Iowans for Energy Independence

Add a Comment

Comment by Greg Wortham on May 25, 2009 at 4:28pm

Great Plains Energy Summit -- Omaha -- June 17-18, 2009 -- Leaders from the states & provinces of the USA-Canada Wind Corridor are gathering in Omaha, Nebraska on June 17-18 to plan for action in 2010 & beyond. Through the Great Plains Energy Alliance, we are gathering community & regional leaders, state officials, component manufacturers, colleges & universities, wind energy leaders, ranchers, farmers & more. We will discuss transmission infrastructure, community benefits, workforce preparation, state & federal policies, environmental perspectives, The Pickens Plan, and more. There will be caucuses of the state/provincial delegations and learning of best practices from each other. Please join us!

Check out www.GreatPlainsEnergy.us for more info, including registration forms, sponsorship opportunities, and more.

Comment by Chris Schneider on February 15, 2009 at 2:28pm

Please visit the following link for the details of the Early Earth Day Odyssey locations in Wisconsin and Iowa.

http://www.hybridcarstore.com/downloads/calendar-09.pdf
Please RSVP on the Pickens Plan events page to send a signal to other PPrs to get involved!
Thanks,
Chris Schneider
Hybrid Guru

Comment by Bill Mollring on February 13, 2009 at 1:18pm

VERYWHERE!! We are setting up distribution points in Wailuku, Maui hawaii, Omaha and Ogalala, nebraska. Thes Units produce lots of energy and can be attached to existing structures, such as, power poles, chimmies,cell towers
To see a Video go to: Click on CONTACT, nex page Click on VBine Energy,
Contact Bill Mollring for info. We have financing 831 402-2037 mrbillmaui@yahoo.com We have financing Mrbillmaui@yahoo.com We have financing.

Comment by Michael, Houston on November 1, 2008 at 7:39am

JOBS UPDATE
Thousands of new GREEN JOBS are now posted on GREEN JOBS NOW! group page. Join the group today and we will keep you informed. http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnowcom
Tell your friends looking for a job to sign up on the PickensPlan and upload their resume FREE at: www.green-jobs-now.com
Melissa
coordinator@green-jobs-now.com

Comment by Mike Anthony Fernald Sr. on October 23, 2008 at 11:17am

Comment by Mellisa Hale on October 7, 2008 at 8:29pm

I understand that MidAmerican Energy will not allow wind turbines to be used by individuals. If these energy monopolies with their lawyers stand against the average Joe, how are we to get to the point of energy independence?

