During President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union address he announced a national goal, of meeting 20% of the nation’s energy needs from wind energy, by 2030. The timeline for meeting this goal was determined in part by the Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) and will require an increase of over 289,000 MW of wind energy production in the next 22 years.
Wind energy development, like many other industries is driven by tax equity investment. For wind the extension of the PTC (Production Tax Credit) is considered crucial to structuring and financing the development of the 20% by 2030 goal. Nestled in the economic bailout bill was a year extension of the PTC set to expire this December until December of 2009.
The extension of one year of tax credits, at a cost to the taxpayer of roughly $8B is hardly sufficient to drive these lofty goals to fruition and the AWEA continues to lobby Congress for longer extensions. Additionally, the American transmission grid is already congested. In order to achieve this goal using the centralized generation model of large, utility scale wind farms, we must increase transmission.
The proposed transmission “superhighway” estimated to cost between $23 -26B must also overcome strategic difficulties including better technical integration into the existing grid, better load management over larger balancing areas and, gasp, regulatory changes. Environmental issues surrounding habitat disturbances, wildlife and avian risks, visual impacts and noise are other mitigating factors of the centralized wind farms.
Just as with local pipeline issues, thousands of property owners along the proposed 19,000MI 765KV superhighway stand to lose their holdings to eminent domain if energy developers like T. Boone Pickens convince Congress to pave the way and help foot the bill. Benefits of achieving success include a reduction in CO2 emissions, less water use for energy production and price stability associated with independence from foreign fuel.
Despite these barriers attendees of the Wind Power Finance and Investment Workshop I attended last week in New York City are optimistic about the future of the wind industry. While Vestas, Gamesa and Suzlon, large turbine manufacturers, have no plans to manufacture anything but blades and towers in the US it is expected that as many as 500,000 new jobs will be created by 2030 and the tax base to rural communities will increase by $1.5B and land owners will receive $600M per year in lease revenue.
All these figures relate only to large, centralized wind farms and even the PTC has little to do with small wind turbines like mine unless they are deployed within a utility scale distributed network as we are working toward doing. Nevertheless, I was happy to see the PTC extended even though the proposed tax base increase does not come close to covering the cost to the taxpayer of providing the PTC as it will definitely drive the renewable energy industry.
Again, I have to hearken back to my battle cry for public ownership of essential services such as energy production. Please note that the cost to the taxpayer of providing large institutional investors tax credits exceeds the returns by a significant margin as listed above and does not take into account the projected $23 trillion in revenues to be earned by these subsidized projects. Those revenues could certainly support health care, transportation, infrastructure, and have a profound impact on the quality of life of every American.
As an energy developer I will happily sell my product to anyone but as a populist I hope to see the V-LIM and other renewable technologies in the hands of public utilities where it can do the most good.

Rural America grows the food, harvests the timber and produces the power essential to the survival of urban America. Factory farms work fields as far as the eye can see drawing water from the surrounding settlements and forests. Power plants are sited on once pristine environments while forested mountainsides are cut away to mine the coal to fuel them far from the view of urban centers.

Mighty river arteries are dammed, wildlife refuges flooded while coastal fishermen see their livelihood severely affected. Millions of acres of timber are cleared through rural farms, ranches, small towns and homesteads to erect transmission lines and lay pipelines to deliver power to dense population centers. Taking all this into account a single metropolitan apartment dweller may leave a larger environmental footprint than a rural counterpart living on a couple of acres.

Rural America supports their urban brethren in another way as well. While it was urban America that was attacked on September 11, 2001 military enlistment demographics show that it is predominantly white, rural farm kids risking life and limb on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is rural America fighting the war and suffering the losses.

We are all Americans contributing to the welfare of all so these facts mean nothing until it comes time to count ballots. As rural Americans we have less say in such issues as natural resources, land use, timber harvest practices and foreign, domestic and economic policy.

Not surprisingly rural and urban America vote differently on many divisive issues. In Oregon most statewide policies are decided by three counties, Multnomah, Lane and Washington. The remaining 33 sparsely populated and geographically diverse counties must accept the consequences.

To support an economy based upon a model dependent upon continued growth, massive energy corridors are planned for the eleven western states. Essentially fossil fuel corridors these energy routes, up to two thirds of a mile wide, are made up of oil, gas and hydrogen pipelines and high voltage transmission lines connecting to coal powered generation plants.

Proposed for Oregon are hundreds of miles of multi-modal lines most impacting the Harney Basin in southeastern Oregon. The population of most rural Oregon counties, including Coos has not grown significantly the last decade and the expected increase demand is for urban centers.

This would appear to be a huge step backwards in energy production and management. Notwithstanding the environmental impact making a massive capital investment toward infrastructure to support a finite fuel source is folly. Once again it will be rural Americans who bear the bulk of the burden if these fossil fuel corridors go through.

