I recently saw an item on Dailykos by Senator Kerry, touting his version of a Senate Energy/Climate Change Bill. The link to his bill can be seen here:
http://kerry.senate.gov/cleanenergyjobsandamericanpower/intro.cfm
His bill is an alternative to/similar to the so-called ACES bill (Waxman-Markey Bill) which recently passed the House, albeit in a severely wimped out/compromised form
Anyway, here was my reply to Senator Kerry.
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Dear Senator Kerry,
This is the final release for the Spring 2009 National Renewable Ammonia Architecture. It's having a hearing on DailyKos, there will be a 2,000 word precis for The Oil Drum, the place where it all began, and then outreach to Congress, the press, and economic development groups will begin in earnest.
Looking ahead it's obvious a peer reviewed journal piece needs to be derived from this basis; we'd have done it this time, but we move a bit faster than academia. The final product you see here was built as sixteen separate sections and it doesn't take a lot of effort to envision these 6,500 words expanded to 65,000 and published in book form. There is a not insubstantial gap between envisioning and actually doing - perhaps the fall of 2009 will only see another web published update to the overall plan rather than the distribution of speaker's copies of the book at the Fall 2009 Ammonia Fuel Network conference.
It's been quite a ride up to this point ... and the pace is only going to accelerate from here.
I've got weekly column duty now with the Paxton Record and my most recent column they've entitled Earth Needs Paxton's Help
NPR's All Things Considered had a piece on Dakota winds and the need for grid expansion. I registered on the NPR site and left a nice little note - maybe they'll come around and do a bit on us??
While many think of NY State as NY City plus nearby 'burbs and a big upstate park (Adirondack), in many ways we are the original Stranded Renewable Power state. Only, when the this was in vogue, it was actually good for the upstate regions - all that hydropower probably spawned 100,000 industrial jobs.
Electric consumers experience the power in the United States as something that is very stable and always available except in the event of natural disasters such as tornadoes or ice storms. If you pull the curtain back you'll find that there are three different types of electricity, each with its pluses and minuses.
Electric generating capacity can be classified as baseload, dispatchable, or variable.
There has been lots of talk for some time on tapping the wind energy of the Great Plains. So much wind power that could make electricity, and so few people to consume it. For example, The listed population for South Dakota is 804,000, on ~ 77,000 square miles, and that is less people than in Erie County NY (~ 900,000) on 1,100 square miles. And most of Erie County is rural or forest...
In the last few weeks, some companies wind turbine manufacturing companies have announced either some new models, or enhanced old models. First, the "enhanced" older models:
1. Nordex N-100 x 2.5 MW unit - 100 meter rotor, 100 and 120 meter towers
2. Fuhrlaender FL-2500 x 100 meter rotor (2.5 MW) (95 meter and up tower heights)
3. RE Power 3.3 MW unit (104 rotor diameter)
And the new ones announced:
4. Siemens SWT-101 x 2.3 MW unit - 101 meter rotor diameter
5. Vestas V-112 x 3 MW - 112 meter rotor diameter, 100 meter tower
6. Vestas V-100 x 1.8 MW unit - 100 meter rotor diameter
Here is a story about a new and very nifty offshore wind platform for
waters that are more than 50 meters (164 ft) deep:
http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content_lt.php?content.3...
Here is the company doing this:
http://www.principlepowerinc.com/technology/windfloat.php
It will probably be demonstrated off the shore of Portugal initially (that part of the Atlantic Ocean is quite similar to the Pacific Coastline of North America, as it's really windy, and gets decently deep fast). Right now, Europe rules with respect to offshore wind.
Are energy supplies a form of goods or a type of service? Jerome Guillet of the European Tribune explores this line of thinking and what it means for government policy below the fold ...
