Raining Fire In The City

London is ablaze. Rioting.

Why?

Cuts to their budget, just like the ones we are about to do to ours….

The only reason Americans haven’t rioted so far, is because of Obama and the Democrats insistence that Federal money is being spent as part of the stimulus plan…

In Greece, Israel, and now London, Liverpool, and Birmingham, people have been without…

Which as I said above, is exactly where we soon will be…

Not to sound callous, but perhaps one must consider the British deserve it? Likewise so will we if we too follow through with austerity cuts as did all these countries that have been rioting…

In every case, austerity cuts are the instigator….

Now austerity cuts, are really a stupid way out of a budget mess.

When you get to where your expenses are greater than your revenue stream, there are two ways to solve it… One, lower expenses so they match the revenue stream; two, raise the revenue stream so it matches the expenses… Best if you do both…

Where they failed in these nations, was to tax the wealthiest to pay for these necessary programs… Just in the numbers alone it makes so much more sense if you have to piss off someone to piss of the one percent at the top,…. than piss of the 99 percent on the bottom…..

“Hey, lets give whatever the “one-percenter” asks for.. just give it to him, and what ever it is he wants, we will take it out of the little the 99% have to fight over on the bottom…. ”

So Britain did that, and now they’ve got 99% of the population mad enough to riot, and there is only 1% with any resolve to stop them…

On the other hand, if they had taxed the wealthiest one percent (just for the sake of illustration) everything he had…. he’d be pissed. But 99% percent of the population would have jobs, would buy cars again, pay rent on time, would go out to eat, would shop to refurnish their house… 99% of the population would have jobs…..

So when the one wealthy per center, strode into the poor sections of town, and began throwing firebombs at the 5 And 10 Cent Store… 99% of the populations would descend on him, and nip his riot in the bud… “Uhh, no, you ain’t doing that here…”

So from hell it appears this notion came from, that we have to cater to the top 1% …. no, we don’t; we should be catering to the 99% of those on the bottom…. What they need, and therefore, what we need, … is to raise taxes just a tiny bit, up to 40% on the top marginal rate… and re tax capital gains, up to 40%…

Pretty soon, everyone will be too busy working to even think about throwing a firebomb through a store front window…..

McCain & Women XOXOXO

Courtesy of PhillyPhotos.

Anyone who has ever been to Tony’s for a cheesesteak, knows that until one is fed, one simply doesn’t think correctly.. Therefore for a Temple student to question our next president on whether or not we should go into Pakistan to flush out terrorists, before she has even had one bite, is unconscionable.  (lol).

No one should be asked such an important foreign policy question before they have taken a bite out of a delicious Philly styled cheesestake on a roll with carmalized fried onions….  It should be against Federal Law.

But its not, and someone did..

And Sarah in trying to get the obnoxious, ugly, pus-ridden, (see video) gag-reflex inhibitor, annoying character out of her pretty face, answered his question unprepped, speaking strictly from the heart…

It was of course the wrong answer, according to John McCain, and the right answer according to Obama….

McCain in his way of telling her, “don’t bother your pretty little head with issues, us men will handle them”….responded for her…  He spoke for her and said that she had misspoke…

Of course she misspoke… she was waiting for a cheesesteak at Tony’s for heaven’s sake…  At least give her the dignity to speak for herself, instead of having “the campaign” do it for her…..

A short list of what women everywhere should be asking?

Can McCain speak for women when they don’t agree with him?

Under this cloud of Women’s issues, should McCain just “let her go” to “do her thing”?

Not being apologetic and not being defensive, would that endear McCain to more women voters?

Try as he might, can McCain ever show himself to allow women the right to think for themselves?

Stick To The Issues

Photo Courtesy of CBC

I was debating to fight the urge or not….I had just learned that the National Enquirer had leaked (yeah right) that Sarah Palin had an affair with her husband’s business partner in his private car-wash deal…

She has left the mainland and is in Alaska for a week her publicist says…

I noticed that no one else had published anything on either side of the issue, and was debating titling a post beginning with the word “breaking”.

Normally I skip over those “breaking” posts, but everything about Sarah is news; (did I mention she was hot).

