For all of California’s many charms, dwelling right here isn’t all the time simple.
There’s the astronomical value of housing, in fact, and the seemingly fixed menace of disaster, whether or not from earthquakes, fires or excessive warmth. Especially as the consequences of local weather change enhance, catastrophe usually appears to be lurking proper across the nook.
This publication lately lined the rising reputation in California of “disaster-proof” houses, constructed to higher face up to excessive winds and temperatures, and to restrict entry factors for wildfire embers. And final yr, my colleague Ivan Penn wrote about Californians who, out of frustration with blackouts and rising utility costs in our warming world, are opting to reside off the grid.
Here’s one other means Californians try to adapt: microgrid communities. Kaya Laterman lately wrote about them in The New York Times.
These are energy-resilient communities that may function independently from a bigger municipal electrical system when obligatory, by producing their very own electrical energy (usually utilizing photo voltaic panels) and storing it in batteries for later use.
The aim is for the communities to have the ability to face up to energy outages, one thing that feels more and more obligatory in a time of worsening wildfires and devastating warmth waves.
Kaya advised me that she had lengthy been focused on how utilities hope to maintain up with power demand, because the nation shuts down nuclear energy vegetation and offers with growing old energy infrastructure, storage points and different challenges.
“It’s scary to read headlines where people don’t have water, or blackouts happen 20 times a year,” Kaya mentioned. “That’s frightening to me. So when I hear about ideas that can keep powering everyone’s lights, it intrigues me, especially at a time when the country is trying to produce, store and use more green energy to reduce carbon emissions.”
A brand new microgrid neighborhood in Menifee, about 80 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, payments itself because the state’s first all-electric residential neighborhood. Residents started to maneuver in in the course of the spring.
The improvement will embrace about 200 homes, every with its personal warmth pump, photo voltaic panels and battery to retailer surplus photo voltaic power. In an emergency, the neighborhood can energy itself with saved power from a communal battery.
Dan Bridleman, senior vice chairman of sustainability, expertise and strategic sourcing for KB Home, the corporate behind the challenge, mentioned the Menifee microgrid would assist reveal “whether an entire community can become self-sufficient with power.”
He added, “We wanted to do something that seemed disruptive but will eventually become the standard.”
Where we’re touring
Today’s tip comes from Sarah Wauters, who recommends a visit to the Eastern Sierra close to Bishop and Mammoth Lakes in the course of the summer season:
“Take the Rock Creek Trail up to Ruby Lake. Only two miles and 1,000-foot elevation gain — so it’s a good hike with just rain gear, snacks and water in your pack. It’s rare to get up so high so quickly and experience the towering rocks and snow fields of the Sierra.
“Visit Wild Willy’s Hot Springs: There are several pools and a convivial atmosphere. The hot springs are surrounded by an Alaska-like scene — a broad prairie between the High Sierra on one side and an arid mountain range on the other, grazing cattle and waving wildflowers. The march of the clouds across the sky and the light show across the prairie floor as they pass are glorious. I saw a full double rainbow as I drove from the hot springs to Mammoth one evening.
Mammoth is a ski town and looks rather bare in the summer, but it has many options for lodging and eating. I enjoyed Booky Joint, a bookstore with shelves of mountain- and nature-oriented titles (both used and new), as well as plenty of fiction.”
Tell us about your favourite locations to go to in California. Email your ideas to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing extra in upcoming editions of the publication.
And earlier than you go, some good news
Southern California has welcomed two new furry residents: mountain lion kittens generally known as P-116 and P-117.
The kittens, a lady and a boy thought to have been born in May, have been lately found roaming the Santa Susana Mountains, simply north of Los Angeles, ABC7 studies. In a video that officers with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area posted on Facebook, the pair may be seen purring of their den at simply 24 days previous.
The litter is the twenty sixth to be discovered on the Southern California den web site, in keeping with the National Park Service, which has been learning how mountain lions have tailored to urbanized situations within the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002.
Source: www.nytimes.com