[press release]
Washington -- A coalition of giant supermarket chains and token small grocers, along with a nutritionist from a supermarkets-funded program at an otherwise little known academic institution, hailed the bipartisan agreement today by the state's legislature and governor to establish the marketing of grocers greens tags.
"A lot of overpaid lobbyists have billed for a lot of hours to make this bill a reality," a spokesman for one supermarket chain is imagined to have said. "It is crucial to our efforts to improve the diets of Americans."
Background
In the past, the effort to introduce leafy greens into diets has been stymied by the extra expense of a product that shrinks substantially when cooked, thus requiring so much more to supply a satisfying meal. A cycle of reluctance to buy enough and consequent disappointment with the shrunken result prevented the movement of greens from grocers' shelves at an adequate rate to remain profitable.
That all changed in the mid-1990s when Enron expanded into the wholesale grocery business. The company's "whiz-kid" accountants perceived that there were two parts in the cost of leafy greens. As food, their cost was comparable to other, more popular, items. The extra cost was for the nutritional attributes. Enron convinced the state of California to require grocers to sell a certain percentage of "healthy" foods, particularly leafy greens which could be quickly grown.
The "greens obligations" were calculated from the purchase of the extra-cost nutritional attributes, as represented by "grocers greens tags," accounted separately from the regular food part of the greens. Grocers greens tags are "grown" at the same time as the food itself, and thus the grocer could buy the greens both as food and as a benefit to the diet.
But what if a grocer's wholesaler did not have enough greens to sell? Since some grocers had more than enough greens to meet their greens obligations, they were allowed to sell, or to allow their wholesaler to sell, the excess greens tags to others. This very effectively promoted the growth of greens by creating a profitable market for their nutritional attributes apart from their value as food. This market also allowed grocers to meet their greens obligations, if not to their own customers then by helping to defray the costs of better nutrition for the customers of other grocers.
Today
The use of grocers greens tags is now commonplace, with brokers springing up across the country and many companies buying them for their cafeterias and vending machines. Even individuals can buy them to "offset" their bad diets. Today's announcement brings the total number of states that have established a greens tags system for a healthier America to 17.
"We can all eat better, even if we don't," an executive of one of the coalition's grocery chains is said to have said.
"It's the market at work -- everyone wins," an analyst from a bloated Wall Street investment company that happens to have substantial investments in the giant grocery business added. "With grocers greens tags, combined with greens obligations standards, venture capitalists are very excited by the lower risk and much larger returns."
The coalition also recognized the untiring efforts of many public interest groups such as Greens Pease International and the state's Public Interest Group.
A statement from Greens Pease in praise of the new bill echoed the business interests: "We can have our greens and eat them, too -- or not and say we did."
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
April 26, 2006
April 25, 2006
Why a 52-MW wind "farm" is worth only 4.3 MW
I have been asked to clarify the numbers from the "data" paragraph of the previous post, "Why is VPIRG hiding?".
Capacity factor: Searsburg started at about 24% and has now been around 21% for a few years. The national average as reported by facilities themselves to the Energy Information Agency of the DOE is 27%, but they apparently do not count out-of-commission turbines, so I think 25% is a fair estimate. Note that in the U.K., with the "best" wind resource in Europe, the capacity factor also is only 24% or so.
That's the easy one.
For most of the power curve between the cut-in wind speed of 9 mph and the rated wind speed of 30 mph, the power generation increases cubically in relation to the wind speed. That is, as the wind speed doubles, the power output increases eightfold.
Say the wind speeds are evenly distributed within that range, that is, it blows at 12 mph as often as at 24 mph and so on across the range. Because the turbine produces power at much lower rates at slow than at high wind speeds (one-eighth the power, e.g., at 12 mph than at 24 mph), such an even distribution of wind speeds would mean that the turbine is producing at lower rates much more often.
All this is to explain actual observations as shown in this graphic from German grid manager Eon Netz. The curve follows the total output (or infeed to the grid) of Eon Netz's wind plant and the number of hours that level was reached or surpassed. For example, the infeed was at least 2,000 MW during approximately 5,000 quarter-hours of the year and 1,000 MW during about 12,500 quarter-hours. Higher levels of infeed were seen during much fewer quarter-hours.
