Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Not to distract from the current thread, which I think is important, but:

>From those installations, with half a billion operating hours in the
 first five years, came all the engineering data which matured the
 technology and resulted in today's turbines,

My reading of the book would incline me to phrase this "...all the
engineering data which caused everybody to chuck their self-destructing
turbine designs and buy from the Danes instead!"
  

    
One might surmise that...but what makes the American design story so
fascinating is that the US approach so clearly reflected cultural
history.

Of course, no one has yet mentioned the Smith-Putnam wind machine,
which operated during World War II in the verdant hills of Vermont. The
1.25 MW two-bladed downwind machine dumped the first wind-generated
electricity into our utility monopoly grids in 1941. 

A blade finally broke in 120 mph winds in 1945, the end of the war.
While this pioneering wind turbine was developed with the help of 350
engineers, the Atoms for Peace campaign launched by Eisenhower killed
America's cutting edge wind program. (p.43-46)

In the mid-70s, the federal government authorized the construction of
wind turbines the same size. Big names like Boeing, General Electric,
were given millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to develop turbines
that faced, for the most part, downwind. They were all incredible
failures. PG&E actually blew one of these turbines up, resting on the
outskirts of the Altamont/Diablo wind resource area off of Highway 680.
(p. 55)

The tax credits were a desperate attempt tp get something going at a
smaller scale, by infusing some entrepreneurial chaos to the equation.
And it was California that created today's wind power industry with
this crazy anarchistic approach to technology development. The big
government approach, funded by taxpater dollars, totally failed. 

Yet American culture fostered competition and secrecy. The Danes,
instead, relied upon a craftsman approach that ws also shaped by the
values of rural cooperatives. They all agreed on a fundamental design
-- three-bladed, upwind horitzontal axis -- and then just competed on
fine incremental refinements.

Americans, on the other hand, were continually driven to design the
ultimate, light-weight, super cost effective machine. Indeed, the
world's most advanced design -- by the Carter brothers from West Texas
-- is so light that it swung around like a skinny palm tree. Yet it
fell victim to a father/son feud worthy of a book all on its own. (p.
131). The Carter design is everything that the typical Danish machine
is not. 

Then there were the vertical axis machines of FloWind. These eggbeater
machines are the favorite of tourists. Yet today they are rusting from
lack of maintenance. Many, if not most, may be removed. 

Randy, don't you think that some of the first generation technologies
should be spiffed up and allowed to keep running, sort of living museum
of wind power generation technology?

And is it true that the Altamont has a special presence -- a
personality that sets it apart from the other major wind resource areas
in the state? Afterall, here's what Jerry Garcia said about the why
the Dead never performed at the 1969 rock show that signaled the end of
the "Summer of Love:" "It was in the air that it was not a good time
to do something. It was too weird. And that place. God. It was Hell."

Anyone out there who actually attended the Altamont Rolling Stones
show marred by the stabbing of fans by Hell's Angeles whose pay for
security services was $500 worth of beer? (p. 70)

But I go off on tangents. (What kind of tequila was that? Wine just
doesn't work anymore...phred, HELP!).

As I was saying, the California approach enleashed some of the sickos
of the financial world. The stories of folks like Eckland from the CIA,
and John Kuhns from Wall Street, may convince some folks that the wind
industry is filled with kooks. It is. But it is alos filled with the
most brilliant people on the planet. 

And good night!
  

    
        Amen, Peter.
        And since me finished the novel this eve, pardon if me join Peter for
a virtual tequila, and forget posting 'til the morrow.
  

    
The question I forgot to ask last night was: If anyone was at the
Altamont rock concert, was it windy? What direction was the wind coming
from?
  

    
It was hazy, kind of cold.  I don't remember wind per se, but we seemed 
to be in a basin (where the racetrack is, I presume), though in the 
crowd and wintery haze that was hard to ascertain.
  

    
        Peter, when all the energy needs of the globe are met by renewable
power, i'll feel much more comfortable putting early windpower in a
museum.  Until then...

        No question in my mind that the Altamont is a special, powerful, even
weird place.  Anyone who ever spent time on the rock outcroppings
above the cave paintings knows...
        Some of the best days of my windpower life were spent on the vernal
pool cliffs with good friends who happened to be meteorologists,
engineers, and assorted wind execs.  We called these annual visits Day
on the Green for various reasons.  Wandering the cliffs, watching the
wind season gathering in the distance, surrounded by hundreds of US
Wind Potato's famous 56-100s constantly yawing back and forth as they
tried to figure out the wind's direction... windpower in a special
environment, as beautiful as technology can be.
  

