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May 2008 Commentary
Nurturing invention
 Richard G. Biever
Senior Editor
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. What better month, then, than the one in which we celebrate the women who have nurtured us and cared for us, to talk about the baby boom of invention needed in the electrical industry if we want to keep our lights on and rates affordable, and meet the climate change goals.
As discussed in our continuing series, “An Environment of Change,” we are running out of electricity.
Consumers are using more and more energy to power their modern lives. But there is a price many people — even those in positions of leadership on Capitol Hill — seem to deny. That is the price of building generation. While renewables and conservation are important components in meeting these energy challenges, they alone will not meet the demand. We need to build power plants that still use fuels. That’s where new technology and innovation will need to step in.
Since last May, Electric Consumer has been talking about the “prism” analysis that was presented last year by the Electric Power Research Institute. We’ve begun discussing in depth its seven elements that, working together, will meet our energy demands and still cut carbon dioxide emissions (please see the back cover). It’s a balanced and realistic strategy that works over the next 25 years.
But it’s based on assumptions.
It assumes new coal-fired power plants (assuming state and federal officials will permit them) will continue to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. These technologies already exist, but they need to be expanded in larger-scale plants.
The analysis assumes we’ll be able to capture carbon dioxide from coal and natural gas plants and store it permanently underground. The technology is advancing here, but applying this to large-scale operations is still a decade or more away.
The analysis assumes nuclear power will be allowed to expand, and a new breed of plug-in hybrid vehicles will replace more and more of the big combustion-engine cars we drive today.
We need to incorporate more renewables into our mix, but not all renewables will work everywhere. And even widely distributed renewables like wind still have intermittency problems. In late February, when south Florida was dealing with a wide-scale blackout, the wind suddenly stopped blowing across the Texas plains. Generation from the large Texas wind farms stopped, and the electric grid there just avoided a major shut down, too.
Hoosier Energy REC, the cooperative power supplier to REMCs and RECs in the southern half of Indiana, featured a wind turbine at its annual meeting last month. The 1.8 kilowatt turbine is the kind many energy-conscious and conscientious folks are installing or considering. But the unit and its proper installation on a tower costs around $20,000.
The return in power? About enough electricity to power a third of the average home. At any one time it could run your refrigerator or hair dryer or the lights. But that’s only when the wind blows — about 20 percent of the time in Southern Indiana. At around $20,025, that’s a “green” hair dryer most people can’t afford.
The necessity to generate affordable electricity and cut carbon dioxide will drive these and new technologies — and even more advanced ones like fuel cells and fusion — onward. One thing that won’t nurture invention, though, and will actually hinder it and drive up costs, will be a government mandate.
May is a great time to remember how rural electrification — the greatest partnership between government and the people — built the greatest machine the world has seen: this system of power lines covering 70 percent of the nation’s landmass. In May of 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the executive order creating the Rural Electrification Administration, a relief agency to bring power to the vast unserved rural areas.
A year later, in May of 1936, he signed into law the Rural Electrification Act, a bill that was co-sponsored by Republican Sen. George Norris, that made the REA a permanent agency of the federal government to help consumer-owned co-ops electrify the nation.
As Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, noted in his address to the nation’s co-op leaders in February, “The president didn’t say: ‘You people go out and provide electric power all across the country while the rest of us sit on the fence and determine what penalties will be assigned if you don’t meet these goals.’ No, President Roosevelt said we need a partnership between the government and the people.”
Likewise, citing the Apollo space program, English said, “I do not remember President Kennedy saying, ‘You, contractors, engineers, people in the aerospace business, get us to the moon or we’re going to penalize you by the end of this decade.’ No, government was a partner. Government was engaged.”
Solving these current challenges before us will take a national Apollo-program-like mustering of resources and technology, public and private. We did it in the 1930s and the 1960s. We will do this time, too. We must protect our Mother Earth. But we also need the electricity to be there when caring mothers (using a CFL on a motion sensor, I hope) leave the porch lights on for the next generation.
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 4/30/2008
Number of Views: 133
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