Power Talking

Power has been on the minds of Israelis and Israphiles quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. First, there's the buzz that Israel is going to pull out all the stops to create an electric car industry including car power stations, sales, and so on. The second is the power feed from Israel to the Abandoned Gaza Zone.

Going nowhere fast

Electric powered cars are a very sexy, futuristic, science-fiction-into-fact item that has been on the back burner for a very long time. In America it won't get off the ground until you get a Government that can will it into being, right in the face of the automotive industry. Can you imagine the trillions of dollars lost in infrastructure investment, factory redevelopment, mechanic retraining and who knows what else? Forget it; it's a lost cause without serious merit. Even the Prius is only a novelty.

Israel, with it's smaller size and greater ability to develop and adapt to new technologies (drip irrigation, cell phones, Internet usage), is a prime candidate to have a go at the electric car industry. We hate suckling at the teat of Arab oil almost as much as we hate the US Secretary of State opening her stupid yap. So great, we'll just abandon our gas-guzzling cars and all buy brand new $30,000 electric cars! Right? Wrong.

It's all well and good that instead of the pump we'll go to the plug, but if you trace that wire back into the wall, it connects up through the local transformer, across the high-voltage lines, through the substation, back through the transmission lines, all the way into the power plant. Now electricity is created in these big ol' machines called generators, which use heat to make them spin. Guess what they burn to produce the heat. Go on, guess. Did you guess oil? Good guess. So if we're consuming more electricity, we're still burning more oil.

In order to make this work, Israel has to consume its own fossil fuels in the form of natural gas from the Med fields it needs to assert its claims on in order to power it's electricity generating stations, macro and micro. Second, it needs to develop in tandem renewable sources of energy to feed the grid. The solar panel farm idea in the negev is a good start, but if we're looking at exponential in electricity consumption, we're going to need more than even the proposed 1GW plant to start. And while they're at it, the need to create a battery that can store the energy. Oh yeah, investments, too. And after all that, they're still going to have to fight it out with the major car companies whose imports may be significantly impacted. I'm thinking hydrogen in the 22nd century.

Oh, and if when Israel does bring it to market in whatever form non-fuel transportation takes, it'll be another interruptive technology, like cell phones, MMX microchips, bluetooth and all of the other great stuff we've done. I think a big ol' Made In Israel sticker on each one would do very nicely.

Collective punishment my ass

As a measured response to the ongoing terrorism coming from the Abandoned Gaza Zone, Israel has decided that it is going to reduce the amount of electricity it supplies. How much you ask? 5 percent in one of the ten power lines that supply the region For all you mathphobes, that 0.5%. Of the 120 megawatts (~120,000 homes) that's the equivalent of 6000 homes. Not exactly punitive measures for an area that has 1.3M people living there. Oh and it sucks for the Palis too because of their little stunt last time, with the candles and the meetings in darkness in the middle of the day (shades drawn, for effect). Now that's all played out. Even the media didn't feed on that with the same voracious appetite that they usually have for All Things Pali. This time they'll ignore it.

Israel has no responsibility whatsoever to keep the power on. It is a hostile territory. What about the women and children? They hand out candy when suicide bombers strike, so I could give a shit. If they want to keep the power on, the next time they see someone setting up a rocket launcher out their window, call the IDF.

Quite honestly, the way they live they only need it to power their television sets anyway. Think about it. New York City peaked at 13141MW. Gaza uses only 1% of that for 1/6 the population. We're not talking about a lot of power consumption to begin with, and since Hamas would rather drive everyone back into the ninth century anyway, Israel is actually advancing Hamas' political agenda. What about Egypt? What about them? It'll take eight years to build a generator station to supply the needs of Gaza, and they're in no particular hurry to please these Hamas pricks who encourage the Islamic Brotherhood.

So to recap: electric power is still fossil fuel power until Israel creates a real renewable energy loop and technological framework, and the Gaza power cutback serves to remind Hamas that they exist at the end of a leash Israel firmly holds.