Catching Up

A rare rainy day in Huskerland. About time for me to put a posting in again so here goes.

Been busy as all get out lately. Worked on three “value-added” and cooperative workshops around the state last fall for the Nebraska Farmers Union. I provided part of the wind energy PowerPoint action in one section. The idea there is that farmers can hook into the wind and get some extra value from their farms in the process. Since the winder areas are also farming areas with the most economic need, this seems to be a good plan in general.

The workshops were at Norfolk, Beatrice and Kearney and all went pretty well, imo. There have been continuing calls from people who participated or those who had spread the word to other interested folks who in turn rang us up. The curious thing is that we’re not really a wind energy development organization and the resources for getting these folks engaged is rather limited as such. At least for the time being.

Also with the large wind farms, there is such a shortage of large wind turbines now that even if you can get an order in it might be a couple years before they’ll show up on the ranch. That assumes you can get your way through the process of getting a power purchase agreement from the local utility company. (Nebraska is the only state with 100% publicly owned power so that adds a bit more of complexity.)

Community-Based Energy Development (C-BED) as developed in Minnesota seems to be the way that these developments will be happening in Nebraska. Local farmers and small local investors owning the wind farm turbines instead of the, currently illegal, developments as noted by Florida Power & Light and other big wind farm corporate developers.

Also the new overload in demand is driving prices up along with energy costs that go into the steel components (like the tower). Once again, success seems to breed failure. What’s fun is watching W and some of the other GOP clones trying to look like their supporters of renewable energy. Granted W did help jump start wind energy development in Texas (some of that had to do with Kenny Boy owning the only large wind turbine company - Enron Wind) and there was a 9% increase for wind in the administration’s first energy bill but beyond that they have pretty much been an expectable nightmare. Enron Wind turned out to be one of the few businesses that was still worth anything after the big meltdown. General Electric picked it up for a relative song and is making good money from it now.

Even more fun was when W decided to drop by the recently slashed National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) for a visit in his post-“addicted to oil” State of the Union speech tour. They restored the cuts to personnel there a couple days before W showed up. Such a coincidence. The speech itself was more than a little curious.

After the workshops were done the plan was to keep me on as an independent contractor (aka consultant, aka worker droid without benefits or recourse) through the end of last year. At the first of the year I decided that working half time would work out better for me in terms of projects I was interested in doing and in terms of what they could afford. So I’m doing afternoons there most days.

I also helped out with the state Farmer’s Union convention at the end of last year. That was held in Grand Island and was fun in it’s own way. Most of the politicians who were running for the big state offices were there and gave presentations. Interesting to see and hear them in person. Sometimes you get a completely different feel for them in person. Tom Osborne looks a LOT older in person than those photos in the paper for example. He’s kind of a weird politician in general as he has never really gone through an apprenticeship of any sort with his career as a big time college football coach. This is the first time he’s been in a real race so it will be interesting to see how he responds to that pressure.

The thought is that he’s running for governor because he can be the boss again whereas in his role of a U.S. congress critter he’s only a low seniority and little noted actor in a bigger play.

Speaking of politicians, I did have the good fortune to help “brief” the Democratic candidate for governor over a very long lunch hour at Lazlo’s. David Hahn seems to be a really smart and decent fellow. Unfortunately, given the voting habits of Nebraskans, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him. Given that, and based on my initial contact with him, I think he’s got as good a shot as any Democrat in winning that seat. He’ll be getting my vote barring some unforeseen event.

The rest of life has been pretty mundane. Still trying to sort out my day-to-day schedule and activities. Still looking to start up my own not-for-profit organization to promote sustainable development in Nebraska and elsewhere. Shifting to working half days was part of this greater plan. It has helped but I’m increasingly thinking that I need to shift to full time at some point in the not to distant future or none of it will really get off the ground.

I’m also teaching on-line classes in wind energy fundamentals for the Minnesota West Community College’s Windsmith program. I’m not really too keen on the whole on-line class thing and prefer the face to face traditional approach. Still if you have students from Alaska and other willy wack areas, this may be the only way they can get up to speed. Growing up in neither the left or east coast, I can relate to that kind of isolation. And usually there is at least one student from the bunch who provides some inspiration for pushing on with it all.

We have had a wonderful winter by Nebraska standards. Maybe that global warming bit isn’t all bad. Then again, without more of this rain, we can look to shifting to sand dune sailing tourism as the ranches disappear and the soil blows away out west. Not that they aren’t disappearing for reasons of “free trade” and other agricultural disasters but that’s another issue for another day.

