Opposing sides of an increasingly bitter wind farm debate will rally in Canberra on Tuesday, with supporters gathering in the city and opponents at Parliament House.
Wind farms bring billions of dollars in new investment to regional areas according to their supporters, but households are being slugged with higher power bills, according to opponents.
Crookwell grazier Charlie Prell, who wants to host residential wind turbines, said opponents were wealthy, well-connected landholders who did not want to look at the turbines.
"To be honest, we need to stand up and fight for what we believe in," Mr Prell said. He is a spokesman for NSW Regional Renewables Alliance, a group of 70 landholders and regional businesses, and said the rally in Garema Place at noon would be supported by various groups, including chief organisers Friends of the Earth and the online activist group GetUp! Action for Australia.
In a statement Mr Prell said the Renewable Energy Target had generated $18.5 billion over 12 years and reduced electricity prices by 8 per cent.
Alliance member, Goulburn earthmoving contractor Andy Divall said the RET was making a big difference in regional NSW.
"In the 25 years we have been in business we haven't seen anything like the opportunities the renewables industry will bring to the region," he said. Another alliance member, Tarago farmer Joan Limon said: "There are six turbines on my property. They take up very little land. The closest is 800 metres from my house and they don't worry me, my sheep or my cattle."
Rallying from 11am under a "Wind Power Fraud" banner, critics will say every turbine is issued between 8000 and 10,000 renewable energy certificates every year, which translates into a tax on power consumers.
Friends of Collector president Tony Hodgson said the rally at Parliament House would show growing opposition to industrial wind power because of rising costs to the community for no benefit.
Mr Hodgson said $52 billion in wind subsidies would ultimately be paid by electricity consumers and taxpayers over the next 18 years.
"The 63 turbines at the proposed wind farm at Collector alone could attract almost $1 billion in that time if the same system of RECs remains in place."
Joining the anti-wind farm rally will be Boorowa and Yass "landscape guardians". Mary Ann Robinson from the Yass group said their battle with wind farm proponent Epuron was in flux because Epuron had to re-submit planning documents for a large project west of the town.
2013年6月17日 星期一
2013年6月12日 星期三
Offshore Wind Rules Set New Standard
The new Rules form part of the wider Mobile Offshore Unit Rule set 2013 launched by Lloyd’s Register in June, and is for vessels engaged in installation and/or maintenance activities relating to offshore wind turbines. It covers a number of unit types as well as liftboats, whose primary function is to provide support services to offshore wind turbine installations or other types of offshore installation.
Vessels which comply with the requirements of the new Rules will be eligible for a new classification notation.
The release of the new Rules and Guidance Notes coincides with reports that operators are suffering from the substantial incremental rise in the cost of constructing offshore wind assets and is casting new light on the value of independent third-party assurance, and how certification authorities are informing asset design and construction.
Rob Whillock, Offshore Renewables Lead Naval Architect at Lloyd’s Register said, “It is critical that throughout the process of independent assurance, there is an eye to the future of the industry as well as current guidelines.”
Offshore wind projects have tended to run late and over-budget, but the industry is forecast to grow at pace. The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) estimates that Europe’s offshore wind potential is able to meet the continent’s energy demand seven times over.
Whillock states that modern certification authorities have to offer technical solutions that recognize industry’s future growth.
“As the industry matures, we will see a greater number of larger turbines being installed in deeper water and further from shore, such as the planned 9GW wind farm at Dogger Bank, which lies some 125km off the east coast of England,” said Whillock. “Such developments will require owners and operators of offshore wind farms to rethink their installation and service vessels entirely. The new Lloyd’s Register Rules highlight the importance of independent technical assessment of structures, systems and capabilities. We are demonstrating to the world that our offshore Rules reflect best practice.”
The intention of the new Lloyd’s Register Rules is to help clients understand the classification process and clearly set out the rules to be applied to various vessels and unit types, from the Lloyd’s Register classed ship to the Mobile Offshore Unit.
To support the development of these new Rules, Lloyd’s Register developed a set of client guidance notes (titled Mobile Offshore Units - Wind Turbine Installation Vessels) which were also approved at the recent Offshore Technical Committee where more than 100 industry stakeholders attended Lloyd’s Register’s Singapore based Group Technology Centre. These guidance notes provide summary information on classification rules and regulations, national administration requirements, documentation required to be submitted, and the Rules requirements for various types of units used in installing and maintaining offshore wind turbines.
