A 10 Day Around the Horn [8.16.13 to 8.27.13]
Sorry for the delay in getting this around the horn to you. I meant to have it ready on Friday, but I had my physical. So I delayed it to Saturday, but then I had my Fantasy Football draft. And then on Sunday and Monday I was toying with the idea of just waiting until Friday for a two week round-up. But then I started writing it and it was getting too big. So I am just going to post what I have now, and do another Around the Horn column on Friday, September 6.
So here is what the Delaware blogosphere was talking about this past 10 days. I have organized the postings into individual subjects. Organization FTW!
Teachers and Testing–John Young at Transparent Christina takes issue with John Sweeney’s latest op-ed to the News Journal about the “growing pains“ of the teacher evaluation system. Kavips has some thoughts too. Another News Journal op-ed saying that teachers are afraid of tests got some definite reaction from Kavips and Steve Newton at Delaware Libertarian.
Charter Schools–Kavips looks at arguments that Tennessee’s proposed charter school law was unconstitutional. Can these arguments be applied to HB 165?
Department of Education Awards and Grants–Kavips lists them all.
Proposed New Castle Tire Incinerator–Nancy at Delaware Way thinks we are being sold a bill of goods, and Governor Markell, DNREC Secretary O’Mara and Alan Levin are the salesmen.
The big news during the show yesterday was a call in from district County Councilman, George Smiley, who said that he was told by the owner of the industrial park at 78 McCullough Dr, New Castle – where ReNew Oil, DEDO and DNREC claim the facility will be located – that this incinerator is NOT and was NOT EVER going to be a tenant there. That begs quite a few questions:
• How can a permit be requested and considered for a site with no lease where the property owner claims never to have spoken to ReNew Oil?
• Does this reveal a ‘trojan horse conspiracy’ of sorts for opening the door to allegedly ‘clean’gasification process?
Highmark and MedExpress–Steve Newton at Delaware Libertarian shows us the future for non-Highmark hospitals in Delaware. No, he is not psychic. He knows the future because this whole monopoly has already played out in Pennsylvania. And the footprint for Highmark in Delaware is already larger than you think.
Revolutionary War–Kavips blew my mind with this opening:
Occasionally something that you looked at many times, but have never seen, suddenly jumps out and changes your whole perspective. For example, I had always thought that as far as the Revolutionary War went, Delaware’s only claim to fame was that the new flag was first flown in battle on Delaware’s soil…….
Not so! Two hundred thirty-six years ago today, things were really jumping in these parts. It may seem like a long time ago to most of us, but in reality it is only a string of three ten year olds who each knew someone who was ninety. In the vernacular, that means that most of us know someone, who themselves knew someone who actually had spoken to someone, who was alive during the Revolutionary War!…… Whoa…….
August 25, 1777 close to 300 ships sailed up the Chesapeake Bay, anchored off off Elk Neck, Maryland, and began disembarking. That has been called the largest fleet ever assembled off either of the America’s coasts. To put that number into perspective, the famous Spanish Armada, consisted of a meager 130 Spanish ships. The most-oft talked about Battle of Trafalger, consisted of a combined total of some 60 ships. Modern historians can get a perspective by comparing those 300 ships to the 700 off of Dunkirk or the 900 off of Normandy…….
It must have been quite a sight to stand on the top Iron Hill and see over 300 tall masts sailing to defeat you. And on board those ships, were15,000 solders disembarking to begin marching towards your capital city….That’s close to the total number of women living across Greater Newark in 2010.
Were we living 236 years ago, we would all be on edge! Anticipating a major battle on Delaware soil, 11,000 continental troops were moved into Delaware and bivouacked at what used to be known as Red Mill Neck, and now is near the Marshalltown bridge over top of Red Clay Creek.
Go there to read more…
Nancy Willing at Delaware Way has some more on Deputy Treasurer Benner’s resignation.
Bloom Boxes and the Newark Data Center–It seems our friend Nancy fell into a trap set by our ever so clever right wing adversaries. Take for instance new piece of trolling from Resolute Determination, where Steve Larrimore seems to have completely taken the reigns now that the blogger formerly known as Charlie Copeland is now GOP CHAIRMAN Charles du Pont Copeland..….
This new high tech green data center to be built right next door to the long awaited Bloom Box plant in Newark is not going to purchase those clean efficient Bloom Boxes to power their new facility. Say it isn’t true!
Nancy then jumps right on the bandwagon, republishing the Resolute Determination post, and adding her own title that implies her agreement that says “Yet Another Delawarean Wondering Why TDC Won’t Just Use Bloom Boxes For Their UD STAR Campus Data Center.”
