The Picken's Plan is a great start but...
Hi everyone,
Many people have requested that I start a blog to lay out all my thoughts, insight and plans in one place so they could be discussed in more detail. Since I'm firmly behind Boone Pickens' Plan, and I agree that his plan is a great first major start, I decided to start it here. Maybe that'll give my comments a small level of credibility. :)
Here goes... Wind is a great resource. It has the potential to offset enormous amounts of electricity generation produced by less desireable sources. In my opinion, wind even has the potential to offset all of our fuel used. Yes, I said it, but now I get to throw in the caveat. As we all know, it is unpredictable and not even usually timed well with our energy needs. This means that we need to either reduce our energy use or increase our supply when wind is low or we need to store this power when it's available for a rainy (less windy) day. Boone is counting on the former, which is ok but has current limitations. The grid can help match demand to production to a point but costs increase quickly as that amount increases. To store ill-timed wind power, we hear about compressed air storage systems, big batteries, big blocks of small batteries, and even regulating hydro as examples of this. Even small scale turbines have these drawbacks, but they are much easier to compensate for. Some people promote a combination of these two methods. Either way, it takes a concerted effort to accomplish this feat.
We have some serious talent in this country. There's no doubt about that. People from all walks of life are creatively solving various pieces of our energy crisis. Many of these solutions have similar drawbacks in that they rely heavily on time shifting of power, aka storage. The problem is that we need a way to allow them all to share their strengths and weaknesses to form a single system. If done correctly, Smart Metering will allow all generation sources and energy needs to automatically coordinate with each other to keep the grid stable for everyone. This can be done for relatively little extra cost, unless you figure in the lobbying costs of getting the rules changed.
Compressed Natural Gas cars are also a great thing but like other fossil fuels, they do have their limitations. As Boone has figured out, we don't want to increase our NG use overall though because we don't want to depleat it prematurely and we don't want to increase our greenhouse gas emissions. For the short term, most people would be comfortable with simply switching it from a electricity source to a transportation source for now. The biggest benefit is that this switchover can be quick, cheap and painless, all three of which everyone wants. It also promotes some new infrastructure that will be beneficial to up and coming technologies! More on that later...
Solar is absolutely wonderful energy source! It's hand-down the best energy source we have, bar none, but it too, has it's drawbacks. Photovoltaic Cell (PV) solar can be installed just about anywhere you can find regular sunlight and get power for free. These cells are low maintenance but they do drop in output over a couple decades. They are now more flexible in the applications they can be used in. The elephant in PVs room is that it only creates electricity and it only does it instantly when the sun is hitting the cell. This brings the storage issue back into play. This storage problem becomes even more prevelant as you increase the size of the plant. PV has predominantly remained a smaller scale, distributed source because off-grid homes can justify batteries while on-grid homes & businesses can time share with the grid in sporadic amounts without costing the grid too much in time management expenses. As you can see, from a societal point of view, PV is limited by these external indirect costs on top of the initial direct higher cost of their purchase. Popular society has focused on PV so much that many people are unaware of the other forms of solar.
Solar Thermal systems collect heat and store it for use later. This heat has many uses. It can directly heat water, a driveway, sidewalk, pool, spa, your floor or even just be sent to your furnace to replace fuel use there. A well placed window can allow the sun's heat to be stored in a stone wall or floor to be released slowly throughout the night. There are even heat powered air conditioners and refrigerators. All of these uses are very cheap considering the amount of energy they can provide. If the temperature of this stored heat is high enough, electricity can even be efficiently generated on demand from it by making steam to run a turbine or by a heat-powered Stirling engine. Concentrating the sunlight, like using a magnifying glass on an ant, can increase the temperature of the stored energy although they usually use focused mirrors to concentrate it. It is called Concentrating Solar Power when you use it to make electricity and it can make up to double the power of PV. Large CSP plants have been getting installed all over the world have been making fuel-free electricity for decades. Smaller systems that can fit on a department store roof are now being tested with very small ones sized for a home on the way.
