Global Warming News

Archive for April, 2010

It seems that Montana is in trouble.

Her glaciers are melting into oblivion; apocalyptic forest fires ravage her vast forests every summer; bark beetles threaten to eviscerate her natural forest ecosystems (the result of a more hospitable, warmer climate for these critters) and agricultural output is faltering due to prolonged drought conditions. As for the rest of the nation, the Tufts community and the world at large, energy reform is an increasingly pressing issue in Montana.

While it is difficult to find feasible, creative and effective ways to address such a complex issue, with the help of its trusty governor, Brian Schweitzer, Montana is rising admirably to the challenge.

Namely, nestled between two dramatic mountain ranges lies the Judith Gap Wind Farm in central Montana — a visual, technological and energy−production wonder. With over 90 turbines, this single wind farm produces over 135 megawatts, enough to power a small city and equivalent in production output to a large coal−fired power plant.

But most importantly, this solar farm is located in Montana — a state that contains vast coal and petroleum reserves, and a state frequently associated with the dirtier, more environmentally destructive forms of energy. For smaller, less resource−rich states, it is easy to write off states like Montana — saying that it is not in our economic interest to pursue progressive policies, but regardless of this preconception, the state is witnessing an energy revolution that stands as a remarkable testament to the evolution of energy production in the United States.

The Tufts Energy Conference, organized and administered by the Institute for Global Leadership’s Tufts Energy Forum, will be delving into this precise universe of topics during its annual conference on April 16 and 17. The keynote speaker, Michael T. Eckhart, founding president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, in addition to a wide array of expert panelists and speakers, will flesh out the complex realities of energy in the United States in the 21st century.

Specifically, the conference will focus upon such things as evolving fossil fuels, green energy, urban design and a number of practical economic concerns — all in an attempt to characterize the long history of energy evolution in the United States, and in an effort to answer many pressing questions brought up by this evolution.

Montana is slowly embracing the challenges of the green movement and hammering out the kinks inherent in any evolutionary process. Under Governor Schweitzer, Montana has been gradually decoupling the state’s electric utility monopolies, making alternative, greener options more feasible. Early deregulation efforts to move away from the inefficient steam turbine that have historically been the primary source of the state’s electricity has sparked a state−wide wave of technological innovation.

This concept of distributed generation — the process of decentralizing and diffusing energy production into local communities — pioneered to a large extent in Montana, has been a boon not only to the environment but also influential in preserving reasonable energy costs in a time of great uncertainty.

Another initiative that Schweitzer has undertaken involves creating incentives for renewable energy, in the form of a rebate, on an individual level. While a two−kilowatt−hour photovoltaic cell normally runs for $9,000, these rebates, in addition to the Obama administration’s national energy program, work toward making such investments feasible for average Americans.

In addition to rebates, the U.S. Department of Energy has also taken steps to foster the creation of “green−collar” jobs through a number of tax incentives aimed at rewarding individuals, small businesses and even corporate America for their green efficiency−minded consciousness. Moreover, the administration has provided some $500 million for “green−collar” training programs that endeavor to promote such things as home weatherization and the installment of renewable resources in a distributed generation spirit.

While as native Montanans we are a bit biased and profuse in our Montana−promoting rhetoric, we believe that issues such as Montana’s changing energy policies are objectively important to us as global citizens. For ecosystems the world over, Montana is not only the proverbial canary in the coal mine of environmental integrity, but an excellent example of how change can be affected on the energy front to alter our destructive ways.

The key to changing the gluttonous, selfish attitudes most Americans have adopted toward energy consumption is education. As intellectually curious students, we should engage with experts and professionals in energy industries as well as politicians to fully embrace the economic and moral future of this nation — we can halt the deterioration of our environment and rout our nation’s current economic woes.

As citizens of a state battered by environmental perils, citizens of Tufts and of the United States, we urge you to attend the Tufts Energy Conference to further your engagement with our generation’s most important issue.

City officials and Los Angeles’s power company are sparring over big increases in electricity rates that the utility says it needs to pay for a push into renewable energy.

So far, the city council is balking at the requests. But both sides agree the utility will need more revenue, making some substantial increases likely later this year.

Los Angeles’s case could serve as a warning to officials in other cities and states who are also trying to change the energy mix of local utilities, substituting more power from renewable sources, such as wind and sun, for power from coal- or gas-burning plants.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest municipal utility, says it needs to collect significantly more money to manage costs associated with an ambitious plan to get more electricity from renewable resources and less from coal.

