Time To Euthanize Grandpa

I predicted two months ago that by the end of Obama's term there will be more Americans without health insurance than there are today.

Nothing over the last few weeks has swayed my thinking. Nothing.

I love hearing our beloved Republicans focus on "long lines in Canada" and "she died before she could be seen" in Germany or how "grandparents in Denmark are euthanized even though they aren't sick"...but you know...there isn't any one of these nations that are currently engaged in exasperating talks regarding their system...not one of these nations hunkered down in all-nighter last minute debates before recess trying to shoehorn in legislation to change their system. They ain't perfect but they don't need to reform them either.

Health care reform is equivalent to smart grid reform -- all you need to know about why health care reform is doomed is to consider this: Today we spend north of 15% GDP, while in 10 years it's gonna be 20%. If we were to keep those costs under or below 15%, then a few very powerful health care and pharmaceutical corporations stand to lose over $1 trillion annually. Won't happen in my America.

The smart grid isn't about lowering your electric bill; it never has been. It's only about positioning electricity providers and a handful of vested interests in a more powerful position at your expense. There isn't one, not one, of my colleagues who think differently and while that should be a strong indictment, it's falling on deaf ears. However...there ain't no discussion about electric reform in Congress and there never will be. You're gonna pay more for your smart grid and you won't have any choice in the matter and you're going to do it with a smile on your face.

Sick people are big business, and big business runs the nation. Agribusiness on the front end profits from fattening feeding Americans cheap corn syrup, subsidized pork and soybean oil while Big Pharma and the insurance industry profits on the back end when you're obese and suffering from myriad diseases of the affluent. Investor owned utilites owe their shareholders and soon-to-be smart grid management corporations a growing share of your electricity payments.

You would think that us Merikans could simply pick a Western European or Canadian program and that would be that. Instead, single-payer is off the table. In my opinion this would have carried true reform but we won't get it. We'll get a parallel public option that will become the dumping grounds for all private insurers who deem you too risky. The costs of managing this public option will become so fucking high that we'll have to cut back on all those promises of "free quality health care for all," which puts us right back to what we have today...while ignoring not addressing ad infinitum double digit premium increases.

I'll tell you this -- my family and I take far, far more off insurance than I or my employer pay through our premiums. I'm going to conservatively guess that we will have sucked a good $22,000 more than my premium this year alone and this will be likely be repeated for the next thirty five years, and every year going forward it's gonna be 6% more. There are a million other families doin' the same thing and there will be millions more in the future. This is your money (you being the healthy ones) funneled off to allow my doctor and his HMO representative to run with the bulls in Pamplona every summer.

Because I have health insurance...I thank you. Thank you for subsidizing my chronic diabetic care, care that will rise to $60,000 per year by 2019, even though I'm otherwise healthy and fit. And that we aren't going to provide for any meaningful reform on health care costs, I will thank you today for the half million dollars you'll give me tomorrow. I hope you'll pay it with a smile on your face, too, because you'll have no choice.

Strikes!

Peter Calthorpe, the "renown" San Francisco architect, built Laguna West as a Transit Oriented Development project in the early 1990's. The whole point was a human scaled, mixed use development within walking distance of quality transit. Following a few scornful letters to the editor I wrote to the Sacramento Bee regarding the project and Elk Grove in general, the Great Tsakopoulos opined in a later piece that he helped develop "the first walkable community built in the U.S. since WWII."

On the whole, the project is a total fucking failure.

15 miles south of Sacramento, it's indeed walkable. Walkable to Nowhere. You can walk to the Laguna Interstate 5 interchange if you want, only to be handcuffed by the CHP if you pedestrianate down the freeway. Laguna Blvd. itself is a Great 6-Lane Divider, dividing the residences to the south to the supposed job centers to the north, making walking across it to your job a wholly dissatisfying experience and one fraught with danger, so I've not ever seen one resident do it. The Laguna interchange regularly hosts thirty six thousand vehicles per day, filled with chronically speeding housewives late in dropping off their kids and inattentive husbands commuting to Sacramento to work. Light rail plans have long since been scrubbed -- the community will never, ever see any train service whatsoever. The whole of their residents commute to Sacramento and the Bay Area. As my bus commute takes my through the famed Laguna West, I've only ever seen a handful of people drive their cars near the bus stop and walk to board the bus; this is the extent of "the first walkable community built since WWII." What a total crock of shit.

Regarding the job development on the north side of Laguna: well, I admittedly stand in awe at the potential this had, but I am totally underwhelmed by what actually did get built. Tsakopoulos and Phil Angelides both lured Apple and JVC (among others) into the development and for years we actually had some manufacturing in the city! Elk Grovians actually built stuff rather than just consumed it!

But wouldn't you know it, JVC pulled out a while ago. Another out-of-town corporation with absolutely no loyalty to the locality decided (for whatever goddamn reason they chose) to pull up stakes and bail. They used to produce 3 million CDs and DVDs per month and employ just north of 100 people; today, those 100+ manufacturing jobs [likely] reside in Cambodia whilst it's the same Americans who are consuming those CDs and DVDs.

JVC also, presumably, paid development impact fees to site the facility there; fees to provide sewer, water, natural gas, police and fire service, roads, what have you.

Cut to the present. 2008 sees the reincarnation of their old manufacturing facility into Strikes! Bowling. Actually, it's called the Strikes Family Entertainment Center. So instead of 100 decently paid manufacturing jobs, now we get one multi-millionaire developer, one multi-millionaire owner, and scores of wage slave attendants and fast-food servers earning far less than required to buy even the most decrepit Elk Grovian piece of shit starter home...and certainly nowhere near any capability to buy in the more expensive Laguna West "development." All these wage slaves commute in by their own private motorized vehicles from elsewheres. So much for "walkable."

And now! The City of Elk Grove has announced to the Strikes! owner that he's on the hook for $536,000 in developer impact fees...the owner who had no idea this was coming (supposedly). Mayor Hume says it's "just been a communication breakdown between parties...but you still owe us a half million dollars, please."

The owner and developer "assumed" that JVC paid that shit two decades ago. Nope, the city and mayor want their own slice of our growing retail/service sector pie.

