There's a kind of poetry I think, a kind of awareness, that your devices may spin up and down with the seasons instead of marching incessantly and unstoppably onward.
As to renewables the simple solutions is to over provision and add spare transit capacity. You move electricity 1,000 KM with minimal losses at fairly low cost so with reasonable transit you get to average over a vary large area.
This is why the next generation of battery technology is going to be so groundbreaking. It will allow batteries to become more economical feasible both on a small and large scale. It simply cause renewables to become more societally efficient.
That's why hydro power is absolutely critical to a renewable grid. It's the only scalable way to normalize supply and demand.
We are at the stage with battery technologies, where it would make absolutely to build hydro storage, even given the current trend of removing dams.
However, for other scenarios, it is indeed a viable option, considering that it's statistically the safest (last I checked), very clean, and packs a high energy density.
The problem, though, is that fissile material is subject to a lot of the same availability problems as fossil fuels (if not worse), plus quite a few safety concerns (particularly when it comes to radiation, though coal mining poses this sort of risk, too). The energy density is much better, so we could probably get by for a very long time (especially with things like breeder reactors, increased use of thorium instead of or alongside uranium or plutonium, etc.), but ultimately, we'll need to transition to something like fusion power at the very least.
I am not sure what time spans you speak about. Thousands of years is possible on fission with current technology and at current levels of demand.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2379
(and understand that "thousands of years on fission with current technology" is pretty far from the truth)
I can envision a future where libraries have few books. Here's one at a school in Florida - http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/25/us-usa-florida-lib... . Here's a broader commentary about libraries which don't have physical collections, including a public library in San Antonio - http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/is-a-libra... .
I doubt that small-town libraries will get rid of all books. Libraries do have collections of local history which are unlikely to be part of a digital archive. (Eg, phone books from the 1950s, local high school yearbooks, photo collections and films about the annual downtown parade, publications from the local genealogical society, etc.)
But if in 100 years small-town libraries have mostly switched to digital collections, then yes, it's possible for the knowledge to disappear even if the infrastructure remains.
I don't think it's likely, but it's not completely inconsistent.
Research is another question, but it's likely that a society that was more heavily based on electricity would discover relativity sooner than we did.
Also you don't have to enrich uranium at all if you can instead enrich water for a heavy water reactor or use a graphite moderated reactor.
This could, however, change the balance of power between different regions of the world. Fossil fuels favor coastal flatlands where it's easy to transport bulk materials. A civilization that depends on hydroelectricity, on the other hand, might favor a more mountainous terrain. The capitol in the postapocalyptic world of The Hunger Games is located somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, powered by hydro.
Our usual concept of business hours might also have to disappear, if we're going to rely on hydro to smooth out fluctuations in other energy sources. We may no longer be able to afford peak usage at certain times of day, and therefore spread out power-consuming activites across all hours of the day and night. This helps eliminate the rush hour, which is itself a terrible waste of energy.
If push comes to shove and we need to ration power, I suppose this will put more pressure on battery technology. People will have to store up on power at certain times of the day, and use it until the next charge-up time. It will be a bit like fetching water from the well every morning.
But even under such circumstances, some people are clever enough to put a tank on the roof and install pipes/faucets to simulate a constant water supply. Batteries are to an intermittent power supply what a tank is to an intermittent water supply. We as a species can't tolerate inconvenience. We'll find a way to make life as convenient as possible, no matter what the circumstances. Intermittent meat supply? Brb, gonna store up on ham and bacon during the hunting season.
(Heating in the winter might be tougher of course. But a house heated to 80F during the day might be 50F in the morning, so might be tolerable?) Or Find ways to store the heat during day and slowly release it at night. Tanks of water in the attic?)
In my experience, a house heated to 80F can be 30F within a matter of a couple of hours, depending on the number of windows, temperature outside, and insulation levels.
I certainly don't think that's a solution to winter problems in cold-weather climates.
As for storing the heat, I'm not really sure what you mean. Surely it would be inefficient to generate extra heat during the day and store it, as opposed to just creating some in the evening?
Add in some passive solar and you can keep a house in the continual US warm without active heat sources fairly easily. The major issue is it stops looking like a traditional house and costs more up front, but it’s not a major issue.