The biggest benefit of CSP is that the left over energy after making electricity can still be used for all the other thermal uses. With electricity efficiency maxing out today at about 1/3rd, that leaves 2/3rds for heating something else. The large systems in the Southwest U.S. can capture lots of sun, but they have very little use of this extra heat energy so they must dump it into the atmosphere. In a system mounted on a WalMart rooftop, this excess can heat the building or even cool it! In a home sized system, this heat can be enough quantity to supply the home's full heating needs with excess left over to melt sidewalk or driveway snow! In lower sun regions, the only thing needed to make up for the reduced sun is more of those inexpensive collectors and you've got the same capacity as a higher sun region. Since these creative solutions are still in development, they need public support so they remain an option in our big decisions. (More on that later)
One other benefit of solar thermal systems is that the use is the expensive part while the collection & storage parts are relatively cheap. This means that once you have paid for the equipment to use the amount of heat however you want, you can cheaply increase the total amount of energy collected by adding more collectors and storage. Think of it this way... If a gasoline tanker delivers to your home tank to run your home generator, you can easily call for more deliveries or a larger tank without buying a bigger generator. As you can see, storage is no longer a problem and it can even be used to balance the needs of your neighbors who run on wind alone. (Are you seeing the need for the Smart Grid yet?)
The list of other alternative energy sources is as extensive as our imagination. A few examples are river turbines, wave power, geothermal, tidal and many many biofuel options. Each of these can play a role in our supply but they need to have all the pros and cons considered in relation to the location they are being promoted on. The key, however is being able to fully take advantage of all they offer. By and large, this leads back to the fair interchange with the electrical grid and this leads to Smart Metering. One alternative to this interconnectedness is the hydrogen economy. Since hydrogen isn't simply found or harvested anywhere, we must put more energy into refining it from somewhere than we get out of it. Some say this makes it not worth it but in reality, it has other benefits that must be considered. For example, since it causes no unwanted emissions, it completely eliminates carbon monoxide poisoning accidents. That's just one small example but it shows how the game is not a simple energy balance discussion. One nice feature that it has is that it is somewhat compatible with our natural gas pipeline infrastructure. What I mean is that a concentration of up to 20% in our natural gas has almost no effect in appliance operation. This opens up the possibility of sharing the pipelines for at least some of that energy to be supplied by hydrogen. I'll leave this subject for further thought before coming back to it later.
I've studied all aspects of energy for quite a while now. I've discussed the problems and solutions with professionals in almost every industry and geographic region. The overall analysis is that we need to do things a bit differently. We can only make our products so much more efficient, but we can save much more energy by using them in different ways. We can only get so many mpg in our cars, but we can move our people and products differently to cut the total use to just a tiny portion of what we currently use. Similarly, we can use our transmission lines and natural resources in different ways to make big leaps in progress. We can strive for rollouts of large projects like wind or CSP, but we may gain more in so many ways if we also include smaller, individual sources on a massive scale. There are so many things we can do if we're all aware of what we have available that we can not only replace our fossil fuel use, we have the potential to increase our creature comforts and productivity at the same time. If we do it now and in a planned, organized manner, we can even do it cheaper than simply surviving today.
Stay tuned for more details as I'm able to post them. Thank you for your attention.
Many people have requested that I start a blog to lay out all my thoughts, insight and plans in one place so they could be discussed in more detail. Since I'm firmly behind Boone Pickens' Plan, and I agree that his plan is a great first major start, I decided to start it here. Maybe that'll give my comments a small level of credibility. :)
Here goes... Wind is a great resource. It has the potential to offset enormous amounts of electricity generation produced by less desireable sources. In my opinion, wind even has the potential to offset all of our fuel used. Yes, I said it, but now I get to throw in the caveat. As we all know, it is unpredictable and not even usually timed well with our energy needs. This means that we need to either reduce our energy use or increase our supply when wind is low or we need to store this power when it's available for a rainy (less windy) day. Boone is counting on the former, which is ok but has current limitations. The grid can help match demand to production to a point but costs increase quickly as that amount increases. To store ill-timed wind power, we hear about compressed air storage systems, big batteries, big blocks of small batteries, and even regulating hydro as examples of this. Even small scale turbines have these drawbacks, but they are much easier to compensate for. Some people promote a combination of these two methods. Either way, it takes a concerted effort to accomplish this feat.