The utility currently gets about half of its power from coal, an unusually large amount for a utility in California, a state with no significant coal deposits.

The city’s goal is to get 20% of its electricity from green sources by the end of the year, which it is on track to achieve. It hopes to raise that to 35% to 40% by 2020.

Renewable power from sources such as wind turbines and solar farms, however, is considerably more costly than the coal-based electricity it replaces.

The city council had authorized the utility to raise rates 5%, or 0.6 cents a kilowatt hour, on April 1. That plan dissolved Thursday, when the utility’s board instead moved to impose an increase of about 5.7% and was halted by the city council, postponing any action for three months.

Jan Perry, a city council member who is chairwoman of an energy subcommittee, said the appointed utility board “overplayed its hand” in thinking it could ignore the wishes of the city’s elected officials.

Other council members accused the utility of extortion for threatening to withhold a $73 million payment to the city, which is running a deep deficit, until the department gets a satisfactory rate increase.

A looming revenue shortfall at the Los Angeles utility prompted its board last month to demand a double-digit increase of 2.7 cents a kilowatt hour this year, broken into several increases.

The budget crunch stems from lingering effects of high fuel costs two years ago and, more recently, increased purchases of renewable energy. The utility has been unable to charge customers the full amount of its rising costs because the city council has capped rates.

“The utility needs to raise rates. The mayor’s main concern is to make sure the citizens get something back for it, like cleaner energy and green jobs,” said Sarah Hamilton, press secretary for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Many businesses oppose rate increases in a weak economy. On Tuesday, the city council heard objections from residents and business owners. A representative of brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, for example, indicated the rate increase could cost it up to $2 million a year.

Others said the city’s goal to generate green jobs was undercut by high electricity prices that would drive businesses from the city.

“We’re going to lose a lot of jobs,” warned Councilman Greig Smith. “And this proposal doesn’t shut down a single coal plant.”

As citizens, businesses and non-profit organizations seek to transition to cleaner power sources like solar and wind, some big energy firms whose business models rely on polluting sources are standing in the way.

In Georgia, the energy company Georgia Power has lobbied for favorable public policies at the Public Service Commission (PSC) and State legislature that are making it difficult for the state’s residents to transition to solar power.

IPS learned that the Dekalb County school system wanted to put solar panels on their schools, but could not do it because of state policies like the Territorial Electric Service Act of 1973 which gives Georgia Power a monopoly over the purchase of energy.

“In Georgia, we have about a dozen state policies preventing creation of solar energy,” James Marlow, vice chair of the Georgia Solar Energy Association, told IPS. “One of those is the Territorial Act.”

“If you’re looking at a school, one of the common ways [of setting up solar panels] is using a power purchase agreement or PPA,” Marlow said.

Typically, one of the biggest obstacles for businesses and organizations to switch to solar energy is the initial cost of obtaining and installing the panels. A PPA allows a school system, for example, to obtain the panels for no cost from a solar installation company which finances the panels.

Then, the school can purchase the energy from the solar installation company, which would own the panels, for a 20-year period. Marlow said that a PPA client typically pays for the panels after the first five years and then saves money on energy for the next 15, all the while avoiding the use of dirty energy.

However, because of Georgia’s Territorial Act, individuals, organizations, and businesses with solar panels can only sell their energy to Georgia Power. This means they cannot enter a PPA with a solar installation company and may have difficulty affording the panels in the first place.

For those who are able to buy or lease their own solar panels, selling that energy to Georgia Power–the only allowed buyer–is subject to the rules of Georgia Power’s net metering program. Net metering is where residents and businesses with solar panels sell any excess energy produced by the solar panels to Georgia Power for use by other customers.

“The problem with the current [net-metering] program is… there’s a waiting list and it’s limited. Net-metering in Georgia has a cap of 100 kilowatt hours,” Marlow said, adding that one state in the US South, North Carolina, is taking the lead on solar power. “In North Carolina, that cap is two megawatts.”

“We requested a 5 megawatt cap in Georgia. Georgia Power has lobbied to limit that to a smaller number,” Marlow said.

But why would Georgia Power put a cap and waiting list on purchasing solar power from Georgia residents and businesses?