I have been to Strikes!, once, and not likely ever again --the beer prices are completely fucking outrageous...and these prices don't even reflect the "impact fees" supposedly still due. I would say primarily I do not enjoy Warehouse Entertainment. Several hundred patrons stuffed into a big-box venue surrounded by five acres of parked cars. Poor, poor Strikes! may have to close up shop because of these fees, according to our Elk Grove Citizen. Of course, the city, while demanding hundreds of thousands in fees, won't possibly allow it to close simply because the city has no other jobs other than bowling alley attendants. They think that keeping all these low paid jobs in the city will keep millions in payroll tax receipts rolling into their coffers, so they won't let it fail.

Personally, I see the total need for Elk Grove to double dip, to charge Strikes! for development impact fees -- primarily because they don't have jobs that are worth a shit, jobs whose payroll taxes will pay back all that road upkeep their South Sacramento employees use, jobs that will pay back the scores of police service calls, jobs that will pay back all the local vandalism and mayhem those South Sacramento employee's friends bring. All those employees aren't buying new cars at the Elk Grove Auto Mall either..can't afford them...they're driving Sacramento County Paul Blanco beaters. Perhaps the owner and the developer are buying new cars, but they won't bother buying any of that suburban housewife shit offered by our Auto Mall. A Honda Odyssey? Please.

Charge away, my fair city.

Cool Technology

Here's another round of technology that I might employ with my upcoming AC replacement project -- installation of carbon dioxide sensors in each room to determine the number of people in each room and control the vents accordingly. Sounds like a fantastic improvement, eh? Energy efficiency, wa-hey!

Until you discover the cost per sensor is $219, and the sensors, manufactured in Germany, last on average 60 months. Wiring the vents will cost $1175 and each vent, now electrically controlled, will have to be replaced at a cost of $58 each. Of course, the electronic vent controller module will be $417, and the new AC adapter to power the controller will chew up 75 kWh over the life of the installation.

How much cool air could you allow to vent into space for what the technology costs to better contain it? Quite a bit, methinks.

Technology <> Energy

I'm not a fringe lunatic because of my contemptuous belief in our future smart grid. I just question the end result...that's all. I personally believe that technology <> energy and the more technology we throw at our smart grid, the more energy we will end up consuming, both on a total basis and on a per capita basis.

Look what energy efficiency has brought your household: five TVs instead of three; two refrigerators instead of one; six wireless phone outlets to eliminate all that bothersome walking to the other room to field a call; a larger housal unit -- requiring a six ton 16 SEER AC unit instead of a four ton 11 SEER unit because your 3,360 sq ft Garage Majal needs the additional cooling.

Look what technology has brought your household: a DVR on each TV, along with a cable box or satellite receiver, or a digital converter box if you don't have either of those; plasma HDTVs that consume more power than the original cathode ray tube you had in your living room; a blue ray player and an HD DVD player 'cause you didn't know which format was gonna win; sixteen different AC adaptors to accommodate all those must-have-at-all-times electronics like Boysenberries, iPhones, and iPods.

On top of my firm belief that we will save precisely nothing through technological improvements to our grid comes this fantastic summary provided by General Electric's Smart Grid Solutions Team in the latest IEEE Power & Energy Journal:

• Smart grids are not really about doing things a lot differently than the way they are today. Rather, they are about doing more of what we already do --...leveraging existing technologies to a greater extent while driving a higher level of integration to realize the synergies across enterprise integration.

What the fuck does that mean?

You know, it doesn't really matter what it means, except that you can be assured smart grid isn't about you. It's all about expanding the role the electric provider has in providing its service to you; the role that a handful of actors, including the utilities themselves, will have in creating the technologies the electric provider will use. Google, Cisco, Control4, Trilliant-- all of them vying for their own slice of that smart pie, to own the operating system for the future Home Area Network, in-home displays for energy management, to become owners of the communication protocols required for your grid connectivity; to establish the connections for variable pricing markets that may soon be the only way for you pay for your electricity.

It's no stretch of anyone's imagination that someday you'll be able to contract for the Friends & Family Electric Plan, where you pay your own rate for charging your Palm Pilot at anyone's house who also subscribes to Your Circle. You'll get access to all your Rollover Watts, with unlimited text messaging from your home energy management device. You will be able to day-trade your kilowatts; you'll be able to buy your own power on the GridPoint spot market or arrange for bilateral energy contracting with a rooftop PV owner in Kansas. You'll be able to sell power you don't use; you'll offer decremental bids for energy via your Boysenberry while commuting into work.

And with each and every market transaction, with each on-line review of your energy usage patterns, and each time you just plug your old incandescent lamp into the wall socket -- someone's gonna fuck you out of a little more of your time and money.

Keep Bombing Brown People, Our Economy Depends On It

With gun sales booming, so is stock in Colt Firearms. I mentioned earlier this year how certain sectors of our economy make a killing (no pun intended) during a depression economic slowdown. So long as we continue to bomb brown people the US economy will do OK.

I said it six months ago and it's still relevant: We could bomb five new brown nations and feel good about it for what we spent to bail Goldman Sachs and feel like shit about it.

Let' see...North Koreans are most decidedly brown, don't you think? South Koreans are certainly whitish, but because we don't get to see too much of North Korea, their residents must be brown.

Nigeria -- while they might be technically black, because they sit atop 11% of our oil imports they are most certainly brown. Countries with oil tilt the coloring scale.

Therefore, Venezuelans are absolutely brown. They even have a brown name. An equatorial country with oil? Shit, they couldn't not be brown.

Iran? No country browner. The biggest "threat" since the Third Reich as governor, using an alphabet we don't use, along with loads of light sweet crude...yep, no browner a nation there is.

Pakistan? Well, very nearly 100% brown. And we are already actively bombing them. But I throw them on the list because we aren't technically bombing them yet according to our spokesmen.

The bombing of brown people would put myraid Americans back to work. Our Americans wouldn't give a shit about what they'd be doing, cause "it's a job, man," and that's all that matters. Instead of two active wars, how about seven?

Tell the employees of Winchester Repeating Arms that we're in a recession. They'd look at you like you just asked them to spell chrysanthemum. "There ain't no recession," they'd say, and from their point of view they'd be right. Can't manufacture enough personal firearms in these booming economic times.

Shit -- start bombing these five nations (whilst retracting all our bank bailouts) and economic recovery would happen overnight. All the soon to be end-of-unemployment-benefit 18-34 year olds will be willing soldiers against the Brown Infidels. Scads of women out of work as florists, real estate salesladies, wine tasting hosts, and balloon shopkeepers could re-tool into munitions manufacturers.

