Hot off the press - Major development in here in Delaware — first U.S. offshore wind project is one step closer, the utility signed a PPA. And dig this, the PSC last year, when faced in a level-playing field RFP choice between IGCC/coal gasification and wind and natural gas, recommended a wind/gas combo, and y’all can guess who was advocating for that!
For more info: http://legalectric.org/weblog/2314/

No New Coal!

Full disclosure (without the this time) — I’ve left state government to become the regional policy manager for Wind on the Wires, the Midwest regional partner to the American Wind Energy Association. WoW’s membership includes wind developers (both large and community energy developers), environmental advocacy groups like Izaak Walton League, ReNew Wisconsin and others, and goods & services providers.

How have the public hearings been? I’m still out of town, but maybe Rochester…

xoxoxoxoxoxox

Carol

Hopefully, my letter to editor may get in Wednesday paper, with list of locations for the public hearings this week, starting with June 25, Wed, New Prague HS Commons, 221-12th St. NE, New Prague.

For more info, call Bev Topp or Atina Diffley or check website
http://www.cetf.us

Go out Cedar to stop (cty 86), turn left on 86, watch for 8919 on north side of road (2-3 miles).

Citizens Energy Task Force presents:

Barn Dance and CapX Public Hearing Energizer
Featuring the Prairie Creek Group Dance Band
Sunday, June 22, 2008, 6:00 PM - 9 P.M.
Carrie Jenning’s Barn: 8919 280th St. W, Northfield, MN

Bring your friends and neighbors: anyone interested in learning about alternatives to the CapX high voltage transmission line planned for your neighborhood. Donations to support legal work of Citizens Energy Task Force.

JOIN US and…

align with others who believe the CapX lines are the wrong kind, at the wrong time.
demand an alternative to the CapX power lines.
receive information on alternatives to the CapX lines.
receive coaching with CETF attorney Paula Maccabee for citizens who want to speak up in public hearings .
have a great time at the community dance.
help fund the Citizens Energy Task Force legal work.
The decision on whether or not the CapX 2020 power lines will be built is a critical decision about Minnesota’s energy future. Whether or not the power lines may cross their land, citizens concerned about rate increases, conservation, renewable energy, local jobs or the long-term ability of Minnesota to provide our own energy security have a lot at stake with the CapX projects.

For additional info: http://www.cetf.us
Carolyn Joyce 507-645-6359 or cajoyce2001@yahoo.com

http://legalectric.org/weblog/2047/

The recycling increase is good (though I’d heard 75%, not just 50%), but otherwise… eeeeeeeeuw

Imagine the following negative side effects of climate change that could happen in Minnesota. Crops develop new diseases due to variation in temperature. Water table drops, and additional energy is used to access deeper water, continuing the climate change cycle. Expansive drought in the southern US leads to a state vs. state fight for water rights (such as happened in the south this year), including a pipeline to pull water from the great lakes down south emperiling MN resources. Nations that depend on glacial melt for drinking water go into drought conditions as glaciers disappear, causing massive refugee migration and potentially wars over resources. OK, that last is obviously global, but it’s one of the biggest potential problems I see from climate change, and would likely have a big impact on resources available at the federal level.

Now imagine the opposite: Minnesota leads the US in helping not just slow climate change but actually reverse it. In the process, we develop a new industry or two (wind and solar development, at a guess) and create jobs which stimulate our state economy. We likely institute mass transit throughout the state and probably across state lines, so people can easily and quickly commute to the twin cities or down to Rochester or up to Duluth, without driving. In doing so, communities along the commuter rail lines get a huge influx of new residents, quickly followed by businesses. The rail lines are also used to transport farm products with reduced usage of trucks. Minnesota’s natural areas are preserved and even enhanced, promoting tourism which also gets a boost because tourists can get directly from the airport onto a train and ride close to their destination. Finally, healthcare costs go down a bit because morbidity and mortality associated with pollution are greatly reduced. Maybe the last one is dreaming too far, but the rest present very real possibilities if only our leaders will lead the charge.

I guess my big message is that traditional economics seems to miss the boat in this discussion, both in terms of the unintended costs of coal and other traditional energy sources and the potential benefits of real renewable efforts. Market-driven plans which don’t account for the negative impacts of each product on society are leading us down a dangerous path.

Too bad I can’t make it to the energy summit.

Okay, so the wind turbine would replace the power plant… so less wires… but DC isn’t as good as AC…

Hopefully they’ll edumacate me tonight at the meeting. And hopefully Carol and Mike will come and interject the knowledge we need so we can talk about important things.

To Bruce M in particular — a couple of weeks ago, the Governor announced our Local Renewable Energy Initiative, to provide financial assistance (long term, low interest loans) to local units of government to support the installation of small scale renewable generation in their jurisdiction. Here’s a link to the MPR report: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/17/energyplan (not sure how to do links here, but if it doesn’t work, you can cut and paste). The Intitiative is subject to legislative approval.

