Ted Turner’s at it again. No, he didn’t buy another set of cable stations or a new bevy of bison; he’s out to solar the Wild West.
Turner and Southern Company announced today that their Cimarron Solar Facility in New Mexico is up and zipping out enough voltage to power 9,000 homes. The Turner Renewable Energy, Southern Company cooperative effort picked up the project from First Solar last March.
"We are very excited to see this project completed and producing clean solar energy to power homes and businesses in New Mexico," Turner was quoted as quipping about the project. "Large-scale solar generation is among the fastest growing energy sources in the world, and we're pleased that we can be a part of that growth."
Turner is known for doing his own thing at his own pace; so, his leap from TV to rancher to solar scholar isn’t all that out of his normal range. However, what’s surprising is the number of old school cowboys (both real and imaginary) that have joined him on the renewable energy side of things.
Let’s be honest. Cowboys don’t really have an image of progressiveness. Old trucks, old dogs and old horses are more their style. But, renewables---especially solar---may be a dark horse in this cowboy race.
Let’s take the ultimate TV cowboy from the 1980s, good ol’ boy J.R. Ewing, who stopped time (it seemed) until their writers of “Dallas” finally revealed who shot him. The actor who played J.R., Larry Hagman, popped up last summer hocking SolarWorld, a German photovoltaic module maker. The commercials played off the cowboy/oil days of old and offered a new and shiny energy alternative in solar.
And Hagman himself does have a 94-kilowatt solar system on his estate in Southern California. He also sits on the board of a nonprofit group that helps build solar systems in places of hardship and poverty worldwide.
Hagman isn’t the only oil-based cowboy (albeit an imaginary one) to embrace renewables. In real life, Oklahoma oilman (and self-proclaimed Oklahoma State University cowboy) T. Boone Pickens has introduced “The Pickens Plan” which is a long-term energy plan to get off of oil by using a whole lot of wind and natural gas transportation. Of course, this was a great idea for him since he was all set to invest a ton in a Texas wind farm that, unfortunately, never got off the ground, leaving him with a lot of wind turbines to spread around.
But, the interesting connection between these three cowboys remains that investment in renewables. As Pickens saw a huge market in consolidating oil companies in the 1980s, it appears he may see another ground floor opening with renewables this time around.
And a couple of other cowboys seem to see that on the horizon as well. Wind farms and solar arrays do speak to the loner spirit of the cowboy---being far away but still managing a few creature comforts. And, perhaps it also speaks to the push cowboys often have to forage into new territory and new frames of mind. It may be that old cowboys will ride to the rescue of this new world (at least in the form of renewable energy) after all, leaving me to wonder: Are renewables the next “oil boom,” so to speak?
Monday, January 24, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
On outages and clear Oklahoma skies
Another blizzard has hit the Northeast. Atlanta is frozen solid. There’s snow in 49 of the 50 states, according to CNN, even here in Tulsa. But, today, we have a clear, bright blue Oklahoma sky reflected in that remaining white.
There’s a lot of real estate in the sky in Oklahoma. The blue horizon seems to go up and out forever, an endless ceiling with no glass barrier in sight. On days like today, it’s almost impossible to believe that the bright blue ends somewhere, that eventually the dark of space will interfere and stop that tinted ascent.
We don’t put a lot of skyscrapers into the real estate of an Oklahoma sky, but we do put quite a bit of one thing---electricity. Towers and poles dominate the landscape here. They trace along highways and roads, turn left or right to follow the bits of civilization and urban sprawl. They go up and out the way Manhattan builds office buildings.
It makes for cheaper energy. It makes for quicker hook-ups if you decide to build out in the middle of an Oklahoma nowhere to enjoy that deep blue overhead real estate.
But, sometimes, it can be problematic.
Sometimes the real estate above our heads in Oklahoma isn’t that bright blue we’re used to. Sometimes it’s black or gray or even green. Green’s the worst. That means tornado. But black can also bring strong winds, sometimes hurricane force. And gray can mean a whole lot of ice---all items that can destroy the biggest builds of our Oklahoma sky, that power structure.
When the worst ice storm in state history hit here in 2007, the parts of Tulsa with lots of power real estate in the sky were crippled. Poles were down everywhere. Transformers exploded. It was chaos---except in those newer spots with underground equipment. They had a few spotty power outages but, all in all, maintained a good front.
After that storm, I thought, “Perhaps we should stop building our power structures into the bright blue of the Oklahoma sky.”
However, there is a problem with moving all these bits and pieces underground: cost. It’s expensive. And, locally, for a utility caught in a recession and already hurting from a series of bad winters (including that historic ice storm), it’s not something easily done.
I know our utility is anxious to return to upkeep and undergrounding, but I also realize their dilemma with cost and cutbacks. And, while the average customer might love the reliability and safety from ice and wind that underground power provides, they are not willing to pay out of pocket for it. Again, this is as equally understandable as the utility’s bottom line concerns. So, no fair pointing fingers at each other with this argument.
For the moment, the real estate in that Oklahoma sky remains the most practical power option. I’ll just keep an eye out for the blue to change to black or gray and hope that our infrastructure in the air can be spared---at least until the utility can spring for undergrounding things again (or customers are willing to pay for it). Until then, power will remain in the air, and there’s just not much we can do about it from our spot on terra firma below.
There’s a lot of real estate in the sky in Oklahoma. The blue horizon seems to go up and out forever, an endless ceiling with no glass barrier in sight. On days like today, it’s almost impossible to believe that the bright blue ends somewhere, that eventually the dark of space will interfere and stop that tinted ascent.