More information about the program is available on the web site at www.scfwindturbine.com.
Vessels which comply with the requirements of the new Rules will be eligible for a new classification notation.
The release of the new Rules and Guidance Notes coincides with reports that operators are suffering from the substantial incremental rise in the cost of constructing offshore wind assets and is casting new light on the value of independent third-party assurance, and how certification authorities are informing asset design and construction.
Rob Whillock, Offshore Renewables Lead Naval Architect at Lloyd’s Register said, “It is critical that throughout the process of independent assurance, there is an eye to the future of the industry as well as current guidelines.”
Offshore wind projects have tended to run late and over-budget, but the industry is forecast to grow at pace. The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) estimates that Europe’s offshore wind potential is able to meet the continent’s energy demand seven times over.
Whillock states that modern certification authorities have to offer technical solutions that recognize industry’s future growth.
“As the industry matures, we will see a greater number of larger turbines being installed in deeper water and further from shore, such as the planned 9GW wind farm at Dogger Bank, which lies some 125km off the east coast of England,” said Whillock. “Such developments will require owners and operators of offshore wind farms to rethink their installation and service vessels entirely. The new Lloyd’s Register Rules highlight the importance of independent technical assessment of structures, systems and capabilities. We are demonstrating to the world that our offshore Rules reflect best practice.”
The intention of the new Lloyd’s Register Rules is to help clients understand the classification process and clearly set out the rules to be applied to various vessels and unit types, from the Lloyd’s Register classed ship to the Mobile Offshore Unit.
To support the development of these new Rules, Lloyd’s Register developed a set of client guidance notes (titled Mobile Offshore Units - Wind Turbine Installation Vessels) which were also approved at the recent Offshore Technical Committee where more than 100 industry stakeholders attended Lloyd’s Register’s Singapore based Group Technology Centre. These guidance notes provide summary information on classification rules and regulations, national administration requirements, documentation required to be submitted, and the Rules requirements for various types of units used in installing and maintaining offshore wind turbines.
More information about the program is available on the web site at www.scfwindturbine.com.
2013年2月16日 星期六
Port Orchard high school teaches environmental conservation
Forty-five feet above South Kitsap High School’s athletic field, the 6-foot-long blades of a wind turbine turn gracefully in the breeze. The blades are flared at the tips, like aircraft wings, and the turbine head has a sensor mechanism allowing it to swivel with the slightest shift in wind direction for maximum power output.
The $60,000 turbine, obtained through a grant from the Office of Naval Research, has been running for about a month and has been a great conversation-starter around campus.
The OMG factor is one reason the high school’s Career and Technical Education Department pursued the grant in the first place. The hope is that passing curiosity will grow into a hunger for knowledge about how it works, said Chance Gower, CTE instructional specialist, who wrote the grant proposal with Sara Hatfield, agriculture instructor.
The Navy is keen to promote an interest in science, technology, engineering and math among K-12 students, said Corinne Beach, STEM K-12 outreach coordinator for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The Navy is pumping money into efforts to recruit and train younger people while exploring more cost-efficient forms of energy
The wind turbine is the most visible aspect of the high school’s focus on environmental conservation. The school also has solar panels on its livestock barn, a sophisticated composting system and a “pig toilet,” for processing livestock waste. Discovery Alternative High School students this year took over earlier efforts to reintroduce salmon to Karcher Creek. All of the high school’s environmental initiatives are grant-funded.
The number of energy conservation projects at SKHS has earned attention for the school’s natural resources curriculum, said Thomas Mosby, CTE director. Science teachers outside the natural resources program also are eager to share in data and curricula being developed by CTE staff.
Gower is working on a computer program that will allow students to track the turbine’s energy output and compare its efficiency to the barn’s solar panels. The wind turbine eventually will help power the high school’s greenhouse to offset power consumption. The solar panels last year earned the district a $917 rebate from Puget Sound Energy.
The high school’s Naval Research grant, obtained in 2011, was for up to $100,000. Gower and Hatfield have other ideas for expanding the energy efficiency curriculum. But the remainder of funding has been frozen as Congress battles the budget deficit.
The “pig toilet” involves channels inside the barn that students can hose down into an underground tank. The tank can be flushed into the city’s wastewater treatment system. Pigs, unlike other livestock animals, eat a lot of protein, which contains potentially harmful bacteria. Flushing the waste keeps bacteria out of the landfill and saves disposal costs.