PS: ~6 hours * 1kw/m^2. Take a 30' x 30' roof and that's ~600 kwh per day or an average of 24kw of heating. Though you do need to keep the now off the roof in the winter, but a steep enough rough does that fairly easily.
Ideally, if you can build your entire house below the frost line, you're laughing - but this isn't always feasible.
My understanding is if you live near a stream or pond it's a great way to make heat pumps far more efficient, but otherwise just having a large rock slab in the middle of your house combined with solar heating is far cheaper for heating, but not that useful for cooling if your area does not cool off at night.
Of course, all this is reliant on knowledge of the local geography and climate before you purchase and get set up. If you're limited to where you are right now, you're kind of stuck with what you can put on your property right now. Which could be as limited as running on-grid but growing your own food.
12-17 days after the power failed, the contractor measured temperatures in houses that had had neither power nor occupants during that time. "None of the air or surface temperatures in the 31 houses inspected had fallen below 0°C."
There is a proviso: "In very cold temperatures (for example, -30°C), high winds or houses without basements, the rate of cooling will be much faster than observed in the southern Quebec houses of this study."
Now, I lived for a year in a house which was poorly insulated, and where you could feel the draft through the window frame. When it was -15F outside 2L pop bottles would freeze on the floor of the pantry even when the heat was on, and when the furnace went out during Thanksgiving weekend the inside temperature quickly dropped. Even then, it didn't match the freezing outside temperature over a couple of hours. I can well believe that your experience is true, but it is atypical.
On the other side of things, Passivhaus designs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house ) give an example of what can be done with good design, for houses designed for freezing weather. They need only 10W/m² of heat, which can often be met by normal activity (people, computers, screens, coffee makers, etc.)
It's possible to have south facing windows in Germany which let in more solar energy in winter than is released by heat loss.
Cooking by fire takes a bit of practice, but even that is easy with some practice. Admittedly, this in many cases isn't considered renewable, but you can remove a cord of wood (approx. 85 cu. ft.) per acre per year without ever depleting your supply. People in Northern climes claim they require 5-6 cords to get through their winters, but with a well insulated and geothermally "heated" house, you could reduce this fairly effectively. A wood gasifier can be used to drive gas burning engines - I'm not sure I'd recommend it for cooking due to potential CO output - you certainly wouldn't want to use it for cooking inside the house.
We have an abundance of energy all around us and while the technologies that harness this energy aren't perhaps as efficient as we'd like yet, they're efficient enough that harnessing a bunch and wiring them together with a battery bank, charge controller and power inverter is enough that you can power your home sustainably with a much reduced need for fossil fuels. There's certainly enough for lights (especially if you're running all LED lights) and T.V.
For the moment, portability of tools and machinery (think chain saws, sawmills etc.), the need for gasoline still isn't removed completely - you could go back to a felling axe and use your own energy, but trust me, as time gets on, you'll realize you spend an awful lot of time rushing to beat winter and wasting time doing things that are done far quicker with power tools. We're now at a point where you can comfortably live off-grid and (mostly) power your home with sustainable energy without giving up too many off the creature comforts you've come to take for granted. With some efforts to reduce your reliance on modern appliances - such as dishwashers, dryers, hairdryers, electric stoves etc. a modest battery bank would be enough to have enough electricity on demand to keep you running relatively normally.
I think there's a difference in living sustainably and using fossil fuels. It's possible to live much more sustainably and still utilize fossil fuels at a consciously reduced rate.
Perhaps something similar could be applied here? An air compressor powered by some renewable fuel (like wood gas) could pump air into portable canisters for use in power tools (or just be hooked directly into the tools themselves, much like in modern automotive repair shops) would solve this at the expense of some portability.
In the above case, neither electricity nor combustion are necessary. The above example does rely on wind power, however (though the site claims that wind speeds as low as 8 MPH are sufficient); I'm not sure if there are any similar compressors that run on other energy sources.
Admittedly, some Amish communities do use diesel generators to power more conventional compressors, but I have a feeling that these would be easier to adapt to the posited post-apocalyptic wood-gas-fueled world.
Even better, if the available power is low, just run things slower. Does web browsing really need all .8KW my desktop can drain out of the wall?
I have no idea what the entire setup uses when I'm web surfing, but the spare bedroom I'm in gets noticeably warmer. Would it kill me for the system to just spin down a little and make me wait and extra 2 or 3 seconds for a page to load?