The heavy horizontal line shows the average infeed (which, as a percentage of the total installed capacity, represents the capacity factor, in this case 16.4%). That level was seen during about 12,500 quarter-hours, which is 35% of the year. The graph shows, therefore, that the average rate of production is seen only a third of the time. That is, only one third of the time the turbines produce at or above their average rate.
A higher capacity factor would simply raise straighten the curve somewhat; the average infeed, although higher, would still be seen only a third of the time.
This graph, from a Views of Scotland paper, shows the same thing even more clearly. Each bar shows how many hours of the year the infeed was in the specified range. The total heights of the first three columns represent two-thirds of the year but only one-fourth of the installed capacity. The capacity factor in Denmark is actually around 20% or less, so a rate of production at or above average was reached less than a third of the time.
That's the time the wind plant is reasonably productive. But that is not really how I got down to 4.3% effective capacity for UPC's proposed 52-MW facility in Sheffield and Sutton.
The "effective" capacity is a measure of how much other sources could be replaced by wind power for the supply system to remain reliable. It is also called "capacity credit." It is a much more speculative number, but study after study of the grid integration of intermittent, nondispatchable, and imprecisely predictable wind energy put it at about a third of the capacity factor.
The scenario is that even as, say, a 52-MW wind plant produces at an average of 13 MW, the grid cannot decommission or plan not to install a corresponding 13 MW but perhaps only a third of that. As more wind plant is added and therefore more often uses more of the rest of the system to balance it, that "credit" approaches zero (which the Irish Grid study I alluded to clearly states).
I'm a bit out of my depth here, but I would assume the capacity credit would be reflected in costs to utilities, which would be similarly unable to contract for less energy to an amount that is anywhere near the amount of wind power they may purchase. Thus, if Washington Electric buys UPC's production from 52 MW of turbines averaging 13 MW, it would be able to buy only 4.3 MW less from other sources.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism
Capacity factor: Searsburg started at about 24% and has now been around 21% for a few years. The national average as reported by facilities themselves to the Energy Information Agency of the DOE is 27%, but they apparently do not count out-of-commission turbines, so I think 25% is a fair estimate. Note that in the U.K., with the "best" wind resource in Europe, the capacity factor also is only 24% or so.
That's the easy one.
For most of the power curve between the cut-in wind speed of 9 mph and the rated wind speed of 30 mph, the power generation increases cubically in relation to the wind speed. That is, as the wind speed doubles, the power output increases eightfold.
Say the wind speeds are evenly distributed within that range, that is, it blows at 12 mph as often as at 24 mph and so on across the range. Because the turbine produces power at much lower rates at slow than at high wind speeds (one-eighth the power, e.g., at 12 mph than at 24 mph), such an even distribution of wind speeds would mean that the turbine is producing at lower rates much more often.
All this is to explain actual observations as shown in this graphic from German grid manager Eon Netz. The curve follows the total output (or infeed to the grid) of Eon Netz's wind plant and the number of hours that level was reached or surpassed. For example, the infeed was at least 2,000 MW during approximately 5,000 quarter-hours of the year and 1,000 MW during about 12,500 quarter-hours. Higher levels of infeed were seen during much fewer quarter-hours.
The heavy horizontal line shows the average infeed (which, as a percentage of the total installed capacity, represents the capacity factor, in this case 16.4%). That level was seen during about 12,500 quarter-hours, which is 35% of the year. The graph shows, therefore, that the average rate of production is seen only a third of the time. That is, only one third of the time the turbines produce at or above their average rate.
A higher capacity factor would simply raise straighten the curve somewhat; the average infeed, although higher, would still be seen only a third of the time.
This graph, from a Views of Scotland paper, shows the same thing even more clearly. Each bar shows how many hours of the year the infeed was in the specified range. The total heights of the first three columns represent two-thirds of the year but only one-fourth of the installed capacity. The capacity factor in Denmark is actually around 20% or less, so a rate of production at or above average was reached less than a third of the time.
