PowerSwitch

The lights went out for about 25 minutes last night here in Madrid. The kids loved it, running around the house with torches etc. but I found it rather disturbing and eerie - it was only a short blackout but it gave me enough time to feel utterly helpless. I couldn't even switch on a radio or TV to ...

Incredible. All you have to do is swap the word "fish" for "oil" and the word "stocks" for "reserves" and you've got a Peak Oil story (albeit the ExxonMobil version: 2 thirds remaining and no problem until 2050!) On the bright side, there are two lines in this...

Let's just accept it - Russia will have de-facto control over the entire Europe. Love it or hate it, but it is the reality. The only way to avoid it is to stop using their gas. You certainly hit the nail on the head there. Sooner or later we're all going to have to get used to stop using gas altoge...

Matthew Simmons goes into this subject in the first chapter in Twilight in the Desert. It doesn't look too good really: "It is no longer a country of 7000 billionaire princes and some expatriate help, but a country with an exploding population base, a need for jobs, water, electricity, educatio...

Have you ever looked into "bicycle generators"? Good idea. Not being a DIY type person, I would need to buy one! Are they available retail? I've looked around and there seem to be a few sites in the US that sell generators that look like little dynamos attached to a sort of frame on which...

This messing about with electricity is quite fun! I have just used a 750 watt mains electric jigsaw to cut a sheet of wood to use as a door on our duck house. It took just 40 seconds. If I had a slightly more powerful invertor I could have done that from battery power without any problem. I have a ...

Sounds like Norway are well on the way to being top of the class when it comes to sustainable energy policy. It's one thing being lucky enough to have the resources and geographical features to cover 99% of their electricity demand with hydroelectric power (when there is enough water of course), but...

It's been great reading about everyone's progress in preparedness. Some of you, enviably, have come a long way and others, like me, don't seem to get very far beyond the reading stage yet. I am admittedly relatively new to this - Peak oil hit me less than a year ago (even this thread is older than m...