Post-Crisis Power is Much Like Today

Of all the major problems the world faces in the next decade, power seems to be the one least likely to be solved by radical new technology. Note that this is not a bad thing. We have great technologies for generating power from wind, water, and sunlight, with potential for significant (but incremental) technological improvement. More complex power sources, too: Geothermal heat, salinity gradients, nuclear fission (including fast breeder reactors and so on), maybe fusion. But seriously, if there are major power problems requiring some significant investment in infrastructure, it will be way easier to train lots of new people to build and maintain windmills or solar farms than nuclear reactors.

If we are in the midst of a power crisis in 2020, celebrations are more likely to involve less power use than power use from different sources. If we're mid-crisis, who knows where I'll be getting my power? Different energy sources will be available at different times, and the price of anything that can generate power will be way up. Maybe I'll be able to get (or build) and maintain a windmill or some PV cells, and maybe the weather will cooperate (or I'll have setup sufficient batteries). Maybe a friend will still have a car and a can of gas, and I can hook things up to the alternator. Most likely I'd get some friends to play instruments instead of plugging speakers into the wall. Party games replace movies, etc. In the midst of a power crisis, even if I have nifty gadgets to mitigate the lack of a reliable grid, I might not want to use much of that for things other than necessities. Then again, getting a bit of power to listen to radio or watch TV could be pretty good, assuming the station also has sufficient power.

If 2020 is after a power crisis (navigated successfully), I'll power whatever electrical devices my celebration requires by plugging them into the wall. There might be a giant wind farm off of Cape Cod, the Nevada desert might be covered in solar panels, but that won't change the content of my celebration much. Friends will probably arrive by train and foot, not by individual vehicles (electric or otherwise), and that could well be the most significant change.

Admittedly, that's shaped by the fact that I live in an area with an existing power grid. Local generation and storage gives you more options, more potential to increase efficiency, the ability to spread out electricity generation from better spots and meet demand that varies between locations and over time. Local generation will be useful in spots so remote that the cost of connecting to a large-scale grid exceeds the benefit. I suspect that those areas are far fewer than areas where the cost of connecting to a large-scale grid exceeds the profitability, but there's a reason why rural electrification in the US was political, not private, and why the solution was extending the power grid, not putting a windmill (or a diesel generator) on every farm. Much of that still applies.