Oh, and to answer your question, since we're talking to bankers we're only going to use off the shelf stuff that we can go buy today. We'll cut some plant space, electricity, and ammonia out for R&D guys we know, but we have to execute on this.
I do believe there are advances in ammonia synthesis that will double yields ... and that makes wind driven ammonia easily competitive with diesel at today's prices.
We might be able to partially dodge the peak oil bullet, but we're going to have to build turbines the way we built aircraft for WWII - flat out, everything we can convert to the duty gets switched, and we go at it until the job is done.
You will receive an email from an @strandedwind.org address shortly. I'm not sure if our process guy needs any help but worst case we can get you educated on what we're going - the more people talking it up the better :-)
We're only going to use off the shelf stuff that we can go buy today
Good approach.
Anything new takes 20 years from the lab bench to mature industrial scale process ... when it goes very well.
Even Sasol with 50 years of experience in syngas and FT, has run into problems at the Oryx GTL plant.
This is being done this way because its tested technology and the waste heat will produce many, many jobs, which gets a lot of attention here.
As soon as this one is moving under its own power we're going to get going on a solid state ammonia synthesis from wind with either a diesel style engine or perhaps a fuel cell. I want to see every municipality in the state convert their existing diesel backup to ammonia, and then trickle charge them with the smaller scale wind turbines. We've got a logjam in the multimegawatt units but refurbished 600kw systems are pretty readily available.
Unless we - the local community - plans on going into the Wind Farm power business a couple of 600kw systems would do just fine and we don't have the problem of "Stranded Wind." We do have a problem with the damn things falling over when hit by some of our wind gusts - up to 65mph under certain conditions and 100+mph in some locations.
What we do need to derive is a viable plan to use that power. Which is a nice way of giving Fair Warning that I would like to Steal-Your-Stuff.
I wish to personally profit from the installation of a system here to the tune of a paid for farm and a cut of the production. We're already looking at locations #2 and #3. If you've got local organization in your area and need the technical and perhaps financial contacts I would be thrilled to appear, speak, help get it moving, etc, etc - thats the whole idea behind the http://strandedwind.org thing ...
My hope is to 'boot-strap' a wind power industry here by starting with one or two 600kw systems to be used locally and generate $ when excess over local requirements power is generated. (We've got some transmission power lines not too far away - ~10 miles.) The experience gained running these local plants will, hopefully, prove a base for further development of local businesses using this power, requiring more installations, and so on. Ultimately, I'd like to see a full-blown wind farm, or ten, established for the purpose of entering the power business. Not only are these good jobs they are jobs that can*not* be taken away.
But that is years down the road.
In the meantime, I gotta get eddicated 'bout this stuff.
In about two months I'm personally getting very serious about the co-op movement. Meantime, there are several threads and projects going on, just involving ET members.
Out there in the larger world of DailyKos and myriad smaller, local blogs, there are numerous potential investors. People are looking for the better method in pursuit of the correct goals.
Just as an observation, LLCs could be registered for each local or regional project of these sorts. Each one will need a coordinator/manager, which could be persons such as yourselves (ATinNM and SacredCowTipper for examples). paul spencer
