popular logistics

Great news from the Jersey Shore. Writing in the Asbury Park Press, David Willis reported Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008 that New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities gave a green light to a Garden State Wind Offshore Energy, a joint venture between PSEG Renewable Generation and Deepwater Wind, one of several competitors, including BlueWater Wind, Fishermen’s Energy of New Jersey LLC, Occidental Development & Equities LLC, and Environmental Technologies LLC. David Harper of The Press of Atlantic City covered the story Sunday. Street Insider published the Press Release.

Map showing approximate location of the offshore wind farm.

“Offshore wind is probably the most cost-efficient and reliable form of energy we can have” said Jeff Tittle, director of the Sierra Club’s New Jersey Office. “We will have offshore windmills or we will have offshore oil” until the oil runs out and the shore will move as the sea rises and as storms pummel the coasts.

The $1 Billion project will generate 350 megawatts of power, enough for 125,000 homes, and meet approximately 5% of New Jersey’s needs. The $1 Billion cost for the 350 mw facility is $2.86 per watt for construction, compared to $1.87 for the Atlantic City wind farm, and $6.00 per watt, according to Rebecda Smith in the Wall St. Journal for Florida Power & Light’s proposed Turkey Point 3 & 4 nuclear plants.

The wind farm will be generating energy within four years, and be completed by 2013. The first 1 gw wind farm that T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Power, is building in Texas is forecast to cost $2.00 per watt and be operational by 2011.

New Jersey’s wind farm will be historic. It will be the first offshore wind farm in New Jersey, and with the Delmarva Wind Farm that BlueWater Wind is building off Delaware, and the plant that Deepwater Wind is building off of Rhode Island, one of the first three offshore wind farms, possibly the first in the United States. While the US will still lag far behind Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, other nations in Europe and the rest of the world, this is a start.  I hear the sound of a paradigm shifting.

There are magic numbers in New Jersey: $450, $550, $771, $150 and $600.

In Jersey you can produce a widget that would cost you $150 to buy, use or sell the widget, and then sell it again for $450 to $550 - that is sell it for $600 or $700. The question is, how much does it cost to produce? And the raw ingredients and fuel are free, so the production costs are only are only the amortized costs of the machine.

Allow me to explain.

Janet Tauro, of the NJ Environmental Federation, raises a disturbing question - is the NRC as incompetant as FEMA?

The NRC’s mission is to protect citizens, not put up roadblocks to a full and open airing of safety concerns, but as Janet Tauro writes in the Asbury Park Press,

“It should not have been citizens who made public the safety problems at Oyster Creek. It should have been the NRC.

It took a whistleblower who took pictures of a bunch of sleeping guards at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania to wake up Congress about NRC’s lackadaisical approach to citizens’ safety concerns. Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, announced recently that an investigation by the Office of Inspector General that found “questionable decisions by the commission with respect to nuclear power plant relicensing” also will be under review.

Some of these Questionable Decisions:

• The NRC’s refusal to evaluate the terrorist risk of elevated fuel pools jam-packed with thousands of pounds of highly radioactive fuel rods,
• The lack of a workable evacuation plan,
• The transfer of the state’s most senior nuclear expert after he publicly chastised NRC officials for not imposing penalties on Exelon after the department discovered safety commitments were not being honored,
• The discovery of radioactive Cesium in soil samples outside of the plant,
• Massive fish kills in Barnegat Bay, and
• The mysterious emptying of water collection buckets shortly before NRC and state inspectors arrived to draw samples to try to determine the source of leaks within the drywell, the reactor’s steel containment vessel.

In addition, Rep. Dingell’s committee might review:

• Transcripts from our precedent-setting hearing before the Atomic Safety Licensing Board and decide whether preferential treatment was given to Exelon and the NRC, while NJ Environmental Federation’s attorney and expert were badgered and interrupted.
  
• Judge Anthony J. Baratta’s minority opinion that affirmed our coalition’s contention that there is no analytical proof that the drywell meets current safety standards, and that those standards must be met as a condition of relicensing.
• The NRC’s attempt to change the basis of Exelon’s current licensing, which stipulates adherence to accepted engineering standards for safety. When an NRC inspector affirmed that the drywell did not meet minimum safety standards for thickness, the NRC tried at the last minute to change its rules, saying that it wasn’t necessary, just preferable, to meet those standards.

The NRC must regulate nuclear power, to guarantee that nuclear power plants are operated safely. Or the NRC should be shut down, and every nuclear power plant as well.

Texas, with environmentalists like T. Boone Pickens (official site) is building wind turbines. Click Here. In Texas, when they find that they have wind in their backyard, they want to use it to make money. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, when someone finds wind in his backyard his neighbors say ‘Hold on there, Cowboy. What you think you’re doin? You think this is Texas or somethin?’ Just ask Mike Mercurio.

Massachusetts, with Environmentalist Liberals like Ted Kennedy, is not building wind turbines. Cape Wind is swinging like an albatross, like NJ’s Offshore Wind Farm. Maybe they are worried they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s body swinging from the nacelle.

I’m glad the Texans are doing something right. And I’m not proud of Kennedy or Jon Corzine. Makes me almost wish I was a Texan.

Testimony before the NJ Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Offshore Wind
April 14, 2005, Cape May Courthouse, 4 Moore Road, Cape May, NJ

Wind Power - 1976 and 2005 - More Questions Than Answers

Thank you for this opportunity today to share my observations regarding electricity generation technologies. I am a consultant with an academic background that includes utility economics and energy systems. I have provided consulting services to Public Service Enterprise Group at the Salem nuclear facility and at their corporate data center in Newark, NJ. I have also provided IT consulting services to Exelon / Amergen, to systems administrators of the Oyster Creek facility in an off-site location.

