And there is definitely a tension between the western style of "conservatism" and the southern style of "conservatism" that can be most usefullly wedged if there is some good old fashioned parochial interests going along with it.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

Texas gets most of its power from natural gas, but is actively working to build a substantial wind infrastructure.

On the one hand, doing it that way there is less total intermittency, since access to a greater variety of intermittent energy sources results in a higher minimum amount of power available (as well as lower maximum amount) per user ... connect wind farms from multiple wind regions together, and it is much less intermittent than an individual windmill driving an individual use.

And on the other hand, doing it that way means a much greater range of potential variable demand users ... once the ability is in place to do time of day metering and transmit availability of time of day discounts - the widely discussed "SmartGrid" technology ... all users that can benefit from varying demand to match supply have an incentive to do so.

Both in the US and the EU, we already have substantial swing production on many grids in the form of the main hydropower generators, which are already used to dispatch their available power when it is most valuable. And tying together grids to reduce the aggregate volatility of volatile energy sources also means that readily dispatchable renewable power is more broadly shared.

That alone is the basis, in the analysis in the US DoEnergy report, for effectively accommodating 20% wind power by 2020 (that is not a maximum, of course ... the task of the report was to report on the feasibility of 20% by 2020). And, of course, that does not constrain the ability of the grid to take up other volatile, "use it or lose it" energy sources, provided they are not highly positively correlated with fluctuations in availability of wind energy.

It follows that greater demand flexibility would allow accommodating additional wind power, over and above the amount allowed by nationwide (US) / unionwide (EU) Electricity Superhighways and existing hydro resources and the balance of dispatchable generating capacity.

Further down the track, we can imagine the combination of solar thermal heat collection and heat collection from the exhaust of the first stage of gas turbines stored as heat in molten salts that are used for thermal power generation that can be more readily tailored to peak demand loads in the context of the cycle. The availability of substantial hydro power capacity and substantial responsive demand means that if we are getting supply matched to demand on an eight hour cycle, the ability to fine tune to availability of volatile power sources and non-responsive energy demands is already in the system.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

But, we have a bunch of buttheads who are often part of the Environmental community (NRDC is one example), or who head up AWEA, or are the politicians and regulators who need to pass the laws/implement regulations that would allow FIT's to be one of the choices (the others are the MACRS/PTC tax subsidy approach) for wind turbine operations (and thus installation). These are just more snowdrifts that need to be moved out of the way, but it would be nice if they got on board with Paul Gipe, instead of fighting him so much. There is also quite the legal cottage industry which does the significant machinations needed to convert "active income" into "passive income", or which lines up those with tax appetite (for up to 10 years into the future, no less - quite a feat of prediction in this new era) to developers. The fear that electricity prices might rise for a while (until you get to the wind turbine Feed-In Tariff level) strikes fear into regulators and politicians. Of course, Peak Oil, Peak Ngas and Europe's lust for relatively cheap Appalachian coal (we kill mountains for furriners so they can have coal real cheap, or at least relatively cheap) will raise those anyway, and far in excess of what wind FITs will do. But as Homer the Wise likes to say - "Doh!"

There are efforts in Michigan, now Indiana, Minnesota, possibly Illinois and New York, and maybe California to allow FIT laws to be a part of the wind scene. So it would be really nice for at least some states to turn from the Dark Side of electricity price gambling, and tax payer subsidies that only go to the really, really rich. There is also rep Jay Inslee's nation version of Feed-In Laws, a bit of a tougher stretch. For places like Michigan and Indiana - they have cheap coal power for electricity but no new jobs and unemployment way in excess of the official numbers, and if they want jobs, they will need feed-in laws to counteract that supercheap electricity from old coal burners that retails for 3 to 4 c/kw-hr. Those old, fully depreciated and wearing out nukes that are being milked to the max supply cheap energy, but any new ones will make quite expensive electricity. Pricier than wind by a long shot. A situation somewhat like allowing Whiskey and Rum to sell for $1/liter - cheap electricity has its fans, but it's almost always based on pollution that trashes the future.

So, to paraphrase Cheech and Chong, cheap electricity but no jobs, or reasonably priced electricity and lots of jobs. Where is Homer the Wise when we need him?

Last year (2008), only 8500 MW was installed in the U.S. That was only 62% more than was installed in 2007 (5244 MW), a year where twice as much was installed compared to 2006, with about 2500 MW. Anyway, this is just a drop in the bucket of this hemisphere's potential. This installation rate was somewhat limited by the presumed end of the MACRS/PTC extension on 12-31-08, but that excuse went away in October, and with the election results in November. Availability of turbines and turbine components was also an issue, but with a number of project cancellations and layoffs in manufacturing (DMI for towers, LM Glasfiber for blades, Clipper for turbines), that's not a problem anymore either. Prices for key items like steel, copper, nickel and aluminum (for transmission wires) have also dropped since the peaks of mid-2008, so presumably manufacturing costs and prices will stabilize. Just dependable project financing, something the Feed-In Laws are really good at providing.

Anyway, thanks for the article!

Nb41

dig and expand reservoirs.  You're going to need them for power storage eventually,

and irrigation, and recreation!

it's nuts that a rainy country like england has water shortages!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty