News stories continued.
Net-metering Swindle
In
effect, those who don’t own a small generating facility will pay higher
rates for their electricity and subsidize their neighbor’s home
generating system.
One rational for requiring
net-metering is that
home
generating systems allow electric utilities to delay building new power
plants; but this line of rationalization is flawed because a home system
is several times more expensive per kilowatt, than is a central power
plant.
Proponents of net-metering also assert that home
systems prevent the building of transmission lines at a cost of $10
million per mile. Such an assertion is misleading. The cost of new
transmission lines can’t be included in the evaluation of net-metering
because it’s necessary to know the details of why a new transmission
line is being built.
Is a new line being built to carry electricity from
a wind power plant in Montana? Or is a new line required because of load
growth? How many homes will a transmission line serve (which might be
the basis for amortization of costs)? And so forth.
Proponents also point to transmission line losses
that some claim are as high as 10%. Supposedly, net-metering would
foster a distributed electrical system that would eliminate line losses:
I.e., get rid of central power plants and get rid of transmission lines,
ergo no more line losses. But common sense tells us that replacing a
centralized system with a far more costly distributed system to improve
efficiency, is an illusion.
While net-metering is unfair to those who don’t own
a home generation system, Feed-in Tariffs are much worse.
Feed-in Tariffs as used in Germany, for example,
guarantee a much higher price (four times the retail rate) for the
electricity a home owner sells to the utility; and the rate is
guaranteed for 20 years.
The Feed-in Tariff is paid for by a surcharge on
everyone’s electric bill, so, once again, neighbors are subsidizing
those who own a home generating system.
This has resulted in the installation of extremely
costly roof top systems, at a cost per kilowatt far in excess of the
cost of a central power station.
Net-metering and Feed-in Tariffs supposedly promote
renewable energy. But what sense is there in making our economy less
efficient and our electricity more costly?
Shouldn’t renewables make our economy more energy
efficient?
TSAugust
June 28, 2009
Second news story, continued.
PDO & Alaska
Professor Richard Keen, University of Colorado, Boulder, was hired by the National Park Service to obtain temperature history from central Alaska to determine whether temperatures in Alaska were accelerating when compared with the rest of the world.
Professor Keen learned that there was a strong correlation between the PDO and temperatures in Alaska. He further showed that there was a correlation between the sun and temperatures in Alaska.
The preceding chart shows PDO regimes in blue plotted against temperatures. The periods between 1923 to 1946 and 1977 to the present, were periods of higher Alaskan temperatures when there was a strong Aleutian low..
Similar charts, dating back to 1600 using tree ring data, showed the same correlation.
The PDO is an area of Low Pressure in the northern Pacific Ocean. When the Aleutian Low is strong, temperatures in Alaska are high; when weak, temperatures in Alaska are lower.
This is another example of scientific study that disproves the theory that CO2 emissions are causing climate change.
TSAugust
June 21, 2009
Copyright © 2002 - 2009 TSAugust