Don't think I'm out in left field...I'm squarely at shortstop here...I had already mentioned how Raytheon, General Atomics, Colt Firearms, Winchester, Northrup-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin haven't laid off shit while Starbucks, Boeing, and Warner Bros. have let go thousands. While the government is increasing their spending to boost GDP, why not increase our offensive defensive spending?

Drive More! Our Economy Depends On It

This is how my American government tries to foist fuel economy upon two hundred and ninety nine million people who don't give a shit about their energy use: Cash For Clunkers.

The real name is the Consumer Assistance Recycle and Save Act of 2009. Note, again, how all you ignorant Americans aren't regarded as citizens, but only as consumers. The term consumer is so widely synonymous with citizen that Congress is effectively calling you a dumb fucking consumer instead of a voting citizen...but they don't call you that to your face. Don't you feel better 'bout that?

One billion dollars of your [future] tax payments! Wa-hey! We don't have a billion today to spend so we'll gamble that things will improve and print a billion more to encourage you to buy a new car you don't need so you can ostensibly save our economy. Clearly, Washington is fully aware that our moronic auto-dependent nation can't function without the perpetual selling of more cars than the year before.

Another billion dollars spent to help you keep our automotive economic engine alive. Just pile it on top of the other thirty or forty odd billion already blown to bail out the Autos: 1/30th isn't that much more, is it? Of course it isn't.

This whole Act screams "we're doin' all we can to save the world from global warmin'" while providing nothing more than a government subsidy to sell more fucking cars. This is a program whose intention is to take money from me to help my neighbor buy a car. My Elk Grove neighbor, the wholly car dependent asshole driving nineteen thousand miles a year -- he gets to trade in his car at my expense, and will likely drive his new car twenty three thousand miles next year because his fuel efficiency is better. He's really looking forward to getting back to his usual seventeen yearly round trips to the Bay Area to visit his relatives and old stamping grounds rather than his current eleven.

Yep, we're really gonna green up this place with this legislation, goshdarnit.

The End Of Coal

I've mentioned before how much better off SMUD is in our quest for "renewable this" and "renewable that," particularly when you look at Los Angeles with 40% of their energy provided by out of state coal fired generation. Cap and trade, carbon offsets, carbon sequestration, climate change, NOX emissions, sulfuric rain, all of that horseshit -- coal is a nightstick up LA's green ass.

Villaraigosa announced the End of Coal last week for Los Angeles by 2020. Within the span of eleven years, eleven! the city will phase in a wholesale swap out of 2000 MW of clean(er) capacity.

A city whose identity revolves around the automobile, a city whose NIMBYfied residents refuse to site power plants anywhere near them, a city whose name is synonymous with excess -- they're gonna go green in eleven years? Wa-hey!

Remember Al Gore's chant last year about 100% renewables in 10 years? Well, we're 10% the way through his timeline and 0.00864% closer to that goal. Remember every president's tagline since 1973 about reducing our dependency on foreign oil? Now some thirty six years into it we're more dependent now than we've ever been.

This is greenwashing, pure and simple. These statements are made, the mayor gets PR value, and he'll be long out of office by the time his predecessors get to make the same statement while no real efforts have been undertaken.

Edit: I could have continued this idea on my ALT.energy post, but another thing that conventional generation provides (and PV doesn't) is inertia. Hydroelectric power is the king of inertia because there's such a huge chunk of rotating steel and copper; inertia to absorb and provide power in the event of a system disturbance. If a transmission fault occurs there's a huge amount of energy in that rotating mass that allows the grid to ride through power swings. If the system can't ride these through it'll break apart into pieces; virtually every major blackout owes its condition to system instability.

Get rid of the IPP and Najavo coal plants and you reduce system inertia. This has to be engineered back into the grid. I'm not suggesting that we can't do it, but my point is that there's more to it than just slapping up 56,004 rooftop PV systems and that's that. What, you think Angelenos are going to allow a gigantic flywheel to be built anywhere near them?

ALT.Energy

San Diego became an interesting test bed for the future of solar power. The California Public Utilities Commission on June 17th denied Chula Vista a permit for a proposed peaker plant...claiming that the alternative of thousands of rooftop solar systems may be a viable alternative to the gas turbine project.

This ruling will set the stage for every utility going forward to now spend more money to study why solar is or isn't a viable alternative for every new generation plant in the state. You need a new baseloaded combined cycle gas turbine? DENIED. First prove that the installation of 11,350 rooftop PV systems along with a football stadium-sized 265 MW 8-hour rated battery bank (in case the sun ain't shinin' that day) isn't a viable alternative.

Dan Fink has spent a lifetime developing a viable alt.energy solution to those living off the grid, but I am constantly pulled back into the reality of our Merika that couldn't give a rat's ass about where their electricity comes from so long as it "comes from" anytime they want it. Wind and solar power are not valid energy sources against the backdrop of this nation's electric consumers in my opinion. You think my neighbor would like to hear my 10-foot home wind turbine as he's enjoying a fine Bordeaux in his backyard? You think our nation's homeowner's associations are going to allow retrofitted PV systems to fuck up all those majestic mountain-esque rooflines in their communities? You don't think that neighbors across this great land won't burn an owner in effigy because he puts his laundry out to dry that's visible to the neighbors?

My own PV system and solar shares, first of all, barely manages 60% of my own usage and second of all, 100% of it is backed up by installed utility capacity because I want power all the damn time. My installed capacity cannot yet even cover my peak load, so even if I could get 100% of my energy, I'd still need utility power to cover the peak.

And this is where I really question the idea that rooftop PV can displace the building of that Chula Vista peaking plant. The argument says that on days when the peaker is needed the sun has to be shining, or else it wouldn't have been needed in the first place. This is a compelling argument, until you stop to consider that generation can be used in myriad ways outside of just meeting peak demand. Maximum solar incidence does not correspond with peak loads in all cases. Insolation is still a huge obstacle...some of the heaviest electrical consumption days in SMUD have occurred with high humidity combined with cloud cover. So, you say, just install additional PV capacity to account for it. OK. But take note that a peaker plant can provide operating reserve, something that PV or wind can never do. PV will produce when it's sunny, wind when it's windy, yes, but what happens when your coal-fired baseloaded plant trips off line? You gonna ask God to make the wind blow harder? Will Jesus part the skies to let more sun in? You gonna ask consumers to back off their power demand? Yeah, good luck...you'd have an easier time convincing God to produce more.

