On the Grid
A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work

Wires, pipes, roads, and water support the lives we lead, but the average person doesn't know where they go or even how they work. Our systems of infrastructure are not only shrouded in mystery, many are woefully out of date. In On the Grid, Scott Huler takes the time to understand the systems that sustain our way of life, starting from his own quarter of an acre in North Carolina and traveling as far as Ancient Rome.

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Scott Huler was born in 1959 in Cleveland and raised in that city's eastern suburbs.

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NPR put up this fabulous interactive map of the electrical transmission grid: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

This interactive site enables you to figure out how much energy everything in your house uses. http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html

If you're wondering about the relationship between the joule, the watt, the BTU, horsepower, and all kinds of other measures of energy, this interactive website translates any into any of the others.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) produced this [http://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/gen-info/transmission-grid.pdf ] study of the transmission grid.

Everybody talks about the "Smart Grid" – know what it is? Okay, neither does anybody else. But here's the U.S. Department of Energy's introductory page full of PDFs to read: http://www.oe.energy.gov/SmartGridIntroduction.htm.

Look at that utility pole and all that stuff hanging there: what the heck is it all? The answer lies here: http://www.annsgarden.com/poles/poles.htm