But while I was pondering whether to send it or not, a link came in from a new source… Pinging back I read this article…..

Whoa… This sounds like me I first thought… It certainly uses the argument I firmly fought for when Americas thought sex acts were a cause for impeachment…..

And it dawned on me… I really don’t care who Sarah went down on before she was a government official… If she can govern adequately, more power to her… If she can govern superlatively, then I would recommend even more promiscuity…. If a video turns up, and she donates the proceeds to diminish the Federal Debt, I hope it goes global… If she can spend a night with billionaires willing to fork up 100 billion towards our debt, more power to her…..

Of course…I’m exaggerating… But I can get away with it because she is so hot. Imagine it I said the same thing with McCain as the subject….(Block visual image)…

But what goes on in her husband’s friend’s car or bedroom does not help me pay for the high cost of energy; it does not help me pay for insurance’ it does not help me pay for prescriptions; it does not help me pay for food; it does not help me pay for sewage; it does not help me pay for taxes…..

So her sexual escapades, although titillating (did I mention she was hot) have no relevance on whether my life continues to get better…. or worse….

So what are her plans to lower insurance. What are her plans to lower prescription costs? What are her plans to reduce our debt payments to foreign nations? What are her plans to make us an exporter nation again? What are her plans to give me more disposable income than I have today?

“Call-it” is right… We bloggers (both sides) are the leading intellectual source of information in this state…. If we put first graders in a class about sexual promiscuity, they will learn about sexual promiscuity…Teach them about “the fun stuff”, and they will learn… It is the teachers who control the curriculum…. They have a responsibility to keep to the high road…

So, I took Call-It’s link as a omen not to publish the trash I was about to send… I hit delete…and it was gone…. Although I still secretly continued to wonder whether there is a video out there, Perhaps originally a secret forever, until the price tags crossed over several million dollars…. I kept it to myself….

Americans have sex…. That is no secret…. otherwise there would be no children….and no orgasms.

Final point…. I once argued vociferously with my Republican friends who were so incensed that oral sex went on in the White House. I told them to forget about it and enjoy the prosperity that came with a balanced budget… something I thought I would NEVER see in my lifetime…. but…there it was… Balanced.

Looking over such miracles to force a scandal out in the open, was foolish I told them… they would soon learn I was right I warned them…. Eager for power, they laughed.

Today, they worship the ground i walk on…. When they need advice, they call me….

The Vice Presidential Debates

Photo Courtesy of Le Point

Debate Moderator:

Senator Biden: With your emphasis upon your protection of battered women, and your avid stance as a protector of woman’s rights everywhere across this nation, and your career-long belief that women should be considered for what they are, other than sex objects,…. do you or do you not, within the time allowed,…. feel that shots of your your opponent’s cleavage…against which you unfortunately have no defense,….. should be allowed to be shown across this nation during these debates…..

Senator Biden:

Yes.

Why We Blog

Because that……. is what we do.

Satire or Truth?: Please Judge Ms. Pamela Thornburg

Hello to my fellow Delawareans:

Hi, my name is Pamela Thornburg and I am from Dover and I am a Republican who voted to keep a vote for Bluewater Wind locked up in committee.

As a Republican I think your concerns do not matter. I am bought and paid for by corporate interests and this Bluewater Wind deal will prevent my lobbyist friends from making tons of money. You citizens have no understanding on how tough it is to be a lobbyist. The need someone to look after them too.

I am confident that after this hoopla is all over no one will remember that I voted to kill this bill. But had I voted on your side, to give you cheap energy with clean air, my lobbyist friends would stop calling on me and not invite me to any parties…..and I love parties……

Knowing that you all have tons of extra money and will not miss a couple of hundred dollars going to Delmarva, I hereby support those corporate interests who need to take billions, not just millions of your excess cash.

I refuse to vote for cheap power for anyone.

Sincerely,

Pam Thornburg.

Gary Stockbridge Gets Some “Air” Time….

Today, a resolution ordering the General Assembly to vote yea or nay on accepting the Bluewater Wind deal, got out of committee and onto the floor.