If we could couple demand side management with renewables it might just work. We would have to have a public willing to go without AC for a coupla hours every so often for the sake of a lost resource or cloud cover, but in my opinion this is something that our nation's citizens will never sign onto. Yeah, it sounds good on paper, but the first day you implement a forced load reduction is the day state legislators will be signing into law the fast-tracking of new peaker plants.

To prove this last point, consider that I and thousands of other SMUD customers are paid $5 per month so that SMUD has the right to cycle our air conditioners in the event that demand outstrips supply. To date it has never been used; not because it wouldn't have been beneficial or cost effective but because the policy ramifications of cycling suggest that you'll only be able to do it once. It's like the guy who joins the Army Reserves for the college benefits but says 'fuck that' when told to go to war -- the second we use it we'll lose 60% enrollment if not more. A five dollar savings is not worth a few hours of unconfortableness. On top of that, you'd have to drop the five dollar payment and charge 15 dollars more if you rely on more expensive peaker PVs.

I don't think this will fly in my Merika.

Smarte Grid

The Safeway, the supermarket nearest me, operates a Key Club Member program (something like that) that, if you enter in your code or phone number, you get instant savings.

I would love to understand exactly how corporations use this information. Perhaps they discover that people who buy fresh spinach are statistically inclined to buy Oro De Oxaca tequila, while those who buy canned spinach are warmed to Cazadores. My gut feeling is this data is sold to third parties who take these relevancies and figure out a way to market and sell more shit to people.

I also think that they could easily determine which households consume an above average volume of red meat, processed peanuts, sour cream, and bacon, and find ways to legally exclude them from insurance pools or at a minimum ensure that insurance products aren't marketed to them or that designer health care products tailored to the fat & diseased are marketed to them. Insurance premiums could be raised on such people, and lowered for fresh kale and cabbage buyers. If you've ever been electronically flagged for having bought a pack of cigarettes, watch out.

Then along comes our more smarter smart grid, wa-hey! where my utility will someday be sitting on a few million terabytes of user information. I'd bet anything anything! that an additional revenue stream will be created by selling this data to appliance manufacturers, marketing firms, and the like. Perhaps digging through all this information it's revealed that there's a statistical correlation between when the Blackberry turns on and when the cell phone charging station stops charging, leading to better integration of these two products allowing for more sales of both.

Maybe local law enforcement might process this data to determine if your alibi holds up -- do the electrical on and offs correspond to a person who says he was sleeping at the time of the bludgeoning?

Maybe home AMI compliant smart-behind-the-meter microprocessor based home-energy solutions products will offer a web based portal to allow you to program your electric water heater to start incrementally warming up as soon as the electric treadmill is sensed coming on so you'll have a warm shower after your workout without all that bothersome waste in heating a tank of water when you aren't using it. And are you using firmware ver. 4.56? No? Well, then you'd better spend fifty more minutes of your life downloading this latest version because version 3.60 can't process the protocols from the newer IEEE C75.4 compliant water heating elements.

Damn, it's obvious my earlier contempt for what a Smart Grid's gonna bring us was rather shortsighted. I have clearly failed to understand how much better my future life is going to be once Smart Grid starts automatically controlling all this shit for me while I sit back and relax. I must have overstated the loss of my life-energy when I have to drive my batterized car twelve miles to the Smart Store and spend a half a day choosing from sixty-five different Smart Plans (rollover kilowatts) and payment options for ancillary services like Boysenberry-enabled home energy apps. I have clearly failed to understand that getting a nineteen-page electronic electricity bill sent to my Boysenberry will take less time to mentally process and understand than my current one page bill. I've clearly overstated problems like "I plugged it in and the damn thing don't work" and the hours spent on my iPhone with the manufacture to discover that my smart-enabled dishwasher's port settings aren't compatible with my existing 1350 nM fiber optic cable and that I should go out, buy, and install the 1550 nM cable for better throughput and reduced system crashes. Lastly, I've overstated all those unemployed hackers who will find a way to 'reduce' their energy use. I've incorrectly calculated my time lost that I'll have to spend uploading patches and service packs to my own integrated home area network to prevent hackers from fucking with my system, such as spamming my Boysenberry iTron with unsolicited requests for better smart grid products.

I've also failed to appreciate the smart grid savings I'm going to get while smart grid service charges, CPUC fees, CEC smart grid restructuring assessments and utility user connection fees are paid even though I'll use less than 10 kWh a day because I'll generate my own from solar and I'll install future home energy improvement projects. I should welcome the fact that 75% of my future bill won't come from energy that I actually use, but rather will consist of all these smart grid fees, charges, taxes, assessments, surcharges, tolls, dues, levies, surtaxes, tariffs, stipends, and duties.

Yeah, life's definitely gonna get even better, less hurried and less stressed with our Smart Grid. I also think that if my industry called it a Smarte Grid (which sounds more sophisticated with that extra 'e') we'd sell this crock of shit to the public a lot easier.

More Smarter Smart Grid

I am wary of our more smarter Smart Grid; I wear my reservations on both sleeves. We've got this vision that your and your neighbor's hundred million plug-in hybrid vehicles are going to give a boost to the grid when it needs it and will draw power to fuel your daily 42-mile round trip commute from Wentzville to St. Louis when it's sunny and windy. All of this is forms the base our our smart grid pyramid while we currently have 9,500 electric vehicles in a nation filled with 250,851,833 vehicles -- 0.0038%.

Yep. We've learned that Tesla Motors will turn a profit next month, validating the future of electric vehicles. They're coming. Silent electric 18-wheel tractor-trailers with battery powered refrigerator units to keep the iceberg lettuce cool from Salinas to Springfield. Hybrid utility bucket trucks. All electric flatbeds, car carriers, and federal express vans. Hybrid container ships. Electric helicopters. Battery powered wreckers. Battery powered yachts. Electrified snowcats. Battery powered hard rock mining equipment. Electric bulldozers. Batterized Jet Skis, Wave Runners, and SkiDoos. Battery powered standby generators. Hybrid freight trains. Battery powered launch rockets to outer space. Electric tanks. Electric motorcycles. If these sound ridiculous, they should; never in history has the use of energy efficiency resulted in less energy usage...only more. If we drop the price of a battery car from $50,000 today to $5,000 tomorrow, we'll only see a billion more cars on the road.