    
> watching the
>  wind season gathering in the distance

How's that again?
  

    
        The screamer wind season in the Altamont is from mid-May to
mid-September.  We'd be up there in, say early March, envisioning the
coming power from the West South West, or perhaps invoking it, or
paying homage to such forces of nature, or Aeolus, or praying for a
strong year.  At least, i think that's what i was trying to say.

        This stunning site of caves with native paintings, strange moon-like
outcroppings of windblown sandstone, vernal pools where the endangered
fairy or brine shrimp play during the post rainy season of their lives,
where eagles nest some years, and where the Palmer Oaks camp atop the
highest point, some 250 miles north of their natural habitat, is the
site chronicled in Reaping the Wind where i tried to develop phase II
of my Howden project.  Here i tried to prove that windpower and
sensitive environmental areas could coexist... and though the permits
finally came through, economic circumstances had changed, and the
project was never built.
        Now the hills are a fenced off portion of the Los Vaqueros Watershed,
and i don't know how you obtain permission to visit.
  

    
Anybody else have any good stories about being out at the Altamont
Pass? Or the Montezuma Hills? Tehachapi? San Gorgonio?
  

    

Well, I've seen the windmills in Tehachapi - had forgotten all about them
until now - but I don't have any good stories.  I used to live nearby.
  

    
Used to live nearby? That is the middle of nowhere.

I remember visiting the Dehlsens, who lived in the ranch composed of
recycled materials, etc. They made the best out of living in the middle
of a wind farm, but you could tell their teenager -- whose name was
Wren -- was a little bored there. And the cement kiln across the street
did take something away from the surrounding beauty of the place. In
spring, the hills are covered with wild flowers....

As I say in the book, the Tehachapi wind farms look incredible in
winter, with the snow and white turbines.

Well, back to current events. Did you guys see that Bush included a $1
billion for solar and wind technologies -- but it was contingent upon
revenues derived from drilling for oil on the top of the world. 

This is an outrage!

And what about these power purchase contracts the state has just
signed, averging 6.9 cents and extending out for 10, even 20 years.
We still have a long way to go. In the ideal world, we would rush as
much wind turbines into the ground and cover rooftops with solar
panels. But as Randy ahs noted, the industry would not be able to
produce what we really need. We hav no long-term vision.

Is it possible to solve our energy crisis without massive taxpayer
investments, with some vision and planning, and entrepreneurial zest?
How can we best take advantage of public policy and private initiative?
  

    
It's really too bad; Gray Davis has caved to the conventional interests
in the hydrocarbon companies and Wall Street.  The power deals are, in
the aggregate, a way of locking in an era that is already starting to fade
away.  In the meantime, his energy conservation bill, AB 5x, failed to
pass the Senate yesterday by the needed supermajority, so it will be shelved
until they can work out some kind of modifications and get the remaining
votes locked in.  But the net effect is a commitment of $20 billion or more
of state money to mostly natural gas fueled electricity, and less than a
tenth of that for conservation and renewables.  

Even if you didn't care for conservation and wind and solar particularly,
but just wanted some bargaining leverage against the gas industry, you would
do a crash program (better crafted than the Jerry Brown era tax credits)
to move them forward, and do 2 to 5 year power contracts rather than locking
in for 10 and even 20 years as Gray Davis has done.

The Wall Street Journal had an article today that made an interesting point.
When you step back and look at all this, it seems like the big motivation
Davis has in shaping a workout package that emphasizes locking the state
into an inflexible long-term power purchase arrangement at very costly
rates (8 to 9 cents, when you include interest costs, on power costing half
that or less to produce), is to fend off the situation where he would be
running not so much against Arnold Schwarzenegger but against a Harvey
Rosenfield ballot measure.

I don't look at it quite so cavalierly; Davis is wrestling with an immense
problem whose contours he still hasn't grasped very well.  But on the
other hand, his cautious and conventional nature has shown up in the
cautious and conventional "solutions" that he is proposing.  

And the cost of gas at the California-Arizona border is still over $20
a million btu, about four times what the rest of the nation is paying
for exactly the same stuff.
  