The barn’s composting system makes use of food scraps from the cafeteria and wood chips from carpentry classes. The rich material that is produced fertilizes plants that students sell to support the agriculture program.
On Karcher Creek, Discovery students and their teacher Jerry Polley have cleared the creek of debris and created channels to a hatchery renovated in 2010 in a collaboration between the district and Port Orchard Rotary. The students monitor trays of salmon fry, grown from eggs purchased from a hatchery on Minter Creek. By passing water from Karcher Creek over the trays, students are imprinting on the coho and chum fry information that will allow them to navigate back to the creek to spawn.
The $60,000 turbine, obtained through a grant from the Office of Naval Research, has been running for about a month and has been a great conversation-starter around campus.
The OMG factor is one reason the high school’s Career and Technical Education Department pursued the grant in the first place. The hope is that passing curiosity will grow into a hunger for knowledge about how it works, said Chance Gower, CTE instructional specialist, who wrote the grant proposal with Sara Hatfield, agriculture instructor.
The Navy is keen to promote an interest in science, technology, engineering and math among K-12 students, said Corinne Beach, STEM K-12 outreach coordinator for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. The Navy is pumping money into efforts to recruit and train younger people while exploring more cost-efficient forms of energy
The wind turbine is the most visible aspect of the high school’s focus on environmental conservation. The school also has solar panels on its livestock barn, a sophisticated composting system and a “pig toilet,” for processing livestock waste. Discovery Alternative High School students this year took over earlier efforts to reintroduce salmon to Karcher Creek. All of the high school’s environmental initiatives are grant-funded.
The number of energy conservation projects at SKHS has earned attention for the school’s natural resources curriculum, said Thomas Mosby, CTE director. Science teachers outside the natural resources program also are eager to share in data and curricula being developed by CTE staff.
Gower is working on a computer program that will allow students to track the turbine’s energy output and compare its efficiency to the barn’s solar panels. The wind turbine eventually will help power the high school’s greenhouse to offset power consumption. The solar panels last year earned the district a $917 rebate from Puget Sound Energy.
The high school’s Naval Research grant, obtained in 2011, was for up to $100,000. Gower and Hatfield have other ideas for expanding the energy efficiency curriculum. But the remainder of funding has been frozen as Congress battles the budget deficit.
The “pig toilet” involves channels inside the barn that students can hose down into an underground tank. The tank can be flushed into the city’s wastewater treatment system. Pigs, unlike other livestock animals, eat a lot of protein, which contains potentially harmful bacteria. Flushing the waste keeps bacteria out of the landfill and saves disposal costs.
The barn’s composting system makes use of food scraps from the cafeteria and wood chips from carpentry classes. The rich material that is produced fertilizes plants that students sell to support the agriculture program.
On Karcher Creek, Discovery students and their teacher Jerry Polley have cleared the creek of debris and created channels to a hatchery renovated in 2010 in a collaboration between the district and Port Orchard Rotary. The students monitor trays of salmon fry, grown from eggs purchased from a hatchery on Minter Creek. By passing water from Karcher Creek over the trays, students are imprinting on the coho and chum fry information that will allow them to navigate back to the creek to spawn.
2013年2月4日 星期一
High Rise of the Machines
New York’s legion of window washers have long fascinated city dwellers below with their fearlessness. But the future of the profession might belong to those even more impervious to dangerous heights: robots.
Clearing a path to the market soon will be the Winbot 7, a compact machine billed by manufacturer Ecovacs Robotics as the first full-service window-washing robot. The device, which resembles a Roomba vacuum cleaner, attaches itself to the pane, maps out its perimeter and proceeds to clean the surface, playing a tinny tune when the work is completed.
Nick Savadian, executive general manager of the company’s U.S. arm, said the robot is aimed at busy homeowners looking for a labor-saving escape from boring chores. “One thing we’re short of in life is time,” he said.
Mr. Savadian allowed that his company’s small robots could have potential applications some day on gleaming skyscrapers, where window work carries risks. “Winbot is very proud to put itself in that position,” he said. “It will clean the outside without taking any chances of liability.”
But the prospect of a near future in which scaffold-riding professionals are replaced by automatons doesn’t appeal to everyone — particularly window washers and the New Yorkers who romanticize them.
