Musings on Electric Development
My great grandparent's cattle ranch was far from any city or railroad depot. Life could be rough, especially in the winter. Their most precious possession was a wood stove in the kitchen. It heated their small home, cooked their food, and warmed the water for baths. They had no indoor plumbing. They hauled water into the house in buckets. The outhouse was a hundred feet from the back door. The home was lit with oil lamps and candles.
In 1936 the Rural Electrification Act was passed as part of FDR's New Deal. My great grandma wasn't enthusiastic about that, being highly suspicious of any new technology that wasn't mentioned in the Bible. But my great grandfather had bought himself a damned radio. In those days radios used vacuum tubes and it took three different sorts of batteries to power them. These batteries were expensive, especially the "A" batteries that powered the tube filaments. The "A" batteries lasted a few hours at best. It was possible to save money by using a lead acid "wet" cells that could be recharged by the generator of your tractor while you worked. If you didn't have a car or tractor they could be taken into town for recharging. Some wealthier farm owners and ranchers installed wind turbines to recharge these batteries.
When the power lines reached the family ranch my great grandfather wasn't so excited about electric lights, well pumps, space heaters, etc., as he was about power for his radio. No more batteries!
After my great grandfather passed away my mom's cousin took over operation of the ranch, got married, had kids and moved into the "big house." My great grandmother moved into the older two room "little house." My grandma's brother and his wife lived in a house he'd built elsewhere on the ranch. My mom's uncle was retired, his body pretty much worn out from ranching.
When I was a kid we'd visit my great grandma and the rest of my mom's family in the summer. At that point my great grandma's house had two forty watt electric lights and the damned radio. She did not allow children to touch the light switches or the radio for fear we'd electrocute ourselves.
One summer we arrived at the ranch and my great grandmother and my mom's cousin were hating one another. He'd committed the sin of ordering from the Sears catalog a well pump, pipe, and all the fittings he needed to bring water into the big house. My great grandmother thought it would bring financial ruin to the family.
After my great grandmother passed away my mom's cousin went all out with electric water heating, a washing machine, power tools and a stick welder. He upgraded the electrical service. Later he got air conditioning... all the modern conveniences most of us expect.
That's a story that's been played out all over the world whenever families are connected to a reliable electric grid.
Here in the U.S.A. we like to do things big and we've always had the resources to do that. The goal was to bring every household in the U.S.A. a 60 amp electrical service. This being the U.S.A. certain non-white communities were overlooked, most notably Native American communities.
Other nations had similar electrification programs but with some compromises because resources such as copper were not so abundant, especially after World War II. In Britain they settled on thirty amp ring circuits that use less half the copper of other wiring systems. The problem with ring circuits is that they make poor electrical connections much more likely to fail catastrophically, starting fires or creating other hazardous conditions. This was dealt with by implementing much higher standards for electrical work, fixtures, and connectors than was typical in the U.S.A.. ( Modern British homes are built with higher capacity electrical services and no ring wiring. This uses more copper. )
In Italy the goal was to bring, at the very least, electrical lighting to everyone. But every city or region did it in their own way with different voltages, frequencies, and connectors. There was even greater complexity and confusion in the financing and regulation of the various electric systems.
In the 'sixties this was all unified into a national electric company with a two tier tarrif system. The lower tier electric service was 127 volts, the amperage was limited, and its use was restricted to low current devices like light bulbs and fans. The upper tier service was 220 volts with a higher amperage. Homes with both tiers of service had two meters.
The last low voltage system in Italy was shut down in 1999 but there are still two tiers of service. The typical household electric service is 3.3 kilowatts. In North America typical residential service is 24 or 48 kilowatts. People in Italian families quickly learn which larger appliances they can and cannot run simultaneously without tripping the circuit breaker. The 3.3 kilowatt service is split into two tiers, the lower tier limited to a few hundred watts. If you don't pay your electric bill the smart meter doesn't shut off your electricity entirely it just limits your use to the lower tier -- enough for a few lights, charging your phone, etc.
Italian homes have much less copper in their wiring than North American homes.
Okay, here is my big question:
Doesn't everyone on earth deserve the same standard of electric service we enjoy in the "developed" nations? Why are we asking people in developing nations and remote communities to futz around with low-capacity unreliable solar panels, batteries, inverters, "micro-grids," etc?
If my great grandparents living on a ranch many miles from the nearest town or city could enjoy a 60 amp grid connected electric service why can't someone living on an Indian Reservation in the U.S.A. or a small village in Africa have the same?
It's a question of ethics. Saying "I've got mine but you can't have it... um... for reasons..." is reprehensible.
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