Let’s take a break together from FISA to discuss another critical issue: what should our path forward be toward a sensible energy future.

To what extent should Swift-Boating T Boone Pickens be a voice that we listen to? And, with $58 million (and perhaps more) getting thrown into this discussion, do we have any choice other than to listen? … And react?

ZED?

No option must be taken off the table.

Wind. Solar. Geothermal. Nuclear. Others we haven’t even thought of yet. We’ve much work to be done. The Oil Age is over. The BushCo Oilmen helped rush its demise with such far-sighted planning strategies as the gas guzzler tax gimmick.

Prairie Sunshine … Not suggesting that any option be taken off the table. But, the natural gas for car transport does not seem a best choice on large scale (I want that NG for fertilizer, home heating, other industrial processes, etc …). And, with the first order analysis suggesting that it is a (very) bad idea, one can look to Pickens very large natural gas interests and wonder whether the NG element is driven more by a desire to create new NG market spaces to earn even more money …

HooBoy! Thank You for dealing with this subject. I spotted probably one of his 1st ads in our part of the country, and was about to cheer far & wide.

Dang.

I far prefer to step with caution when advisable

Shall read and ponder carefully, and I can’t thank you enough for the leads to follow and better understand the issues involved.

Solar for electricity, Algae for a Biofuel, Wind power, and making use of tidal energy for starters!
Another link
Solar flexible panels being printed here in California!

Now all we have to do is to get the government and the power companies off their asses and put some real effort in these alternative means of powering our infrastructure and transportation vehicles.

Wind and solar power require alternative source to power us when the wind don’t blow or the sun don’t shine. Could be nukes- but for now natural gas from existing plants isn’t a bad solution.

The “celebration” is that Pickens is so strongly stating that we can’t drill our way out of the problem, that oil is a serious problem, and that there isn’t an oil supply solution. (Note: he has stated support for off-shore drilling, shale oil, etc …)

And, that an F3 (fossil-fuel fool) is so strongly coming out in support of wind and a HVDC distribution system. This helps give wind legitimacy with a community that has mainly ridiculed it. (Even as Texas has a robust wind industry.)

windpower is currently the cheapest method of generating electricity EXCEPT for RAW COAL generation (UGLY DIRTY).

Nicole — Gas and wind are good partners, with gas to turn on quickly when intermittent wind fails to produce against demand. Now, with HVDC and wind resources across extended regions, we have a higher likelihood of flattening the production cycle across all the wind turbines.

Not disagreeing with you, more of a broadening of your point. This is a huge issue with ramifications far beyond what we customarily think of as “energy” or traditional energy sources.

Do I have any illusions that T.Bone’s first concern is anything other than T.Bone’s bottom line, certainly not the good of the country? Hell, no. But just because he doesn’t bring clean hands to the table doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sit down and include him in the conversation.

Maybe he’s lookin’ for redemption…maybe he’s lookin’ for the next best profit string…maybe both… I’m less interested in his motivations than his ideas.

And the ideas we already have, to learn from: rural electrification of the entire country in the ’30s, hydropower, the kids who just came up with the one-person “car/bike,” all the incarnations of the electric car that were killed by oil interests….

Okay — RWCOLE … mea culpa …

Must point out that this is for ‘new’ generation.

better storage batteries

Don’t forget to Digg this post !!
Here is one mans solution to his energy issues and needs

Why not use that wind generated electricity to directly fuel America’s ever-more electrified transport sector?

because what you are describing here is a distributed energy storage and use model. with that, eventually there will be distributed generation. and that will cut into the profits of folks like pickens who depend on control of centralized energy generation and transmission.

A Siegel, thanks so much for this terrific post. I am pretty illiterate about renewables, and it’s hard to know who to trust. I trust FDL, so I really appreciate the post.

I really second everything you say about wind. The other thing afaik, is if you can do it “behind the meter,” once you buy the turbine and install it, you’re generating at retail rates of electricity.

Do you know of any resources on harnessing energy from rivers? It seems to me that because water is so heavy, it could generate a lot of power. I’m looking at the Mississippi and the Missouri as examples. That’s a very constant flow. Obviously you have to figure out some way not to kill the fish.

FWIW, another topic I’m interested for future posts is the trajectory of battery technology.