    
You are right Phred...I'm also worried that the state's approach will
frustrate expansion of public power and distributed generation. I have
a piece coming out in the SF Chronicle that makes that point. I just
found out that legislation that would increased eligibility for
incentives for small wind, solar PV and fuel cells has suddenly lost
momentum because if the state invests all of this money in fossil fuels
and transmission, it doesn't want folks to do their own thing.

As we wind up this fun time on wind energy, renewables and the current
energy crisis, I would like to return to the book.

What of Heronemus' idea of floating wind ships producing hydrogen out
in the oceans. How far off is that? 

What about the vision of a decentralized grid, where say, 50 percent
of us generate some of our own electricity on-site with small wind,
solar PV and fuels cells.

How do we balance the need for large renewable energy systems
necessary to combat global warming, while also encouraging the
evolution of the electricity industry to smaller, smarter and cleaner
power sources right in our own backyards?
  

    
I like the idea of a decentralized grid, though I think except in sparsely
populated rural areas the house is not the most efficient unit; wind seems
ideal for municipality-scale power.  One of the lessons of the Cali crisis
seems to be that not having control over generation can really suck.

For rural living, total decentralization is great. As wireless
communication spreads I think the poles and wires will make less and less
sense. I rent an off-the-grid PV house and I'm pretty sure I have more
reliable electricity than anybody in town. I was idly looking at
Uninterruptible Power Supplies in catalogs one day when I stopped and
thought, my whole *house* is a UPS!

I do think conservation deserves more attention.  Unfortunately, no
politician wants to tell people that they need to get by with less. They'd
much rather say, "Keep on doing everything you do and have a great time,
we'll figure out how to make it have *no impact at all*! Don't do a
thing!" IMO this is an insidious aspect of the promotion of "green"
technologies like renewable energy, electric cars, or recycling.
Everything has an impact, and a solution to the problem of environmentally
disastrous fossil fuels is not a solution to the problems of
industrialization.

I think distributed generation is great.  I think the closer people are to
the source of their electricity, the wiser their use of it will be. I
admit this is a political position; I feel the same way about food and
other resources.

By no means am I saying that wind power should be rejected because it
isn't perfect.  It should be zealously embraced!
  

    
I agree with you about distributed generation. Just having a solar
panel on one's roof or a small wind turbine in the backyard makes us
more aware of our energy usage. Over the past decades, we have just
taken this juice for granted. We stopped worrying about sun patterns
when we planned our new communities because of the wonders of AC. Just
placing homes in the path ofthe sun, planting shade trees, and a few
other very simple steps, can reduce energy needs tremendously!

But global climate change also demands answers much larger. I hope
this energy crisis gets people so riled up that they demand a
revolution in energy. Power to the people, and all of that stuff.

Getting back to my book for a minute. It ends with the implication
that some of the original visionaries are going to give it the old
college try one more time, try to put acompany together that lives up
to the promise of a renewable energy future.

Is this pie in the sky? Is there any hope? Do we need capitalists to
help deliver a clean energy future? Or do we need socialists? What
could Davis realisitically do RIGHT NOW that could both ease the energy
crunch in the West and set the stage for a sane, progressive,
affordable and sustainable energy future?
  

    
"Conservation" is really two quite different concepts wrapped up in the
same term.

"Curtailment" is using less energy and getting less service.  That is
what Gray Davis is pinning his hopes on this summer to avoid blackouts.
When you are in a curtailment situation -- as we are -- the appropriate
thing to remember is that this is a symptom of deeper issues which
curtailment cannot address.

"Energy efficiency" is using less energy and getting *more* service.
As Amory Lovins often puts it, keeping the beer cold and the showers hot.
I can't fathom why anyone wouldn't want a quieter, more evenly heated,
less drafty home or faster production lines with less rejects in a factory,
or more pleasant school rooms and office buildings with natural light and
HVAC systems that don't have to run the cooling cycle in the middle of
winter to remove the heat created by wasteful lighting.  And pay less for
all of it.  But a lot of big companies make a lot of money off our
wasteful buildings, appliances and processes.  The technology and 
implementation strategies for getting energy efficiency have been mature
for about 12 years now.  Enough to reduce overall energy use below the
current course by about 10% a decade for the next three to four decades,
and that's without trying real hard.

And yet it's not happening.  Why?
  

