MGx - Musings, Essays & Ballads

For months I have been receiving news alerts about the failures and foibles of Eskom, SAs national electricity provider and the daily rolling blackouts. Now it seems, SA may be without power for as much as two weeks straight as the plants and grid shut down for maintenance.
Something we have heard from several specialists […]

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Years ago I read The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible, by James Burke, about the origins and evolution of innovation and invention. Burke chronicles the unlikely connections that led from a wet clothesline in France to the permanent wave, which in turn spurred concentration on the borax mines of […]

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Windustry in cooperation with the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority are having a seminar in April to enhance the prospects of developing community owned wind projects. Items on the agenda include
* Day 1: Open dialogue on local, state and national public policies for community wind energy and options […]

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This video produced in the UK illustrates the merits of CHP ( combined heat and power) and distributed energy using microturbines, renewable and fossil fuel powered.

Note how many European cities have successfully made this transition already. Progressive forward thinking city councils are paving the way on the local level to break through regulatory barriers […]

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Centralized power vs decentralized power
There is a national movement away from centralized power, large power plants producing hundreds of megawatts in a single location toward decentralized power generation. Decentralized energy (DE) is defined as power produced at or near the point of consumption and has many advantages over the standard centralized model we have […]

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Distributed energy refers to power generated at or near the point of consumption and has the benefit of being highly efficient without requiring the enormous infrastructure and maintenance of centralized power transmission. Presently, it costs as much as $1m per mile to run transmission lines to a rural farm in Iowa and as much […]

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Rogue River Wind is working with local engineering group SolCoast to investigate the feasibility of siting a 3 mega-Watt, municipally owned distributed power generation facility using wind turbine and photo-voltaic technology in rural, coastal Oregon communities. Study aspects include development of:
- environmental, social, and geological impacts required for consideration in a formal EIS
- a […]

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Been having a very productive time in northern Oregon this weekend and will be following up with Portland State University on the generator for a rooftop wind turbine tomorrow. Sustainability, renewable energy is crucial for real social change and ending the war! More when I return

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Rogue River Wind and Portland State University Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, have joined forces to optimize power generation from a high efficiency wind turbine suitable for rooftop mounting. Pictured here, this twelve foot, self indexing turbine can produce 3Kw at 15mph winds. The turbine is unaffected by air turbulence […]

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PSU is establishing a test center which will analyze data collected from an installation expected this fall in Bandon, Oregon, known for its ample wind resource.

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Liquefied natural gas, like oil is a finite resource and investing in infrastructure to support a limited resource has no lasting benefits. One need only look to the economic boom and bust of the Baku, Azerbaijan oil fields or the dormant pumps in California and Texas as examples of wasted infrastructure and the devastating impact to the environment.

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New technologies are emerging in wind energy that allow for distributed power (power created at the point of consumption) to be mounted on rooftops or hilltops without the need for high towers. One design that I am intimately familiar with as I was the patent agent, is the ducted fan wind turbine.

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Is the future? Distributed energy, power at the point of consumption is on the rise (more to come)

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