One of the changes that we didn't do was add a gen trans to the main electrical panel for the house. Bainbridge has been famous for power outages because trees on the island keep getting blown over and taking down lines. We've had a few outages, including one for over 12 hours, but still, not that bad. So when I saw Paul Boutin's article about home generation, I started thinking about it again.

Living on an island has only increased my awareness of how reliant we are on infrastructure. We have a bridge on the north end, so we're not totally cut off, but I'm more conscious of things like electrical, telephone, and other infrastructure since moving here. Over the years, I've heard about home fuel cells, wind machines, and other techniques for putting power back into the grid, or storing power so that you're not dependent on the grid. Given the events of this week, and 9/11, maybe now we'll look at some alternatives to our current means of generating power.

Today I saw articles on flow cells that would store power off grid as a way of balancing production and consumption. I also saw an article on collecting solar energy on the moon and then microwaving it back to Earth. This would assume that we still have the capability to get hardware to the moon and back. At the rate things are going for us in space, the Indians may be the only people who can put a man on the moon. It's been at least 25 years since we wera able to do the task.