The first time I spoke before a body such as this was 1976, in Albany, NY, before a committee of the New York State Legislature on Energy, the Economy, and the Environment. The gist of my statement back then was “It is theoretically possible to power the New York City Subway System with wind driven turbines located in New York Harbor and off of Long Island.”

There is a tremendous market for photovoltaic modules and wind turbines. Consequently the stock price of companies that make them well are going thru the roof. (Look at Akeena, Evergreen Solar, First Solar, Sun Power, Vestas Wind, World Water and Solar. ) I think these will follow the trajectory of Apple, Compaq, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, etc, (I hope so, because I invested in them, but that’s another story.)

We could buy solar panels made in China, India, Phillipines, Germany, Spain, or - god forbid - the US. The Sierra Club, NJ PIRG, and the Steel Workers want to manufacture turbines and PV Solar mods in New Jersey, which will create 18,600 jobs over the next 10 years. Click here for local news.

The opponents whine that government investment in infrastructure is wasting Tax revenues. I believe that governments, like people, can squander their resources or invest them wisely. For example, the $2.4 Trillion we are “investing” in the war in Iraq could build and install PV Solar modules that produce 1 to 1.5 KW for every man, woman, and child in America. Building and modernizing factories, especially in the nascent clean energy sector is wise and patriotic investment.

Mike Mercurio understands national security and knows the way to energy independence. He feels it with the cool breezes and the warm light of the sun outside his Long Beach Island, NJ home. He knows that clean energy stops global warming, enhances national security, and provides jobs.

He sees it on his electric bills – $9.50 per month – $114 per year – which reflect the clean power generated by the photovoltaic solar array on his roof. Without them the bill would be $150 in the winter, $350 in the summer - about $3,000 per year.

His neighbors can’t feel it, can’t see it, and have sued to stop him alleging that it is slightly louder than an air conditioner. What are they thinking? (Not in my backyard. Give me nuclear and give me death. Rad-Waste makes Teeth Shine.)

Meet Mike Mercurio, a friend of mine in Long Beach Island, NJ. The image shows his PV Solar installation and small wind turbine. The turbine sits 34 feet above the ground. The 6-foot blades make the tip 40 feet above the ground.

Mercurio’s wind turbine and solar panels produce power without pollution - without greenhouse gases, mercury, and radioactive wastes. And with an annual bill of $114. Click Here for Treehugger, or Here for the International Herald Tribune.

His neighbors prefer smog. They prefer the hacking cough of polution related “health effects” and other “externalities” to the gentle whirr of wind power. And electric bill of $2500 per year and $3500 per year, as opposed to his grid-connect charges of $114. What are they thinking? Are they thinking?

Mercurio is a real patriot who believes in intelligent action, not empty words. His wind turbine and photovoltaic solar panels show us how to achieve energy independence, and national security, with clean safe energy, with lower costs, with no pollution.

He should be applauded and emulated, not sued and shut down.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, as ratified:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The Constitution. Wikipedia.
The Bill of Rights. Wikipedia.

If 10 or 20 other students or their professors at Virginia Tech were “packing heat” then they would have opened fire on Cho after he shot his first few victims. But the problems with that idea are obvious. Some innocent people, perhaps only 2 or 3, would still have been killed Monday, April 16. And I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable seeing guns become as prevalent as cars.

Speaking of cars, I have a right to drive, however, in order to exercise that right in New Jersey I must meet certain prerequsites - pass a road test which proves that I am capable of operating a motor vehicle, pass a written test which proves that I know the rules, maintain my car such that it is “road safe,” and carry liability insurance at or above certain minimums.

We take away driver’s licenses from drunk drivers and people who drive without insurance. We put repeat offenders in jail. You can buy a car without a license and without insurance, but you can’t drive it off the lot. And people buy cars every day.

Shouldn’t we do the same for gun ownership? Shouldn’t we ask gun owners to maintain their guns in a safe and secure manner? And carry insurance in case the guns are used irresponsibily? And disallow certain individuals from obtaining or carrying guns?
And finally, given the right to keep and bear arms because a well armed militia is necessary to the security of a free state, do I have the right to own an F 15 fighter or my own personal nuclear bomb? If not, what arms can I keep and bear? Muskets of the type that were in use during the American Revolution? The rifles of the Civil War era? Or the M16’s of today?

“Adapt or Die” says Gary Yohe, economist at Wesleyan and co-author of the UN study on climate change, on Marketplace this morning. Growing seasons will lengthen, rainfall patterns will change.

Some people are in denial. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cheerleaders. Others are adapting. You can see solar panels on homes in California and New Jersey. Their visionary owners have no electric bill; their solar powered roof top power plants will pay for themselves 8 or 10 times during their 40 year life-span.

We see wind farms in operation from Jersey to Texas to California. More are on the horizon. Power without pollution. Wind Power. Solar Power. No greenhouse gases, no radioactive wastes, no mercury. Clean Energy.

If Vestas, harnessing the wind to produce 30% of Denmark’s electric power, may be the Apple Computer of wind power, GE is the IBM, legitimizing the industry with Arklow Bank as IBM did when they introduced their PC in 1981.

Evergreen, First Solar, and Sunpower may be leap-frogging each other for “best” solar panels. Meanwhile BP, the energy company that sees itself moving “Beyond Petroleum,” manufactures solar panels in factories in Maryland, Spain, Germany, and India, for sale in Home Depot.

The best example of adapt or die can be seen in the auto industry. Honda and Toyota offer hybrids with low emissions, good mileage, and great performance. Ford and GM are still pushing gas guzzlers. Big SUV’s are only profitable when they are sold, not while rusting on dealer lots. Wall Street is voting with its “Market Capitalization” and Main Street is voting with its wallet.