Politicians who would personally gain from supporting Delmarva, now have to balance their selfish interests against those needs of their constituents who are having trouble paying their electric bills.

Some brief words were spoken for the passage of the bill, and Gary Stockbridge was the sole person speaking to have it killed by the committee.

What is interesting it that the battle has moved from wind versus coal, gas, or other carbon sources, to wind versus wind. As Delmarva was forced against its will to investigate the positive benefits of wind, they too came to realize that wind is and will be an important part of America’s energy future. It is inevitable. It will come to pass. Long gone were the cries of just last year, over whether man-made global warming exists; except for one kook in Sussex County, global warming is now universally accepted……

The argument made by Gary was that we should be determining whether our wind power should be supplied locally by Bluewater WInd, off the coast of Rehoboth, or by Pepco’s own windfarms being purchased and built on top the ridges of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia…..Obviously they would like to keep the profit to themselves, now that they have found how lucrative it can be…….

The bids for land based wind power are still locked up in Delmarva’s coffers. But insiders who have seen some of the bids say they range from $5 to $11 dollars per megawatt. The current contract for Bluewater Wind is locked at 10.93 dollars per megawatt.

This is their cost and does not get passed on to consumers. Why? Because under the PJM rules all Pepco has to do to set the rate, is bid their high priced natural gas to push the hours allotment over the anticipated amount. All power for that hour is charged the rate of the last bid that reaches that line. What that means is that if Pepco, by controlling all aspects of energy production can, by selling a gas turbine fired electricity at 20 cents per kilowatt hour, take the 20 cents charge, passing it onto you, even though 99.9% of the power used that hour was generated at 5 cents, giving them a 300% profit…..

But, like their Y2K electric bills, is this just another sham?

Perhaps….my sources did not let me see the bids…but if they are based on REC’s being purchased to meet the renewable allotment, then there is a good chance that we are being schmoosed.

Gary mentioned that electricity is like the air we breath. Electricity added to the grid in Illinois is the same as that added to the grid off Rehoboth. It was a shame he used that metaphor, for it caused me to ponder those facts, except I saw them from a different perspective.

In a physical sense, it is. Electricity is the gift of God. It is found spiraling around every atom from Hydrogen to Ununoctium (not yet discovered,… maybe). Where your electrons came from is undeterminable. Like a paper cup stabbed with pencils, one needs to add water at the same rate of speed it leaks out. Whether that water came from an Artesian Well, Hoopes’ or Newark’s reservoir, or pumped out of the Christiana River, it all looks the same coming out of your faucet…….

But lets expand that analogy, for it makes a big difference in whether Gary’s supposition (forgive the pun) holds water or not.

Now lets assume that the Christiana River was the dirtiest and most polluted of all your sources. If you lived close by that outtake plant off Smalley’s Dam Road, there is a good chance that most of your water would come from that source, even though all the water companies in this area are interconnected…..The possibility exists that there could be some White Clay Creek Water or pine scented water from Hoopes reservoir blended in, but barring shortages, the water closest to your house, would flow through your pipes.

Now suppose you had a chance to have a well dug in your neighborhood and the water was much healthier. You could actually anticipate the crisp, clear taste, devoid of the usual hard PCB’s that made your pasta taste funny……but your utility company said no. They could build three wells in Chateau Country that would do the same thing, and do it cheaper. All the water is connected they told you at every public meeting each time you attempted to engage them.

Yes it is connected, but it is not the same. Gary was correct but wrong in his implication. Electricity IS like the air we breathe. Some of it is better in certain locations than others. Putting a renewable option here in close proximity, will make a difference in our air, water, and overall state run economics. Standing next to someone who spoiled their pants is far different than standing intimately close to someone wearing Britney Spears new fragrance…..( no it is not toxic). Likewise, you can catch a cold from someone sharing the same air as you, but you can’t catch one from someone coughing in Illinois.

If Delaware needs 300 MW and Bluewater can supply 450 MW, there WILL BE less emissions landing on top of Sussex County.

Conversely, if Delaware needs the same 300MW and we don’t have wind blowing offshore, NRG will have to go full power. The Pennsylvania and West Virginia power plants may throttle back….(see less coal is being burned somewhere), but cough, cough, hack, hack………it just doesn’t help us now, does it.