Thanks again.

This is an idea that would be very difficult, but I wonder why I work at a school miles away from my house, when I could walk to a school nearby. If jobs and housing could be better coordinated, we could save lots of fuel.

If T. Boone Pickens wants to build a huge wind farm, I think we should encourage him to do so. Iberdrola wants to invest billions in Upstate New York by buying Energy East Corp. to do the same thing(probably to pick up the wind off Lake Erie and Ontario)…only the NYS PSC is dragging their feet because they already have a big wind generation plant which just so happens to already BE in NYSEG territory. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Dereg definitely has done nothing for consumers in New York State, but the PSC keeps clinging to their model whereby utilities CAN’T own generation. Oh, and the governor of Colorado announced this week that he’s having a conversation with iberdrola in Madrid this week. i think we can all figure out what they are going to talk about. And new York state can’t get off the dime.

Yeah–or an actual useful role for hydrogen (use electricity to free hydrogen and store the hydrogen for power when needed.)

Dugg, dugged, have dugged, etc.

General Electric is, I believe, one of the larger producers of wind turbines—interesting that T Boone is advertising on MSNBC.

Another discussion of alternative means to produce power @ Scientific American

It’s not like there aren’t other means there just hasn’t been a fire under this administration to do anything else but drill for more oil and make their oil friends even richer

1

I agree we’re going to have to build more nuclear (pebble bed, per A Siegel above, it’s like natural gas, you can more easily throttle it down ).

My concern is always about the waste. How do you keep it out of the ground water for hundreds of thousands of years? Sure you can keep pouring concrete, but that cost adds up and then it’s not so inexpensive?

My hope is that we could use renewables and nuclear to eliminate the coal plants first. Then bring more renewables online so we could stop using natural gas to produce electricity. Then shut down as many of the nuclear plants as possible.

No nuclear.

Absolutely no nuclear.

We do not need it.

See the:

Solar Grand Plan

Read the damn thing. For 420 Billion we can supply 100% of the electricity WITH ALL CARS RUNNING ON BATTERY POWER and 90% of all energy needs by 2050.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

dugg, thanks for the link.

Glad to see ya supporting the Lake Toby:>)

First, thank you.

Second, battery technology is something that I watch from a distance and can follow, but not lead, conversations.

Third, lots of stuff can happen with hydro and there are some really interesting things being worked with. Problem is that hydropower is truly a difficult thing for permitting. (Claimed harder than getting a nuclear power plant approved.) There are good reasons for paying close attention to dams (fisheries impact, anyone), but this difficult might be unreasonable. In any event, as an example, this is a really interesting example of how we might be able to up hydro power by 5% or so quickly. And, it can go on rivers.

how much electricity does it take to recharge an electric or hybrid vehicle?

And isn’t the cost of producing electricity tied to the cost of oil?

Countdown aired Pickens’ ad about halfway through the broadcast hereabouts. Was that a local ad-buy, or did everybody see it? Looks like he’s going for an expensive rollout of this campaign. Doesn’t this conflict with his candidate McCain’s offshore drilling proposal?

Apparently the french are doing a pretty good job on the waste problem- they recycle it and then “Crystallize” the remainder to make it inert.

Heh. I’ve got a commie in my peace group that’s absolutely convinced that there’s no such thing as “Peak Oil,” that such talk is just a capitalist plot of some sort to…heck, I dunno. So Peak Oil hit back in 2005, eh?
I was dealing with someone who thought we could just replace Persian Gulf oil with Caspian Sea oil. Erm, not quite as Peak Oil means that it’s only a matter of time until we’ll need to get back the Gulf anyway.

I would love if society started to foster this sort of sensible decisions. Instead, we have magnet schools with kids coming from miles away, build parking lots for high school students to have cars in lots, basically assign public employees with little (no?) regard to their home and commute, etc …

If T.Boone Swiftboat wants to get all Ross Perot (”I’ll be talkin’ to ya over the next few weeks about mah plan”) and draw hin some charts’n’stuff I’ll be enamored.

Not.

The Japanese also know what’s up.

Read:

Rope the Sun!

FWIW, Nice map of the lower 48 showing average wind speeds.

Well, you know, sometimes the breeze gets pretty strong here..