“Technology is nice — phones and everything — but for window cleaning, I can’t see it,” said William Coffey, who works for Manhattan-based Skyway Window Cleaning and has been in the industry for three decades.
Mr. Coffey has worked alongside cleaning machines at times but said his most important jobs, including the glass observation deck at the Twin Towers, have always been done by human hands.
“We’re jumping, we’re going on a scaffold, we’re getting pushed out [by wind], you know, we’re going down the side of a building,” he added. “I can’t see a robot thinking of all the things that have to be done.”
The total number of high-rise window washers in and around the city isn’t clear. The window-cleaning division of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, one of the largest unions, counts 800 members.
Andrew Horton, who coordinates safety training for the union’s apprentice window washers, said graduates of the nearly two-year-long program can expect to earn roughly $27 an hour plus $18-a-day fee for working on a scaffold; experienced window cleaners can earn up to $60,000 a year.
In a city defined in no small measure by its towering architecture, Brooklyn Public Library archivist Ivy Marvel believes there is “civic pride” in knowing that window cleaners exist. “It humanizes the city,” she said. “We take a lot of pride in people that do those jobs that only exist in a city like this.”
The city’s sense of window-washing heroism is likely as old as its skyscrapers. Ms. Marvel recently came across a 1952 Brooklyn Daily Eagle profile of Ed Kemp, a window cleaner she describes as fighting a “grimly noble struggle against ambient dirt and pigeon dung.”
Ms. Marvel said she wouldn’t be surprised if she stared up one day and saw machines doing the work. While the Winbot 7 tries to win over homeowners, other companies are already aiming to automate window-washing work for the world’s futuristic mega-towers.
Even with advances in robotics, Mr. Riddell believes the idiosyncratic corners, buttresses and recesses of New York’s 20th century skyline will keep humans involved in the trade. “In some cases you could see a machine has benefit but in most cases it’ll be old elbow grease and ingenuity,” he said.
At J. Racenstein, which has offices in Secaucus, N.J., the most high-tech option available is the HighRise Window Cleaning System, which costs up to $50,000 and promises to reduce labor costs by 50%. The machines are operated by technicians and built to fit into existing rigging used by human cleaners.
Clearing a path to the market soon will be the Winbot 7, a compact machine billed by manufacturer Ecovacs Robotics as the first full-service window-washing robot. The device, which resembles a Roomba vacuum cleaner, attaches itself to the pane, maps out its perimeter and proceeds to clean the surface, playing a tinny tune when the work is completed.
Nick Savadian, executive general manager of the company’s U.S. arm, said the robot is aimed at busy homeowners looking for a labor-saving escape from boring chores. “One thing we’re short of in life is time,” he said.
Mr. Savadian allowed that his company’s small robots could have potential applications some day on gleaming skyscrapers, where window work carries risks. “Winbot is very proud to put itself in that position,” he said. “It will clean the outside without taking any chances of liability.”
But the prospect of a near future in which scaffold-riding professionals are replaced by automatons doesn’t appeal to everyone — particularly window washers and the New Yorkers who romanticize them.
“Technology is nice — phones and everything — but for window cleaning, I can’t see it,” said William Coffey, who works for Manhattan-based Skyway Window Cleaning and has been in the industry for three decades.
Mr. Coffey has worked alongside cleaning machines at times but said his most important jobs, including the glass observation deck at the Twin Towers, have always been done by human hands.
“We’re jumping, we’re going on a scaffold, we’re getting pushed out [by wind], you know, we’re going down the side of a building,” he added. “I can’t see a robot thinking of all the things that have to be done.”
The total number of high-rise window washers in and around the city isn’t clear. The window-cleaning division of Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, one of the largest unions, counts 800 members.
Andrew Horton, who coordinates safety training for the union’s apprentice window washers, said graduates of the nearly two-year-long program can expect to earn roughly $27 an hour plus $18-a-day fee for working on a scaffold; experienced window cleaners can earn up to $60,000 a year.
In a city defined in no small measure by its towering architecture, Brooklyn Public Library archivist Ivy Marvel believes there is “civic pride” in knowing that window cleaners exist. “It humanizes the city,” she said. “We take a lot of pride in people that do those jobs that only exist in a city like this.”
The city’s sense of window-washing heroism is likely as old as its skyscrapers. Ms. Marvel recently came across a 1952 Brooklyn Daily Eagle profile of Ed Kemp, a window cleaner she describes as fighting a “grimly noble struggle against ambient dirt and pigeon dung.”