Gary’s argument this entire year has not been about costs and benefits. It is strictly about maintaining his monopoly. They are scared they are going to have to face some competition. When you control all the angles, as did Enron in California during the blackout phase, you can manipulate the outcome to your direct advantage….Of course we have to pay 60% more for the privilege of your doing so, but that…. is the market place. If Bluewater by signing this deal, can stabilize a portion of that price to 9.89 cents per kilowatt hour, then Pepco’s charging us 20 cents and justifying it, becomes a little harder……….

“Electricity is like the air,” Gary said before the Delaware House Committee of Energy. Indeed it is…..And as evidenced by the tremendous amounts of testimony provided at every public hearing, including the brief comments made yesterday afternoon,…….Delawareans prefer their local air to be clean…..even at a cost….as opposed to air whose particles once breathed, can one day………kill you.

Life Imitates Art?

There are few among you who do not know the tale of Gollum. It is, after all, the greatest selling movie trilogy of all time. What intrigues me in that tale is that throughout the three films, we see in Gollum, as an enemy of the protagonist. But in the end, as the film plays out, when the protagonist himself succumbs to the ring’s influence, the freak we despised, winds up saving his world, even if for selfish reasons.

Had we gotten what we wished throughout the tale, for the freak to die in order that the protagonist could be free to carry on his quest……….had that really come about as we had wished…in the end, .instead of the world bouncing back from a close call, we would be crying our eyes out over a traitorous ending.

The same can be said with Harris McDowell as he put the hearings against wind power to bed last Friday. Vilified across the entire state by his treatment of Arnette McRae on Wednesday, he tried the same with spokesperson Hunter Armistead, who runs the North American Energy Development Group for Babcock & Brown.

Again the use his nasgul agent Randall Speck was intended to pick apart the Bluewater Proposal in order to show the faults behind its reasoning.

Instead, just as Gollum saved the Middle Earth from evil Sauron’s control, his equivalent on this planet wound up saving the very wind project he was trying to kill…….

By pushing too hard, Speck caused Armistead to drop the ring of Delmarva’s power, through the cracks in the General Assembly’s floor, into the unattainable depths of Mt Doom.

Friday’s invitees were better prepared to deal with the lines of questioning presented to them. Having been forewarned on Wednesday, they did not have to ponder each question prefaced with the thought of “is this bizarre action really happening to me?” Prepared for the unbelievable, they offered cold facts against hot suppositions.

The questioning came to a head, as the Nasgul king, questioned Armistead as to why it was NOT true that wind power from out West was more beneficial to Delawareans than a local renewable source of energy. Armistead replied.

“The only true way to reduce emissions in the area is to actually inject renewables into the area,”

Will wind power out West have any impact on Delaware at all?

No. NRG, Connectiv, Premcor will continue to pump as much pollution as they always have, with only additionally needed supplemental energy being supplied from the Grid……..

No…..The only way to stop and diminish local pollution, is to supply the local need first with a renewable such as wind power, and let the the agents of Mordor, belch their black smoke only when the outside grid needs supplemental extra power……..

When Delmarva tried to counter that argument, they tripped up “real bad”….. They argued that Bluewater Wind would first supply Illinois with green power, before suppling Delaware. The audience gasped and turned to each other in amazement. Were they watching the actual disintegration of Delmarva’s argument? Had Delmarva strayed to far and gone far beyond even the willing suspension of disbelief?

Fact is, they have done so ever since Delmarva said Bluewater Wind was too costly for its consumers……..and then turned around and charged us a much higher rate for our electricity than what Bluewater Wind would have guaranteed over twenty five years. But that previous mis truth was not clear to many. But the over stretched argument saying that renewable power from Illinois was far less polluting for Delaware’s skies than creating most of our own power needs from a home grown wind farm, proved that not all the screws in Delmarva’s had been tightened sufficiently.

In an effort to kill the wind farm deal they stretched too far, and like Britney Spears getting out of a car, the world got a shot at what little they have to offer. It wasn’t much.

