Living in the hydro-rich Pacific Northwest it is hard to imagine rationing showers and lawn watering in order to have a few hours a day of electricity, but that is what is happening in Venezuela right now.

One of the severest droughts in decades has given Venezuela’s socialist president a political nightmare as hydro-electrical power dribbles to a standstill, unleashing blackouts, rationing and protests. The waters behind the Guri dam, which supplies more than half the nation’s power, have touched perilously low levels.

Nevertheless, with energy production requiring as much water as agriculture and once mighty rivers like the Rio Grande no longer reaching the ocean and energy usage expected to grow beyond existing capacity, unless we decentralize now, it will happen here.

There are many reasons I focus upon wind energy, not the least being the ample supply…this from the November 2009 Scientific American.

Plenty of Supply
Today the maximum power consumed worldwide at any given moment is about 12.5 trillion watts (terawatts, or TW), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency projects that in 2030 the world will require 16.9 TW of power as global population and living standards rise, with about 2.8 TW in the
U.S. The mix of sources is similar to today’s, heavily dependent on fossil fuels. If, however, the planet were powered entirely by WWS, with no fossil-fuel or biomass combustion, an intriguing savings would occur. Global power demand would be only 11.5 TW, and U.S. demand would be 1.8 TW. That decline occurs because, in most cases, electrification is a more efficient way to use energy. For example, only 17 to 20 percent of the energy in gasoline is used to move a vehicle (the rest is wasted as heat), whereas 75 to 86 percent of the electricity delivered to an electric vehicle goes into motion.

Even if demand did rise to 16.9 TW, WWS sources could provide far more power. Detailed studies by us and others indicate that energy from the wind, worldwide, is about 1,700 TW

Another reason I favor wind is that wind is the only renewable energy source that does not require any water during the production of electricity. Even solar requires massive amounts of water when used in a centralized system.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity from nuclear power 2.3 litres of water are needed. Coal requires 1.9 litres and oil consumes 1.6 litres…Some CSP technology utilises rows of curved mirrors focus heat onto a tube filled with oil which boils water to make steam, in turn spinning a turbine a turbine – this is called a trough system. Another uses reflective mirrors called heliostats to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto liquid-filled tubes used to generate steam and spin turbines.

In the case of trough technology, the water footprint is considerable – around 3.6 litres per kilowatt hour.

This video produced in England shares the benefits of decentralizing even if still using fossil fuels.

Last Thursday, I participated in a forum in Salem put on by the US Department of Agriculture related to economic growth in rural America.

The USDA is leading an effort nationwide to listen to Rural America’s thoughts and ideas about what is needed to create jobs and stimulate economic development in rural communities across the country. These forums follow the lead of President Obama’s December 3, 2009, national roundtable discussion. So, plan to attend and share your thoughts and ideas about job creation and economic growth.

In Oregon, the following Community Forums have been scheduled:

> ALBANY, January 21, 9AM-Noon; Linn County Fair & Expo Center, Conference Center Rooms 1 & 2
> REDMOND, January 28, 1-4PM; Central Oregon Community College, Hitchcock Auditorium

Coos County Commissioner Nikki Whitty was there along with Sandy Messerle director of the South Coast Development Council (does anyone know what, if anything, SCDC has successfully developed?).

The forum consisted of two panels, the second putting some focus on energy, hence the reason I was invited. ODOE was represented on the second panel by Bob Repine, Assistant Director, Energy Incentives who began by talking about the opportunities for jobs in Oregon relating to the wind industry. Repine noted that many parts break on big wind turbines and while, “…Oregon will never compete with Europe”, Oregon can manufacture the replacement parts and create jobs.

Oregon could manufacture the generators. The Shepherd’s Flat wind farm awarded a $1.4B contract to GE to ‘assemble’ the turbines with China being the primary manufacturer of components. Shepherd’s Flat like all big wind farms is heavily subsidized with US taxpayer money, so why are we providing jobs for China?

State Senator Chris Edwards, representing part of Lane County, also on the panel, proudly advised that Oregon can trade with China producing fine wood products and other sundries. Now that China has all the jobs, it is no wonder they can afford to import our turned bowls our trinkets.