That's the time the wind plant is reasonably productive. But that is not really how I got down to 4.3% effective capacity for UPC's proposed 52-MW facility in Sheffield and Sutton.
The "effective" capacity is a measure of how much other sources could be replaced by wind power for the supply system to remain reliable. It is also called "capacity credit." It is a much more speculative number, but study after study of the grid integration of intermittent, nondispatchable, and imprecisely predictable wind energy put it at about a third of the capacity factor.
The scenario is that even as, say, a 52-MW wind plant produces at an average of 13 MW, the grid cannot decommission or plan not to install a corresponding 13 MW but perhaps only a third of that. As more wind plant is added and therefore more often uses more of the rest of the system to balance it, that "credit" approaches zero (which the Irish Grid study I alluded to clearly states).
I'm a bit out of my depth here, but I would assume the capacity credit would be reflected in costs to utilities, which would be similarly unable to contract for less energy to an amount that is anywhere near the amount of wind power they may purchase. Thus, if Washington Electric buys UPC's production from 52 MW of turbines averaging 13 MW, it would be able to buy only 4.3 MW less from other sources.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism
April 22, 2006
Why is VPIRG hiding?
It is no secret that VPIRG supports industrial-scale wind power development of Vermont's ridgelines. It has been at the forefront of arguing on behalf of the developers, even as it fights such heedless sprawl in every other issue they are involved in.
After the recommendation from the Public Service Board hearing officer to deny a permit to the four-turbine project in East Haven, the next project they are advocating for is a 26-turbine (each 399 feet high) development in Sheffield and Sutton. But the "group" sent out to rally the people in the developer's favor is called "Clean Power Vermont."
I looked up the group's internet domain (cleanpowervt.org) information some time ago and discovered that it was registered by VPIRG. The main organizer, Tyler Edgar, is an employee of VPIRG. (She was also the sole representative of an earlier group, "Clean Air Vermont," which held an "informational" meeting in Sutton before that town rejected the project by a margin of 6 to 1.) Joining her for the Sheffield push is Drew Hudson, field director of VPIRG. The domain information is now hidden, but the the web pages are still filled (at the time of this writing) with code referring to vpirg.org.
Although they may have been defeated in East Haven, VPIRG board members Dave Rapaport and Mathew Rubin (the developers) are now targeting the string of ridges between East Haven and Island Pond (town of Brighton) that overlook the protected "Champion" lands and the Nulhegan Basin, which has been recognized by National Geographic as one of the world's prime "geotourism" destinations. Obviously VPIRG/EMDC (Rubin & Rapaport's company) needs a favorable precedent to improve their chances of a permit and thus their fanatical -- and dishonest -- promotion of the Sheffield/Sutton installations.
Data: Italy-based UPC has applied to erect 26 two-megawatt (MW) turbines (Gamesa G87 models), each 399 feet high (requiring strobe lights day and night), their rotor blades each sweeping a vertical air space of 1.47 acres. The average output from this 52-MW facility can be expected to be only 25% of its rated capacity, or 13 MW. Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed below the ideal of 30 mph, however, it would generate at or above that rate only a third of the time, as shown by infeed curves from Germany and Ireland. Its effective capacity, its actual contribution to grid capacity planning, would be about a third of that, or 4.3 MW, since it is nondispatchable, variable, and imprecisely predictable. (This figure of the effective capacity, or capacity credit, of large-scale wind power on the grid is taken from studies by New York, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Germany, all of them supportive of wind power development; the Irish and German studies also noticed that as more wind power is added to the system, presumably as its penetration approaches the excess capacity that can readily serve to balance its fluctuating infeed, the capacity credit of new turbines approaches zero.)
At 4.3 MW effective capacity, the output from the Sheffield/Sutton plant would represent about two-thirds of one percent of Vermont's current electricity needs. Clearly the negative impacts of such a massive and prominently intrusive facility far outweigh this meager possible benefit.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
After the recommendation from the Public Service Board hearing officer to deny a permit to the four-turbine project in East Haven, the next project they are advocating for is a 26-turbine (each 399 feet high) development in Sheffield and Sutton. But the "group" sent out to rally the people in the developer's favor is called "Clean Power Vermont."