How much electricity depends entirely on the vehicle.

Electricity has, basically, no relationship to oil prices unless you are in the rare situation of having significant amounts of electricity from diesel or other oil-derived fuels. Such as Hawaii, which has very expensive electricity and a major program for 70% renewable energy by 2030.

One more troubling matter that Pickens mentions too… Our tax dollars will build ‘em… C’mon Pickens you can contribute some of your billions, right…? 8-(

we’re going to have to build more nuclear (

not even an option so long as both parties are committed to deregulation.

Hydropower/rivers has the complicating factor of impacting multiple areas, so I frankly like this least. I’ve seen the competitiveness between St. Louis/Missouri and its barge traffic vs. the Upper Missouri basin ND/SD—which is too often on the wrong end of the prioritization process.

Why would FDL pay any attention to Pickens?

Pebble bed… the Chinese are leading in that area

“T. Boone Pickens”….no “ego” problem there…..D’oh….

Well, I’d love to hear T. Boone say something like, “If we’d invested all those billions of dollars that we’ve flushed down the drain in Iraq on wind power projects, we’d be there by now..”

See 24 and 34 for some real life solutions.

All off the shelf tech.

Solar Grand plan under construction.

Strizki’s house is interesting. Don’t forget that there is $500+k of additional cost that went into this. Electrification with renewables (wind, solar, and batteries/other storage) would be a fraction. Personally, I don’t see hydrogen as a large part of the solution in the near term.

Why would FDL pay any attention to Pickens?

“Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds his nuts.”

Or something like that. *g*

FWIW, I thought this was a really helpful discussion in the WaPu Builder Mike McKechnie, of Mountain View Builders, was online Tuesday, July 1 at 11:00 a.m. ET to discuss efforts to create energy efficient, sustainable homes.

It has a lot about solar and geothermal for individual home owners. It’s very concrete, not a lot of theory.

Fat chance! I wonder he has made off this “War of Choice”

I have a transmission-grid question. Is the problem that there is currently no grid where the windfarms will be, or do windfarms need a different kind of grid?

Oh … the comments that make one wish that FDL had a way to highlight top comments.

I’d love to hear T. Boone say something like, “If we’d invested all those billions of dollars that we’ve flushed down the drain in Iraq on wind power projects, we’d be there by now..”

Me too …

I’ve never met T Boone. I disagree with his politics- which is no reason not to join him if he is right on an issue and ready, willing, and able to take the lead in an expensive argument.

I play golf with doctinaire goopers who have been convinced that we can drill our way to greatness. Pickens is helpful…

I have a new name, and it makes me an expert…Rib Eye Lickins’…..

I’ll fix the world fer ya, and I lives in Texas…so I’m an xpurt. I knows all about earl…peanut earl fer boilin’ turkees, and such.

Yep the most polluted nation in the world.

Great recommendation. And by the way half-lives of common nuclear ‘byproducts’ are in the hundred of thousands of years in many cases. Most the tens of thousands, when the DOJ studied storage the came up with the idea of a religion to tell people not to dig in certain spots as only religions have such lifetimes of all human institutions.

SF writers of the 50s used this theme.

I have heard about this, too — maybe on 60 Minutes? Why isn’t this talked about more in America? Do our politicians avoid it because it’s, um, French?

Hydrogen’s poor energy density makes it a lousy choice for transportation.

Dugg

Two issues here:

1. There is an issue referred to as Stranded Wind. Frequently, good locations for large-scale renewable power are far from grid infrastructure. Thus, there is the cost / impact to get the electrons to the grid, in a place that has enough capacity to move the electrons to market.

2. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) would be an upgrading of grid that would allow far more cost effective (less transmission loss) movement of electricity over long distances. A good HVDC backbone across the nation would enable solar power from the desert to power air conditioners in New York City, for wind turbines in Montana and Texas to be treated as near interchangeable in fulfilling power demands so that if wind is blowing in one place and not the other, you still would be able to turn on your lightbulb.

because what you are describing here is a distributed energy storage and use model. with that, eventually there will be distributed generation. and that will cut into the profits of folks like pickens who depend on control of centralized energy generation and transmission.

