Will be talking about empowering local communities with renewable energy. The venue is outdoors under an awning but I don’t believe there will be a screen or projector to allow for a power point presentation so I am just going to wing it with some photos, etc..

A widely publicized study claiming that there is no evidence that Wal-Mart has had a negative impact on the small business sector is debunked. Careful review of the study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance found fatal flaws and this paper highlights the problems. Since I am an advocate of localization I hope this study will be of interest.

None of the data presented here is causal: the fact that independent retail businesses declined in numbers and market share at the same time that Wal-Mart and other large-format retailers grew does not prove that one caused the other.
But it does make clear that the small business sector is not as robust as it was 20 years ago. Sobel and Dean’s sweeping conclusion that “there is no evidence that Wal-Mart has had a significant impact on the overall size, growth, or profitability of the U.S. small business sector” is unfounded.

We all appreciate a bargain but just like importing power exports dollars so too does buying from companies like WalMart. For every dollar we try to save we dig the local economy into a deeper and deeper crevasse.

Heat waves in Australia and ice storms in the US have caused recent wide spread blackouts to millions of customers dependent on the centralized grid system, seven hundred thousand in Kentucky. Despite occurring on opposite hemispheres and under opposite temperature extremes the recovery efforts leave rural residents last on the priority list. This despite centralized power plants located in rural areas and out of the view of urban settings.

Contained in the new $819B stimulus package is as much as $21B to upgrade the electrical grid and $2.4B to build carbon-sequestering power plants. Grid failures cost lives and according to the Electric Power Research Institute cost the economy, in particular, the digital and industrial markets, up to $188B annually. Obviously, an upgrade is long overdue and the lack of it has been very, very costly.
In order to fully upgrade, advance and improve electrical quality and supply any new grid, smart or otherwise will have to implement wide ranging distributed energy sources. Distributed energy is energy produced at or near the point of consumption and is widely used in micro-grids and the new concept smart grid technology.
Smart grids have the potential to cut back on the duration of massive power outages by immediately pinpointing the location of a grid failure. Smart grids may also improve efficiency, the Department of Energy estimates, “If the grid were just 5% more efficient, the energy savings would equate to permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars.”

Most micro-grids are already smart grids monitoring and matching load levels while avoiding the typical losses associated with long distance transmission. The DOE states more dollars can stay local when not being used to ‘pay the freight’ for inefficient transmission and operation. The report addresses distributed energy but still focuses on the current centralized paradigm.

This strategy is also prevalent with the Western Governors Association’s who “…are encouraging the cooperative development of the new transmission lines in the West needed to develop the region’s vast renewable energy resources.” Nevertheless there are macro-trends driving the move toward micro-grids that include security, military bases are moving toward micro-grids, quality, the digital age requires conditioned, clean power and federal standards are finally being set for distributed generators.

Micro-grids are gaining strides around the globe and The European Commission has co-funded micro-grid demonstration sites in several different countries. Even Walmart has gotten into the act and installed two micro-grids in Texas and Colorado.

For financially strapped rural counties such as the Southern Oregon Coast, reinvesting money that would be spent on electric bills anyway on distributed power generation can show returns in as little as five years. Energy independence can improve the quality of life even when the centralized electrical grid is operating by keeping dollars local. In the event of a major power outage it can insulate the usually forsaken rural dwellers from the days and sometimes weeks of blackouts.

