NCD Energy Technologies

NCD Energy Tech
For millennia, mankind has relied upon physics and energy in order to do tasks that would've otherwise taken too much brute strength to perform. Chief among these was electricity, and since the last century, it's powered people's lives.

Unfortunately, the outbreak has all but destroyed the centralized infrastructure that was utilized to deliver copious amounts of electricity. With this, machine tools and other electricity-driven apparati that would've helped during the first few weeks of the apocalypse were rendered useless. Anyone who had generators to use machine tools unwittingly attracted the attention of both the undead and humans alike. It was only by the advent of walled settlements and noise-proofed machine shops did these tools see their use again.

At present, electricity only accounts for 30% of all energy usage. The NCD utilizes a wide variety of mechanical and thermal-based technologies due to its decentralized nature, from simple windmills to solar engines. Most of these are used in urban agriculture, the metalworking industry and weapons development.

It is worth nothing that recently, there has been a gradual influx of weapons that actively need energy to function.

History
At first, only acetylene tools saw use in modifying vehicles and cutting metallic materials. Other tasks were performed with manual tools, such as hacksaws, tin snips, and hand drills, as power tools often made enough noise to attract unwarranted attention. Dedicated machine rooms -- rooms with padded and insulated walls to minimize sound -- sprung up after the first weeks. These initially used car batteries and inverters, as generators were noisy, needed maintenance, and required an open space, lest it overheat or suffocate the occupants of a room with its fumes. As batteries often did not last long, however, machine tools still did not see widespread use.

It was only when pockets of secured, guarded, zombie-free areas were inadvertently created that power and machine tools saw widespread use again. These areas often had walled-off streets, with the walls being guarded by dozens of men, and occasionally, machinegun emplacements were also utilized, especially against larger attacks. Generators finally found self-worth in powering small pockets of civilization's remnant amenities; however the exorbitant amunts of fuel spent to do this did not justify their continued operation, hence small generators were favoured to solely power machine tools and recharge batteries (and to run water pumps, to some extent).

Most tools and power sources were scavenged, even well after the formation of the NCD. However, the mass-appearance of the L-1 colonies became a turning point for energy in the NCD. It had been discovered that L-1 colonies, when subjected to extremely high-power electricity, died off, safely turning into black charcoal, instead of releasing deadly neurotoxins into the air if flamethrowers and other thermal methods were used. Armed with this new discovery, the Directors of the NCD ordered the institution of L-1 colony threat elimination units, arming them with vehicles carrying inverters, transformers, and a myriad of power sources, such as batteries and diesel generators. In the ensuing bloody weeks that followed, over a thousand car batteries and scores of generators were either lost, stolen or destroyed due to ambushes and raids by hostile human factions (as NCD territories were essentially isolated from each other, leaving pockets of bandits and looters in-between) and regular hordes. Nevertheless, the Directors pushed on to eliminate the L-1 colonies from the surrounding areas. By the end of the L-1 purge, thousands of square kilometers had been cleared of L-1 colonies, but at the expense of an extremely large portion of the fledgling NCD's energy capacity (an estimated 60%).

As a result, the NCD entered an energy crisis. Some night-operation farms weren't able to sustain their light sources, resulting in a slow of food production. Power had to be reallocated to the defense of the frontiers with the onslaught of fresh, new hordes, leaving many machine shops all but powerless, which all but virtually halted innovation, any small-scale weapons development, and vehicle modification. At the behest of Director-4, alternative energy projects were undertaken. Every available machine shop, mechanic, and engineer was put to work. Scavengers continuously prowled the streets beyond the reaches of the outposts, looking for intact cars, trucks, and untouched battery retail stores and car repair shops, hoping to recover batteries and alternators. Found generators were considered too valuable, and were secured by heavily-armed recovery teams.

At first, only simple systems like solar panels, windmills, and to some extent human power, proliferated in minute amounts. Despite their difficulties, these systems were adequate to power enough machine shops to bring on an onslaught of energy innovation. The first and most common system to be innovated in the districts is the (human) waste-to-energy system. Sealed uric acid wet cell battery banks were and still are the most common short-term energy solutions to date ("short-term" as the cells have to be flushed periodically; the flushed urine is used in other applications, like gunpowder manufacture). Longer-term solutions included manure digesters to produce methane gas, used to fuel generators and flamethrowers.

Within a few months, the energy crisis was averted.

Modern Energy Technology
Contemporary technology has developed numerous artifacts and monuments of post-apocalyptic engineering over the years. Some of them are listed here:

Solar
Solar photovoltaics have been mostly phased out for large-scale applications by solar thermal technology.