rarely do I see discussions of creating stronger, local communities as a form of dealing with the climate crisis. Often the main answer to the climate crisis is more technology without questioning how to create, sustain, maintain or recycle all that tech.

If I am wrong, I'm wrong. I am merely reacting to the situation I found myself in and the things I've observed in those situations. If you think my view is extreme, it's because I now believe the unsustainable use of resources to keep our trades and tech going is absurdly extreme.

If the world truly wants to use tech to deal with the climate crisis, it would have to address the waste and dependency on fossil fuels. Ignoring it will do nothing but hasten our current declining climate health.

schmorpel ,
@schmorpel@slrpnk.net avatar

Interesting, I went through half a bachelors of Electrotechnical Engineering, for the love of renewables but also automation, back then a big hobby of mine together with drones. University got a big grant for some agricultural drone project because it was all the rage. I was asked to participate, found out they had to build a robot instead because using a drone for the task was bollocks but add the drone for decoration because the money was for something with a drone. By then I was already tired of ordering hundreds of tiny pieces from China all the time to keep systems up and running, and staring at screens instead of interacting with the real world.

For every bit of tech that actually improves something there's ten bits of tech developed by arseholes to milk the latest hype. And that shit adds up to all this waste everywhere.

confusedpuppy ,

As a covid lockdown hobby, I got an Arduino starter kit. I found myself buying all these little parts for these projects that I had thought up. I ended up losing interest in Arduino because of all the cheap and tiny bits that get made in China and shipped to the rest of the world. All those tiny parts must be shipped in more disposal packages that help protect the parts from moisture and shock.

There's so much energy and waste involved in all these tiny parts and integrated circuits when you look at the whole picture of manufacturing, packaging and shipping.

Robots, technology and open hardware/software concepts are all really interesting. It just gets hard to justify the environmental impact of all this fun tech.

schmorpel ,
@schmorpel@slrpnk.net avatar

When I went into the hobby the idea was to learn how to repair stuff. Should have kept strictly to that. But a nice Arduino project guaranteed to work as announced is so much more gratifying, so I ended up doing that, or worse, collect stuff for future projects I was going to do.

I think my lowest point, when I was getting a little better at actually putting the pieces together, was developing a plan for my first own invention! A pet toy for lonely cats, basically a glorified treat dispenser with a screen attached, where the bored lonely house cat can swat at digital mice. Of course there's an online leaderboard, so owners can compete with their cat!

A slightly better project was a sensor-based sun tracking system for a solar oven. I just ended up concluding it was rather stupid, because a sensor is useful when we don't know where something is, and we do know where the sun is.

Now it's all boxed and shelved, and I am spending time re-thinking my position towards technology - which tech and tech activities do I actually want to endorse? I guess it's time well spent, and if I get back to doing stuff in the future I won't end up as a walking trash-producer.

confusedpuppy ,

I got into Arduino through my electrical apprenticeship. We had an electronics course to teach us electrical flow, sensors and boolean logic with integrated circuits. I was working on a project for lights and lighting patterns. Also had a couple other smaller ideas but eventually gave up on all of them.

My world view at the time was being challenged and changing rapidly. It's far to easy to get lost in tech crazes because there's always something new to distract you from the truly destructive nature of tech.

I kept a couple parts but sold off everything else for the price of a lunch. The person who bought everything from me was a teacher and said his students would appreciated the box of parts. I didn't feel so bad since they would get used instead of collecting dust.

I've since been focusing on less tech related interests. I'm attempting to work towards a minimal tilling garden. I maintain my own bicycle. I've recently picked up whittling. I have a bunch of untreated wood I can use and the wood shavings can be used in my garden. I am working towards simplicity after burning out hard from technology related complexity.

I never planned on staying in the automation industry for long, planned to complete my apprenticeship and run. Management delayed my apprenticeship and then covid further delayed things. All the new revelations of abuse, waste and destruction ate at me pretty hard and little voice in my head wouldn't stop screaming at me to get out. In an attempt to offset the damage feel like I caused, I planned to get fired and somehow took down the HR manager with me on the way out. Still got my severance pay and a ban from a large, international automation corporation. Maybe I didn't offset my damages but it was still very satisfying.

schmorpel ,
@schmorpel@slrpnk.net avatar

I’ve since been focusing on less tech related interests. I’m attempting to work towards a minimal tilling garden. I maintain my own bicycle. I’ve recently picked up whittling. I have a bunch of untreated wood I can use and the wood shavings can be used in my garden. I am working towards simplicity after burning out hard from technology related complexity.

It's so similar to what happened to me, and I think quite a few others, one could almost believe some good forces of nature guide us towards better ways. I tend a garden, make colored pencil drawings that take a few weeks to complete. Walk a lot. Try to consume local as much as I can. For two years the burnout was so bad even other people and the need to use spoken words to communicate with them was too complex.

carl_dungeon ,

I’ve heard the solar industry is a massive scam for a lot of people too- predatory financing deals.

ghostface ,

Your not wrong, but my only caveat is my solar installation was no money down, and just switch over from big electric to renewable.

This was my situation but several offers were presented previous that required money down. I agree scams are everywhere but I wouldn't classify Solar as an industry as a scam.

carl_dungeon ,

Dont get me wrong, I want to go solar. I’ve just been reading that the top 5 companies you see non stop blasting YouTube ads are actually just predatory lenders using solar as a way to get high interest loans.

If you go solar and aren’t paying cash, make sure you really investigate the company and the fine print. Also be wary of who provides lending for the local installer doing the work.

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