Not knowing of the battle going down in a hearing room hundreds of miles away, a PJM person, dealing directly with the transmission of power across the grid, said in effect……..’oh no that it not true……..when the transmission lines on the peninsula are congested, wind power would displace traditional, high-cost sources of electricity nearby. (Note to all: the Delmarva peninsula’s transmission lines are heavily congested).

In fact as soon as the Bluewater deal is finalized, we need to move forward with the building of new transmission lines so that excessive energy on good-wind days, CAN offset the carbon being burned in Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and Illinois. Then tiny Delaware can truly impact the planet on a global scale.

But above all in this epic conversation taking place beneath the General Assembly, the truth finally came out in front of witnesses, as to why Delmarva is trying real hard to kill Bluewater Wind……..It is not new; we have said it many times. But allowing the witness to make public these remarks on the record, was a true tactical error on the part of Speck:

Armistead elaborated:

..he wondered why the utility was resisting, and said he believed it was because the wind farm would take away business from Delmarva’s sister company, Conectiv.

Pepco wants to sell Connectiv. A wind farm in southern Delaware belting out multi MW’s with no pollution, would tend to drive down the price of any local carbon fueled power source being put upon the auction bloc. How can you make money with a gas plant with a future costing of 20 cents per MW, when Bluewater Wind can belt it out sometimes at a cost of 2.3 cents per megawatt?

That is Delmarva’s problem….Our problem is paying the %^#%$ electric bill….

And I think our past enemy, by trying too hard, has slipped and proved to all, that Bluewater Wind is a real good thing to bring to all of Delaware. As Armistead spoke those last words, astute members in the audience could feel the rumblings beneath the caverns of Mt Doom, and the tall, black tower that has cast its fiery lies over the first district of Wilmington/Claymont for such a long time,………….began crumbling at its foundations, sliding slowly towards its impending collapse.

And minions everywhere….suddenly awoke…..as if under a long, peaceful slumber………

“Like many others following this, we get the impression Sen. McDowell is not a big supporter and is trying to find a way to put the whole idea behind him and his fellow lawmakers. But that’s speculation.

This time, though, not everyone in the Senate went along with Sen. McDowell’s somewhat strange behavior. Sen. Karen Peterson, D-Stanton, and a member of the Energy Committee, called the latest series of McDowell hearings a sham and an attempt to mislead the public.

Calling in an outside attorney — apparently to the tune of $35,000 — to “grill” the gubernatorially appointed Public Service Commission is bizarre at best and underhanded at worst.

Sen. McDowell is a noted champion of electric deregulation — which led to $60 a month electric increases
News Journal

Chapter 3: Windpower for Dummies

Weed-whacking and Symbiosis

Anyone who has raised their own food in their backyard, knows a little about weeds. As often as you pull them out, they return to begin the process anew. So it is with arguments against offshore wind. Each time a new person ponders the issue and feels they have been genetically gifted with unique insight, we see two leaves sprout of an argument that has been debunked months before.

So like weeding ones garden, one must periodically revisit those areas to remove ideas that faulty genetic engineering has placed in places where they do not belong. And so:

What about buying Land based wind power which costs less than that offshore?

This may sound good if one is looking for the lowest cost. But as often as advice comes cheap, its value should be trusted only as deep as its analysis. I can tell you that overall a brand new Mercedes CLK63 sedan is cheaper then a used Dodge Neon. And you may not believe me. But only by investigating the analysis will we know if buying a CLG63 is better for us in the long run….(It’s not.)

So let us first examine the myth that land based wind is cheaper and secondly, probe the economics behind that myth that are always happy to propel that myth forward.

Of course anytime one makes generalizations as I just did, one risks the case that an exception will prove that the overall statement is not correct. It is possible for example in North Dakota, to build a simple small windmill, free on public land, close to existing transmission lines and do it cheaper than build a towering work of engineering on an offshore platform eleven miles into the ocean. That makes sense.

Therefore we need a common denominator or formula that translates all power sources to a single cost effective denominator so we can compare apples to apples as the saying goes, and not find ourselves comparing apples to paramecium, disintegrating pop stars, classic cars, or even oranges.