Ms. Marvel said she wouldn’t be surprised if she stared up one day and saw machines doing the work. While the Winbot 7 tries to win over homeowners, other companies are already aiming to automate window-washing work for the world’s futuristic mega-towers.
Even with advances in robotics, Mr. Riddell believes the idiosyncratic corners, buttresses and recesses of New York’s 20th century skyline will keep humans involved in the trade. “In some cases you could see a machine has benefit but in most cases it’ll be old elbow grease and ingenuity,” he said.
At J. Racenstein, which has offices in Secaucus, N.J., the most high-tech option available is the HighRise Window Cleaning System, which costs up to $50,000 and promises to reduce labor costs by 50%. The machines are operated by technicians and built to fit into existing rigging used by human cleaners.
2013年1月31日 星期四
The Complex Mosaic of Scottish Offshore Wind
Scotland is called the energy capital of the EU because its North Sea oil and gas industry pulled Europe out of the oil crises of the 1970s. It is now serious about renewable energy.
Renewables in Scotland’s electricity supply have grown from 20.18 percent in 2007 to 34.65 percent in 2011, a feat the country achieved by growing its abundant onshore wind and hydro. The government has committed itself to getting 50 percent of its power from renewables by 2015 and 100 percent by 2020.
As much as 5 gigawatts or more of the new renewable capacity is projected to come from offshore wind, according to Scottish Renewables Communications Director Rachelle Money, though it is only 190 megawatts, less than 0.1 percent, of Scotland’s current 5,453 megawatts of installed renewables capacity.
At the U.K. Offshore Wind and Supply Chain Conference in Aberdeen, product and service providers from all over the U.K. and around the world gathered for an update on Scotland’s plans and efforts. The sheer variety of exhibitions showed the budding industry’s wide-ranging economic potential.
Clyde Fasteners Commercial Director Iain Boyd displayed a selection of the foot-long hub and gearbox studs and bolts his half-century-old company, long a supplier to the oil and gas industry, has begun marketing to offshore wind turbine makers. A single offshore wind turbine requires 500 or more such bolts.
One of the key stages in the U.K. Crown Estate’s consideration of proposed offshore wind development is the Consents process. One of the key elements in that process is guaranteeing that a wind project is well-sited and environmentally safe. Consents Manager Andrew Finlay has recently taken on the challenge of making sure birds, aquatic life, and marine activities are not threatened or disrupted by offshore projects.
According to Senior Development Manager Ronnie Quinn, the Crown Estate was the first to review early offshore wind locations, because it is responsible for all of the royal family's land holdings, which include the seabed beneath British territorial waters. With the U.K.’s drive to grow offshore wind, Parliament seized on that experience by giving the Crown Estate the responsibility for managing and driving deeper-water offshore wind growth.
Fulfilling much the same functions as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Interior, the Crown Estate’s first five rounds of lease offerings have resulted, as of June 2012, in 1.9 gigawatts of operational offshore wind, 2.4 gigawatts under construction, 1.2 gigawatts approved and 5.1 gigawatts in planning. Quinn said to expect an announcement in 1H 2013 about deep water technologies, including floating wind turbines.
The U.K.’s old ports, even those in Scotland which have been servicing the oil and gas industry, will need renovating, explained Ian Munro, engineering firm I&H Brown’s Divisional Director. His company recently re-engineered a Liverpool harbor quay for handling nacelles and towers. It will mean a lot of design, engineering, building and dockside labor opportunities.
Generating the economies of scale necessary to bring the U.K. cost for offshore wind down from 140 pounds per megawatt-hour to the targeted 100 pounds per megawatt-hour is expected to be a boon for the U.K. and Scottish economies. Investment in offshore wind from July 2011 to June 2012 alone was estimated at 150 million to 600 million pounds.
The harsh offshore environment will require a new kind of technology, according to NGenTec CMO Dr. Charles Gamble. His Scotland-based company is challenging Boulder Wind Power in the design and development of axial flux, air-core permanent magnet direct-drive generators that will dramatically increase reliability and reduce the need for maintenance in the turbine’s most costly and vulnerable part.
Renewables in Scotland’s electricity supply have grown from 20.18 percent in 2007 to 34.65 percent in 2011, a feat the country achieved by growing its abundant onshore wind and hydro. The government has committed itself to getting 50 percent of its power from renewables by 2015 and 100 percent by 2020.