We don’t put a lot of skyscrapers into the real estate of an Oklahoma sky, but we do put quite a bit of one thing---electricity. Towers and poles dominate the landscape here. They trace along highways and roads, turn left or right to follow the bits of civilization and urban sprawl. They go up and out the way Manhattan builds office buildings.
It makes for cheaper energy. It makes for quicker hook-ups if you decide to build out in the middle of an Oklahoma nowhere to enjoy that deep blue overhead real estate.
But, sometimes, it can be problematic.
Sometimes the real estate above our heads in Oklahoma isn’t that bright blue we’re used to. Sometimes it’s black or gray or even green. Green’s the worst. That means tornado. But black can also bring strong winds, sometimes hurricane force. And gray can mean a whole lot of ice---all items that can destroy the biggest builds of our Oklahoma sky, that power structure.
When the worst ice storm in state history hit here in 2007, the parts of Tulsa with lots of power real estate in the sky were crippled. Poles were down everywhere. Transformers exploded. It was chaos---except in those newer spots with underground equipment. They had a few spotty power outages but, all in all, maintained a good front.
After that storm, I thought, “Perhaps we should stop building our power structures into the bright blue of the Oklahoma sky.”
However, there is a problem with moving all these bits and pieces underground: cost. It’s expensive. And, locally, for a utility caught in a recession and already hurting from a series of bad winters (including that historic ice storm), it’s not something easily done.
I know our utility is anxious to return to upkeep and undergrounding, but I also realize their dilemma with cost and cutbacks. And, while the average customer might love the reliability and safety from ice and wind that underground power provides, they are not willing to pay out of pocket for it. Again, this is as equally understandable as the utility’s bottom line concerns. So, no fair pointing fingers at each other with this argument.
For the moment, the real estate in that Oklahoma sky remains the most practical power option. I’ll just keep an eye out for the blue to change to black or gray and hope that our infrastructure in the air can be spared---at least until the utility can spring for undergrounding things again (or customers are willing to pay for it). Until then, power will remain in the air, and there’s just not much we can do about it from our spot on terra firma below.
Monday, January 3, 2011
The Governator exits stage left
He angered his own party quite a bit. He was a definite handful---a big, brash personality difficult to compete with. He was a source of both pride and frustration for Californians---sometimes at the very same time. And, today, he is the Governator no more.
This Monday, January 3, 2011 marks Arnold Schwarzenegger's “hasta la vista” goodbye to politics in the Golden State. He is no longer a governor. He’ll just have to return to his lowly previous career as matinee god.
Thems the breaks.
Schwarzenegger blew into office a little less than 8 years ago when pretty much the entire state hated then Gov. Gray Davis and headlines like “Pacific Gas and Electric to Gov. Davis: We’re Busted” were regular bits of ink in the trade presses. Deregulation had taken the state---and the state utilities---to the cleaners, and Davis was left holding the bag, whether or not he was actually at fault.
Schwarzenegger swept in like the action hero he often portrays---trying to save the day for the state and for the state of energy.
At the time of Arnie’s big rescue, I worked for Electric Light and Power magazine and wrote a piece on Schwarzenegger’s energy plans. You can read that one HERE if you’d like to take a trip in the Way Back Machine. At that time, the only thing we were arguing about concerning Schwarzenegger was whether to use "governator" or "gubernator" as his nickname. (Governator won out, though I still prefer gubernator.)
Long story short: Arnie was going to fix it all.
"I will restore stability to our energy system and stimulate private investment in electricity generation and transmission," the governor's campaign website stated at the time. And he had a multi-point plan for doing so that included:
- reforming the 13 state agencies with sway over the markets.
- creating a regulatory structure based on "other states and the FERC standard market design" while eliminating incentives for "gaming" the regulatory system.
- investing in natural gas and transmission capacity.
- encouraging conservation.
- creating reserve requirements for generators.
- addressing "overpriced legacy power purchase agreements."
How much of that he actually did or was really necessary depends on whom you ask. No one really talks about power purchase agreements anymore, the regulatory structure in the state hasn’t truly changed all that much, but there has been movement in both transmission capacity and conservation. And he combated global warming like no Republican in history, in or out of the Golden State. In fact, last month, he was named 2010 Green Governor of the Year by the Beautiful Earth Group and Opportunity Green.
When accepting the award, Governor Schwarzenegger said, "California is showing the world that you can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time. We are creating a new economic foundation for the 21st Century built on clean fuel, clean energy and clean cars that is turning California into the green capital of the nation and the world, and I couldn't be more proud of these accomplishments.”
Despite the California greening, the BBC reported today that Shcwarzenegger’s “political star has faded” since he came into the scene with approvals hovering in the 20 percentile range (rather close to Davis’ when he was in such hot water in 2003). But, whether you think the Schawarzenegger was a driving force for energy change or was stagnated by other issues no longer matters, really, except in terms of his legacy. Today, he hands over the state driver’s seat to Democrat Jerry Brown, a former governor who first served from 1975 to 1983.
While it is likely that Brown will continue down Arnie’s greening power path (the environment and clean energy jobs were a part of his eight-point campaign platform), one thing’s for certain, though: The official reign of the Governator is over.
No word on whether Brown will have as fabulous a nickname as Arnie. Granted, in Brown's first round as governor, he was called "Governor Moonbeam" by one journalist for his liberal policies. Somehow, that just doesn't compare. In the nickname arena, the Governator may always remain supreme.
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