Naturally, I saw red and leaped up to give my opinion about what the government can do to help with jobs creation, such as insisting taxpayer funded projects be manufactured in the US. Oregon has the manufacturing infrastructure and the technology in place all it appears to lack is the political will.

Neither Messerle or Whitty contributed anything to the forum conversation but when I spoke to Whitty she told me she thought everything “was so interesting”.

The first power curves for the V-LIM are done and I will publish them here after some additional verification soon. We have learned a lot from these tests, have changed the magnet topology for a more focused flux and will segment the stator for faster saturation in the production models. Even without these changes we outperform our competitors and after such a long hard struggle, I can’t tell if I am happy or just relieved to be past this point. Am definitely exhausted.

More data soon to come, here and at Rogue River Wind.

Redundancy, in the context of power transmission and distribution, means simply that there are lots of backup sources for power to take over, should a power source fail anywhere along the grid. My push for distributed energy micro-grids has been criticized locally claiming it lacks redundancy when in fact wide scale distributed energy is the epitome of a redundant electrical system. To make my point here are a few examples of massive power outages that occurred because there is no redundancy in the centralized grid. The article lists many examples of catastrophic grid failure but this one below is pretty amazing.

November 2006: A German power company switches off a high voltage line over a river to let a cruise ship pass. It triggers outages for 10 million people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Recently, we had an outage in North Bend that cascaded through sections of Coos Bay. In the event of such an outage most utilities fall all over themselves disconnecting from the faltering line as quickly as possible to avoid massive outages. They do not, as is believed rush to help by rerouting power to the stricken area. It is more akin to a mass exodus to the life boats with all lines cut to keep from being sunk with the ship. No one tries to keep it floating.

Pretty astonishing really when you think about it that despite having to replace every single part the V-LIM generator will finally get to spin up and turn on some light bulbs. All this has been accomplished in less than four months whereas the previous fabricator was moving up on a year and hadn’t even assembled the stator.

Reasons behind replacing the various parts, including the axle explain why the LIM was not being completed as promised… it simply couldn’t fit together. Actually, the stator has not been replaced but that was engineered and laser cut in Clackamas but every thing else, every single thing machined or signed off on by the former ‘fabricator’ including the damn trailer he insisted I buy (axles and wheel bearings shot), were worthless.

Rather than be angry, although I clearly am, I am endeavoring to be happy about the spin up and finally, finally getting some power curves and selling some turbines. Honestly, I can’t wait to write a memoir about the LIM and amazingly cool capacitive storage technology. From the first encounter with Coos County’s own Larry, Curly and Moe to the darkly comedic episode of the denial expert and shanty singer cum wind turbine fabricator and his wedding disrupting partner.

Yes, I have just had a glass (maybe two) of champagne

Been suffering from a bit of information overload, lately. Must admit, everything I am learning is of utmost interest to me and I love reading more and more on my favorite subjects, energy, economics (which I used to hate) and ecology. There is no limit to the information available and I am tasked by virtue of business demands to disseminate all of it into a comprehensive plan and series of articles.

Doing all this cuts into my personal life, however, and compounded with all the travel I find myself getting further and further behind on everything including my salvation, exercise and family and friends. Schedules are looking to get worse before they get better so I am not too sure how well I will keep up with this blog although I will be publishing the articles mentioned above here as well as elsewhere.

One thing to note, my experiment with barefoot running seems to be working though I have only logged 12 barefoot miles so far. For other runners, I suggest you give it a try as it completely takes the pressure off your hips and lets your foot perform like a foot is supposed to perform. Pretty cool!

Engineers at a faciity in Portland transport the V-LIM stator to be properly wired in anticipation of the first testing of the new generator.

Stator move video

Sadly, the coils wound in Coos County had to be rewound. The ceramic insulation applied by a local powder coater cracked and failed and mitigation attempts to ease the sharp edges of the coil core by the former local fabricator were inadequate causing multiple shorts. All the money invested using local talent may have helped the local economy, I don’t know, but my company has nothing to show for it and is almost a year behind schedule.

Happily, we are making great strides and hope to invite Oregon Department of Energy for the first spin test of the new generator before the end of August. It has been a long hard haul made all that much harder trying to do it here in Coos County… no more!