David Baker's Blog (7)

Joe Citizen puts a solar PV array on his property and creates twice as much electricity as he uses. Is he compensated? Net Metering (which we have in San Diego) is a system where the producer is compensated for the amount of electricity they produce up to the amount they use. Any additional energy created is a windfall (albeit small) for the utility company. The Feed-In Tariff (FIT), sometimes referred to in the U.S. as the Advanced Renewable Tariff (ART), is fundamentally a mechanism (law) re… Continue

While reading some of the Forum posts, I get the impression that many people think the PickensPlan is some wide ranging National Energy Plan. It's not. 1) What is the sum total of the Pickens Plan to date? Installing a series of wind farms from Texas to the Dakotas in order to generate the same amount of electricity currently being generated by NatGas, and pull that NatGas out of the Electricity generating system. 2)What is the purpose behind freeing this NatGas from creating electricity? To h… Continue

Hi All, You and I are here for the same reason, to be a part of the solution. It’s why I keep sharing these videos with you. I hope you don’t mind. I hope you copy and paste this to everyone in your PP friends list, or even better, your entire email contacts. This is the most comprehensive presentation of the PP Vision from T Boone that I have seen so far. I hope you get the same jolt of exhilaration and sense of inspiration I did! “I have only one enemy, that’s foreign oil”, “We are more frag… Continue

I have long held this belief, and was excited to hear Rep. from Pennsylvania John Peterson voice this on TV the other night. Apparently I'm not the only one in America with this belief. What a relief. But we can take it a step further, dependence on oil itself is a threat to National Security. I don't believe we can wean ourselves from the use of oil this year or even next year... but, sometime, we need to. It's a finite resource. If I keep drinking from my coffee cup, no matter how sparingly, i… Continue

Last night while watching Washington Journal on CSPAN (yea i know i have no life, lol), I was very impressed by the two Legislative Representatives being interviewed about ENERGY INDEPENDENCE. John Petersen from Pennsylvania and Neil Ambercrombie from Hawaii were speaking about their congressional "grassroots effort" to remove the obstacles associated with implementing alt energy policies. Their group (its not a standing committee)"House Energy Working Group" is manned by members from both sides… Continue

Up there in the first question on this page, Am I interested in being an organizer in my area? Kind of puzzles me. Organize what? Becoming ENERGY independent? Ok, I'm on board with that. I have been an advocate of this since the seventies when I experienced my first "gas shortage." I live in San Diego County and here in Ca we are building some windmill farms, but not enough in my opinion. The entire Interstate 5 corridor from LA to Redding should be utilized for windmills. I like the vertical t… Continue

Lots of good ideas all around this site... but, one step at a time. Let's remember that regardless of whatever technology or power generating systems we may want to see utilized in America to get us off foreign oil, the physical part of the PickensPlan is ONLY about building wind farms to supplant the NatGas currently being used to create electricity. Maybe it will expand in the future, but right now, thats all the PP addresses, as I currently understand it. But its also about something else. I… Continue