Holly — I think its fair to say that MISO was focusing their attention & resources on things other than transmission planning to support wind development. I guess in their defense, transmission engineers generally had very little confidence that high percentages of wind energy could be integrated reliably and cost-effective “integrated” into the electric system, until our Minnesota Wind Integration Study was issued in November 2006. That was game-changing and set the stage for the Minnesota Renewable Electricity Standard last session (requiring over 27% of our electricity to come from renewables by 2025), and the Midwest Governors Association regional committment of 30% renewable electricity by 2030. That MGA effort was co-chaired by Governor Pawlenty and Governor Doyle of Wisconsin.

We’ve put the same kind of team together for the dispersed generation study (referenced in my post #28) that we did for the Wind Integration Study…

Has anyone driven through northern Iowa recently? There is a very large wind farm just west of 35 north of Clear Lake. It has been there a few years. Just a couple weeks ago, I traveled through there again, and there is another large facility being installed on the east side of the freeway. If you go east on 18, there is another large facility going up near Charles City. Seems our southern neighbors have hit upon something. There must be some economic potential with these things if they have made that kind of commitment to wind power.

What about the MISO problems, again? Scrambling to catch up? Didn’t see the tidal wave coming? Someone must have been thinking about building coal plants instead of anticipating a need for alternative fuel sources.

Sounds like we’re just going to keep on doing the same, now that I think about it.

We can and should do that, to some extent, but, honestly, the economics don’t support it as the dominant paradigm. To have every municipality provide for its own electricity needs would be overwhelmingly expensive — we’d lose too much in terms of economies of scale and in terms of energy reliability.

But, the economics are getting somewhat better, as technology advances. We want to make sure we support (and not exclude) that more dispersed generation model going forward, so that we can take advantage of the benefits of that model as the technology gets better. And that’s what we’re trying to do as state policy. That’s a good example of “both/and” and not “either/or”.

What if we built for local consumption, and stayed connected to the grid for no wind days?

Processing the wind apps is a problem? Sounds like inefficiency, to me, and like someone is playing for big money elsewhere.

The other part of the problem wind developers are facing is transmission capacity. Even if the MISO queue/interconnection process gets reformed in the ways described in the article, that will still only lead to a “faster no” for wind developers in our region, unless we develop the additional transmission infrastructure necessary to carry the wind energy from where the best wind resources exist to where it can be used. The additional infrastructure needed includes both the lower cost, lower voltage “gathering lines” (from the “sweet spots” I described in my post #28), and larger, more expensive, higher voltage transmission lines.

Energy Department backing out of Illinois-bound FutureGen project, officials say

By Bob Secter | Tribune reporter
3:43 PM CST, January 29, 2008

The big clean coal development coup Illinois thought it had locked up only last month appeared to be evaporating Tuesday, with members of Illinois’ congressional delegation saying the Bush administration was pulling the plug on the $1.8 billion FutureGen power plant of the future that had been awarded to Downstate Mattoon.

http://tinyurl.com/2zcb2u (long link to Chicago Trib)

Not good news.

No worries. I guess I will have to read this discussion now, since I have been called upon.

I would like to comment briefly though, and I have to go back and re-read the article in the Star Trib by H.J Cummings regarding the pending applications for Wind Turbines. 612 years at the current rate.

…the biggest immediate problem is the bottleneck at the regional agencies of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — Midwest ISO, in 15 Upper Midwest states — that give projects permission to connect to existing power lines.

From: http://www.startribune.com/business/14445531.html (Cummins, 2008)

The article also goes on to state that even with changes in the procedures and grouping of applications, it will take well over 50 years to process all of the current applications.

It just amazes me, that we have these folks ready to go, to implement a methodology to get clean, renewalble power, yet we have this huge roadblock in place.

I would have to ask this of the group, as I do not know… do we have the transmission infrastructure to move this power if it was there?

I get the perception that these new lines are primarily for the Coal plants in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Southeastern Montana.

It would make more sense to keep the power sources as close to the users as possible, so that you would not need all of this infrastructure. Problem is, some sites are much better than others for power generation.

I need to get more informed on this subject. Thanks for allowing me to participate.

An example: we (the MN Office of Energy Security) are overseeing a technical transmission study of the statewide potential for dispersed generation, trying to find the”sweet spots” in the transmission grid where over 1200 megawatts of dispersed renewable energy projects under 40 megawatts each an be added to the system without a great deal of new transmission investment.

At the same time, we’re supportive of the CAPX-type large backbone transmission infrastructure projects (I say CAPX-type projects because the regulatory process will determine whether these specific projects proposed by the CAPX utilities are needed).

Some will think that’s a contradiction, that you can’t be supportive of dispersed renewable generation *and* big honkin’ transmission lines. But I think that’s a false dichotomy — I think that they support each other, bringing different economics and reliability benefits to the table, and both types of solutions should be implemented, to provide the best blend of benefits to Minnesota.

GM Hy-Wire water car on Top Gear

After you get past the Mazda, it gets pretty interesting. Wait until you hear what the car COULD power. BBC Prime says in the video that this will be the car we are driving in ten years. Unless someone kills it.

(Just messing around with Daiko’s youtube widget for a blog, and that’s how I came across this video.)