Peak Oil Hits the Amish (Continued)

Amish Country, May 2012

Jacob had promised Josiah that he would do his best, but nobody realized either how difficult it would be to get power from the sun or --having set up a magnificent solar array-- what the consequences would be. They would be good and bad.

To understand part of the problem, you must understand the Amish approach to technology in general. They evaluate every technology choice based on its affect on the community – the Amish community. They deliberately pick and choose technologies to maintain the special nature of their community. And that approach is inward-looking.

They struggled with choices when it came to a public health requirement regarding milk storage – it had to be kept chilled (refrigerated), and had to be stirred automatically. Chilling (and automatic periodic stirring) requires electricity, and they had been averse to running electricity to their barns. Instead, they used diesel generators to create the electricity needed to chill and stir the milk.

Yet even that seemingly odd solution left open the possibility of allowing more technology into their communities. In fact, an Amish bishop –long before the energy emergency—said that “ To make a living, we need to have some things we didn’t have 50 years ago.” So what where the non-cultural barriers to the use of solar power?

For starters, the sheer cost of setting up the vast solar arrays surprised the community. They also had to decide whether to store the energy for a rainy day (or for night use), or to save money by not storing the power at all. Not storing the power meant using the English grid as a battery -- essentially sending excess electricity back to the utility grid. This “ran the meters backwards,” saving money on the electric bill, and was what the community decided to do

The cost itself, to generate power for woodworking and for use in the dairy, was far more than they'd expected, well over $50,000. This had required long hard lobbying --if that is the word-- in the Ordnung by Josiah. By working together --in typical Amish fashion-- the labor costs to set up the arrays were minimal. And before they started, they all realized that the whole community would have to share the cost but would share the power. Neighbors came to use the woodworking equipment, and milk storage tanks had to be tripled in size to accommodate neighboring dairy milk. Still, the system worked, and absent physical damage to the arrays, they should run quietly and as long as the community kept them clean and performed minimal maintenance.

Still, it was an odd looking construction -- black and shiny, definitely high-tech, and didn't exactly blend in with the typical Amish décor.

And then there was the heat. Nobody in the community remembered it ever being this hot, for generations, in the middle of May. Families could tolerate heat inside the barns and homes -- hand fans will always work-- but they were beginning to worry about possible damage to the solar panels themselves. And not only that, but the English were acting strange. The cost of gasoline had risen so high, up to $10/gallon at times, that the Amish didn't get very many gawking tourists anymore, and they didn't worry about vandalism from the English teenagers as much. But there was a certain tension when the English tankers came to pick up the Amish milk, always chilled as it should be, since power outages that the English farmers experienced hadn't ruined any of the Amish milk. Power outages usually occurred during the day when the sun was shining.

Yet the tension was clear. English farms were built on a scale that couldn’t apply solar refrigeration without massive changes to the buildings and land use, the cost would be way beyond English farmer means –especially in the newly depressed economic environment—and the demand for solar equipment in general was so high that just getting the supplies was nearly impossible.

There is generally a natural fellowship between farmers, in good times and in bad, but that friendship was strained as the “oddball Amish” –as some English referred to them—were clearly better positioned for the gathering energy storm. And most farmers have guns. What’s to prevent a stray bullet from hitting some solar panels by mistake? The Amish were no strangers to such outsider violence, and by nature would neither defend against it or repay in kind. But the threat of such violence seemed to be growing, and it was anybody’s guess where it would end up since the economic depression seemed to be worsening with no end in sight.