As much as 5 gigawatts or more of the new renewable capacity is projected to come from offshore wind, according to Scottish Renewables Communications Director Rachelle Money, though it is only 190 megawatts, less than 0.1 percent, of Scotland’s current 5,453 megawatts of installed renewables capacity.
At the U.K. Offshore Wind and Supply Chain Conference in Aberdeen, product and service providers from all over the U.K. and around the world gathered for an update on Scotland’s plans and efforts. The sheer variety of exhibitions showed the budding industry’s wide-ranging economic potential.
Clyde Fasteners Commercial Director Iain Boyd displayed a selection of the foot-long hub and gearbox studs and bolts his half-century-old company, long a supplier to the oil and gas industry, has begun marketing to offshore wind turbine makers. A single offshore wind turbine requires 500 or more such bolts.
One of the key stages in the U.K. Crown Estate’s consideration of proposed offshore wind development is the Consents process. One of the key elements in that process is guaranteeing that a wind project is well-sited and environmentally safe. Consents Manager Andrew Finlay has recently taken on the challenge of making sure birds, aquatic life, and marine activities are not threatened or disrupted by offshore projects.
According to Senior Development Manager Ronnie Quinn, the Crown Estate was the first to review early offshore wind locations, because it is responsible for all of the royal family's land holdings, which include the seabed beneath British territorial waters. With the U.K.’s drive to grow offshore wind, Parliament seized on that experience by giving the Crown Estate the responsibility for managing and driving deeper-water offshore wind growth.
Fulfilling much the same functions as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Interior, the Crown Estate’s first five rounds of lease offerings have resulted, as of June 2012, in 1.9 gigawatts of operational offshore wind, 2.4 gigawatts under construction, 1.2 gigawatts approved and 5.1 gigawatts in planning. Quinn said to expect an announcement in 1H 2013 about deep water technologies, including floating wind turbines.
The U.K.’s old ports, even those in Scotland which have been servicing the oil and gas industry, will need renovating, explained Ian Munro, engineering firm I&H Brown’s Divisional Director. His company recently re-engineered a Liverpool harbor quay for handling nacelles and towers. It will mean a lot of design, engineering, building and dockside labor opportunities.
Generating the economies of scale necessary to bring the U.K. cost for offshore wind down from 140 pounds per megawatt-hour to the targeted 100 pounds per megawatt-hour is expected to be a boon for the U.K. and Scottish economies. Investment in offshore wind from July 2011 to June 2012 alone was estimated at 150 million to 600 million pounds.
The harsh offshore environment will require a new kind of technology, according to NGenTec CMO Dr. Charles Gamble. His Scotland-based company is challenging Boulder Wind Power in the design and development of axial flux, air-core permanent magnet direct-drive generators that will dramatically increase reliability and reduce the need for maintenance in the turbine’s most costly and vulnerable part.
2012年12月26日 星期三
Idaho Power is obstacle to wind generation
Brian Jackson, a scrappy, eternally optimistic engineer who believes that community wind projects can be built—projects that are good long term for ratepayers, good for the environment and good for the counties that receive property taxes—partnered with an Idaho farmer, Ben Bartlett, to build projects outside of Burley, Idaho, on the family’s scrubby piece of land where they can barely raise cattle in the harsh winter winds.
Unfortunately, the engineer and the farmer are up against a monopoly utility, Idaho Power, which has spent the last 10 years doing everything in its power to kill wind projects—from lobbying for state wind energy moratoriums to public anti-wind energy campaigns. Idaho gets about half its power from coal plants. The acid rain from mercury and sulfur dioxide from these coal plants just happens to fall on other people’s kids and milk cows in the Pacific Northwest.
After working with Idaho Power diligently for five months in 2010 to draft an acceptable contract for it to purchase the power from these renewable energy projects (a Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act contract), Brian signed the contracts and handed them back to Idaho Power in its building’s lobby. Idaho Power sat on the signed power purchase contracts and refused to sign them until one day after the Idaho Public Utilities Commission deadline limiting wind projects, and then said it didn’t have to honor the contracts.
The problem for Idaho Power and the Idaho PUC is that this is not legal under federal PURPA laws. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently has initiated a federal court action against the Idaho PUC for its lack of enforcing PURPA in a similar case. The federal government created the PURPA laws in 1978 exactly to encourage small, renewable energy projects over dirty power plants. Brian, who used to work for Idaho Power, thought he could work with the company peaceably to resolve this. He has been shocked by its blatant disregard for federal law and “so-sue-us” attitude. This honest engineer still can’t believe that companies would operate this way.
