MMS Director Randall Luthi is scheduled to announce today (11/12/08) in a conference call plans for selling one small lease off Virginia's shore.  "One sale in a small portion of the mid-Atlantic is proposed offshore Virginia with a 50-mile buffer", reports MMS.

Ah yes, power plants in the west and offshore drilling in the east.  That's sure moving Virginia forward, Governor Kaine! Outstanding job there!

While some of us believe that decentralized power sources make perfect technical sense, and partially solve the problem of power transmission, there are many who hate that solar and wind are decentralized; they hate that such decentralization makes it difficult to monopolize; they hate that they get cut out of the power production and distribution business, even if only partially.

I am NOT saying this is some vast conspiracy, it's simply good business sense.  Why would you, given a monopoly, give up half your customers?  You wouldn't either; you'd fight to keep every one as long as you could.  It is the only sensible business practice when money is the only goal.

Until individual users of electrical power get up the gumption to produce some of their own power; or until utility companies decide to operate on altruistic goals rather than profit-motive, we are stuck.

Over time more and more people will switch out some power and conserve more efficiently, but it is not likely to be fast.

I had some hopes for solar collector systems recently, because they keep the status quo by required large, somewhat centralized steam plants that use solar heat rather than photo-voltaic; but power companies appear to be passing on even that.

I have no hope that Americans will shift in large numbers; I was recently in Arizona for a family funeral and was appalled that even in Arizona which sees the most sun power of any state there was effectively ZERO use of solar on all the roofs (which are mostly nearly flat as they don't get snow) that could so easily have both solar water heaters and photovoltaic collectors.  If we are not willing to go solar where the sun is strongest, why would we do it here?

We have a history of waiting until it's too late then over-responding to the disaster we helped create.

so that their profits are no longer tied directly to the old model of producing more and more power from traditional sources - fossil fuels, mainly - without regard to the environmental impact or anything else.  In short, we need political leadership willing to stand up to these corporations.  For governor of Virginia in 2009, that's exactly what I'll be looking for in making my decision about who to support - Creigh, Brian, or Terry.

Decoupling is not a new concept and most utilities have obtained it in some form in one or all of their jurisdictions.  That is if all you are referring to is fixed cost recovery.

are expensive.  Like new car expensive.  In Arizona you are likely to achieve a good cost recovery, but in Virginia probably not.  Power is too cheap in VA to make economic sense for individual consumers to throw PV cells on their roof.  Plus, the amount of sunlight is not the same.  And then a lot depends on what direction your house faces and how they can position them on your roof as to whether you get the maximum potential output.

As far as decentralization goes, that is not a problem.  As has been discussed on here in many of these diaries, all we need is a smart grid.  But upgrading our grid will cost a lot of money and will take time.  So be sure and write your congressman and tell them they need to put funds in for upgrading our grid as a part of this economic recovery package.

HOW DO WE MAKE THESE TECHNOLOGIES MORE AFFORDABLE TO THE CONSUMER?

For starters, we should work to attract the companies that produce these solar panels and wind turbines to Virginia. Kill two birds with one stone - create jobs and put the technology in our backyard. Newport News just attracted a major nuclear power technology company (from France) to its dilapidated southeast end, helping VA stay on the forefront of 21st Century energy tech.

So as Barack likes to say, we helped Wall Street, what do we do for Main Street? If we want people to adopt solar power does it make sense to offer state income tax credits? How about tax credits to home builders who install the panels on new developments? Or tax credits to businesses who install them on their buildings? What about offering a discount on the real estate tax from localities? If we have to pay $5000 in real estate taxes anyway (in Newport News), perhaps it makes sense to a lot of tax payers to just put the money towards solar panels.

 

The higher up you go, the better the wind, and they are talking about the tall wind turbines.  For Virginia, they are probably talking about offshore wind - that's where the best wind is for us.

And the hotlink for the map in the story is broken..

"Wind and rooftop solar." I also fixed the link.

I think you can request wind power from Dominion. Maybe if enough do this they will try to get more power from wind. I think they already offer some. Does anyone have any information on this?

If the money spent on Iraq war was spent on wind turbines and they were turned over to our electric coops.Oh wait dominion power wouldnt profit from that.

In Germany wind power is only used in the local communities. That way they don't have to run power lines all over the country. If you see a wind farm power lines are close by, but only locally. Also, after the harvest of some crops they waste from the milling process is turned into energy. The mill temporarily becomes a power plant. They also convert garbage into energy. They have power plants which run off garbage. Let's face it. They are WAY ahead of us.

is to work toward relaxing HoA rules forbidding solar panels on roof tops.  It doesn't' make sense to completely restrict them.  But, unfortunately, many HoAs do just that.

Let me give you an example.  HOAs are unable to prevent homeowners from installing satellite dishes.  I don't remember the legal specifics (whom gets to sue whom and all that), but a little google work will turn up all the info.

Something similar can be done for solar panels.

This doesn't help everyone of course.  People who live in apartments or condos won't be able to install anything on the roof.  We live in a 4-story townhouse with a steep pitch on the roof, and we had a devil of a time getting the satellite dish properly installed on the roof mainly because the installers didn't feel safe climbing up that high.  I expect that if we wanted solar panels installed that we would have similar issues.