I carried away one important point regarding renewables when I worked at the California ISO: for every megawatt of scheduled wind energy we kept a megawatt of natural gas fired generation available. That is, wind carries a 100% reserve requirement. You have to...because of the fundamental that's never considered by our green populace -- wind's unpredictability means it truly has no generating capacity value and its construction will never displace the construction of new coal or natural gas capacity.

Wind is simply an additional capital cost, an additional capital investment on top of fossil fuel fired plants. Sure, you may not have to run them as much but you still gotta build 'em.

This is the exact same thing regarding a hybrid car -- you need the capital investment of both a battery bank and a gasoline engine to ensure a reliable ride.

What the ISO needed was a more accurate forecast for wind -- if you had better confidence that the wind was gonna blow you could reduce your reserve requirement. Thus, if you had a 100 MW wind forecast you might only have to have 70 MW of gas fired peakers ready in the event the wind fails to blow because your better forecast means that it's highly unlikely to not fall below 30MW. We're probably close to the limits of our forecasting capabilities; we may only get a few percent better. We're not Gods -- although some of us like to think that they are. And when the wind stops, you'll get to fire up that gas peaker that is more inefficient and emits more pollutants than other base loaded technologies.

Rooftop solar is likewise constrained. A thunderhead passes overhead and local insolation changes by 60%. An unexpected change in the frontal system means that regional insolation might change by 30%. Because we demand electricity at every moment of every day without question, we have to manage these unpredictable events -- and one way to do that is to count on additional fossil fuel generation. What, we're gonna have grid sized battery backup? Wouldn't want to count on the quadrillion plug in hybrids we're gonna have, either -- suppose it's a little hazier than yesterday and suppose the wind fails to blow and suppose to meet our electricity demand we steal energy from all those parked cars -- and then people get stranded half way home on their commute to their horse property 37 miles from the city because they've run out of juice.

I listen with some bewilderment to these arguments that if we'd just put a few dozen square miles of solar panels up in the desert we'd meet all our energy requirements. Sure...but keep in mind these intermittent sources don't exactly mesh with our mittent desire for energy at every moment, and require base loaded technologies in addition to meet our on-demand needs.

All Debts Are Off The Table

California state transit authorities are celebrating the recent state court decision to keep gas taxes funding transit (as is the law) instead of the state siphoning it off into their general fund.

And, as you'd expect, the state is gonna appeal the ruling. If I were in this game for the buck I shoulda been a lawyer. You can't go wrong being a lawyer in our tort-happy society, can you? I thought not.

Regardless, assuming "we" (the people) fail to overturn this lower court decision, our Golden State will be $1 billion more in the hole. $24 billion...$25 billion...who's counting?

We haven't seen nothin' yet. This state hasn't seen nothin' yet. We're just humming along like the 150 million or so other Americans also neck to nuts in debt thinking things are just gonna work out in the next few months and everything's gonna be just fine. Instead of mowing state lawns every 8 days we'll mow them every 11; instead of cutting state jobs we'll just cut their salaries by 14% via furloughs...and we think we'll save trillions.

This is what I see happening:

People so goddamned mired in debt they will be allowed to renig. Allowed to welsh on their debts, to write them off.

My prediction: personal bankruptcy filings will soon be allowed to include mortgage debt forgiveness (if they haven't already). Personal bankruptcy is just like a Monopoly card, just slam it down and all debts are off the table. I lost $13,000 three years ago to a niece who failed to pay me back, who at filing personal bankruptcy also was able to welsh on dozens of other creditors. We're gonna see this happen more and more. We will become a society of debt forgivers and us stupid fucks who continue to pay taxes and continue to pay back loans and who continue to take personal financial responsibility and who continue to help others who don't give a damn about helping back; we will be funding all you who won't don't.

I've a feeling that our good Christian society will harken back to the Old Testament -- ignoring all the really nasty shit that God commands but following the Book of Leviticus and allowing whole classes of people to welsh on their debts. The Jubilee! Wa-hey!

This is coming, people. Millions who haven't reaped the presumed benefits of Obama's foreclosure prevention program are going to fare better by simply having their mortgage debts erased in the near future. We are a nation unwilling to pay our debts, both public and private. Privately we own thousands on credit cards, car payments, personal loans and mortgages. Publically we owe trillions in national cumulative debts, state cumulative debts, municipal cumulative debts, social security cumulative debts, medicare cumulative debts and local cumulative debts.

Just wipe them clean, eh? Forclosure of the American Dream.

It's A Job, Man

I must have the best job in the state of California. They almost don't have to pay me to do this work.

My sister just commented on her blog how individualized happiness is, and she's on the mark -- very few others would find transmission line protection interesting work. But I've found my calling -- this is a field that will likely be my last; I might not work it at SMUD forever, but I'll be a protection engineer for the rest of my life somewhere.

Many of us would call it fortune to have a job they love and I think the U.S. leads the world with the highest percentage of people who hate theirs. I might be totally wrong about this, but there aren't many people around me who are really, really passionate about what they do. This is so unfortunate, because I keep harping on the dignity of work as a value that really defines a society -- if any society's individuals believe that their work has inherent worth they become better individuals and better social animals. If not, they become monkeys --they don't give a shit about their employer and they don't give a shit about the work they do. They just do, as any monkey can just do.

My coworker from Bangladesh...we go to lunch quite often...he's so god-damn picky about what to eat, and me with the ability to eat anything, I go for the ride. We ended up at a Boston Market today, and the people working behind the counter, man, you could just see their contempt for what they were doing. I don't know if I should feel bad for them or what.

I don't know if I should feel bad, because I really don't know if they love their work. But I don't think they do simply based on their mannerisms, their body languages, their actions. I look to my sister's comment and I quickly realize that I might be terribly wrong regarding the 24-year old server -- she might have found a job she'll stay at forever because it's what she loves. But everything about what she did screamed hatred and contempt. "It's a job, man."

So here we are, losing manufacturing jobs that many people highly regarded and creating strip retail jobs selling shit made overseas in their stead. Booming are our defense jobs and health care jobs, 'cause Obama can't get us out of our wars and our baby boomers have shitloads to spend on recreation drugs and surgeries. Perhaps there are quite a few Merikans who will find dignity in working to sell shit to other people, to bomb brown people, or to repair old people. And if they do, I would be happy for them.

Bing

My ride home takes me through South Sacramento where I can almost always find a Mexican or two selling fruit on our hot afternoons. One guy in particular at Lemon Hill and Samson is very nice, has a passion for what he's selling and is knowledgeable about his products.