Strict adherence to the centralized energy paradigm won’t benefit urbanites either but being less directly impacted by the environmental damage and fearful of possible shortages may not support rural opposition to such an invasive energy plan. It is time for rural America known for its gritty individualism and rugged independence to dig in its heels and stop carrying water.

As rural communities what we lack in numbers we make up for in space for flexibility, innovation and new concepts. We are not bound by the confines of apartment walls, city regulations and boxed thinking. Rural America can implement and model new paradigms in energy independence and reduce the export of local dollars at the same time by decentralizing power locally.

A utility company CEO told me recently that he believes we will be fighting wars over electrons domestically within a couple of decades unless we make drastic changes. The Enron disaster was an economic war but future energy wars would be much more violent and are happening now in other countries.

Rural America will bear the cost of energy management in any event. My hope is that we put rural farm kids to work engineering energy independence which would preclude the need to fight in foreign lands. Either way, I believe it is up to rural America to save our environment and our country and it will be rural America not Congress that ultimately brings our troops home.

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 Death Valley and eventually spread a fungus via Yankee Clipper that caused death and destruction in Ireland.

Each event or discovery led to a reaction, good or bad, which led to new discovery or a change of policy. England, for instance, decided belatedly to repeal a ban on foreign shipping in order to bring corn, wheat and other aid to the starving Irish, sadly, only after half the population had died or emigrated.

Across the globe, a reaction to the high cost of finite fossil fuels and the threat of catastrophic climate change has brought renewable energy to the forefront of research, development and investment. How to deploy that renewable energy efficiently is also the subject of much research and debate owing to the physics and complicated limitations of the electrical grid itself.

One such method of efficiently managing power is to develop ‘microgrids’. An example of a microgrid is when a large energy user like a school or hospital installs a CHP (combined heat and power) generator and the unused heat is piped to surrounding neighborhoods to heat homes.

Also termed district or neighborhood energy, microgrids are being widely implemented in Europe with the addition of renewable energy including solar and wind. In Minnesota, the small non-profit District Energy St Paul operates a hot water heating system through the downtown Saint Paul area. The heat from the pipes delivering the water is used to keep buildings warm and is heated by a CHP generator burning clean wood waste.

Microgrids allow for more appropriate load matching between generator output and demand. Smaller grids also allow for storage solutions of unused power that cannot be handled at a centralized generation or macrogrid level.

Another technological innovation inspired by the push toward decentralizing power and microgrids is in wind turbines. In May, 2005, a feasibility study was published in the UK evaluating the merits of building mounted or integrated wind turbines. The study, funded in part by The Carbon Trust, measured wind patterns in urban areas and determined as wind travels over a building, hillside or other obstruction there is a velocity gain of 180%. Since the power of the wind is proportional to the cube of the velocity this gain can mean significant increases in power.

This enhanced rooftop wind brings with it several enhanced wind gradients, in other words, turbulence. Turbulence is the bane of the traditional open bladed wind turbines we have become accustomed to seeing. Turbulence is one reason that turbines are mounted high up to place them in the path of more laminar airflow.

Turbulence and variable wind speeds determine whether a turbine is making power or whether the props are feathered to ‘turn it off’ to protect the turbine from vibrating apart. Turbulence is very much a part of wind patterns lower to the ground or as coastal Oregon residents know, near the ocean.

The Carbon Trust study determined

“a project that may not have seemed feasible through an initial assessment could be feasible if the turbine was designed to operate in the higher shear velocity at maximum speed-up.”

The plentiful wind on the Southern Oregon Coast is characterized by gusty and powerful wind shear requiring turbines designed to withstand and capitalize upon those forces.

Several wind turbines now on the market offer the potential to function well in coastal areas. One of these designs I was fortunate enough to be the patent agent for, a ducted fan design is now being installed in California. This turbine is small enough to be mounted on commercial rooftops or in close proximity to homes and farms, can be screened to protect birds, is silent and vibration free and operates at variable wind speeds.

Another turbine, (yes I am tooting my own horn here), is my design and like the ducted fan converts turbulence into energy and offers all the features above. To fully realize the energy potential in the wind with a variable speed turbine, however, requires a high bandwidth generator that can turn on at low wind speeds and stay on at high wind speeds. So I turned to Portland State University to do the heavy lifting, the electrical engineering, on a direct drive generator concept whereby the turbine is a self contained generator.

Perhaps not a carburetor from a Victorian water garden but these innovations and concepts emerged because renewable resources exist and conditions now demand that we stretch our imagination and think out of the box. There is plenty of mature technology to enable the implementation of microgrids and district energy in Oregon.