We have some serious talent in this country. There's no doubt about that. People from all walks of life are creatively solving various pieces of our energy crisis. Many of these solutions have similar drawbacks in that they rely heavily on time shifting of power, aka storage. The problem is that we need a way to allow them all to share their strengths and weaknesses to form a single system. If done correctly, Smart Metering will allow all generation sources and energy needs to automatically coordinate with each other to keep the grid stable for everyone. This can be done for relatively little extra cost, unless you figure in the lobbying costs of getting the rules changed.
Compressed Natural Gas cars are also a great thing but like other fossil fuels, they do have their limitations. As Boone has figured out, we don't want to increase our NG use overall though because we don't want to depleat it prematurely and we don't want to increase our greenhouse gas emissions. For the short term, most people would be comfortable with simply switching it from a electricity source to a transportation source for now. The biggest benefit is that this switchover can be quick, cheap and painless, all three of which everyone wants. It also promotes some new infrastructure that will be beneficial to up and coming technologies! More on that later...
Solar is absolutely wonderful energy source! It's hand-down the best energy source we have, bar none, but it too, has it's drawbacks. Photovoltaic Cell (PV) solar can be installed just about anywhere you can find regular sunlight and get power for free. These cells are low maintenance but they do drop in output over a couple decades. They are now more flexible in the applications they can be used in. The elephant in PVs room is that it only creates electricity and it only does it instantly when the sun is hitting the cell. This brings the storage issue back into play. This storage problem becomes even more prevelant as you increase the size of the plant. PV has predominantly remained a smaller scale, distributed source because off-grid homes can justify batteries while on-grid homes & businesses can time share with the grid in sporadic amounts without costing the grid too much in time management expenses. As you can see, from a societal point of view, PV is limited by these external indirect costs on top of the initial direct higher cost of their purchase. Popular society has focused on PV so much that many people are unaware of the other forms of solar.
Solar Thermal systems collect heat and store it for use later. This heat has many uses. It can directly heat water, a driveway, sidewalk, pool, spa, your floor or even just be sent to your furnace to replace fuel use there. A well placed window can allow the sun's heat to be stored in a stone wall or floor to be released slowly throughout the night. There are even heat powered air conditioners and refrigerators. All of these uses are very cheap considering the amount of energy they can provide. If the temperature of this stored heat is high enough, electricity can even be efficiently generated on demand from it by making steam to run a turbine or by a heat-powered Stirling engine. Concentrating the sunlight, like using a magnifying glass on an ant, can increase the temperature of the stored energy although they usually use focused mirrors to concentrate it. It is called Concentrating Solar Power when you use it to make electricity and it can make up to double the power of PV. Large CSP plants have been getting installed all over the world have been making fuel-free electricity for decades. Smaller systems that can fit on a department store roof are now being tested with very small ones sized for a home on the way.
The biggest benefit of CSP is that the left over energy after making electricity can still be used for all the other thermal uses. With electricity efficiency maxing out today at about 1/3rd, that leaves 2/3rds for heating something else. The large systems in the Southwest U.S. can capture lots of sun, but they have very little use of this extra heat energy so they must dump it into the atmosphere. In a system mounted on a WalMart rooftop, this excess can heat the building or even cool it! In a home sized system, this heat can be enough quantity to supply the home's full heating needs with excess left over to melt sidewalk or driveway snow! In lower sun regions, the only thing needed to make up for the reduced sun is more of those inexpensive collectors and you've got the same capacity as a higher sun region. Since these creative solutions are still in development, they need public support so they remain an option in our big decisions. (More on that later)
One other benefit of solar thermal systems is that the use is the expensive part while the collection & storage parts are relatively cheap. This means that once you have paid for the equipment to use the amount of heat however you want, you can cheaply increase the total amount of energy collected by adding more collectors and storage. Think of it this way... If a gasoline tanker delivers to your home tank to run your home generator, you can easily call for more deliveries or a larger tank without buying a bigger generator. As you can see, storage is no longer a problem and it can even be used to balance the needs of your neighbors who run on wind alone. (Are you seeing the need for the Smart Grid yet?)
