Here is proof ducted fans can be driven by a light breeze. The 24″ fan started the 2 meter LIM from a dead stop with no assist. When wind tumbles over the top of a building there is a velocity gain of 180%… so a light 8mph breeze becomes a viable 14mph energy producing wind if you place a ducted fan in its path. Wait til you see it operate in a Class 2 hurricane.

At right is the base complete with brake and access for the electronics

My column up at Sustainable Business Oregon

Practically, it is hard to imagine a technology that wastes 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every single kilowatt-hour produced is surviving into the 22nd century. Let’s hope it doesn’t; it simply isn’t sustainable. We should be imagining that next century now — one without a crisscross labyrinth of ugly transmission lines, one with thousands of independently functioning renewable energy microgrids.

Time to start imagining the next century rather than sinking more money into the last century’s folly.

With all the talk about modern smart grids and the call for increased transmission to deliver new renewable energy to consumers, eager to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, little attention is given to how antiquated and inefficient long distance transmission is. A March 2009, National Geographic article, citing the Energy Information Administration points out, “…for every kilowatt-hour used, 2.2 are “lost” as that energy is generated and sent over transmission lines.”
Hardly a sustainable business model, centralized power production only works for the monopolized utilities because the ratepayer is compelled to pay for their inefficiency by the PUC. The centralized grid delivery system is like taking the mountain to Mohammad except as energy demands increase the mountain keeps getting bigger and further and further away.

As promising as smart grid technology seems the primary goal is better load matching and therefore fewer wide scale blackouts, not efficiency. Smart grids will be effective for managing over spinning events that have wind farms producing excess power and redirecting it elsewhere but it does nothing to reduce wheeling or thermal losses.

Today’s central grid is based on Edison’s 1882 Pearl Street Station in Manhattan, serving less than 500 customers. More than 100 years later advancements in transmission technology have been mainly around stepping up voltage higher and higher to make the ever increasing distances required by building power plants out of sight of the urban centers.

Perhaps because the ratepayer picks up the tab for these losses little has been done to reduce them and the resultant CO2 emissions. Add in the enormous environmental footprint associated with thousands of miles of transmission lines hundreds, even thousands of feet wide, making the central grid ‘smarter’ is perpetuating 19th century technology into a 21st century world.

Cost estimates to improve the central grid vary widely with one suggesting $46B worldwide within the next five years. Investing just 10% of that money into developing utility scale clean storage technology would help eliminate the need for a central grid.

Producing power at the point of consumption, implementing wide scale distributed energy makes more and more sense, environmentally and economically. Smart microgrids can employ multiple renewable technologies such as rooftop wind and solar without any of the losses associated with the central grid.

Practically, it is hard to imagine a technology that wastes 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every single kilowatt-hour produced surviving into the 22nd century. Let’s hope it doesn’t, it simply isn’t sustainable. We should be imagining that next century now, hopefully one without a crisscross labyrinth of ugly transmission lines, something with thousands of independently functioning renewable energy microgrids.

Coquille, Oregon
Rogue River Wind, Ltd, (RRW) an Oregon renewable energy company has acquired the rights to a revolutionary new relativistic generator (REM) design. RRW is the developer of a ducted fan wind turbine, the V-LIM, capable of operating in low, high and turbulent winds up to Class 2 hurricanes. The V-LIM requires an equally robust, high bandwidth, direct drive generator capable of capitalizing on these powerful kinetic forces. The higher the RPM the more power the REM produces.
Until now modern generator technology began with Barlow and Faraday in England, and rather quickly matured through the dynamo into the recognizably modern generator by about 1900. The REM design represents the first radical design departure in generators since that time.
The REM has no inductive wound coils. Plasma or laser cutters cut continuous and precise shapes simplifying manufacture. There is no inductive steel significantly reducing total weight. The design incorporates a magnet topology that requires only 1/5 the neodymium used in traditional generators. As a low resistance device there are no heating or cooling concerns.
The generator uses no flux targets so there is no magnetic hysteresis. The generator has low internal loss and no thermal loss. The generator operates at a high bandwidth, requires low starting torque and has zero cogging. The direct drive generator can be scaled and stacked to replace existing generators in traditional wind turbines and eliminate the need for gearboxes and reduce the weight at the top of a tower by over 2/3. These combined features result in a 15% efficiency gain over contemporary generator designs.
The general topology can be elementally reconfigured into all different generator design aspects and parameters, from axial to radial. It can function as stacked element generator in a traditional BIG WIND megawatt power mode, or as the power-generating element in a wind turbine based micro grid configuration.
The REM can be used in a radial mode as wheel based motor in an electric vehicle design, or in water driven electrical generation modes. It can replace any traditional field coil or rare earth permanent magnet generator design in most applications, as an efficient coupling element between a mechanical power input, and an electrical power output. It can even be a stepper motor in a disk drive mechanism.
The generator is available for license in any application where generators are required.
For information please contact Mary Geddry, CEO Rogue River Wind, Ltd, at 800-490-8060 x210

So it seems that pipeline companies have found a way to get you and I to pay the taxes of their owners. Master Limited Partnerships that own rate regulated pipelines can force you and me to pay their taxes through

You would never know from looking at your utility bills and gas station receipts that the federal government has let one type of big business drill a hole in your pocket to collect income taxes, just as when looking across the surface of the planet, you cannot see the rich deposits of oil and natural gas buried under miles of water, soil, and rock. The cost is embedded in the sums your local utility or gas station pays for the natural gas and petroleum delivered via pipeline.

Is the Williams Pipeline an MLP? If so they not only can take land via eminent domain but we may be paying their income taxes as well.

Despite mounting evidence that BP is a bad actor and a bill penidng in the Senate, the nation is now caught deciding whether national security, ie, supplying adequate fuel to the military is more critical than protecting the gulf coast and billions of dollars in fishing and tourism.

The amendment was put forward by Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez. “There is ample evidence leading up to and including the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that BP is not a ‘responsible source’ and shows a consistent disregard for federal law and the lives and livelihoods of Americans,” Gutierrez said. The bill is currently in the Senate.

The ‘lives and livelihoods of Americans’ is clearly not at the top of BP’s list of priorities. Consider this expose´ from Rachel Maddow about the lack of readiness for such a disaster. Below that, satirist Lewis Black and Keith Olbermann compare BP CEO, Tony Hayward to Baghdad Bob of the initial invasion into Iraq. Funny if it weren’t so true.