The Delmarva Backroom Deal Smoking Gun(s)
If anyone is looking for a smoking gun that proves that Copeland, McDowell, and Adams entered into an agreement with Delmarva to derail and ultimately kill the Wind Power project just look down.
The floor is littered with smoking guns. You can’t take a step in Delaware without finding a smoking gun at your feet. We have become to smoking guns what Arlington National Cemetery is to grave markers. Every move that McDowell, Copeland and Adams have made since the eve of the PSC decision to go forward with the Blue water wind has been exactly in line with Gary Stockbridge and Delmarva’s desires.
Today’s smoking gun is this quote from Delmarva regarding McDowell’s call for more “hearings”:
Bill Yingling, spokesman for Delmarva Power, said: “We look forward to the hearings. This is about getting the best prices for our customers.”
Tommywonk blogs the full story.
Bottom line: McDowell should just come out and say, “I work for Delmarva and this wind power deal is off. Get over it” This kabuki dance is nauseating.
Just got a call from someone doing a survey (didn’t ask) about wind power. Two questions in all.
1. Was I familiar with th Window Power Project?
2. If so, did I support the project?
Stockbridge is shitting his pants even with McDowell, Adams and Copeland on the take.
“Just got a call from someone doing a survey (didn’t ask) about wind power. Two questions in all.
1. Was I familiar with th Window Power Project?
2. If so, did I support the project?”
Me too. They should do this; it is extraordinarily beneficial for the state. I want to send a letter to someone. Does anybody have an e-mail to get this going?
Sunshine…..on the liberals…..makes me happy!!!!
Sunshine…..on the liberals…..makes me high!!!!
YEAH…..HEARINGS!!!!
If ya got nuthin’ to hide, ya got nuthin’ to lose.
Anyone against hearings is a thieving union crook!
Dear Anonymous Blue Water Sucks,
You doublespeak prole! You cannot even write a sentence. Surrender yourself now and the Glorious Conservative Cultural Revolution Committee will go easy on you. Your filth will land you in Hero Mukasey’s radical extremist enhanced interrogation technique camps. I hope you like to wear orange and flip flops.
You know we need wind power so when it fails we can eliminate the proles, anaco-commie-demonazis and their islamofasiguts allies.
Thanks for giving away the plan. Doubleungood, right deviationist.
The only good thing you did was your pitiful attempt to savage the democommie menace. That will be taken into account. You only need minor re-education at this point, but your mental instability could get worse.
Leave it to professionals from the Ministry of Truth.
If you ever claim the great banner of the Glorious Conservative Cultural Revolution, there will be hell to pay.
I shit you not.
Democriminals, igonore this mentally unstable party member. Go on with your little project.
Get ready Mrs. Copeland.
Stockbridge: (running toward car)…no….no comment…
Reporter: But you said that you never met with Senator Copeland in September ..?
Stockbridge: (trying to get in car) …I have no comment…
It is on.
If ya had something, Jason, you’d have played it.
Ya got nuthin’. Fold.
You’re like the male Celia Cohen, but with less testicles.
Just what makes Delmarva evil and Blue Water good? Is it trendiness?
Electric power is fungible and it makes sense to buy what is cheapest. Why is not the Delaware Co-Op clamoring to buy those bargain megawatts that some would oblige Delnarva to purchase? It the Co-Op had been obliged to get into what appears to be a sucker deal, there would have been even more opposition to the scheme.
Electric power demands vary with time of day and temperature. Variations in the wind are not likely to be synchronized with power demands so the supplementary enrgy might not be there when required. Conventional sources of power can be varied.
Remember the marketplace.
Hero Art Downs,
You Said, “Just what makes Delmarva evil and Blue Water good? Is it trendiness?”
You know it is the Terrorist Sympathizing, Democommie, Code-speaker, Traitors way to support “green” jihadi causes in their battle for “renewable” energy.
Whatever the hell that is.
You know how we will manipulate them Hero Art Downs. Do not fear. The proles will lose.
But let them have their little projects. It is amusing to our World Leader.
Mrs. Copeland,
You are right to be nervous.
There are several competitors of PEPCO Holding that have begun contracting with BWW, IIRC, perhaps some of the CO-OPs or Washington Gas & Electric.
Publius may be cute hs responses but his comments ignore the underlying logic.
Glibness has always been a favorite means of avoiding real debate.
Satire is the best medicine for political humors. It will expose underlying assumptions. In a world where what we say is as controlled as how we say it, glibness and satire are often confused.
