IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cjutxx/v21y2014i3p85-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exergy and the City: The Technology and Sociology of Power (Failure)

Author

Listed:
  • Hugh Byrd
  • Steve Matthewman

Abstract

Blackouts--the total loss of electrical power--serve as a reminder of how dependent the modern world and particularly urban areas have become on electricity and the appliances it powers. To understand them we consider the critical nature of electrical infrastructure. In order to provide general patterns from specific cases, a large number of blackouts have been analyzed. Irrespective of cause, they display similar effects. These include measurable economic losses and less easily quantified social costs. We discuss financial damage, food safety, crime, transport, and problems caused by diesel generators. This is more than just a record of past failures; blackouts are dress rehearsals for the future in which they will appear with greater frequency and severity. While energy cannot be destroyed, exergy--the available energy within a system--can be. Exergy is concerned with energy within an "environment;" in this case a city. The bottom line is simple: no matter how "smart" a city may be, it becomes "dumb" when the power goes out.

Suggested Citation

  • Hugh Byrd & Steve Matthewman, 2014. "Exergy and the City: The Technology and Sociology of Power (Failure)," Journal of Urban Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 85-102, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cjutxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:85-102
    DOI: 10.1080/10630732.2014.940706
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10630732.2014.940706
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10630732.2014.940706?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Knodt, Michèle & Stöckl, Anna & Steinke, Florian & Pietsch, Martin & Hornung, Gerrit & Stroscher, Jan-Philipp, 2023. "Power blackout: Citizens’ contribution to strengthen urban resilience," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    2. Sultana, Beenish & Mustafa, M.W. & Sultana, U. & Bhatti, Abdul Rauf, 2016. "Review on reliability improvement and power loss reduction in distribution system via network reconfiguration," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 297-310.
    3. Ghanem, Dana Abi & Mander, Sarah & Gough, Clair, 2016. "“I think we need to get a better generator”: Household resilience to disruption to power supply during storm events," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 171-180.
    4. Ziyi Wang & Zengqiao Chen & Cuiping Ma & Ronald Wennersten & Qie Sun, 2022. "Nationwide Evaluation of Urban Energy System Resilience in China Using a Comprehensive Index Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-36, February.
    5. Kerianne Lawson, 2022. "Electricity outages and residential fires: Evidence from Cape Town, South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(4), pages 469-485, December.
    6. Sharifi, Ayyoob & Yamagata, Yoshiki, 2016. "Principles and criteria for assessing urban energy resilience: A literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1654-1677.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cjutxx:v:21:y:2014:i:3:p:85-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cjut20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.