Kavips explains to us all what Steve Larrimore’s real purpose here is, and no, Nancy, it is not to demand Bloom Boxes be used at the Data Center.
I heard from Nancy that some dubious fact finders [Resolute Determination] are trying to embarrass Markell and Democrats by raising the fact that the new data center going into Newark is NOT going to use Bloom boxes; then tsking away with their patented headshake and a “my, isn’t that special.” They are trying to imply that if a new business won’t use the product being made here in Delaware, it had to be a bad idea to invest in putting that product here.
Before this gets out of control, let me explain why this isn’t so.
A data center uses tremendous amounts of power. The cost of power per year is usually equal to the cost of the initial capital investment. Bloom Boxes do not have sufficient output.
The scale of argument being made by some on the right, could be likened to asking why a Walmart being built won’t cool its buildings with portable window units.
Silly, right? Which is why the “Right” should stay out of arguments over its head, and should retreat back to arguing only what it knows best: which actually, is nothing, really.
Bloom Boxes have their uses, and it was right to invest in them. But the right is wrong to suggest that they can power everything and anything, and that if we don’t use them to power everything and anything, then we were wrong to invest in them.
It’s like asking people who live near the Energizer factory why they don’t power their homes with alkaline batteries.
This silliness is a perfect example of the scientific illiteracy of the right, as well as their business illiteracy, and their complete lack of qualification to lead a high-tech economy.
By the way, a bi-weekly Around The Horn would be fine with me.
HA!
Nice work, DD. Thanks for doing this.
I’m usually on the opposite side of whatever Nancy’s talking about, but she wins big this week with her headline …
** State Treasurer Flowers Uncouples From His Troubled Deputy, Erika Benner **
HAH! Very nice.
Bloom Boxes do not have sufficient output.
This isn’t quite right. Bloom Boxes power data centers for Apple (a 10 megawatt plant) and eBay ( a 4.8MW plant). You can see in particular at the Apple installation that the power supply by these boxes is very scalable. So you can build a plant of any size for whatever the power need is.
The question, really, is cost. No one seems to have any real information on how much power the UD facility needs to generate, but I think that for the UD installation, they are expecting the turbines they install to provide them with a revenue stream. That would be alot tougher with the Bloom Boxes since I expect the cost for power is higher from the boxes than from direct generation.
Which isn’t to say that the UD project isn’t a problem land use issue, or even that the entire Delaware venture isn’t more than a little dodgy. Just don’t undersell what the boxes in a right-sized array is capable of. Bloom’s current marketing focus is on powering data centers. And without asking them directly, I think they aren’t using the Boxes because they want to sell power back to the grid to help finance their operations.
Each Bloom box provides 200 kW of power. For every megawatt, you will need 5 Bloom boxes. The Apple installation in Maiden, North Carolina, will have 50 Bloom boxes, providing 10 megawatts of power. That will provide only 50% of the energy required by the 20 megawatt plant, so other sources of energy will make up the difference, most notably the solar array Apple put up across the street. Even with that, they will still buy 40% of their energy needs off the grid, specifying it comes from green energy.
In contrast to Apple’s small 10 megawatt fuel cell plant, current plans show a 248 megawatt generator going into the STAR campus in Newark to provide power to the proposed new data center. If Bloom boxes were to supply that energy, 1240 Bloom boxes would be required or almost 25 times the amount to be used at Apple plant, which at 50 Bloom boxes, is calling itself as having the largest private fuel cell generation in the world.
The Apple installation will be selling power back to Duke Energy from their fuel cell and solar arrays — not buying from the grid. This 500,000 sq ft installation runs iCloud and Siri, which is an indication of the size of the data center being run. Apple also operates with a net zero energy policy and the Maiden plant is a LEED Platinum facility — meaning that long term energy efficiency is important to them. If the Newark plant really is planning on a 248 MW installation (source please), they are in the energy producing business, not in the data center business. And no one (at least at current pricing) is going to deploy Bloom Boxes just to provide cheap electricity to the grid.
The Data Center’s production looks like it wants to have cogeneration and trigeneration components and they are providing their own backup, rather than using the grid. Data centers are power hogs, but 248MW is pretty big for a 900,000 sq ft facility.
And while I’m at it, pyrolysis ≠ incineration. I don’t know this site at all, but if my house or business was anywhere near it, I’d be more concerned about the other problems that might come with this thing, rather than trying to redefine the word incineration.
I was mostly being sarcastic in linking to Larrimore on that one. Remember that the initial reaction to Bloom Boxes which use natural gas – although can use other energy sources – was the protest that there is far superior power generation and efficiencies in natural gas turbine plants than from Bloom Boxes. Alan Loudell had the links up on a blog post some months back.