The list of other alternative energy sources is as extensive as our imagination. A few examples are river turbines, wave power, geothermal, tidal and many many biofuel options. Each of these can play a role in our supply but they need to have all the pros and cons considered in relation to the location they are being promoted on. The key, however is being able to fully take advantage of all they offer. By and large, this leads back to the fair interchange with the electrical grid and this leads to Smart Metering. One alternative to this interconnectedness is the hydrogen economy. Since hydrogen isn't simply found or harvested anywhere, we must put more energy into refining it from somewhere than we get out of it. Some say this makes it not worth it but in reality, it has other benefits that must be considered. For example, since it causes no unwanted emissions, it completely eliminates carbon monoxide poisoning accidents. That's just one small example but it shows how the game is not a simple energy balance discussion. One nice feature that it has is that it is somewhat compatible with our natural gas pipeline infrastructure. What I mean is that a concentration of up to 20% in our natural gas has almost no effect in appliance operation. This opens up the possibility of sharing the pipelines for at least some of that energy to be supplied by hydrogen. I'll leave this subject for further thought before coming back to it later.
I've studied all aspects of energy for quite a while now. I've discussed the problems and solutions with professionals in almost every industry and geographic region. The overall analysis is that we need to do things a bit differently. We can only make our products so much more efficient, but we can save much more energy by using them in different ways. We can only get so many mpg in our cars, but we can move our people and products differently to cut the total use to just a tiny portion of what we currently use. Similarly, we can use our transmission lines and natural resources in different ways to make big leaps in progress. We can strive for rollouts of large projects like wind or CSP, but we may gain more in so many ways if we also include smaller, individual sources on a massive scale. There are so many things we can do if we're all aware of what we have available that we can not only replace our fossil fuel use, we have the potential to increase our creature comforts and productivity at the same time. If we do it now and in a planned, organized manner, we can even do it cheaper than simply surviving today.
Stay tuned for more details as I'm able to post them. Thank you for your attention.
Comment
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Comment by Todd McKissick on August 4, 2008 at 12:33pm -
John, Thanks for your comments. I tend towards agreement with you but have some reservations yet. I just think there's going to be much more grid congestion from lack of storage or dispatchable supplies and loads than we can handle without a more radical change. Sure we can get to 20% wind and maybe another 15% solar, but then what? The cost of the required grid balancing equipment will eat up all financial gains to that point. (But yes, those dollars at least stayed in the U.S.) The sticking point I have is that this virtually guarantees staying hooked up to the utility monopoly forever. They will need standby generation to back up the variability and will always charge us for that so as the number of grid connections drops the price to remain connected will rise.
What we need is solar thermal with storage, but not only central or even in the SW, we need it distributed. At scale, and with a simple regulatory change, this provides enough on-call capacity to more than cover what we need. Check out my other posts on further details and then contact me directly at mckissick@gmail.com for some other interesting info.
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Comment by John A Mucha on August 4, 2008 at 11:18am -
Todd,
Both wind and solar are attractive and either one by itself can totally supply our energy needs for all sectors of use (commercial, residential, transportation) with minimal to zero need for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. Both wind and solar will require energy storage and thermal solar looks the best overall right now for load leveling. But we have a big dog in the fight in T Boone Pickens. When he speaks people listen. Gore has been pushing the Pickens Plan for years, but no one will listen to a politician. Thus, wind may be he best pony to ride. Otherwise, we will have to let the energy companies (oil and coal suppliers) decide how to "evolve" the system which I fear will mean it won't go very far, very fast.
Wind technology is very mature on a large scale, and the generators used are very mature and reliable. I hope the next administration adopts programs like the CCC of the Depression era, perhaps a Civilian Energy Corps to provide the manpower and jobs to get the job done. Further, we only need central US wind to acheive energy independence and there are a lot more people and people reources in the plains states than in the Mojave desert region, where most of the sun is. Therefore it will be a whole lot easier and less expensive to "grow" and supply the workforce needed to convert from an oil economy to a wind economy in the wind corridor.
Don't get me wrong. I think solar should advance, but I'd rather see initial investments target a single technology that has fewer players and fewer technology choices in it for starters. Advantage is that existing rust-belt companies like GE, Westinghouse, Emerson Electric, etc could revitalize state economies. Build new plants to make supports and blades. Upgrade the grid to buried high-voltage-DC.