Being the inventor of a low profile, high efficiency wind turbine it pains me to have to dispel the myth that centralized renewable energy such as wind and wave reduces carbon emissions. Large amounts of power produced in one location then transmitted via high voltage lines many miles then stepped down to the lower voltage distribution lines before delivery to the end user is centralized generation. Centralized generation relies upon the vast interconnection of transmission and distribution lines that crisscross the country known simply as the grid and herein lays the problem.

The grid network is sometimes referred to as the world’s largest machine and is divided into three parts, Eastern, Western and Texas. Power flows within each section as alternating current (AC) and must be synchronized at 60Hz while the connection between these three parts is direct current (DC). A drop of only 2Hz anywhere along the grid can rapidly heat up lines and trigger a chain reaction leading to massive outages like we witnessed in August 2003 on the east coast.

While it is correct that wind, wave and other renewable energy can save on CO2 emissions synchronizing demand and output to protect the grid comes at a heavy price. In a report by David White, Reduction in Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Estimating the Potential Contribution from Wind-Power, commissioned by the Renewable Energy Foundation, December 2004, White found that,

“Fossil-fuelled capacity operating as reserve and backup is required to accompany wind generation and stabilize supplies to the consumer. That capacity is placed under particular strains when working in this supporting role because it is being used to balance a reasonably predictable but fluctuating demand with a variable and largely unpredictable output from wind turbines.

Consequently, operating fossil capacity in this mode generates more CO2 per kWh generated than if operating normally.”

Six wave park applications have been made to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed along the Oregon coast. Each wave park is listed at 20 to 180MW output with ties to the mainland via 25kV transmission lines. Wave energy may be somewhat more predictable than wind energy but wave buoy generators have a minimum and maximum swell that they can operate in. Consequently, like wind, centralized wave energy will also require fossil fuel powered generators to idle on standby to maintain grid integrity.

Sadly, electricity cannot reasonably be stored on an industrial scale. So how do we reap the benefits of carbon neutral power generation sources without relying upon a fossil fuel powered grid? The answer may lie in decentralized or distributed energy.

Distributed energy is power produced at or near the point of consumption. It is called distributed energy because this power is generated at the lower voltages carried by the distribution lines we see lining our roadways. Distributed generators can be gas powered or renewable like PV and small wind. All the synchronization problems associated with centralized power are significantly reduced or eliminated.

Power generation at the neighborhood or district scale or just supplying individual homes and businesses is much easier to manage and surprisingly, is less expensive to the rate payer. Studies on distributed generation indicate as much as 44% reduction in capital costs and a 15% savings to the consumer in retail costs.

The transition from centralized to decentralized will not be easy despite a growing global movement toward wide scale distributed energy. One motivating factor toward decentralizing is the aging and deteriorating grid itself. While it is hard to find reliable estimates on the eventual cost of replacing and modernizing the grid at a million dollars a mile and climbing the number could be in the trillions.

Our infrastructure has been ignored and the exorbitant cost of replacing the grid to maintain a costly centralized system makes transitioning to distributed energy almost inevitable. It is the cost to the planet in carbon emissions however, that makes it mandatory.

Part 1

Part2

Part 3 – That is me at the end

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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 for financing projects.
* Day 2: Practical information on how to put togher a community wind project.
* Both days will feature informative sessions on home and farm size turbines (small machines less than 100 kW).
* Day 3: Tour a community owned wind project in Massachusetts.

Who will attend?
Rural landowners, farmers, ranchers, economic development experts, elected officials, business leaders, tribal representatives, bankers, local planners, community leaders, legal and utility professionals, students, teachers and anyone else interested in knowing how wind may fit in their community.

The conference is in Albany, NY and I plan to attend despite the focus being upon centralized wind installations. Oregon will soon be part of a movement toward wide scale renewable distributed energy and I hope that it can be community owned.

What a whirlwind tour I have had these last two days traveling from the southern border of Oregon all the way to the top and back again. Managed a stop at the Roseburg VA Hospital to visit my son and learned much more about the program and the extent of the physiological damage caused by high levels of stress hormones on our troops. I am going to invite Dr Staggenborg from the VA clinic in Bandon to contribute to an article about PTSD and what our returning vets are facing in the future.

From there I went on to Portland for meetings with PSU about wind turbines, distributed energy, my own ultra cool generator and the future of power in Oregon and beyond. Dr Gerald Sheble will be contributing material and articles for a series on energy I want to write specific to the Oregon coast.

On my way home I stopped off in Eugene to meet with Carl Foster and Kaycee Faught. I am happy to report that Carl is speaking very well now though he has to wait for the ventilator to catch up to him and we were able to have a good conversation. There are many issues with quadriplegia that are worth educating the public about.

Anyway, I am a bit weary so I am not going to dig into the political scene ’til tomorrow morning.