Early last month I bought a good two pounds of Bing cherries from him and asked where they came from. He said Stockton, and with a little more prodding I discovered they were from a specific orchard near Peters, which I guess you could call Stockton West. My cherries (at five bucks a bag) traveled maybe 65-70 miles to get to me, presuming they didn't have to first get processed through some distribution facility down in Fresno or some shit like that; and these didn't. His mangoes and watermelons were most decidedly non-local and he knew about his fruits. Name me one supermarket checker who'd know where the lemons come from.

70 miles. Not too bad when you consider most supermarket items travel 1,300 miles on average.

These Bings were good, although I still prefer the earlier sweet double cherries. I don't know what variety these are and I'd like to find out.

Then last week I'm biking home and the guy has Ranier and Bing cherries on the table and again, the price is 5 bucks a bag. Rainer sounds like Washington. I opted for the Bings, but as I was loading them in my bike pannier I asked again if these came from the same Stockton orchard and he laughed, "oh no, our local cherries ended last month, these are from Eastern Washington...same as the Raniers."

Hmmm...in the back of my mind I knew that our cherry season was over; it was damn near mid-July. But I bought them anyway. They travelled a minimum of 890 miles to get to me. But the price was the same?

I would really like to be able to calculate the true incremental cost of an additional 820 miles but I have no good way to do this. I tried with my Eggplant calculation last year, but I was focused on carbon. What about just plain old dollars? And who in the supply chain ate that incremental cost, because it wasn't me, the cherry "consumer."

I can only imagine that the majority of "local" fruit and vegetable stands quite often supply foods grown hundreds of miles away. It feels like they'd be harvested in the next town over but that's all it is: a feeling. The same feeling is used to get you to buy green products, to get you to think that WalMart is all about being the greenest retailer in existence, to get you to think that the shit you buy is natural when it required a few gallons of petroleum distillates to get it to you. Even I was duped, and while I could have made a better choice here I didn't. I'm as much Merikan as everyone else.

Dahddy

Riding my bicycle into work today was again blissful, thanks to another Furlough Friday. I'll maintain that my odds of an accident with a motorized vehicle are much lower due to all our "laid off" state employees, as well as due to you being unemployed. Thanks, by the way, if you happen to be reading my blog because you have the time to waste because you're unemployed.

Interestingly, today was forecasted to be a spare the air day, meaning that our Sacramento regional air quality is forecasted to be...well, shitty. I'll be comparing yesterday to today to see if our Furlough Friday's are having any effect on air pollution. Both days are similar weather-wise -- one hundred degrees with little wind. If today our AQI is lower than yesterday's, then I thank you for having been temporarily laid off today and not driving into work. Spare the air day or not, you could hardly give a shit about alternatives to driving, isn't that right? Won't do it anyway, regardless. You are too beholden to your vehicle to think of anything less else. "From my car here, the air is plenty clean enough."

Funny. One recommendation on spare the air days is...bike to work! Yeah, bike to work and ostensibly keep the air clean, but to do so puts your health at risk. So what do our citizens do? They mitigate the health risk by driving to work and then driving to the gym to work out. On the worst air days it makes perfect sense to drive for the sake of our health.

One interesting thing about our region's air quality is that the bad air generally concentrates around Folsom and Placerville; that is, the foothill region. They get the worst of it because the bad air tends to get pushed by the [light] winds and it stays put over the foothills. Auburn, Ione, Grass Valley, Placerville, Jackson -- all these places suffer worse air quality than my car dependent Elk Grove. But you know, the vast majority of these city's residents earn their living in the valley, or worse yet, in the Bay Area. So fuck 'em -- they live 35+ miles from work so they can live in the 'rural country' with 2 million other people who also want to live 'outside' the city. Their air is bad because they drive through or to the valley. They shouldn't wonder why Little Lisa damn near dies from asthma attacks playing out on the family's 7/8th acre "horse property" in Rocklin. Not when there are three vehicles in the garage.

While my bike ride into work today was blissful and while my odds of dying are indeed lower, it wasn't without danger. My closest encounter with the Grim Reaper this morning came by way of a Land Rover pulling out of Christian Brother's High School -- driven by a teenage girl on her fucking cell phone. What are the odds that this $50k+ rig was actually hers and not Dahddies? What are the odds that this oblivious driver actually works to pay for her cell phone bill, that it isn't paid for by Dahddy? Does a teenager on a cellphone who's "hooked up" in the eyes of God (i.e., passed first communion and confirmation) give her the right to overtly break the law and plow over a bicyclist who merely questions the moral authorities? She knows that this is illegal but she does it anyway. This is what her superior moral upbringing gives society.

Another case of why I think Christian Brothers actually creates worse people than if they didn't "enter to learn." They don't learn how to be decent people. Perhaps sufficiently decent to enter heaven, yes; but to interact with 'lesser' folk, no. I've not encountered a worse group of drivers than these people who think nothing of erratically driving a $53,000 rig through destitute South Sacramento and not giving a whit about cyclists, pedestrians, or anyone else. She can always look to her Dahddy on earth and her Dahddy in heaven to bail her out.

Think, Shop, Live Elk Grove?

Here's a novel idea -- use tax money to fund a stimulus plan to give $500 in gift cards to the first 500 people who buy a new car at the Elk Grove Auto Mall...then make the bold claim that this will stimulate the local economy and increase tax revenues for the city!

What fucking planet do these city council members live on? Funding for this stimulus can be sourced right back to our taxes, effectively. Instead of pulling it from the general fund (read: taxes), we're gonna pull it from a one-time telecom refund. Don't you feel better knowing it doesn't come directly from a tax source? Let's see, we're effectively taxing ourselves to pay for this and then we say that this is going to increase tax revenues? A quarter million dollars is needed to fund this scheme, and along with the ridiculous notion that our economy is local, this isn't gonna stimulate shit.

Look around, my fellow Elk Grovian. Name me one business that's local. WINCO? Boise, ID. PetSmart? Phoenix, AZ. T.J. Maxx? Framingham, MA. I've oft mentioned how we don't have any local economy here (and as a consequence, no community), and I'm clearly not the only one to recognize this -- my sister pointed this out with her reference to the 3/50 project.