Energy efficiency, investing in public infrastructure, including schools and education, and improving access to broadband internet are all part of president-elect Obama’s plan to create millions of new jobs. During his weekly address, Obama emphasized the importance of all these matters in order to reduce our dependence upon foreign resources and improve our competitiveness in the global market.
Rebuilding our roads, dams, bridges, schools and transportation and power networks cannot happen too soon. A new report produced by London-based GFC Economics is predicting by next spring, the United States could be facing a million layoffs every successive month.
“Expenses related to corporate debt, and muddy credit markets consumed by fear, are driving a fast-approaching ‘hard landing’.”
Whether Obama’s plan can avert these dire predictions and how he plans to pay for it will soon be learned as he prepares to take office next month. Either way, his drive for energy efficiency is going to be crucial to the ultimate success of his economic plan.
With energy demands expected to increase, the push to find renewable energy sources and almost daily intermittent grid failures, investing in the grid or rethinking the single machine grid matrix is crucial for our economic survival. In order to fully realize renewable energy generation, absent clean storage solutions, is it easier to implement renewable energy using the centralized production model or a decentralized model?
Comparisons between electricity storage and transmission almost always center on utility scale capacity rather than smaller, more manageable micro-grids. Within the realm of centralized electricity storage technologies such as pumped hydro, compressed air, flow batteries, etc., are thought not just in terms of load leveling, peak shaving and arbitrage but also power conditioning.
The best argument for maintaining the single machine grid and subsequent utility scale storage is financial gain whereby huge producers continue to game the system as Enron did to control profit margins. Despite the well documented technological and efficiency benefits of micro-grid applications it is the independence offered to consumers that brings up the most resistance from privatized energy producers.
In any event, the development of electricity storage technologies, such as capacitors, flywheels, superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), pumped hydro and more will have a profound effect upon the economic recovery of the country and its future as an energy independent state. Rural America has an advantage over our power hungry urban neighbors because we can implement micro-grids and smaller storage systems to manage our load demands much easier and without imposing on a grid network owned by out of state investors.
To help Obama overcome the enormous hurdles before him we all need to do our part and address our energy use habits and our energy production methods. Demonstrating energy independence and modeling it for the rest of the nation will not only help resurrect our own local economy by keeping dollars local but may help small towns all across the country.

As a consequence of annoying intermittent electrical blackouts, the City of Stamford, Connecticut has contracted with an energy developer to install a micro-grid at City Hall. The City will sign a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Pareto Energy who will use tax incentives and institutional debt to install a $5.4M fuel cell power generator.
The city would have an option to buy the facility after five years but is effectively taking the money going to Connecticut Power & Light to own their own power generation within 15 years and use the money generated for the city infrastructure.
Last year the City’s Board of Representatives established an Energy Improvement District (EID) after several years of unreliable power that thwarted business development. Major businesses across the country are recognizing the benefits of micro-grids and while Stamford has not opted for a renewable energy system, micro-grids fossil fueled or not, are still more reliable and efficient than centralized power.
Today there are many mature alternatives to the aging electrical grid that the establishment of an EID to allow large power consumers to generate their own power is more and more practical. Small geothermal generators use the temperature difference between ground water and/or the earth and outside ambient air to produce energy.
Raw sewage is converted to methane to produce power and biomass generators convert wood waste and other organic material into power and, of course, there is solar and wind. Stepping away from the centralized power generation model to smaller micro-grids or district energy makes it affordable for communities to enter the electricity business.
The City of Stamford does not expect to pay less for their power by implementing this system but does expect price stability throughout the life of the PPA until the city owns the system outright. CP&L expects an increase in power demand of 100% in Stamford within 5 years. Taking control of their energy allows the City to be independent of the investor owned utility to manage business, industrial and residential growth.

Military are implementing micro-grids

Economic analysts around the globe are asking if the current US banking failures herald the end of the free market economy. Hoping to free up choked credit and avert possible broad market turmoil the $700B emergency bailout plan to buy up sour assets has other nations questioning the current US economic model.

Placing the burden of salvaging major lending institutions on taxpayers has not only nationalized our economy, coupled with our debt in Iraq and Afghanistan damaged our prestige and credit worthiness abroad. One potentially positive consequence of all this is reflected in a new poll by the Pew Research Center. Americans are increasingly in favor of reducing US foreign military commitments in favor of focusing on domestic issues.

At this writing the House has rejected the new, 110 page bill to bailout Wall Street by a vote of 228-205. Critics of the plan rightly note, that unlike the 1933 New Deal, this bill does nothing to improve public works, schools or national infrastructure. Instead the bill rewards the very bankers who have proven to be incompetent to handle our funds.

Perhaps most importantly and not at all spoken about, this monumental crisis illustrates in crystal clear and spectacular empiricism the folly of centralized essential services. Just as a single power plant losing 2 hertz in Ohio can bring down the single machine grid and cut power to ten million people across the Northeast and Midwest America and Canada, so to can the folly of a handful of bankers bring down the economy across the globe. Decentralizing our banking industry makes just as much sense as decentralizing our electrical grid and power production.

So the US dollar continues to tumble and our international standing plummets with it. Oil producing nations are keeping a tight eye on our central bank as noted in Arab Times.