This old-style utility would rather build coal plants because it’s easier to dispatch coal-generated energy than work with the intermittency of a renewal resource. We’ve come so far with technology—many countries and states have up to 20 percent of their energy coming from wind energy these days. Wind can be modeled, predicted and integrated as an energy source with software and with smart meters—meters that Idaho Power got federal funds to install all over Idaho. Coal leaves poisonous tailings ponds in communities and significantly contributes to carbon and pollutants in our air.
There are many in the United States who objects to wind turbines, most notably the energy industry which sees the development of alternative fuel sources as a threat to their survival. Now it seems that there are aliens who feel the same way.
In a video posted on UFOsightingsdaily by founder and manager Scott C. Waring, a UFO seemingly shoots something, at a group of wind turbines. The location is not identified and the men who filmed the video refer to remain anonymous, but there are clues. The narrator of the video speaks in Spanish most of the time, but twice says “Oh my God”. It is not a great leap of imagination, therefore, to place them in the American Southwest where many people speak Spanish but are also conversant in English. Turbines are another clue pointing to this area.
A UFO is clearly visible in the video, taken with a simple point and shoot camera. What is not so clear is the contention that the UFO was shooting at the turbines. One has to wonder why aliens (presumably) would be threatened by windmills. A UFO is an unidentified flying object. Could this one have been sent by an alien race with highly advanced technology, or could it have been a low-tech ploy by fossil fuel companies to put turbines out of business?
Unfortunately, the engineer and the farmer are up against a monopoly utility, Idaho Power, which has spent the last 10 years doing everything in its power to kill wind projects—from lobbying for state wind energy moratoriums to public anti-wind energy campaigns. Idaho gets about half its power from coal plants. The acid rain from mercury and sulfur dioxide from these coal plants just happens to fall on other people’s kids and milk cows in the Pacific Northwest.
After working with Idaho Power diligently for five months in 2010 to draft an acceptable contract for it to purchase the power from these renewable energy projects (a Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act contract), Brian signed the contracts and handed them back to Idaho Power in its building’s lobby. Idaho Power sat on the signed power purchase contracts and refused to sign them until one day after the Idaho Public Utilities Commission deadline limiting wind projects, and then said it didn’t have to honor the contracts.
The problem for Idaho Power and the Idaho PUC is that this is not legal under federal PURPA laws. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently has initiated a federal court action against the Idaho PUC for its lack of enforcing PURPA in a similar case. The federal government created the PURPA laws in 1978 exactly to encourage small, renewable energy projects over dirty power plants. Brian, who used to work for Idaho Power, thought he could work with the company peaceably to resolve this. He has been shocked by its blatant disregard for federal law and “so-sue-us” attitude. This honest engineer still can’t believe that companies would operate this way.
This old-style utility would rather build coal plants because it’s easier to dispatch coal-generated energy than work with the intermittency of a renewal resource. We’ve come so far with technology—many countries and states have up to 20 percent of their energy coming from wind energy these days. Wind can be modeled, predicted and integrated as an energy source with software and with smart meters—meters that Idaho Power got federal funds to install all over Idaho. Coal leaves poisonous tailings ponds in communities and significantly contributes to carbon and pollutants in our air.
There are many in the United States who objects to wind turbines, most notably the energy industry which sees the development of alternative fuel sources as a threat to their survival. Now it seems that there are aliens who feel the same way.
In a video posted on UFOsightingsdaily by founder and manager Scott C. Waring, a UFO seemingly shoots something, at a group of wind turbines. The location is not identified and the men who filmed the video refer to remain anonymous, but there are clues. The narrator of the video speaks in Spanish most of the time, but twice says “Oh my God”. It is not a great leap of imagination, therefore, to place them in the American Southwest where many people speak Spanish but are also conversant in English. Turbines are another clue pointing to this area.
A UFO is clearly visible in the video, taken with a simple point and shoot camera. What is not so clear is the contention that the UFO was shooting at the turbines. One has to wonder why aliens (presumably) would be threatened by windmills. A UFO is an unidentified flying object. Could this one have been sent by an alien race with highly advanced technology, or could it have been a low-tech ploy by fossil fuel companies to put turbines out of business?
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