I’d convert to battery-electric vehicles and skip the Pickens CH4 push. I’d roll out electric cars by metropolitan area rather than country wide to demonstrate the benefits of electric vehicles rapidly. My personal preference since there’s a vehicle called the Tango – two-seat, front-back, 39 inch wide e-vehicle - that would reduce highway congestion by 50% for commuters (www.commutercars.com ). You should see the specs on this thing: 0-60 in 4 sec, top speed 130 mph, handles like Porsche, a roll-over safety like a NASCAR racer. If it is manufactured by the millions, the price would drop from it’s current $18k to under $10k and become affordable to most people.
Of course, if you can get PV at your home to recharge your batteries and supply the grid so much the better. But 90% of us won't be able to do that and that's the kind of penetration we need to make the renewable lifestyle change happen. Don’t worry about solar being left out because, as the years go by we will be in a position to supply the whole world with power. We have the best blend of renewable energy resources of any country in the world. By doing a rapid turnover as a national priority similar to WW-II, we could take the lead away from Europe in energy manufacturing and battery-powered vehicles. If it’s business as usual the “free market” will extract as much profit from each incremental step as possible. That will slow things down to a crawl.
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Comment by Todd McKissick on July 25, 2008 at 6:27am
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Daryl,
I'm in Lincoln 40 hours per week so maybe we could meet up sometime. Could get interesting. :)
In the PRT I referred to above, the freedom to change routes in mid-trip, travel uninterrupted point-to-point and send unattended cargo or people to their destination counts for a lot when comparing against something that needs any vehicle changes. What's the value of being able to send a part directly to some company's shipping dock unattended without the need to set up people switching it to some intermediate form in the middle? That switch costs so many benefits: Guaranteed delivery to final destination, full trip security, autonomy, schedule, privacy and full trip safety are all reasons we took such a liking to the private automobile. Anything that doesn't offer them is relegated to a 'hopefully accepted' additional traveling alternative.
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Comment by Daryl Oster on July 24, 2008 at 10:02pm -
Todd,
ETT can get deeper into the "last mile" than you may realize. ETT is a form of PRT, and in the cost range you refer to (our detailed firm fixed quote for the FHSRA in 2003 was $253m (in2002 dollars) for 96 miles of double-tube, with three stations, and enough vehicles to meet the minimum capacity specified in the RFP.
I was a member of ATRA (advanced transit association) for several years, and we have partnered with several PRT companies to integrate ETT with overhead PRT such as you describe, and also to accept small 2 seat road vehicles (see the MoPod (tm) link on www.et3.com ). The main advantage of the type of PRT you describe is the reduced cost per station compared to ETT, and we anticipate that ETT will eventually (not initially) be the most effective mode for all trips greater than about 10 miles. PRT like streets, and ETT like freeways (and airways).
BTW, one of the et3 licensees (Jim Burden), lives in Lincoln NE, just to the north of you, and has been an advocate of PRT for many years, we were at his place last month.
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Comment by Todd McKissick on July 24, 2008 at 6:23am
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Daryl, You're correct on the transportation evaluation. You definitely have to get more convenience than you had to want to switch. Cost only offsets so much of that money so unless you can save an enormous percent of your cost by switching, 'it ain't happenin'. :)
The ETT you refer to has many benefits, but increases some of the drawbacks as well. If they are only trying to compete with the airline or train industry, then you may have something significant. However, I only see those being used for rather long distances. For example, connecting maybe 15 terminals around the country to get people to the 'last 200 mile' solutions. I really hate this 'last mile' concept because it wastes all our resources in every trips longer than a few miles.
Based on that, a proposal I've been watching intently is gaining a little support. It takes pieces of different tech and puts them together but I lost the link to the 'together' site. Years ago I analyzed every feature needed in a public transportation and this seems to be able to offer all of them. Basically, it's a personal rapid transit (PRT) with high speed capability on a lightweight maglev rail structure. This allows cheap ($10k??) terminals to be placed in every neighborhood, supermarket, large company and loading dock. It makes the rail cheap enough to place on poles overhead at relatively large intervals. It also makes the maglev cost drop dramatically because the weight is more distributed. Some estimates put the energy cost at 1/14th of a car per person-mile meaning it could be powered by overhead solar cannopies of 13' ?? width net. Other estimates say it's cost is 1/10th of a light rail system and even less than a 4 lane highway. It is direct endpoint-to-endpoint, private travel like a car, but centralized powered, maintained and paid for like a lightrail or bus system. Since it is automated, you can ship a product, your completed grocery list, your schoolkid or your incapacitated friend one way to the destination. That right there cuts travel expenses in half for those trips. Travel in town is a synchronized 45 mph while intercity runs are synched to 150 mph.