I looked up the group's internet domain (cleanpowervt.org) information some time ago and discovered that it was registered by VPIRG. The main organizer, Tyler Edgar, is an employee of VPIRG. (She was also the sole representative of an earlier group, "Clean Air Vermont," which held an "informational" meeting in Sutton before that town rejected the project by a margin of 6 to 1.) Joining her for the Sheffield push is Drew Hudson, field director of VPIRG. The domain information is now hidden, but the the web pages are still filled (at the time of this writing) with code referring to vpirg.org.
Although they may have been defeated in East Haven, VPIRG board members Dave Rapaport and Mathew Rubin (the developers) are now targeting the string of ridges between East Haven and Island Pond (town of Brighton) that overlook the protected "Champion" lands and the Nulhegan Basin, which has been recognized by National Geographic as one of the world's prime "geotourism" destinations. Obviously VPIRG/EMDC (Rubin & Rapaport's company) needs a favorable precedent to improve their chances of a permit and thus their fanatical -- and dishonest -- promotion of the Sheffield/Sutton installations.
Data: Italy-based UPC has applied to erect 26 two-megawatt (MW) turbines (Gamesa G87 models), each 399 feet high (requiring strobe lights day and night), their rotor blades each sweeping a vertical air space of 1.47 acres. The average output from this 52-MW facility can be expected to be only 25% of its rated capacity, or 13 MW. Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed below the ideal of 30 mph, however, it would generate at or above that rate only a third of the time, as shown by infeed curves from Germany and Ireland. Its effective capacity, its actual contribution to grid capacity planning, would be about a third of that, or 4.3 MW, since it is nondispatchable, variable, and imprecisely predictable. (This figure of the effective capacity, or capacity credit, of large-scale wind power on the grid is taken from studies by New York, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Germany, all of them supportive of wind power development; the Irish and German studies also noticed that as more wind power is added to the system, presumably as its penetration approaches the excess capacity that can readily serve to balance its fluctuating infeed, the capacity credit of new turbines approaches zero.)
At 4.3 MW effective capacity, the output from the Sheffield/Sutton plant would represent about two-thirds of one percent of Vermont's current electricity needs. Clearly the negative impacts of such a massive and prominently intrusive facility far outweigh this meager possible benefit.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
April 21, 2006
Greenpeace dishonest
"While you're paying close to $3.00 a gallon at the gas pump, Congress is secretly trying to kill big oil's competition, and only YOU can help us fight back."
That's from Greenpeace's recent appeal to join the fight against the admittedly sleazy effort in Congress to allow Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to kill the Cape Wind project on the shoals of Nantucket Sound.
First, it is bizarre to hear Greenpeace focusing their reason to back Cape Wind to a claim that it will reduce energy prices. What about the vaunted environmental benefits?
Second, it is pathetic to hear Greenpeace suggesting that wind power provides gasoline for our cars (let alone enough to affect the price).
There's nothing wrong with an honest and open debate -- in fact it is to be much preferred to back-room manipulation and bullying -- but this, along with the many other appeals from Cape Wind's promoters, is not it. It is bad enough when the hucksters investing in and developing these projects misrepresent them, which is (has to be) their normal mode of business. That "defenders of the environment" also throw their integrity overboard and engage in any deceitful means to push these projects is quite disheartening.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
That's from Greenpeace's recent appeal to join the fight against the admittedly sleazy effort in Congress to allow Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to kill the Cape Wind project on the shoals of Nantucket Sound.
First, it is bizarre to hear Greenpeace focusing their reason to back Cape Wind to a claim that it will reduce energy prices. What about the vaunted environmental benefits?
Second, it is pathetic to hear Greenpeace suggesting that wind power provides gasoline for our cars (let alone enough to affect the price).