Ding

Energy efficient community planning, i.e. end of the exurbs and a lot of suburbs as well. National public transportation grid. All of the alternative energy sources discussed.

Even with all of these things, you are still not going to make up for the energy content in the oil we use. This brings up another parameter: population. We need to think about designing a plan to bring our population down to 100-150 million.

Long distance power transimission will require a new grid, the current one is shot anyway, based on HVDC not AC.

Off the shelf stuff from Siemons.

They’re doin’ a backbone in China right now.

I don’t know- probably because it’s expensive (just a guess) and power companies don’t want to get saddled with the cost.

Great question.

The issue with electricity from wind farms is it’s variability. A ‘big grid’ company that wants to do this can find a way - and it’s already being done here in Montana with the Judith Gap wind farm.

A really good first step would be a NATIONAL law that requires ‘big grid’ companies to buy all power generated from alternate sources. Although our power company is already using wind power - they have refused to purchase any more from a proposed expansion of the same plant - an expansion that is being funded by private investors.

Iberdrola is being expected to spent its own money to build all of this wind power infrastructure. If Pickens wants to go into the electric utility business, then he’s going to have to jump through all the hoops that all utilities do on a federal and state basis(not that this has really benefitted rate payers, mind you, but I can’t see the electric utilities going along with T. Boone getting his head in the tax payer trough when they have to use stockholder equity or borrowed money to do the same thing). That being said, there is a huge role for the federal government to play in terms of encouraging this, both at the large producer and small/residential/commercial producer as well. There is a company out of MA which is buying up all the midrange wind turbines, refurbishing them and selling them to people like farmers.

Wrong.

Oil will be needed for other things but plugin cars powered by the Solar Grand Plan can replace all reliance on oil for energy.

Why pay attention to Pickens?

Because $58 million will influence discussion in this country. Thus, perhaps it is worthwhile to have an understanding of what is being pushed with those greenbacks. No?

Jerry Brown.

Thank you.

There is a certain power in being disconnected from either party- so that one feels free to embrace a good idea wherever it comes from.

Pickens is pushing natural gas, which he undoubtedly has a big investment position in. Anything else to know?

I think that instead of building a massive new ‘big grid’ we ought to be looking at more local, small-scale production - the ‘electra-net’ as it were. If small-scale solar, wind and whatever is subsidized (with the money we are now giving to big oil) and the current ‘big grid’ companies required to purchase any excess - a lot of these grid problems would take care of themselves.

Oh by the way - Texas’ electrical grid is completely separate from the rest of the country.

Mostly not. Used to be more oil-fired, or dual-fired (oil or gas) capacity; but not so much any more.

T. Boone Pickens is out for himself. He’s just trying to make more money. He wants to double dip so to speak. He wants to make money off of wind power and oil.

Storage the electricity for times when solar or wind power is now available, off the shelf tech being done all over the world, by putting compressed air into abandoned mines.

What does the North and SouthEast of America have a lot of?

Ding!

It looks like the only votes I’ll be casting in Nov. is going to be for the local races.

The “good” dems are planning yet another sell out.

We need to think about designing a plan to bring our population down to 100-150 million.

preferably one that doesn’t involve war or mass starvation. just my 2 cents.

T.Boon Swiftboat is hardly being a good samaritan or an energy-conscious leader. He’s out to do what he’s always done, make a buck at the expense of everyone else.

His Mesa Power is planning to sell wind and water to Texans. Water. Pay or die. uh-uh. Na Ga Ha Pen.

Gonna be hard to get away from the ‘Big Grid’ due to the storage issue. But no reason every house can’t have it’s own ’solar roof’ like we are doing in CA.

While that is undoubtedly true, he actually has been moving all his money out of oil stocks for a few years now. And if there was still money to be made in oil - you can bet he would not be doing that. So whatever you think about him - you would also be well advised to pay attention to at least that part - we are past peak oil production.

Good grief. Are they trying to drive us all away?

They shouldn’t need any different kind of grid al they do is run it through some converters and change the voltage and they can connect to the existing grid. One of the problems is that the grid/infrastructure hasn’t been getting the necessary upgrades and add ing to the capacity of the overall grid again the Rethuglians have dropped the ball in not funding these projects…

C’mon CTut, you know the drill; privatize profits, socialize the risk. Same ol’ same ol’.