The best bet found so far for the simplistic comparison of power sources, is the $ per MW that many of you following this argument, have seen repeated over and over. Since at this same time last year even I had no idea what $ per MW was, I will take a moment to explain.

Most of you who pay for your own electricity have at least seen the kilowatt listed on your Delmarva or Electric Co-op bills. This is the standard method of measuring the amount of electricity coming into your home. It traces its origins to James Watt who by many is considered to be the founder of the Industrial Age by his invention of the steam engine. Watt needed a method to measure work produced, and electric companies were quick to apply it to their needs a hundred years later. A watt is a rather small measure. It takes a hundred to power a light bulb. Therefore the standard measure is considerably larger, a thousand times to be exact, and because of that precise level of expansion it is called a kilowatt, or a thousand watts. One kilowatt supplies ten 100 watt bulbs, and is roughly equal to 1.34 horsepower, which is enough to power a large Wal*Mart-bought automatic lawnmower. Therefore for household usage, a kilowatt is the preferred level of measuring electric energy. Since we humans are habitual measurers of time, the amount of energy it takes to supply a kilowatt over the time frame of one hour, is simply called a kilowatt hour. Keep in mind there is a difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt hour. One can survive a 300 kilowatt lightning strike, but would eventually succumb it it had to undergo that ordeal for a full hour. Therefore on our electric bills we pay for kilowatt hours (kWh), which is simply the amount of electricity required to burn those ten light bulbs for one hour.

A megawatt or (MW) is a thousand kilowatts ( kw), just like a Megabyte (MB) on your computer is a thousand Kilobytes (KB). So if we are measuring power to a system of homes numbering in the thousands, it would make sense to use MWh to do so….( For the geeks and trivial buffs the next levels upward are giga, tera, peta, exa.) For principals of scale, the entire US power supply is around 4 petawatts, up from 2.7 PW in 1992)

Therefore when comparing the costs of different energy applications we need to consider the cost per MWh of energy produced. Then if that source is close or far away, we need supplement that generation cost with transmission costs to get a true idea of what we pay. It is easy really. It would be similar to you comparing how much a head of lettuce would cost to grow outside your kitchen window, and how much it would cost to drive both ways to purchase it at a store.

Bluewater wind according to the latest contract that almost, almost became reality last December had members of Delaware’s Legislative Committee not interfered, was costed out at at $98.93 MWh. So for the price of filling ones gas tank at today’s prices, Bluewater Wind will provide Delmarva the yearly average electrical needs of around a 876 homes for that one hour! Wow! For you non math-wizards this gives the average household a monthly charge for the usage part of their utility bill close to $81.31. (Keep in mind we pay an additional charge for demand as well).

What about buying Land based wind power which costs less than that offshore?

First of all, despite common assumptions, does it?

Remarkably the global experts live here in Delaware. Their names may be familiar to some: Jeremy Firestone and Willett Kempton. Their conclusion:

“The bottom line is that, with the refinements to our comparison offered by WGES, along with the final price of the Delmarva/Bluewater Power Purchase agreement (PPA), the Bluewater Wind price still appears to be lower than the price offered today by WGES. (Washington Gas & Electric Service)

WGES offers 100% onshore wind, in one and two year contracts (see
https://www.wges.com/enroll/index.php). It is offered at 13.90¢/kWh for 1 year or 14.50¢/kWh for two years. The two-year contract also bundles two years of price stability. As a first summary comparison, we previously compared WGES’ 100% offer with wind only from Bluewater Wind (by itself effectively 100%). Basing our comparison on the proposed Delaware PPA contract, the (energy and capacity) prices from the Bluewater Wind project are 10.82¢/kWh in 2008 and 11.15¢/kWh in 2009. That is, in year 1, the currently-offered WGES landbased wind is 22% more expensive than the PPA price, and for the two-year combined price, 24% over the PPA price.