There's nothing wrong with an honest and open debate -- in fact it is to be much preferred to back-room manipulation and bullying -- but this, along with the many other appeals from Cape Wind's promoters, is not it. It is bad enough when the hucksters investing in and developing these projects misrepresent them, which is (has to be) their normal mode of business. That "defenders of the environment" also throw their integrity overboard and engage in any deceitful means to push these projects is quite disheartening.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
April 19, 2006
Support for wind energy declines in statewide poll
According to the latest poll commissioned by big wind flak Renewable Energy Vermont (press release, Feb. 2, 2006), "The number of Vermonters who would like to see more wind energy in Vermont increased to 43%, up from 30% in a 2002 statewide poll." Not mentioned is that the result of this question in the 2004 edition of the poll was 42% for wind. That is, support for wind energy has not increased.
Another deceit in the release of this year's poll was to combine answers to the question about wind turbines on ridges (where the industrialists insist on placing them; also note there were no supportive questions to assess the respondent's knowledge of the technology and the issues). Whereas in the previous polls, four answers besides "other" and "don't know" were reported (beautiful, acceptable, unacceptable, and ugly), this time "acceptable" -- a rather neutral answer, and therefore consistently representing the vast majority, who aren't affected by proposed projects -- was combined with "beautiful."
The fact is, the "beautiful" response declined from 2002 (11%) to 2004 (8%), as did the "acceptable" response slightly (68% to 66%). Again, the latest results are compared with the 2002 results, but only as the combined "beautiful/acceptable": from 79% in 2002 to 81% in 2006 (ignoring the drop to 74% in 2004). Because the individual responses aren't reported, it is evident that "beautiful" continued to decline.
In all three editions of the poll, the more reasonably combined "unacceptable/ugly" responses remained consistent at 16%. In 2004, this was twice the "beautiful" response, and it is probably more in the 2006 results. Again, this poll shows that a favorable view of wind power on mountain ridges continues to decline.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism
Another deceit in the release of this year's poll was to combine answers to the question about wind turbines on ridges (where the industrialists insist on placing them; also note there were no supportive questions to assess the respondent's knowledge of the technology and the issues). Whereas in the previous polls, four answers besides "other" and "don't know" were reported (beautiful, acceptable, unacceptable, and ugly), this time "acceptable" -- a rather neutral answer, and therefore consistently representing the vast majority, who aren't affected by proposed projects -- was combined with "beautiful."
The fact is, the "beautiful" response declined from 2002 (11%) to 2004 (8%), as did the "acceptable" response slightly (68% to 66%). Again, the latest results are compared with the 2002 results, but only as the combined "beautiful/acceptable": from 79% in 2002 to 81% in 2006 (ignoring the drop to 74% in 2004). Because the individual responses aren't reported, it is evident that "beautiful" continued to decline.
In all three editions of the poll, the more reasonably combined "unacceptable/ugly" responses remained consistent at 16%. In 2004, this was twice the "beautiful" response, and it is probably more in the 2006 results. Again, this poll shows that a favorable view of wind power on mountain ridges continues to decline.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism
April 17, 2006
"Big Thinker" scared of little questions
Shea Gunther, self-described "big thinker," continues to pettily limit the comments posted to his blog. I was contacted by "Rosa" after she saw a question of hers removed. Gunther's post was about Whole Foods pushing wind energy for Earth Day. Rosa asked if they are talking about buying actual energy (through one's utility) or just "green tags."
After the question's disappearance, she poked around to find out more and came across the description here of Gunther's censorship of "Rucio," even blocking his replies to a post and comments directly attacking him. Rosa added a comment there, too, asking, since Gunther wrote that he looked forward to the "antiwind nutjobs'" replies, why there weren't any. It was soon disappeared.
Gunther calls his hucksterism "eco-entrepreneurship." Since he keeps the comments section of his blog open only to replies that reinforce his view of himself, a more appropriate prefix would be "ego" or "echo." At the least, he should include a disclaimer that only comments that help promote his business (current caper: carbon offsets) are included.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism
After the question's disappearance, she poked around to find out more and came across the description here of Gunther's censorship of "Rucio," even blocking his replies to a post and comments directly attacking him. Rosa added a comment there, too, asking, since Gunther wrote that he looked forward to the "antiwind nutjobs'" replies, why there weren't any. It was soon disappeared.
