("Dan Luke" wrote)
I seriously doubt we would be at war with terrorism instigated mostly by
Arabs if imported oil were not a vital national interest that has required
a military presence in the Middle East for decades. The cost of Homeland
Security and the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan should count in the
price of gasoline, IMO.


East Timor and Rwanda come to mind.

Thousands of Mini (micro) Nuclear Power Plants, for a variety of uses (all
of the same design) is my answer. (1) Micro-NPP + (1) Ethanol Plant ...corn,
sugar beets, hemp, whatever.

Cost? - This one's too easy. g

[Montblack's reply after linked newspaper story]

Minneapolis [Red] Star-Tribune story today (Friday)
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/468717.html

Public paid for idled wind farms

Xcel lacks the capacity to transmit all the wind power, so it pays for some
machines to remain idle, and passes the cost to customers.

Tom Meersman, Star Tribune
Last update: June 01, 2006 – 11:12 PM

Xcel Energy electricity customers have paid millions of dollars for wind
energy that was never produced, according to documents filed with state
regulators.

The utility guarantees payments to wind farm owners whenever their machines
produce electricity, but it doesn't have enough transmission lines to
deliver all of that power to consumers. As a result, wind machines have been
routinely disconnected, sometimes on the windiest days, when the most power
could be generated.

Xcel paid wind developers about $10.4 million -- called "curtailment
payments" -- for wind-generated electricity that it could not accept from
February 2004 through May 2005, according to a report by the Minnesota
Department of Commerce.

Those costs were passed directly to Xcel electricity customers through the
fuel clause adjustment, which is added to monthly bills. The extra costs for
a typical residential customer amounted to 20 cents per month, or $3.20
during that 16-month period, according to the report.

Xcel officials said curtailment payments are a legal and effective tool to
develop wind power. The payments are unavoidable, they said, because it
takes only a few months to build a large wind farm but it requires several
years to construct the transmission lines to move the power the farm
produces.

[Later in the story]
The developers have contracts that require Xcel to buy the power when it's
available. In early 2004, wind generators were capable of producing 466
megawatts of electricity on the ridge, but Xcel could accept only about 56
percent of it.

The wind developers set up a rotation system in which they took turns
reducing output or turning off their generators.

[Montblack here]
For the love of ...#%^&*$%^#^*!!

Here it is again:

1. Build a 12-ft diameter (silo??) in the ground. 25-ft? 50-ft?
2. Make it 30-ft deep. 50-ft deep? Whatever. Build it above ground - who
cares!

3. Fill (round) weight box with rocks, or sand, or lead, or scrap iron. Or
water.

4. When the transmission lines are full, active wind farm starts lifting
weights.

5. When one weight is lifted, switch to second silo, then third...

6. Hire smart people to tell you how big to make your various silos, how
much weight to lift, DC motors?, earth's rotational affect on the hanging
weights, etc.

7. Sell electricity back to Xcel Power (Minnesota) when grid opens up (no
wind) or demand (price) is higher.

8. There. We now have a way to store the energy commodity our wind farm(s)
have harvested. I'm sticking with the term silo - seems applicable.

9. Not efficient you say? Well, it's a lot more efficient than letting windy
days pass without harnessing/harvesting ANYTHING - and yet paying for it,
ANYWAY!

10. Questions: See Split Rock Light House system using weights (in a long
tube) to rotate the lamp. Weights needed to be cranked up twice daily, IIRC.
Maybe four times, daily? Every four hours? ...you get the point.


Montblack
Have "them" ring my NEW cell phone. We'll set up a time to take a meeting
:-)