So how much lower is Bluewater Wind’s offshore 25 year contract cost compared to a 2 year contract with WGES ‘s offer based on land based wind? Compare $98.03 MWh with $145.00MWh and you have your answer. This is not slanted analysis. These are the two actual choices on the table for those Delawareans who currently subscribe to Delmarva. That $46.96 dollar savings (per MW) is what Charlie Copeland, Thurman Adams, Harris McDowell, Tony Deluca and others, has just prevented you and your children from receiving irregardless or whether it is spread to all Delawareans or not! Not just for two years, but twenty-five.

But how can that be? How can offshore wind be so much better and cheaper than that produced on shore?

The three answers lie in 1) economies of Scale, 2) more available wind offshore, and 3) proximity to our market thereby reducing transmission costs.

The head of Delmarva, Gary Stockbridge, frequently misquoted we could get cheaper wind power on land from Pennsylvania. Naturally the next question that popped into everyones head was: how much wind power is available from Pennsylvania? Apparently not much. Currently there are 89 MWh of PA wind power. Proposed? As of last week, 211 MW which have yet to go through the process Bluewater Wind has already begun. Total PA potential? 300MW! And we are to expect that all of this meager total will benevolently be sent to Delaware, so we can benefit from wind power that is already more expensive than that made offshore?

It would also be wise to remember that demand for a product has as much to do with determining the price of something as does the cost required to produce it. By 2020 almost 1/6 of the Northeastern Corridor’s electrical load will be required to come from renewable sources. (Right click on image below to see the Northeastern Corridor.)

That includes Delaware’s 20%. From what source is this to come? And what if there are too few sources to provide this phenomenal demand? The price goes up, and up, and up. So much for wind remaining a cheap source of electricity if we try to get it from another state besides Delaware.

The offshore wind farm was originally planned for a capacity of 600 MW. In the deal approved with Delmarva it was narrowed to a capacity of 450 MW. Towers offshore can be built higher than onshore. The rotors can be built larger, since they are transported by ships, instead of trucks switchbacking up winding mountain roads. At altitudes of 80 m (or 250 feet) the wind blows uninterrupted as opposed to ground level due to the lack of turbulence that land objects create. Anyone who has ever sailed on open ocean knows how the wind seems to blow continuously instead of in bursts as we experience here on land. Therefore those offshore turbines tend to produce more electricity than those wind mills locked down on shore. We communicate this in our discussions by saying offshore wind has a higher capacity to be busy making power, than that capacity found on shore.

Everyone knows that wind does not blow all the time. Therefore when considering where to put a wind farm, (NOAA already has all the data), one looks for a place with a higher capacity for making power. This higher potential of offshore wind, is based on solid evidence. The combination of larger turbines which are able to generate as much as 5MW of power compared to land based units making 1MW, and the greater chance that the wind will blow offshore than it does onshore, ultimately mean that despite the higher cost of construction required for a wind farm built in water, the cost per MW will be lower…It is exactly the same principal that occurs in transportation where even though a bus costs more to rent a does a car, if you want to transport 450 people to Washington DC, it is better to rent buses to do so in order to achieve a lower cost per person, instead of finding a fleet of cars to carry them.

The third reason offshore wind in Delaware is cheaper than importing outrageously expensive onshore wind from Pennsylvania, is the cost of getting it here. Remember from Chapter 2 that transmission lines lose 10% of the power they carry in form of heat. Bluewater’s power ties into the grid at the Bethany Beach sub station, and that location is where the transaction price will occur. This higher level of efficiency means the entire system saves 10% over that of another system including us and stretching over 300 miles away. 10% is a lot to waste.

So even though a bus costs more than a car, the “cheaper-to-construct” land base wind power provides its electricity per MW at a much higher price than any local offshore wind farm would for Delawareans.

Symbiosis:

Anyone who has studied “systems” knows that any system that is balanced usually maintains the fine line of survivability. In politics, one has to look only as far as our three branches of government to see stability lies in balance. Likewise any parent of a student creating a terrarium knows the very fine line of balancing all the parts to create a whole that works.