Gunther calls his hucksterism "eco-entrepreneurship." Since he keeps the comments section of his blog open only to replies that reinforce his view of himself, a more appropriate prefix would be "ego" or "echo." At the least, he should include a disclaimer that only comments that help promote his business (current caper: carbon offsets) are included.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism
April 16, 2006
Sunday papers: Screw the people, screw the planet
Eileen McNamara tears at the Democrats in her Boston Globe column today:
Meanwhile the Bush administration, with the cooperation of most Democrats in Congress, continues its attack on the poor, requiring Medicaid recipients to prove their U.S. citizenship starting July 1. It is meant to stop, As one compassionate conservative, Representative Charlie Norwood of Georgia, is quoted in the New York Times, the "theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens." It is expected to save the government $220 million over five years. Annually, that's equivalent to the cost for seven minutes of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.
Of final note, a commentary in the Times by Jamie Lincoln Kitman describes the hucksterism that has embraced hybrid automobiles (as it has so much else that might have been "green" but is now manipulated into meaninglessness to cater to the fads of consumerism).
He points out that a hybrid is best for city driving, with lots of starts and stops, and that many conventional cars have much better mileage than hybrids on the highway. Most egregious are hybrid SUVs, in which the electric motor simply adds a little boost to help haul around the massive vehicle and contributes almost nothing to fuel efficiency. In short, most hybrid vehicles are not any better than conventional vehicles, yet the owner of a hybrid but still gas-guzzling SUV can claim tax incentives and use preferred traffic lanes and parking spots while the owner of a truly fuel-efficient, but not hybrid, car is denied any such privilege.
environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism
The hapless Democrats, apparently mesmerized by rave reviews of the ["bogus 'universal' health insurance"] legislation in the clueless national press, got punked.and
Democrats, as leery of being labeled "polarizing" as they are of being called "unpatriotic," have developed an irrational fear of rhetorical confrontation that is costing them credibility as well as elections. Voters are eager for bipartisan cooperation, not for blind cooption. They respect compromise, not capitulation. What the public witnessed last week in Massachusetts was Democratic complicity in a staged campaign event designed to promote the presidential ambitions of a Republican governor selling an unproven ability to work cooperatively with his ideological adversaries.Romney vetoed portions of the bill, notably the requirement for employers to provide insurance or pay into a state fund, although the legislature is expected to override that veto. On the other hand, they may not want to jeopardize their standing in the "bipartisan problem-solving" club, even though it is Romney who is the outsider and the one jettisoning key aspects of the "agreement." Or maybe they know it's a sham bill, so they really don't care.
Meanwhile the Bush administration, with the cooperation of most Democrats in Congress, continues its attack on the poor, requiring Medicaid recipients to prove their U.S. citizenship starting July 1. It is meant to stop, As one compassionate conservative, Representative Charlie Norwood of Georgia, is quoted in the New York Times, the "theft of Medicaid benefits by illegal aliens." It is expected to save the government $220 million over five years. Annually, that's equivalent to the cost for seven minutes of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.
Of final note, a commentary in the Times by Jamie Lincoln Kitman describes the hucksterism that has embraced hybrid automobiles (as it has so much else that might have been "green" but is now manipulated into meaninglessness to cater to the fads of consumerism).
He points out that a hybrid is best for city driving, with lots of starts and stops, and that many conventional cars have much better mileage than hybrids on the highway. Most egregious are hybrid SUVs, in which the electric motor simply adds a little boost to help haul around the massive vehicle and contributes almost nothing to fuel efficiency. In short, most hybrid vehicles are not any better than conventional vehicles, yet the owner of a hybrid but still gas-guzzling SUV can claim tax incentives and use preferred traffic lanes and parking spots while the owner of a truly fuel-efficient, but not hybrid, car is denied any such privilege.
environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism
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