Go ahead, my ignorant neighbors....spend your $500 in gift cards at Target, Old Navy, Best Buy, Jamba Juice, Chili's, Chevy's, TGI Friday's, LaBou's, Chick-fil-A, BJ's Brewery, Roger's Jewelry, United Rentals...and watch less than 50% of your "local" dollars go back into our "local" economy. I'd guarantee that 97% (by volume) of all transactions in this city are made to non-local businesses.

If you want to go local, how about Nelson's Locksmithing? Or Baja Burrito? A buck spent there will return 68% back to the local economy.

Think, Shop, and Live Elk Grove is a bold faced lie because virtually nothing is local. Go ahead, spend north of $23,000 to buy that new car (another remotely made product) to get your $500 in vouchers. The point of this exercise in government subsidization isn't to promote a local economy (which doesn't exist)...it's to sell more fucking cars. This is where our property tax money goes -- to help our Auto Mall sell more cars. Wonderful.

Insecure Securities

I had a plan to stand outside the Bank of America on Florin Rd. yesterday afternoon and target the first person emerging from the bank who couldn't cash their state IOU. I would stand there with cash-money, money I had previously saved, and offer them 85 cents on the dollar for their IOU. I would primarily target those who really, really need the cash -- those who've never previously saved...those poor, unfortunate souls. Hey -- they have needs and so do I. I'd be providing a service.

Then, when state lawmakers pull their heads out of their asses and pass a balanced budget here in a few months, I'd redeem the full value. Instant 15% return. Not bad!

Zounds! The SEC has already stepped in to thwart my idea by declaring IOUs "regulated securities", and I'm not a "registered" broker. They are "concerned" that secondary markets like me standing outside the bank would lead to mayhem, chaos and debauchery.

Yea. Like being SEC registered had any fucking relevance to Mr. Madoff, to curbing our national illusion of instant hallucinated wealth and in mitigating our subsequent market meltdown. Like being "registered" stops the Cash-N-'Go at Franklin Blvd. and Mack Rd. from legally doing the same thing.

SACTOWN 2020

Sacramento City planners and supervisors are really digging WalMart's new digs at the old Florin Mall. What a breath of fresh air this new store brings to the community!

One hundred and ninety one thousand square feet of retail heaven, tremendous tax revenues, and three hundred more jobs than their abandoned store a mile away (a total of six hundred now work there). Bustling, vibrant parking lots; bustling, vibrant satellite retailers like Sleep Train mattresses, a store that reported to get about five additional passers-in now that the WalMart has opened. Not just drivers-by.

So we've created three hundred new jobs. Is that wonderful news? Let me take a guess on the average hourly rate for all three hundred...$13 an hour?

$28k per year, assuming this is a full time worker which probably doesn't apply to a quarter of these employees. I hold no contempt for anyone's wage, I never have, but I do stop to consider that in a better economic clime these workers probably have a 25% turnover rate, implying that they don't give a shit about their jobs, only their paychecks. There is little dignity as a sales associate. "It's a job, man." And with the median home price in South Sacramento at $102,500, that's about 3X annual wage which, in my opinion, is too large a spread.

Now, there's no one who would expect a sales associate to pull down enough to become a homeowner, so I realize this is a straw man I'm burning...but stop to consider that this employee is also forced to own a vehicle to get to work...do you think an overnight stocker can take a bus at 10:30 PM to work? Can take a 5:00AM bus home? Hell no...because we don't have a sufficient level of transit service in this city. What, he's gonna ride a bike? And park it where? His motorized vehicular costs will probably eat a quarter of his income -- especially in South Sacramento where a $2000 car is required to have $1500 rims and a $2200 thumpin' audio system.

OK, enough of this. I think the far more important issue about this new super WalMart, an issue that is totally and completely ignored by everyone, is the big box shell WalMart vacated less than a mile away at Franklin and Florin. The original site is now a ghostbox. The building now sits derelict and silent on an ocean of unused asphalt. There are no windows on this warehouse sized building -- it can't be used for much of anything else other than more discounted mass retail -- and with SuperWalMart a mile away, who's going to occupy it? Huh? Besides, I would bet my next paycheck that WalMart's lease on that ghostbox forbids competitors from moving in, or that they've cut a deal with our city leadership that in exchange for building the new site we've given them exclusive market share by preventing any other retailer from taking over the old big box shell. This is your precious free market at work, folks.

Perhaps it'll become another fucking church, like we don't have enough old supermarkets and roller rinks already converted around here.

Perhaps it'll become an indoor go-kart track. Wa-hey! More jobs! Hundreds of six figure jobs! Go-kart attendants, go-kart mechanics...and it'll feed off South Sacramentan lust for all things NASCAR: unbridled speed, promotion of street racing, beautiful twill racing attire, etc. Put in a climbing wall and a laser-tag game area and you'll be set for the next wave of economic recovery when South Sacramentans cash-out re-fi their houses and spend it at the raceway. Even sheriff's are getting into the street racing game...at least this well-liked idiot killed no one but himself.

Perhaps it'll become an indoor waterpark, filled with scores of six figure jobs attending to all those fat, overweight, pasty-skinned, out of shape South Sacramento residents who can't haul up the rubber raft to the top or who'll get stuck in the tubes.

In Austin, MN, they've converted a vacant WalMart into the Spam Museum. Hmmmm....what kinda museum would we create? Perhaps The Museum of Broken Dreams. A museum of beautiful and lasting architecture...filled with relics and art prints of buildings that used to be worth a shit. Buildings that used to get built but aren't anymore, that are illegal to build anymore...

A 24-hour fitness center! Wa-hey again! We don't have enough gyms in South Sacramento, for sure...yes...that's why the obesity rates are over 35%. There's enough space for an indoor track, so people can run even when it's raining outside or 108 degrees, and also because we can't run around our own fucking town without having to compete with motorists. There isn't a single, not one, area in all of South Sacramento where runners can run without the constant threat of being mowed down by a motorized vehicle.

Perhaps a velodrome! Yes! This would also help South Sacramento's chances when we bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics. SACTOWN 2020. This would elevate our international standing, put our city on the map...SACTOWN 2020. I will petition to become a delegate, schmooze with the National Olympic Committee in all corners of the globe. SACTOWN 2020.

Low income housing! Better yet, how about an indoor tent-city? That way, we wouldn't legally be required to air-condition it, just install a really big fan on the roof.

Yes, I think there are endless endless! possibilities here. I should consider this ghostbox store an opportunity instead of just blight.