Comment by Larry M. Aden on September 5, 2008 at 1:09am

Hi Folks!
Just want everyone to understand the energy issues we are dealing with here.
Below is an in-depth Letter to the Editor I had published recently:
COMMON SENSE ON ENERGY, NOW!!!, Part II
I wanted to discuss how we should make use of wasted local energy resources like that biogas flame at the sewage plant and the algae from Storm Lake for bio-fuels, but the nitwits are attacking on other fronts, so I must rush to the ramparts.
This won’t be short, so if you would rather not learn anything today, or you don’t want your present world view to be confused by the facts, stop reading, now!
I am often fond of saying that God created every person with a special talent and their own little piece of the truth. The real trick is in finding each persons talent to employ them to their fullest, and to recognize their little piece of the truth, so that we can put it in its proper place in the jigsaw puzzle of life to recreate that picture of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden. Sadly, not every living being is willing to lend their talent and their knowledge to this quest. For this reason, we all continue to suffer.
Texas oil man, T. Boone Pickens, whose talent seems to be making money for himself, made over $1Billion speculating in oil and gas in 2005, again in 2006, $1.5B in 2007, was earlier estimated to be worth $3 Billion, but has since been instrumental in pushing crude oil beyond reason with his very public pronouncements that “oil is going to $150”.
It is now hovering around $145 as he quietly sells the barrels he bought at $50, after all, he’s not greedy; he doesn’t have to have every penny of that $150!
Whenever you hear a speculator say one thing, you should run the other direction!
Just like when George Soros caused the devaluation of the US Dollar, when he announced to the world that he was getting out of Dollars and buying Euros. That should have been interpreted by all of us that Soros had already sold all of his Dollars and bought all the Euros he could buy. He went public, because he wanted everyone else to do the same, so he could get out of Euros near their high and buy Dollars cheap.
Because Soros is rich, every fool listens to him. All the lemmings bit on this one, and rushed to dump their Dollars, stressing our economy and raising the price of food, fuel and everything we buy in the process. George only wants money and a Dem elected President, and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get it!
Paraphrasing Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, “If you mix a big lie in with a little truth, and tell it often enough, you can convince everyone it is the truth.”
That is what T. Boone is doing with his very expensive TV ad campaign touting PickensPlan.com to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Everything he has to say about the harm buying foreign oil is doing to our economy is absolutely true. That we should use more of our own CNG (compressed natural gas) for our autos is also true, and absolutely achievable with technology we have had for decades. That we should make more use of wind and solar energy, of course, but, that we can take Natural Gas (NG) away from electrical generation and replace that with wind and solar power shows he is either extremely ignorant of the fundamental facts about electricity, or he is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for his own profit!
Call me cynical, but I am betting on the latter, as recently, Pickens has heavily invested the profits of his oil speculation into both wind and natural gas!
He has also invested heavily in water rights, what should that tell us about what ‘shortage’ might develop next?
I am all for anyone making money, just do it honestly, without hurting your fellow man in the process, always giving your trading partners equal fair market value.
To see why Pickens’ Plan is not perfectly honest and achievable, we need to understand our energy consuming habits and needs.
Electrical power providers categorize our energy demand as 3 types of “load” – base, intermediate, and peak.
“Base load” is the minimum level of electrical power consumption at any one moment throughout any hour of every day of the year. This is constant demand and requires constant generating capacity, as alternating current cannot be stored, it must be used at the moment it is generated. They use hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal-fired steam turbine generating plants to provide this power, as these are cheap, constant and dependable, but cannot be started and stopped quickly to meet new load.
Geothermal, ocean thermal, offshore wind, wave, and ocean current energy could also be used for this load, and these represent the only safe and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy available to us to address ‘base load’. Why does no one even mention them in this debate on what we should do about energy? Why should we build nuclear plants when we haven’t even sunk one turbine in the Gulf Stream, yet?
“Intermediate load” is the demand that increases from 6AM, when the world starts to stir, to 9PM, when it starts to wind down, getting ready for bed. This happens like clock work every day, regardless of the weather, it can be planned for, so they fire the boilers in those coal-fired plants, a little harder, a little ahead of time, to bring more steam turbine generators on-line, or open another gate on a hydroelectric dam, when you and I want to shower and go to work.
“Peak load” is different every day of every season, depending heavily upon the weather and variable human activity. It is normally between 12 Noon and 4PM, with space heating and air conditioning being the greatest variable in demand. This demand changes rapidly and requires instantaneous response in generating capacity from hot gas turbines, which burn NG. There is no alternative to this gas, except other more expensive gases. If we take this NG from electric companies, we will be constantly plagued with brownouts and blackouts, or see massive increases in the price of our power and fuel, or both.
Wind cannot replace this power, it almost never comes when we really need it. Most of the best wind comes at night, when we do not need it at all. The power companies really hate to be forced to buy wind power for 3.5cts/Kwh while shutting down coal-fired generation that costs them 1ct/Kwh. Who could blame them? Likewise, where the best wind comes, from West Texas to North Dakota, we do not have the necessary transmission lines, because there are few people living there to serve this power to.
High tension interstate transmission lines are very expensive, and very intrusive! Nobody wants these monstrosities built in their back yard!
What we could, and should, do is hook every alternative energy source we can find to a local load that matches it.
Solar photoelectric energy is a good match for air conditioning, refrigeration, and water pumping. Demand for these always increases when the sun shines, perfect match! It is expensive, inefficient, and nearly useless for anything else. Solar heating is little better, but should be passively designed into every new building.
Wind is a great match for space heating, water pumping, battery charging and other automated industrial processes that can be run when the wind blows, and shut off when it doesn’t, such as cryogenic distillation of air, hydrogen electrolysis, anhydrous ammonia (NH3) production, and other industrial gas production from these processes.
Huge quantities of our precious NG are spent senselessly in manufacturing NH3 for fertilizer, when it has long been cheaper to return to the original carbon-neutral, and infinitely renewable process of making it from water and air.
We must rewrite the REA charter to cover all forms of rural energy distribution, empower local REC’s to fund, sell and maintain distributed generation systems for their members, and to empower those members to sell all forms of energy directly back.
Then, we must erect wind and water current turbines everywhere we can possibly put them, thousands of big ones, and millions of smaller ones between them, that we manufacture here (not expensive imports). Each can be wired into our present electrical grid without building new transmission lines. Then, we must hook each to a water electrolyzer, and a booster pump, to store the off-peak energy as Hydrogen gas (H2), putting this, along with methane (CH4) from our every hog house, poultry house, cattle feedlot, and sewage plant, into the local low-pressure NG pipelines that serve our houses, farms and industries. Underground low-pressure NG pipelines are cheap and innocuous.
NG, mostly CH4, the very same biogas produced by every marsh, cow stomach, and manure pit, is compatible with both gasoline and diesel engines, and is perfectly interchangeable with propane, butane, and Hydrogen in low pressure gas systems (<300psi). These gases are extremely clean burning and can be used interchangeably in any gasoline motor with a truly flex-fuel system having an adjustable orifice.
H2 and CH4 are perfectly compatible, clean, safe and infinitely renewable; they also store well and liquefy under comparable conditions, but only at very high pressures (5400psi), or very low temperatures (-253C). CNG is normally packed at 3000psi for auto fuel, which is too high to be compatible with other gases, and too low to liquefy.
So, we should standardize compressed gas auto fuel storage pressure with liquid propane gas (LPG) at 300psi, then, use LPG, ethanol, or gasoline, only for long trips, and NG for our every day commutes.
With a small pump, we could all fill our cars and tractors at home from our own NG/H2 pipeline meter for about a Dollar per gallon gasoline equivalent!
When Pickens wants us to do that, I’ll support him, 100%!
Larry M. Aden
2694 180th Street
Nemaha, Iowa 50567
712-636-4490
lmaden@frontiernet.net