I live in a top floor condo. One siide of the roof gets sun all morning and the other side gets sun all afternoon. I could probably store enough electricity to burn my lights all year around. This would be easy using energy effcient light bulbs.

There is a company called AES which helps people put up solar panels, etc. They are local I believe.  

HOAS think rooftop panels lower property values, even though (at least right now) their presence indicates the homeowners have some capital to invest in clean energy.  What we need at all levels of this issue is better marketing.

Spreading the right kinds of memes could attach green prestige to the image of a panel.  Likewise greater awareness of things like this study could help undermine the currently accepted orthodoxy (which is of course simply Big Coal's marketing line) that coal is indispensable because massive consumption growth is inevitable.

 

they seem to have problems with clotheslines, too. Hanging your clothes out to dry saves money directly and avoids using electricity or natural gas to power a dryer. Someone seems to have decided that they are "unsightly", though, and that they lower property values. Of course, if clotheslines were allowed everywhere, it's hard to see how property values would be affected.

I always believed that our standard power distribution paradigm: centralized distribution w/power lines and cables, will give way to a decentralized model due to availability of affordable functional alternative power supplies.

All of those large flat warehouse roofs, vast parking lot spaces, rooftops..are great location sites for large solar panel arrays.

I attended the Green Festival at the D.C. Convention Center, and it was inspiring to see so many entrepreneurs take the lead in promoting alternative energy programs/projects.

 

I'd just like to offer a few points of clarification.

On why are we not doing this -  Because Virginia consumers are not demanding it.  Who holds more cards in this game?  Dominion or VA consumers?

On your statement: "power that sends ZERO money to countries that don't like us"  I think you should qualify that you are talking about transportation fuel since most of the discussion was about electricity and one could confuse power to be focused only on electricity.  Because coal we get from the US; Natural Gas is primarily from the US and our biggest imports are from Canada (I think they like us); uranium is primarily purchased from South Africa, Australia, and Canada; and there are a scant few oil fired plants.  I don't know that Dominion is blocking plug-in hybrids.  I'm sure they would love to get more usage during their non-peak hours from plug-ins.  Hey!  That's another thing for people to write their congressmen about.  Instead of giving Detroit a blank check, the terms of the loan should require the development and sale of plug-in hybrid vehicles utilizing carbon-fiber frames or something equivalent.  The money should go to retooling their entire production system to produce energy efficient cars.  I mean at the very least we should get this for rescuing them.

And a note on the wind potential, I believe from reading their report it includes natural gas back up as a part of the figure.  Granted you could replace that with biomass, but you would just need to account for that increased requirement.  

There are still some open items, not everyone heats their home by electricity; so, is that included in the 48% calculation?  Also, in the transportation sector besides passenger automobiles, we have commercial vehicles, trains, airplanes, and marine vessels.  And while not a big part of a barrel of oil, you have the chemical industry.  Refined products go into cosmetics, plastics, pesticides, herbicides, films (down to the films they put inside a bag of chips), paints, just a range of applications really.  Just as an aside, thinking about all those chemicals that we don't know what kind of impact they have on human health or how they interact and affect human health is just amazing and probably scary to some.

Last, I think this is only a point of time assessment.  If our economy gets back to growing again, we will need more power.  Do wind, solar, and biomass cover us for growth in demand?  It looks like they could, if we build High-Voltage transmission from the Plains and the desert South West.  But transmission often seems like a dirty word to most folks.

So, on NPR this morning they were talking about what will Obama do with this giant grass roots effort.

So, first priority is for all of those folks to go down to Georgia and unseat Saxby Chambliss.  Second priority, for those VA folks, is they could use that same knockin' on doors strategy to create a ground swell of VA voters demanding fundamental change in how we get our energy.  And that could be how you get to my first point.  Which is VA consumers have more power in their hands collectively than does Dominion.  If VA consumers demand of their government, their utilities, and the SCC that their power come from renewable sources and that the state needs to get a move on: a smart grid, energy efficiency programs (not just pilots), building wind power generations, converting coal plants to natural gas, building biomass plants, and financing roof-top solar for consumers.

And if you could tap the fund raising machine that Obama did, then you could really blow Dominion's contributions out of the water.  That might even net you a big ad buying budget.

The excess capacity from Western States can also  be "wheeled" along transmission lines to states which, like Va, don't reach the 100% mark.  

without some upgrades to monitor temperature across the lines.  And even then you will still need more high-voltage transmission to displace the power we currently use from coal and nuclear.  And just as a note, you lose power as it passes through the cables to get across the country and to VA.  So, that means more power needs to be produced on the generating end to account for transmission loss.

You have to pump up the lines along the way, it just doesn't seem practical. It could take more energy to get it here than the energy we actually receive.

I would count geothermal as part of energy efficiency.  Obviously there will never be a geothermal power plant in Virginia.  However, geothermal heat pumps have been used in at least few hundred, if not a few thousand Virginia buildings.  These greatly increase efficiency of heating and cooling.