    
Actually, Amory Lovins would jump in right now to point out, correctly,
that conservation has added more value to the energy system than any
fuel source over the last 15 years.  Some is due to generally rising
prices causing efficiency upgrades, and some is due to scheduled programs
of utility rebates, training, market transformation and so on.  But we're
only capturing, at best, a fifth of what is *readily* available without
risking price and market distortions.
  

    
Right on, Phred. Efficiency really should be at the core of our
response to this crunch. One of the most disgusting aspects of
restructuring -- in California and elsewhere -- is the drop-off in
efficiency savings from 1995 and on. Utilities kept projecting all of
these savings that never materialized. "Vapo-watts" some of us used to
call them. Were the utilities good guys for projecting efficiency as a
source that would supply the same amount of power today as the Diablo
Canyon power plant. Hell no! They just didn't want to have to buy any
more power from these pesky independents installing wind farms and
other cleaner technologies.

The core of this "crunch" is our energy waste. And is these ridiculous
prices for power don't spur on a national program of more efficient
living, then we all deserve to fry. 

Phred, what should Davis do?

Should we go door-to-door in low-income regions, taking out the energy
hogs from those who can least afford these recent price spikes, and
replace all of their old appliances with the best, most efficient
stuff.

Should we require that all new development account for where their
electricity will come from before they move forward? That could require
some drastic steps -- but these are drastic times.

And will all of this concern go away if gas prices fall in two years?
Look into your crystal balls and tell me, will this current fiasco have
a great impact -- or is this just a brief period of enlightenment that
will dim as it is stored in the deep recesses of our -- as Brian Eno
might put it -- our scrambled egg minds?
  

    
There is no enlightenment.  It's all just an illusion, I am becoming
convinced.  The governor's latest moves leave me no alternative.  The
"40" package was one shoe dropping, and the other is the CPUC abdicating
ratemaking authority to DWR.  Renewables and conservation will get
relative crumbs, but the feast is for the Permian Basin and the Texas
and east coast companies that own, distribute, and sell to gas distribution
utilities (PG&E, Southern Cal Gas, Sempra) or generators who use gas to
produce electricity, the natural gas resources found in the Permian.

The governor's team cut a deal with the independent energy producers to
get them cash for what they have sold to the utilities recently, and to
give them something of a market going forward, at a fixed price.  But
nothing more than that.  They were locked out of David Freeman's "40"
deals, and so they are relegated to fighting it out with the gas suppliers
to sell into the peak market.  Jan Smutny-Jones of the IEP is earning his
dough getting accounts payable to his people covered, but that's all they
get.  And it keeps them from pushing PG&E and Edison into bankruptcy.

The utility holding companies are walking away from the entire mess they
created, at a cost of maybe $500 million cash each to provide a little
window-dressing for the wake.  I would say it's still 50-50 for the
utility subsidiaries themselves to go into bankruptcy.  Maybe it doesn;t
matter any more.

I'm very pessimistic tonight.  Gray Davis has shut off a lot of the exit
strategies we had.  The west coast is now in indentured servitude to the
natural gas industry.

This is a very sobering moment.  School districts and hospitals around
the state are already trimming their budgets to pay gas bills.  As the
electric rates inevitably rise, they will trim more.  PG&E was forced by
a court yesterday to cancel plans to lay off *2000* lineworkers and
customer support people.  Things are moving so fast that it's impossible
to keep up with events that, a year ago in isolation, would have been
lead headlines in every paper and TV news show in the state.  Right now
the lead stories are as follows:

LA Times: Public likes Bush but prefers Democratic tax plan
Sacramento Bee: Kings make a comeback to defeat Phoenix Suns
SF Chronicle: More on the wacky "Cornfed"/Marjorie Knoller family drama
KRON: We regret to announce we are unable to re-up our Dish Network deal
KCRA: Community leaders discuss Venerable shooting
KNBC: Santee teenager charged with murder
San Diego News-Tribune: Hearing postponed for shooting suspect

No question, the Santee story deserves top billing in Southern California.
But it's readily clear that Electric Crisis Fatigue has set in with the
reading and watching public and the news media.  I can't really blame
them, because it makes *my* head hurt and I've been doing this for a very
long time.


I'm not an inveterate pessimist, so I will say this: in a situation like
we have, it's more than reassuring that a guy like John White (actually
known as "V-John" to all of us who know him) is representing the good-guy
renewables people at this moment.  He was able to salvage some stuff in
the 1994-96 debacle leading up to AB 1890, and he will surely be able
to get something substantive in the current situation.  