Edit 7-21-09: Just learned that BJs Fish and Chips, which is located in the Southgate Plaza more or less next to the vacant WalMart store, is now going out of business after 40 years. While the sleeptrain near the new WalMart supercenter gains customers, the ancillary businesses near the old dead WalMart are dying. Don't read about that in the Sacramento Business Journal, do you? They are creaming their shorts about the new superWalMart and the shitloads of tax revenues but they don't give a flying fuck about what damage a vacant big box brings to the old "plaza."

My guess is that the whole of Southgate Plaza will stay derelict for years. Years! Then, at some point, the whole damn thing will come down and a new Hong Kong Plaza or Vietnamese bazaar will emerge. It's only too bad that it takes a dozen years and the complete destruction of the area to force the change. The bad news is that it will be the same goddamn single use, single floor,retail model -- only Saigon style.

Good Luck Comes In Threes

Riding my bicycle into work today was blissful, thanks to 1) a pleasant cool tailwind, 2) a Furlough Friday, and 3) thousands of unemployed Elk Grovians.

We've had some very nice weather this week, so much so that you'd think that bike riding would be much more acceptable to commuters. Alas, no...for a moment I forgot I live in the one of the most car dependent cities on earth. I'm still only one of a handful of Elk Grovians who bothers to exercise to work, whether gasoline is $2 or $4 a gallon.

Furlough Friday's are also more commonplace, now that California's Fiscal Armageddon has finally arrived. We've hummed along blind for two years with billions in budgetary debt with absolutely no progress on fixing it, so it's finally rearing. The DMV office is closed today, along with two other Friday's this month. As I rode by the empty Broadway office building this morning I couldn't help but think how much less likely I'll get plowed over by a car now that DMV employees aren't commuting to work and neither are hundreds of patrons. I'm going to guess that DMV employees are just as likely as every other Californian to speed, to fail to signal, to text their boyfriends, to improperly yield. The mechanic's car is always the worst running jalopy on the roadway; the gardener's own lawn is always the worst kept yard on the block; the DMV employee is likely the worst driver on the road.

My city of Elk Grove, a city with no jobs of its own, requires the perpetual motoring of its occupants to the Bay Area, Rancho Cordova, or Sacramento for work, but with all these regions laying off people our Elk Grovians are driving less. And God bless them, too, for that means fewer chances for them to plow me over while texting their mistresses soon after leaving home. The Elk Grove Citizen newspaper this morning had seven pages, seven! of notice of defaults on a deed of trust, compared to three pages five months ago, so Elk Grovian foreclosures are still running hot, straight and normal. Because these people are defaulting and because there are no jobs here they are moving away -- back to renting in the Bay Area, back to living with relatives in cities with jobs. The decline of traffic on Franklin Blvd. in the morning is stunning, absolutely stunning.

I originally estimated that our depression slowdown would reduce my odds of an accident by 5%, but now I'm thinking it's closer to 15%.

The Holy Grail of Elk Grove

My little burg of Elk Grove has apparently decided that we don't have enough vacant strip retail in the city. Nope, what we need is more commercial building, and to facilitate that effort the city has slashed their developer impact fees in half...making it even more attractive to building more of what we don't need.

Regardless, this city has excelled in the approval of building absolute shit; nothing built in the last thirty years will still be standing in another thirty years. Well...our buildings might still be physically standing but they'll have no standing...the facades will have faded, graffiti will line the walls, roofs will be continually leaking, parking lots will have warped and blistered and neglected vegetation will dominate. In thirty years time our city will be approving lowered developer impact fees not for refurbishing the existing tiers, but for new construction south of Eschinger and Dillard. Our existing suburban build out will have turned to liquid shit like every earlier suburban Sacramento ring, with higher crime rates, more traffic calming devices and neglected private realms. Those who can will move to these new areas; those who can't will care less and less about their "communities."

There must be three or four hundred strip retail 'outlets' in 'power centers' across this city that currently stand vacant, waiting for a resuscitated economy to fill them with Asian nail salons, cell phone kiosks, ReMax realtor centers, balloon shops and bible stores. The mayor hopes that even more of these will jumpstart our economy, producing badly needed jobs and wa-hey! tax revenues.

A total crock of shit. It's not as if the impact to infrastructure has magically disappeared, that the addition of a new strip retail store on Bilby Road that sells chocolate covered strawberries has less a need for a fire department, has reduced needs for road upgrades even though 99.993% of its clientele are solo motorists because the store is physically isolated from housing. It's not like the three service sector jobs created by the owner are jobs whose tax receipts pay for the services these employees use; these are fake jobs, jobs that gain the city nothing, jobs that drain the city because all that suburban infrastructure these people will have to use to commute to their homes isn't paid for by them from their taxes.

Of course this isn't limited to commercial real estate; home developers also get a break -- so in the midst of three thousand foreclosed vacant homes in the city we are encouraging the development of even more homes. This shows how utterly fucking dependent this city is on expansion of subdivisions, strip malls and office parks, that without ad infinitum growth the city cannot support itself.

This effectively means that we're gonna shift the burden of these infrastructure requirements not to those who created them but to those who already paid for their own and now get to subsidize the newer entrants. All for the holy grail of Elk Grove-- perpetual growth.

I Had Better

I tried as best I could to maintain some semblance of a correct diet while on holiday in Toronto, Buffalo and Niagara Falls...but I fell miles short somewhere over the border. While traveling, it's exceedingly difficult to find cabbage salads, whole wheat breads, or any of the other good foods that I try to eat at home. This is because my food axiom falls apart when you allow others to prepare your food. In general, others don't give a shit about your health and are more concerned about their bottom line. I respect that, because people need to make money...but I also know that I'm gonna get overly processed, dead food as a result.

I spent over thirty dollars, thirty! to eat fruit at the various airports during my travels. A small fruit cup costs as much as a #4 meal at an airport McDonalds. You don't have to wonder why Americans are such fat slobs when a 46% fat, 100% processed, zero fiber, 1,450 calorie quarter pounder combo meal costs less than a 350 calorie serving of fresh fruit.

OK. You could make an argument that fresh fruit in December in Boston is as energy intensive as a beef burger...but this is July, damn it -- the peak of fruit season.

And let me say that the token blackberries that came in my $4.25 fruit cup in Buffalo were as tasteless as wet cardboard. I had better. They were nowhere close to the berries I picked the week before in the California Delta.