Paul Wieting's Friends

Paul Wieting's Groups

Tell us about your experience with alternative energy:: I am an electric power engineer with 31 years in the profession. I have worked on paper mill projects that generated electricity from burning wood bark and on others that burned spent cooking chemicals.

Over the years I have casually read everything that has crossed my path about wind power, solar power, hydro power, the electric car, and the hydrogen economy. I have my own ideas about the relative strengths of each of these.

A friend of mine who owns his own engineering company and designs distribution - or i guess you might call them gathering systems for wind farms. Over the years he has asked me to come to work for him a number of times. It's always sounded exciting but I've always been concerned that it could dry up & leave me hanging./

What excites you about this campaign?: Mr. Pickens has succinctly outlined a fearsome and UNNECESSARY problem. He also has shown a common sense way for this country to do A LOT to help itself.

What do you want to do to help?: Offer a suggestion for the plan to pack even more bang for a buck:

First, by all means, build all the wind farms we can as fast as we can.

Add to that some exciting new solar technology. Pacific Gas & Electric has recently signed a contract to buy 500 megawatts (enouth for about 100,000 or so homes) from a new solar farm. In fact, who's to say that we can't put solar farms and wind farms on the same land?

Now, here's where I suggest something a little different. Instead of displacing gas from power plants to use as fuel in cars, why don't we start using electric cars. Many of us electric power engineers are holding our breath to see if a new ultracapacitor (a device that could take the place of a battery) will live up to expectations and start powering freeway capable cars for up to 250 miles at 80 mph by the end of 2008. It is also supposed to be a very quick device to recharge. Electric cars are about 85% efficient. Cars driven by internal combustion engines are about 20% efficient. And modern day combined cycle power plants running on natural gas are about 60% efficient compared to the 35% state of the art as recently as the late 70's, early 80's. So, I'm happy with Mr. Pickens & I welcome his wind farms and I wish him the best of luck in selling a LOT of gas...I just hope it's to generate electricity for electric cars.

At 11:06pm on August 11, 2008, Daryl Oster said…: Paul,
TRANSPORTATION is the master key to basic survival, and the cornerstone of the economy. We all know that transportation presently depends on oil production, and oil production is peaking. We must focus first on transportation – it is the highest priority. The PickensPlan to transition vehicles to natural gas is a great start toward 100% energy independence, but is a stop-gap measure till we can transition to all electric transportation. Electric energy is strained without adding transportation demands; so we must focus on drastic efficiency improvement.
Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) is a patented technology where travel occurs without air friction or rolling resistance (like “Space Travel on Earth”); ETT can accomplish 50 times more transportation per kWh (or carbon credit) than electric cars or trains. ETT is silent, low cost, safe, faster than jets, less expensive than freeways, and is electric so it can make maximum use of wind or PV power. With your engineering and science experience I thought you might want to learn more about ETT