I have this idea for a story were the surrounding infrastructure is intact. Now barring regular maintenance, how long would it take for existing infrastructure to not function? How long could a house run on existing utilities?
Thanks for the help!
In: Engineering
A solar power plant will likely be able to run fully on its own for 5 years before beginning to experience equipment failures. Wind farms should last a year before having serious failures but when they fail things will tend towards catastrophy. As long as there are not too many devices connected to the grid then things should maintain a relatively hands-off situation.
If you want to go really into the reality of things then the grid equipment will likely not want to start up the next day because of a lack of a signal to sync to. If your post-apocalyptic people keep a constant grid frequency signal on the power lines (maybe a simple gas generator or battery backup) you could make a reasonable argument that wind and solar power facilities would run automatically. I would not expect a wind farm to continue functioning for long without maintenance. Expect several turbines to die each year.
Lots of places still have personal or community wells to get water. If you have power then you have a functioning well for some number of years without maintenance. The parts would be easily replaced or repaired and anyone who has one of these probably already knows how to do this.
Sewer is an issue but it would take some time to fill up with use or until it rains. If you have a septic system then that can last for 30 years with no major work as long as it is managed carefully.
The internet would go down as soon as power was lost and would probably never start back up without the passwords. however, it is super easy to build a new internet with all the equipment you can find.
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