Wrong.

Google HVDC backbone.

This is a completely different form of transmission.

He’s been selling oil stocks while the price is HIGH. He will buy them back when they are low.

Honestly, if I thought the idea was great, so what if he has a big stake at play? On the other hand, idea is pretty frigging weak (if not bad), thus time to look for why he gets it so wrong. Oops, maybe he is not getting wrong for his pocketbook even it would be wrong for the nation.

Here’s something we need to look out for, though — especially as this “crisis” deepens, and the GOPs start running their Shock Doctrine on us:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly is pushing for approval of a project that would run a high-voltage power line through California’s largest state park for 20 miles.

San Diego Gas & Electric’s proposal would build industrial-style towers up to 160 feet tall to carry the new line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego. The line would carry renewable power from yet-to-be-built plants in the Imperial Desert.

Currently, wooden poles carry low-voltage lines through the park.

“The project’s significance lies not only in its supplying additional power for a thriving and growing region but in doing so in way that truly moves California into the future,” Schwarzenegger wrote to California public utility Commissioner Dian Grueneich, who is overseeing the project’s application, the Times reported. The letter was written in December but came to light last month.

Lisa Page, a spokeswoman for the governor, said Schwarzenegger has not backed a specific route for the project and would rather the proposed line not go through the park “if it can be avoided.”

But Schwarzenegger said in his letter to the Public Utilities Commission that he wanted “to offer my support” for the project.

Page said that when the governor wrote the letter details of a specific proposed route were not included in the filing he read, and “nowhere in his letter or in any of his statements or in any communication did he identify the northern route through Anza Borrego.”

Opposition to this power line from Clint Eastwood and Arnold’s brother-in-law Bobby Shriver were one reason the Governator replaced them both on the state commission deciding whether to use public park assets for energy transmission lines.

Is Mesa Power a regulated utility in Texas?

Lots of wind in the Dakotas, Montana, etc, but very small population; hence local utilities in the past built little tranmission in those areas because it wasn’t needed. If you add lots of wind farms there, you need major transmission lines to move the energy to load centers to the east.

lol, first two times I read that I read “Mensa Power.”

Wind storage works, in some situations. Actually, in terms of large scale storage, I am more intrigued by those who proposed to use tunneling technology to create sealed hydro storage 100% below ground, which would have higher efficiencies than air pressure storage.

Yes, I have lots of problems with T Boone. One of them is an utter lack of discussion of storage issues.

Good lord.

Being a Democrat means never having to say you’re savvy.

I think Mesa was involved in the great California energy scam.

On the issue of Pickens making money–so what? If he makes it honestly and it moves america in the right direction, I have no problem with him making a fair profit..Profit is NOT sinful in my vocabulary.

So respond to the fundamentals, not to the fact that Pickens has a position.

Democrats Prepare to Buckle on Offshore Drilling

What The Fuck?

that’s the dems solution to our energy woes?

Thank you.

I did not know.

Great article on offshore drilling in today’s gooper rag..

Most interesting point- 2/3 of the available offshore reserves are already OPEN to drilling and the oil companies are just sitting on those leases.

This is a fucking BULLSHIT campaign year issue.

The Dems really know how to play the least worse card, don’t they.

I’m not calling them DeeCee Dems anymore — I’m calling them OoT Dems: Out-of-Touch.

What can they possibly be thinking? Taking “every issue off the table” for the GOP worked out so well for them in 2002.

I blame the consultant class. The gate isn’t nearly crashed enough.

Profit is not a dirty word in my vocbulary either, but I have problem with people owning aquifers, and selling the water that is in them. I believe that there have been cases already where “aquifer owners” have started horizontal drilling to purloin adjacent water reserves when theirs were not sufficient. Additionally, aquifers cover geographically (and geologically) vast areas, does ownership of an aquifer in Texas also giver him rights to the same strata in say, Kansas? If a geologist says it’s the same, is it in terms of property rights? Could he force these hypothetical Kansans to pay for wells drilled on their land into “his” aquifer (or Texans for that matter?).

Democratic Party
Republican Party

Revolution.

you give the consultants way too much credit. Them that we got elected in the first place are the ones making the votes.

the buck stops with them.

The vote stops with me.