>MR> The sensible policy of using more locally distributed electrical
 >MR> generation had been bulldozed aside starting about 40 years ago by
 >MR> political motivations that eventually in the 1960's promised hundreds 
f
 >MR> thousands of jobs to win elections. Smaller local dams were in fact 
ven
 >MR> shut down.
 > 
 > To criticize now those changes, is being parochial and wise after 
 > the event.The modern use of a few huge plants very far away, has made 
 > electricity so
 > cheap. You wanna treble the charges? And, the city smog and ash problems
 > drove the old Central stations out of those thousands of cities. The 
ublic
 > interest was served. What a pity maybe that we use about twenty 
 > times the elec energy per capita, as previously!
As you say, there are more good reasons for using a few large generating 
plants than there are for many small ones. Big plants are much more efficient 
in many ways (fuel, labor, and *especially* capital costs), pollute less on a 
per-KWHR basis, and don't have the NIMBY problem. (Not In My BackYard)
As far as electrical usage per capita, you can just about track the 
prosperity of the economy by tracking electical usage. Anyone who thinks we 
should do without central power stations should try living with only 
self-generated electricity or doing without.
Same goes for heat: I've heated my home with wood for a couple of seasons, 
just to see if I could do it. Still heat the shop with a woodstove. Consider 
this: It requires about 5-6 cords of wood to heat an average home for a 
Winter. A cord of wood weighs approximately 2 US tons, and must be moved at 
least 4 times. To the splitter, to the woodshed after splitting, to the house 
woodbox, then to the stove. So you must lift & carry 20 tons of wood over a 
Winter, or 40,000 lbs! That might be OK for a younger person, but what about 
the old or infirm?
This is not to deny that modern society uses more energy than necessary. 
Large houses, heat set too high, large vehicles, etc. are all 'wasteful'. 
However, oil prices are at an all-time low, so who's to say that we're wrong?
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