It is obvious that deregulation in its current state does not work. It is equally obvious that offshore wind on the Atlantic Coast, due to its proximity to the largest power consumer on this planet, is a definite good investment. Any capacity from any North Atlantic wind farm built, will be sucked up by the power hungry Northeast corridor with barely a blip. But if wind power is allowed to become a producer of cheap energy, and able to sell that energy at rates way below that of Carbon fuel, as will happen in the future, then the free market that was set in part by the movement to de-regulate electrical generation, will possibly be able to succeed after all. The only reason we are paying 60% more under this arrangement, is because there is no other entity to compete with Delmarva and force down its inflated prices. Well guess what, with Bluewater Wind……now there is.

And here is the kicker:

As carbon fuel continue to skyrocket and wind continues to become cheaper, the entire Eastern Seaboard will one day become one long wind farm. It will happen as did cell towers spring overnight across this country, as were fiber optics buried from one shore to the other, as were four lane highways carved out of mountains and spanned across American rivers, as were airports built outside every large American city, as was a canal carved across Panama, as did steam ships replace graceful clippers, as iron horses replaced living ones.

And to think……if a tiny band of horse-shit shoveling farmers had been as successful in their attempt to block the very first railroad from being built, simply because it would make their livery business obsolete?

How different our world would be?

Just as those who saw the railroad’s potential, and looked westward at 3000 miles of unexplored wilderness, knew of its inevitability, those of us who see the end of an era of carbon energy approaching with the speed of a summer storm, know too offshore wind spanning the length of the Atlantic Seaboard is also inevitable.

Courtesy of ENS (Environmental News Service)

And where will the new cottage industry of off shore wind be settled, like the Silicon Valley of chip technology? Obviously where it was first done….

There is no time to lose if that central hub of expert manufacturing on this side of the Atlantic is to be located in Delaware………We are in the race, like it or not.

Britney Spears and Marylin Monroe

Somehow I came across a blog about Ryan Seacrest’ s interview with Britney Spears. The line that bothered me was how she was quiet and her “handlers” answered all the questions for her…..

As I was thinking “that’s sad” I had a nudge within my memory bank that said this has happened before…..It took some time to burn through the slow fog over memories past but eventually I remembered reading that before her end, Marylin Monroe had acted the same way…..

Towards her end there were attempts by Marylin to retake control over her own life, but eventually she was out-foxed and re-boxed by her “trusted” handlers. There were similar rages, (no shaved head) that were tsk’d tsk’d as signs of a coming “breakdown”…Sedate her was the answer…..And find a quiet sanitarium……

Then one day she was gone…………and many a young man, who understood her frailty, would pine if only he had been there for her…………..

There is still time for Brittney…So what’s the big deal you might wonder? If one basks in the sun too long, it goes to ones head….Celebrities are so spoiled these days…….No one cares for the average victim, the runaways in the same situation……

Thats a good point, But I guess it can be said that if Britney Spears goes, then part of us goes as well…..Similar to the typical Ming vase, lasting for centuries, that often gets shattered on Hollywood’s floor, the loss of any piece of art that inspires someone, is a loss indeed.

And Britney inspired many…So many prayed she would get back on track at the MVA awards………she didnt…….For ten years she has been the inspiration for so many girls. She’s occupied the thoughts of a few guys as well….

We can say this episode is not important and move on. But in doing so we set another tragedy in motion….A better alternative would be to offer love and support, and forgive past discretions based on our appreciation of her young artistry…..A young artist has a hard time. Mozart, Van Gogh, Jim Morrison come to mind. For at that young age, once the peak has past it is a long downward slide…..Britney evolved the new art form of song and dance into the mainstream ….Put a mike on anyone and they say “I look like Britney Spears.” Now she should stick to just singing. just as the Stones should probably stick to studio sessions.

Instead of a person I think she sees herself as an icon, a possession, as was Marylin Monroe. A board of directors, demanding something new, more return for the dollar….and she feels she has already given…much more than many who have gone before her…

I recommend a trip to India. Not as did Paris, to meet up with drunken elephants, but to do what the Beatles did, and to a certain extent, doing so kept them from going off the deep end,…..the same one as is facing this popular icon now. For as silly as it sounds, the new perspective given by the Maharishi, kept the Fab Four producing for a long, long time…….

Currently it seems as if Britney has no floor to stand on…..If she does not want to follow Marylin, she needs to lose her “flunkies” and “get a life.