Catching Up

A rare rainy day in Huskerland. About time for me to put a posting in again so here goes.

Been busy as all get out lately. Worked on three “value-added” and cooperative workshops around the state last fall for the Nebraska Farmers Union. I provided part of the wind energy PowerPoint action in one section. The idea there is that farmers can hook into the wind and get some extra value from their farms in the process. Since the winder areas are also farming areas with the most economic need, this seems to be a good plan in general.

The workshops were at Norfolk, Beatrice and Kearney and all went pretty well, imo. There have been continuing calls from people who participated or those who had spread the word to other interested folks who in turn rang us up. The curious thing is that we’re not really a wind energy development organization and the resources for getting these folks engaged is rather limited as such. At least for the time being.

Also with the large wind farms, there is such a shortage of large wind turbines now that even if you can get an order in it might be a couple years before they’ll show up on the ranch. That assumes you can get your way through the process of getting a power purchase agreement from the local utility company. (Nebraska is the only state with 100% publicly owned power so that adds a bit more of complexity.)

Community-Based Energy Development (C-BED) as developed in Minnesota seems to be the way that these developments will be happening in Nebraska. Local farmers and small local investors owning the wind farm turbines instead of the, currently illegal, developments as noted by Florida Power & Light and other big wind farm corporate developers.

Also the new overload in demand is driving prices up along with energy costs that go into the steel components (like the tower). Once again, success seems to breed failure. What’s fun is watching W and some of the other GOP clones trying to look like their supporters of renewable energy. Granted W did help jump start wind energy development in Texas (some of that had to do with Kenny Boy owning the only large wind turbine company - Enron Wind) and there was a 9% increase for wind in the administration’s first energy bill but beyond that they have pretty much been an expectable nightmare. Enron Wind turned out to be one of the few businesses that was still worth anything after the big meltdown. General Electric picked it up for a relative song and is making good money from it now.

Even more fun was when W decided to drop by the recently slashed National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) for a visit in his post-“addicted to oil” State of the Union speech tour. They restored the cuts to personnel there a couple days before W showed up. Such a coincidence. The speech itself was more than a little curious.

After the workshops were done the plan was to keep me on as an independent contractor (aka consultant, aka worker droid without benefits or recourse) through the end of last year. At the first of the year I decided that working half time would work out better for me in terms of projects I was interested in doing and in terms of what they could afford. So I’m doing afternoons there most days.

I also helped out with the state Farmer’s Union convention at the end of last year. That was held in Grand Island and was fun in it’s own way. Most of the politicians who were running for the big state offices were there and gave presentations. Interesting to see and hear them in person. Sometimes you get a completely different feel for them in person. Tom Osborne looks a LOT older in person than those photos in the paper for example. He’s kind of a weird politician in general as he has never really gone through an apprenticeship of any sort with his career as a big time college football coach. This is the first time he’s been in a real race so it will be interesting to see how he responds to that pressure.

The thought is that he’s running for governor because he can be the boss again whereas in his role of a U.S. congress critter he’s only a low seniority and little noted actor in a bigger play.

Speaking of politicians, I did have the good fortune to help “brief” the Democratic candidate for governor over a very long lunch hour at Lazlo’s. David Hahn seems to be a really smart and decent fellow. Unfortunately, given the voting habits of Nebraskans, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him. Given that, and based on my initial contact with him, I think he’s got as good a shot as any Democrat in winning that seat. He’ll be getting my vote barring some unforeseen event.

The rest of life has been pretty mundane. Still trying to sort out my day-to-day schedule and activities. Still looking to start up my own not-for-profit organization to promote sustainable development in Nebraska and elsewhere. Shifting to working half days was part of this greater plan. It has helped but I’m increasingly thinking that I need to shift to full time at some point in the not to distant future or none of it will really get off the ground.

I’m also teaching on-line classes in wind energy fundamentals for the Minnesota West Community College’s Windsmith program. I’m not really too keen on the whole on-line class thing and prefer the face to face traditional approach. Still if you have students from Alaska and other willy wack areas, this may be the only way they can get up to speed. Growing up in neither the left or east coast, I can relate to that kind of isolation. And usually there is at least one student from the bunch who provides some inspiration for pushing on with it all.

We have had a wonderful winter by Nebraska standards. Maybe that global warming bit isn’t all bad. Then again, without more of this rain, we can look to shifting to sand dune sailing tourism as the ranches disappear and the soil blows away out west. Not that they aren’t disappearing for reasons of “free trade” and other agricultural disasters but that’s another issue for another day.