Juneau did not get a disaster proclamation from the State of Alaska, contrary to the hopes of most folks here in Juneau, ourselves included. That means the bill for repairs to the transmission line and for the diesel now used to provide over 80% of our electricity (there is still some hydro close to town) will be borne by each and every Juneau resident and business concern. There is no panic nor any organized protest, yet. For all the hype, the first bills should only now be appearing in mailboxes. Our bill is still a week away.
And therein lies the first problem. The new rates imposed by Alaska Electric Light and Power (AEL&P) apply to the entire month of April, whereas the avalanche occurred on the 16th. Our meter was last read on the tenth, so we will be charged extra for the six days we didn’t know we were going to be charged draconian rates for the extra power. AEL&P contends this is fair because we will be see relief sooner once the problem is resolved. Of course, the rates are scheduled to come down in the middle of summer when electrical requirements are at their least anyway (very few buildings have air conditioning here). Rate payers who get billed in the last half of the month also have the benefit of knowing they need to conserve and have the opportunity to do something about it.
There are other problems too. The design of the original installation has been called into question, but the quick fix being pursued by the power company is to put up nearly identical towers on the same pads where the last towers were taken out by the avalanche. No alternative repairs have been seriously mentioned, such as laying the whole wire underwater (it is said to be too expensive, but nobody has mentioned a price). A lovely illustration of a concrete deflector (used in British Columbia and some western U.S. states without a single failure) showed up in today’s paper, but it wasn’t put in there by our power company. Instead, AEL&P has committed to nothing more than the immediate repairs and “long term study” to investigate possible solutions.
My [Michael] darker (and realistic) side suspects there will be several class-action lawsuits that derive from this whole fiasco. We may be a party in at least one of them.
Some good does come of our avalanche situation. Citywide electric usage is down by 30% as residents and businesses tone down their lights, and will likely come down further. Energy conservation is in vogue again in a big way. There is even some prospect that this will give our city a cause to unite behind, improving our sense of community and maybe even improving life in our town.
But much of this lies in the future.
I went to work on my insulation project the same day my picture appeared on the front page of The Juneau Empire (pictured above, me posing with my insulation stacked in the garage).
I was quoted in the article too:
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/042008/loc_270393062.shtml
Our cathedral ceiling, which accounts for about a third of our total ceiling area, was poorly insulated (like the rest of the house). The four inches of foam now installed (two layers of two inch) should effectively triple the ceiling insulation in that part of the house. We hated to lose the wood look of the original ceiling, and I tried to remove the cedar that was up there for reuse, but the pieces were sporadically glued and many of them came down in splinters when I tried to dislodge them, so the wood stayed. We can always put up new wood later.
The biggest irony about our situation is that we used wood through the winter to supplement our heat, and I was burning the last sticks of dry wood the same day the avalanche struck. Had we known I could have set some wood aside.
But all was not lost. I save leftover wood from every construction project I tackle, including scraps, partly because I hate to throw anything away, but also because I think I’ll find a use for the wood in some future project. Thus was born the “home heat” project. For over two weeks we’ve heated our home almost exclusively with scrap lumber from the garage. It works quite well, in fact it is the driest wood our woodstove has ever burned, having spent months or years (back to 2001) out of the weather. Between the wood and the newly upgraded insulation, we’ve been able to keep all of the electric heaters off for the past two weeks, dropping our electric usage by over half versus the month before the avalanche, and about a quarter of what it was before the woodstove was installed (best estimate, accounting for lighting/heating requirements and outside temperatures).
I always knew I’d find a good use for that wood.
Unfortunately, we’ll be running out of scraps in another week at the rate we’re going. Still, there are some pallets to be had around town (about a day’s worth of heat per pallet if the last two I found are any indication). My next door neighbor also said he’s had some wood rounds for a long time but no splitter for them, so we tentatively agreed to have me come over with my splitter in exchange for some of the split wood.
I recall that Sheryl was somewhat taken aback by the price quoted for our woodstove when we had it put in. It appears now that, if we can keep throwing wood in it, we’ll make up for the expense much quicker than in the original estimation. And still we wait for our first bill at the new rate.
We’re lucky: Sheryl and I have enough set aside to pay our electric bills through this crisis. Not only that, but we’ll continue with our home renovations pretty much per plan, since our renovations are largely to improve the house’s energy efficiency anyway. We’ll still be driving to Fairbanks for Dorothy’s wedding too, although our plans for a larger trip down south had to be set aside (which was becoming tenuous even before our avalanche due to the price of gasoline). We are acting proactively, I hope, rather than reactively.
I suspect the reactive responses to Juneau’s energy crisis (and it truly is a crisis) will begin within the next week, and will escalate with every electric bill delivered to the doors of an evermore distraught citizenry. I also suspect that much of the town is still in denial over just how bad this really is, and won’t truly appreciate it until the bills are opened. There are also a lot of people who simply don’t know how to cut back, people who are in many cases the same people who won’t have a contingency for this kind of emergency. The same thing can be said about many area businesses.
But this is a catastrophe in slow motion. It began over two weeks ago. It will continue through the summer.
The kids, by the way, have been largely unaffected by all this. They thought the ceiling insulation project was interesting enough, and they are a little more willing to wear sweaters in the house now.