Comment by Andrew Lewis on August 7, 2008 at 2:47pm

Please come to a Town Hall meeting with T. Boone Pickens where he will discuss the Pickens Plan and take questions from the audience. No ticket required. Open to the public.

Time: August 14, 2008 at 3:30pm
Location: Le Mars Convention Center
Street: 301 12th Street SE
City/Town: Le Mars, Iowa 51031
Website or Map: http://maps.google.com/maps...
Event Type: Town, Hall

Comment by Teena McIntire on July 31, 2008 at 12:58pm

I would like to learn more about residential wind power. Can someone recommend a company that sells roof mounted or smaller wind or solar solutions for our home?

Comment by Alankar Gupta on July 23, 2008 at 8:55pm

Greetings Friends,

Independence does not come with wishful thinking. It comes as a result of strategy and action. It requires all to get United and work toards a common goal. My forefathers (I came from India) gained Independence from the British by strategy and action (Civil disobedience and non-violence).

We all need to thank Mr. Pickens for explaining the energy problem that we as a nation face. Earlier it was one Group (users) pointing fingers at the other Group (suppliers) and vice versa. The problem is real. It was magnified to some extent, in recent times, by speculators. But, the truth is we are importing more oil every year and producing less. We are sending billions of dollars overseas.

I like Mr. Pickens Plan but I think it needs to be supplemented by other plans. It by itself will not get us to Energy Independence. It will just buy us more time. For this reason I have posted a petition for Energy Independence .

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/windenergycorporation


Please (a) sign the Petition and (b) forward it to your friends. United we can achieve Energy Independence and avoid this constant financial bleeding of our great nation.
Also, if you want to become an partner in this endeavour let me know how I can contact you. It will be a Labor of Love for a Country that we love. Just think what Energy Independence will be like. What it will do to our standard of living. The opportunities it will offer us, our children and grand children.
Thanks.

Regards and Best wishes,

Alankar Gupta

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last