Banks and money managers borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve during the week, nearly US$188bn a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The data on borrowing from the Fed closed out another day of high anxiety in global money markets. Key measures of funding stress hit record levels on both sides of the Atlantic as nervous market participants awaited developments from Washington on a US$700bn financial bailout plan. Federal Reserve data showed the total amount banks borrowed nearly quadrupled the previous record of $47.97bn per day just the week before.

Congress might have learned from the Great Depression and from the increasing electricity blackouts we continue to experience and this new financial crisis that centralization is just bad for national security. Unfortunately they hope to shore up the same practices that brought about this downfall in the first place and from here, it feels very much like my pocket is being picked.

As winter approaches and many Americans struggle to heat their homes it may be reassuring to know that the PTC (Federal Production Tax Credit) was extended by Congress. The PTC provides a tax credit for large institutional investors with passive income and is firmly believed to be important in the development of utility scale renewable energy development like wind.

On the one hand this is great news for the future of clean, inexpensive renewable power though it further erodes our tax base. On the other hand the taxpayer may soon be rescuing the same institutional lenders who qualify for the PTC. Unfortunately the taxpayer will pay the cost of the PTC and pay the interest on the money borrowed from China to finance it.

All week I have been flooded with reports that the official cause of the 2003 electrical blackout was not, as reported, untrimmed trees and overheated transmission lines. The largest blackout in US history, more than 9,300 square miles, may have been caused by Chinese hackers gaining access to networks controlling the electrical grid. US intelligence officials have advised the Cyber Security Industry Alliance that forensic evidence suggests the PLA (Peoples’ Liberation Army) was behind the blackout.

The planet as a whole suffered multiple electrical blackouts last week from Belize to Iran and Nicaragua to South Africa. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the UK lost electricity when nine power plants stopped working. Many of these outages are a result of fuel shortages and may have nothing to do with cyber hackers but all were exacerbated by the centralized grid system. In the case of the UK power outage, one plant, a nuclear reactor by the way, in the centralized electrical grid failed taking eight more down with it.

As yet, there is no suggestion that the UK outage had anything to do with network intrusion and the privatized utilities are mum on the cause stating disclosure might raise wholesale energy prices. There is strong evidence that a Chinese PLA hacker, attempting to map the Florida Power & Light network brought about the Florida blackout in February. These events are all strong national security arguments in favor of decentralized power generation.

Also, this week, I was sent photographs of the largest operating container ship in the world, the Emma Maersk. The Emma Maersk with its 207’ beam and cargo capacity of more than 14,000 containers chock full of televisions, tires, toys and appliances can traverse the Pacific in four days. This fast transit and refrigerated containers allow the ship to bring perishables, seafood and exotic fruits, as well as trinkets from China.

As the Emma Maersk and other containerized cargo ships off load in Seattle or Long Beach or San Francisco and return to China, they ride much higher in the water. The US has nothing to trade in return and the containers go back empty and our dollars and our independence go with them.

Outsourcing jobs to other countries has made the US dependent upon more than foreign oil. We have become dependent upon centralized cheap labor to satisfy our thirst for plasma televisions and cell phones and even food to the detriment of our own economy. Even worse, we then turn around and borrow back the money we export so eagerly to countries like China in order to finance our occupation of Iraq and corporate tax cuts.

The best way to shore up our local economy is to keep our dollars local. The best national security policy is to decentralize energy production, manufacturing and food production. Microgrids would be impervious to cyber attacks and we have plenty of clean wood waste locally to fuel combined heat and power generators that capture carbon emissions. Producing power locally means we have more dollars to reinvest in local infrastructure and to provide for social services.

Growing and eating local food is healthier and helps farmers here rather than factory farms in Asia. Frequently, I receive solicitations from foreign manufacturing firms to submit proposals on producing my wind turbine. My closest like kind competitor manufactures in Guadalajara for a fraction of our anticipated cost but we believe investing in the community and providing living wage jobs has long term benefits that exceed short term profits.

Nationally, the policy continues to support transferring our independence and security to countries like China. Here in Coos County the effects of US trade policies have been felt since the early ‘80s and the people have struggled and survived but just barely. It is time to dig in and convert our local assets into a healthy economy and stop importing, food, goods and energy and decentralize now, our independence depends upon it.