The assumption of the debate is that- wind power is good? Normal power is bad? I never offered a point of view on that, but questioning the logic of having windpower is a fallacy of not keeping pace with the market, the market needs alternative power sources and backup energy from coal and other sources to ensure it continues to work at all. Each needs to keep pace with the will of the people and work to keep up with the demands of the market. Connection with the people not isolated ivory towers and vested and corrupt interests are needed.
Energy can be stored and sold, traded and marketed. So your analogy about “downtimes” goes out the window- but what is more important is the will to embrace changes in how to make energy and what its purpose is….if its purpose is to line the pockets of the already obscenely wealthy, then we will be on coal and fossil fuels for the forseeable, if it is the public interest we will diversify and find ways to drive prices down.
The profit motive to the exlcusion of human impacts in energy power does not help anyone but the elite.
Profit and human need are not contradictory, they can work together when greed is reigned in to serve the public interest.
Otherwise we are headed to the world Publius lives in.
Extremes always arise when human logic and common sense give in to doctrinal ideology. Even if that ideology masks itself as relatively benign it has human impacts that are very real. No where is this more true than in energy policy.
Publius likes to point out our fallacies and doctrinal extremes with satire.
Publius must be European….because no energy is effectively “stored” in the US grid. Once supplied to the grid, what is not used is lost.
Jason, you’re like an unfunny Rob Schneider….oh wait….that’s redundant.
Durp, durp!!!!
Energy can be stored and sold, traded and marketed Publius
I remember a television ad that told of the wonderful benefits of creating a market for ‘excess bandwidth’. I wondered how this would work but figured those folks at Enron were on to something that was in the ‘passeth all understanding’ category.
Is it possible that some of the Enron folks who managed to duck indictment arenow involved with Bluewater?
Just how does one store megawatt hours of electical energy during demand valleys and make them available during peaks of demand?
I am eager to learn.
” Just how does one store megawatt hours of electrical energy during demand valleys and make them available during peaks of demand?”
I know this is not publius… that is funny…but I have been discussing this for years. I would like to offer and opinion if you guys do not mind. Publius is not wrong on the ideas and despite the laconic humor. I hope Publius does not call me any names!
To get the needed changes in the energy policy, you need to make energy production policy a local affair and bring the process into the 21st century through starting with the local communities, small towns and cities, and look out regionally. Once you have mastered the regional market you can look even further. It is predicated on the idea of progress with new methods. Remember the best things that work come through experimentation. But I see what publius means, if we kill experiments in new energy we will always be dependent on other people and that is not in anyone’s best interest except the corporate honchos.
Energy is passed along into the grid as it is produced, once on the grid, it creates periods of excess bandwidth during low valley times, and usage goes up during peak periods. Enron simply traded from one grid to another without actually doing anything. They were screwed from the beginning.
Anyway, you have the charts and can track year to year usage. During the valleys you sell to the regional grid, if you are using all the energy sources this should bring down prices for local consumers, during peaks you focus usage on the local grid to support production. That is why my brother pays 23.00 for energy from Niagara Hydropower; and why I have to pay 200.00 for Delmarva; despite the fact that we use the same amount in relative terms, the costs go down when the supply is natural, and the costs go up when they have to shipped in from West Virginia.
Local fuel in Delaware could be as easy as giving everyone access to solar, wind and hydro, or the opportunity to become their own energy company if they have a stream or river, or if they have a farm…
This can be done in two ways, 1. Through centralized alternative power sources, or 2. Decentralizing energy policy. Both will help offset coal/ gas usage but they do not (at this time) eliminate it.
In the centralized system you develop wind and solar farms and give farmers and businesses incentives to invest in those technologies. In the decentralized system you give everyone the opportunity, access and incentives to make their own energy, to be sold to the grid, or sold to the company who sells to the grid. One model is being used in Japan and China, the other is being used in Germany and some Chinese cities.
As far as I have seen both work quite well and reduce the people’s dependence on standard energy sources. In Germany and Japan it is centralized and costs a lot, in some Chinese cities and parts of Germany it is decentralized and people pay less than 80.00 a month in parts of Hong Kong for a 4 bedroom house with 9-10 people living in it and a restaurant at the bottom. I am sure we could do better. But it takes a real shift in the way we view energy policy.
In Germany where people pay more, it is largely a centralized system and people pay for it through taxes and usage bills that are high.
Anyway, if we ever decide to do this, I would advocate a decentralized system where people make their own energy and sell it to the grid because it seems to work very well and it is balanced by reserves of coal and a basket of centralized and decentralized sources to ensure it works. That way the market gets more diversification and choices open up and people get an opportunity to have independent energy production.
Dear Hero Brian,
Go the fuck back to sucking on FSP’s bronze balls. Loser.
publius = donviti
Even his alias is pathetic!