Cost is estimated to start out around $2M to $10M per mile with major price reductions from quantity for an unsubsidized car-mile price of around $0.04/mile. Dual use features offer further price reductions as you incorporate power line, telephone, cable and others into the rail for a ultra-clean look in your neighborhood. Adding the solar canopies could make it an easy way to aid local grid balancing. High population density developments could replace all roads in and out with dual lane bike trails capable of handling the occasional delivery truck.
I estimated that if ubiquitous enough, this would shorten a person's travel time vs. any other mode of transportation for all trips under 300 miles. For a pallet of products being shipped, that distance increases to nearly 1000 miles. Cost comparisons nearly tripple those distances.
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Comment by Daryl Oster on July 24, 2008 at 12:22am
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Mrs TinCT wrote: "can anyone explain exactly why passenger train service can't be expanded back to the times before airplanes became the norm? that right there could bring down alot of gas usage if the trains & trolleys were up & running to many more places on a regular basis"
The reason trains displaced horses and ox carts is because they provided more transportation benefits per dollar than muscle powered transportation did. In 1835 more than 90% of Americans traveled between cities by muscle power (walking or horse). By 1910 trains were moving over 90% of Americans between major cities. Now less than 1% of Americans travel between cities by train; the reason is the vastly superior transportation value that cars and aircraft offer. It took about 35 years for most of this shift to occur.
It is already PROVEN that trains offer LESS value, so we cannot hope to go back to using trains; (in spite of the lies promulgated by the rail industry to convince city after city in the US to build rail system after rail system that go mostly unused, and require billions of dollars in government subsidy to keep in operation).
The ONLY way to displace cars and jets from the market is to innovate NEW transportation methods that offer vastly better transportation value than cars and jets do. if you click on my name you will find information on a new form of trannsportation that offers such value.
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Comment by MrsTinCT on July 23, 2008 at 7:29pm -
I thank you for starting the blog & posting this information -
I'm not sure about all of the techy stuff that you're talking about but over the years I've read a little here & there articles on solar power & wind power & have always wondered why can't we Americans get "off the grid" more & why isn't more being done to make energy conservation items readily available on the store shelves of the big box stores & building green & recycling & composting & all the many things which will help improve our every day lives made more easy to get & use
can anyone explain exactly why passenger train service can't be expanded back to the times before airplanes became the norm? that right there could bring down alot of gas usage if the trains & trolleys were up & running to many more places on a regular basis
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Comment by Jeff Hurt on July 21, 2008 at 11:19am -
You are correct about the level of inertia and disinterest at the governing level. But they can only draw the bridge up over the moat so many times. Monopolies of thought and process have shelf lives. I would bet your battles here have shaped the nature of the next. We'll take it as an investment and give you full attribution.
You are much more advanced on the subject matter and technically you are poised to profit from your hard work. Others of us should work to prepare for the time when we can take advantage of your thinking and that is the education and organization part I'm not bad at.
Your blog is a multi-entree meal. It will take me awhile but I won't leave the table. Jeff
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Comment by Todd McKissick on July 21, 2008 at 11:03am
- Great. Just give me advance notice and everyone's attention. I've already tangled with many in this area. It's amazing what they're will not to do. Other than Federal level politicians, I really don't see anything significant that can be done unless you're specifically looking out for Nebraska over the other states. They're not going to net meter or switch to wind or solar and they don't have the brass to give any tangable incentive to support starting a company here. That's precisely why my company is starting in Toronto, ON.
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Comment by Jeff Hurt on July 21, 2008 at 10:13am
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Great stuff, Todd.
There's nothing more exciting than someone thinking hard and sharing the fruit. You've done much to advance our education. I'm in Omaha, and just talked with a lady from Ottumwa, IA, who suggested a tour for leaders in this area. I'd be interested in getting several of us in a room for a day.
Jeff
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