Gresham Lecture Living without Electricity

Summary

This report presents us all the issues that can appear when we are living without electricity.

We will see though a lot of examples difference of living without electricity between now and before. You will be adapted to many situations, many cases which will make you think about the importance that took the electricity in our lives.

Table of Contents

• 0.0 Summary………………………………………….p 1

• 1.0 Introduction…………………………………….…p 3

• 2.0 Living without electricity…………………...……p 4

2.1 What kind of electricity?................................p 4

2.2 Example of Lancaster Area…………………p 4

2.3 Issues for who ?.....………………………….p 6

2.4 Who is responsible………….………………p 7

2.5 How will change the system control……….. p 7

2.5 Challenges from technology companies..….. p 8

• 3.0 Conclusion………………………………………..p 9

• 4.0 References………………………………………..p 10

Introduction

We are living in a modern time where a lot of technologies are developed and take more and more importance. Indeed, nowadays who doesn’t have a mobile phone, a television or internet box? But what if all electricity is shut down? How can you, as a user of modern technologies can survive to this?

What our cities will do when power, communications and transports are all stopped, and unusable? Therefore, professor Roger Kemp was there in Gresham College. He wanted us to understand how dependent we are to the electricity. Professor Roger Kemp is particularly concerned with energy. Most of his researches are dealing with the nuclear industry, energy and safety regulation of transport systems.

Living without electricity

What kind of electricity?

Basically, electricity system was generated in large power stations away from populations. Indeed, here we want to understand the balance of where electricity comes from:

youtube, living without electricity by Roger Kemp,2016

In the past, we know that coal would had dominated but nowadays it’s not, we can see that on the graphic that the gas (yellow) take a very large part of where electricity comes from.

We can be assured that in 15 years, gas will being phased out. That will give places to renewables nuclear or others forms of energies.

Example of the Lancaster Area

Lancaster area, had what we call a traditional view of electricity, indeed it is composed by 4 things, the generator (where is concentrated most part of this electricity : this is the big power station), then we have the transmission zone ( composed by big pylons ), the distribution zone ( here composed by small pylons) and finally all the cables that we can see on the street.

We can notice that the energy that arrives in your house is absolutely not the same as the one from the generation zone. We agree that if one generator is damaged then all the links are falling.

The Storm Desmond arrives on December 5th ,2015. It comes with 300 to 350 millimetres of rain in only 24 hours. The city was flooded. The loon River at all this water can fill an Olympic pool in 1 and a half second.

The Substation in this city was the centre of all electricity without it “the whole city lost power” (Kemp, 2017).

To remedy to all the disaster of this storm, 3 days later, they bring in town 75 generators to slowly put back the electricity and repairing at the same time the substation.

A lot of issues result of this disaster, they loss communication in all city.

Try to think, your mobile phone has an autonomy of half a day, but with the flood you do not have phone network anymore. The communication becomes very difficult.

This is not the only thing that you use with electricity, the light, television or even you garage door.

How can shop continue to be open?

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