The contribution by Brian seemed well-meaning but he missed the point.
My comment re ‘bandwidth’ had nothing to do with power generation but with anothe Enron scam. One should note that Enron dumped engineers and hired a lot of overpaid MBA types who were as enthusiastic about selling the program as an AMWAY rep.
‘Congeneration’ sounds like a great idea but how is that power from individual small producers put onto the power grid? With polyphase systems, putting back some power that leads or lags the line voltage will wreak substantial havoc is there is a measurable phase difference.
How will the required phase locking be achieved?
The devil is always in the details.
“With polyphase systems, putting back some power that leads or lags the line voltage will wreak substantial havoc is there is a measurable phase difference.
How will the required phase locking be achieved?”
Forget Enron, to do creative work you need a vision, you need physicists, engineers and project managers. Forget the Enron scam. They were jerks and they were not the smarest guys in the room, just the greediest. To get energy policy to work and to make an impact, we do not need clever administrators who are good at allowing their bottom to grow, we need creative people.
This is the truly brilliant part of the systems I saw in China, was that the individual small producers sell the energy directly back to the grid. But before it gets there it has to go through a small regional station where it is monitored and they make sure that the standard phasing and power systems are used. So the company made money selling the energy production equipment to the local producers and the producer and company both made money selling it to the grid.
To ensure the quality of the conduction and appropriate phase amplification the energy company people had a small station manned with one guy who would receive energy back from each producer in the canton. It was his job to ensure regularity, and conformity with the standards, it was then sent directly into the grid. So as it was produced and transferred the individual’s contribution in KwH was recorded.
Some people were even renting their neighbor’s roof to have more access area to sell solar energy back to the company and make a profit or for their homes and blocks. One guy never paid for energy and was making money from selling energy. The guy with a little stream in his yard was rapidly becoming a middle class villager.
They made an investment in the technology and hardware and were making a profit selling renewable energy back through their local energy office. The company would proivde the wiring and the connection points, install the generators and help the villagers install the solar panels or in the case of the guy with a stream make a small dam. They would prrovide isntructions and technical assistance on istalling the stuff. Once people made a little money they could save it and invest more in new panels and rent their neighbors roof or buy more panels for their own.
With these conditions that are favorable for entreprenuership, I think we can overcome phase locking and ensure that the generated energy meets the standards set by the company and prducers use the appropriate kind of equipment. To my mind this decentralized approach was amazing. It gives companies and producers a great and relatively easy way to make energy and make money.
It was primitive capitalism at work without any government intervention and you could see the changes taking place as a result.
This was very interesting, I thought, if China can do this certainly we can do it. But, to do this we would need to change our policies on energy and the relationship between people and the energy companies from one of confrontation to one of ownership, it is a lot harder to feel screwed when you know “we are in this together”- and those who are willing and able can make a contribution and do get a reward and a tax credit for doing so and sometimes no energy bill at all.
It does work. It just needs the company to invest in the community and set standards on the equipment to use. It created the most democratic atmosphere I had seen. It was like each little generator was partner, becuase their bills were extremely low except for winter months they felt like franchisees. And the people invested were all making money and getting tax credits for it. People who could not afford it were to the point where they could.
It also created an environment of healthy competition and entrepreneurship. I remember thinking, America could do this tomorrow, then I thought of how we agonize over these decisions, we should not we can do this stuff; it is easy once they put the infrastructure in place. And ensure that we use the right products to do so. Technically every person who can afford it could be a power producers in this state.
So what does this mean, well, what it does mean is that the power company has to play along.
Without that, you are likely to get havoc.
With that you have a sustainable congeneration project. Now in China they backed the program up with reserves of coal and active mining. If we were really savvy, we would take this model and diversify it even more, at the same time, ensure that the standards for transmission etc. are the same across the grid and we can do multiple congeneration. And once it is up and running along locally, sell back to the regional grid and compete in a larger market. It would offset coal and nat. gas use, but we would still stock up on coal anyway to ensure we have a certain timeframe’s worth (like a year) in reserve for any failures. We would ask the EPA and DNREC to ease up on hydro programs, be more open to wind, and set up a commission not to debate it, but to do it.
From what I saw over there, the Chinese village was rocketing ahead of us. I do not want to fall behind that curve for no good reason. Or because we have become so complacent we can’t try new things. Or because someone has their hands deep in someone elses pockets. None of those are valid reasons to keep this from the public.
The good thing about details is that they can be worked out. The terrible thing is that special interests and paradigms is that they cannot be worked out the same way.
Anyway, the outline of the model is there and it works.