But after pawing around Peter's question for a good four paragraphs too
much here, I have to conclude that the best strategy for Gray Davis to
follow is almost everything he is not doing.
  

    
Yes, I'm beginning to feel a little blue myself.

I head off to SActo today and may pop in and say hi to VJW. But even
at Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, the
influence of Calpine and other generators into gas can be seen.

Since I moved from Sacto, I've become a bit of a bomb thrower. I hope
to get some more info on some of the good bills in the Legislature. I
heard that a bill to make it easier to become a public utility passed
yesterday. However, as my piece in today's SF Chronicle points out, the
Davis approach could lock us into the gas industry agenda. I'm putting
together a report right now for Common Cause on campaign
contributions. ANy ideas on how I shuld look at the money and the
outcomes?

I want to show how much money renewable guys put in (including the
retail marketers like Green Mountain) versus what the private utilities
and various factions of independent energy producers put in. There is
indeed a split between the small (not quite) Mom & Pop operations that
own a biomass plant and the Dukes and Dynegys that bought the utility
generation assets.

What you guys suggest in terms of analyzing lobbying and campaign
contributions in 99-00 time frame. What is the best way to frame the
issue in terms of here is what these guys gave, and here's what are
proposed solutions look like?
  

    

Peter, do you want to post a pointer to your article in the Chron?
  

    
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/
2001/03/08/ED199013.DTL
I'm interested to hear what kind of response you get, Peter.
  

    
Meanwhile -- big surprise -- the Bush administration is moving to strangle
federal investment in conservation and renewables, with proposed cuts in
research budgets up to 30%.

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32429-2001Mar6.html
  

    
        Reaping the Wind ends with three of those chronicled in the book
taking the leap to form a company to bring windpower offshore, where
the winds are stronger and the water makes it a natural to produce
hydrogen.  Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, but if the future isn't
right now, we might all be in a bigger environmental mess than we can
handle.
        I'm one of those guys, the lucky one, able to forge a company with my
mentors in windpower, two men whose pivotal role in the birth of this
industry Peter begins to capture vibrantly.  Professor Bill Heronemus
is rightfully the father of modern American windpower, to whom Peter's
book is dedicated.  Dr. Forrest "Woody" Stoddard is one of windpower's
leading aerodynamicists, and wind turbine designer of note.
        We're in fundraising mode, angel class, and despite negotiations with
some significant corporate players, fundraising is a fulfilling
struggle.  For you see, our product is designed to replace oil and gas.
        We're not worried about floating wind ships at sea, because we have
Bill Heronemus' years as a Navy Captain, and designer of nuclear
submarines, to help us navigate the deep.  We have thirty years of his
efforts to fit wind and hydrogen together, and nearly that long of
Woody climbing towers to see what's up.
        We know how to optimize the rotors to take advantage of offshore
winds, and we know how to build the necessary flotation and anchorage
to weather the seas and the winds.  We know how to do it more
economically than current offshore designs, because our experience
tells us to look deeper than windpower's current directions.
        Just as more than twenty years ago, when working windmills were just
a gleam in our eyes, but are now commonplace around the globe, so too
will the use of ocean winds be the base on which the hydrogen economy
is built.
        We realistically expect to be able to demonstrate the technology
within 3-4 years, though we'd like to move more aggressively, through a
series of demonstrators, starting with land-based turbines, then
moving into the deep.
        All while questions of energy use are debated more hotly, as the real
cost of burning fossils becomes more and more apparent.
  

    
Howdy folks -- I've been away from my computer for more than 24
hours...

Yes, things are looking dark. But I'm still hopeful. I think this
summer will be a disaster, and the people will becomae angry, so angry
that maybe the farce that is our national energy strategy will get
exposed....

There are a lot of great ideas out there. Randy, Woody and Bill are
the kinds of people we need right now. We need to think BIG. I've said
it before, California is the canary in the coal mine. It time to wake
up and smell...the oil, gas and diesel? 

I'm working on a report for Common Cause. The bottomline conclusion
will be: The reason why the solutions being offered don't focus nearly
enough on renewables is reflected in the lobbying and campaign
contribution totals.

I have to take advantage of this beautiful day. Let's keep this dialog
going....