The company explains that its ability to purchase solar power from Georgians with solar panels is limited by the proceeds of its “green energy blocks” program, wherein Georgia Power customers are allowed to pay extra to purchase blocks of solar energy.

“We had to cap the amount we would buy back, because there’s only so much the program would bear as we rolled it out and it started to be developed,” Ervan Hancock, Georgia Power’s renewable and green strategy manager, told the Savannah Morning News newspaper in July 2009.

“Georgia Power will only buy solar energy if it’s funded through purchase of green energy blocks. Right now they only have 4,500 customers such as the US Center for Disease Control and Warner Robins Air Force Base. The funding from that goes to buy solar energy from your rooftop,” Marlow said.

However, Georgia Power charges more for solar power than it does for coal-based power, so there’s no incentive for most customers to purchase it. “They [purchasers of the blocks] would pay a slight premium to buy clean energy versus buying coal energy,” Marlow said.

Many of the purchasers of blocks of solar energy are government agencies that need to comply with government mandates to support clean energy, Marlow said.

Other states like Colorado have taken a different approach to encourage the use of solar panels. They charge all energy customers 50 cents a month, a very low amount, to support the purchase of solar energy from producers.

According to the Morning News, the Tennessee Valley Authority has enrolled 13,000 green-power customers and has no cap on the annual amount of green energy it will buy from producers. Florida Power & Light “is building three solar facilities that combined will generate 110 megawatts of electricity… Duke Energy in North Carolina plans to invest 50 million in rooftop installations.”

To be sure, Georgia Power is only following the regulations established by the legislature and PSC. However, they lobbied for those policies to be enacted in the first place, Marlow said.

“At this point, the utilities are opposed to solar and they’re not working to foster its development,” Marlow said.

In addition to regulatory tricks, there are more direct ways in which big energy companies like Georgia Power are blocking solar and wind power.

“They are trying to block clean energy by trying to flood the market with cheap, dirty energy,” said Erin Glynn, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, referring to companies attempting to build two new coal plants and two new nuclear reactors in Georgia alone. As previously reported by IPS, numerous coal and nuclear plants are in planning stages throughout the U.S. South.

“If you build these giant power plants, there will be no demand for clean energy. The clean technologies are here today. People have solar panels. The companies are blocking the market,” Glynn said.

Big energy companies are lobbying at the state and national levels to prevent public policies from shifting towards renewable energy production as well. Georgia Power’s parent company, Southern Company, employed 63 lobbyists to fight the recent federal clean energy bill.

A recent report from the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI) shows that many big utility companies employed two dozen or more lobbyists to oppose the clean energy bill, while Southern Company had far more lobbyists than any other company.

“We feel it’s very important to educate our legislators, and we continue to work with Congress to further address the issues we see as critical to our ability to provide affordable, reliable energy,” Southern Company spokeswoman Terri Cohilas told CPI.

Southern Company argues that pursuing renewable energy or taking steps to address carbon dioxide’s recent classification as a pollutant will drive up the cost of energy to consumers. However, Marlow believes that dirty and clean energy are quickly approaching “cost parity,” and he said there are indirect costs of dirty energy such as high asthma rates near coal plants.

Twenty-nine states have a renewable portfolio standard, which requires that a certain percentage of the state’s energy will be renewable by a certain date.

“California and Colorado will require 30 percent comes from renewable by 2020,” Marlow said. “North Carolina requires 12 percent. Georgia has no requirement. North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast that has a renewable portfolio standard.”

Officials from NASA joined Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) today to commission FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center. The new solar photovoltaic (PV) power facility is the result of a unique public-private partnership between NASA and FPL and demonstrates both organizations’ commitment to bringing clean-energy solutions to the state.

FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is located on NASA property at Kennedy Space Center and is producing an estimated 10 megawatts of clean, emissions-free power, which is enough energy to serve approximately 1,100 homes.

“NASA is a pioneer in the use of solar power for space exploration, so it’s fitting that we’re working with FPL to expand the use and R&D of that renewable energy source at Kennedy Space Center where many of those missions were launched,” said Robert Cabana, director of the Kennedy Space Center. “This type of commercial partnership with NASA helps provide Florida residents, and America’s space program, with new sources of ‘green power‘ that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and improve the environment.”

“Like NASA, FPL is looking beyond the horizon. FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is an important part of our state’s clean-energy future, but large-scale solar projects like this one also have a very positive impact on the economy today,” said FPL President and CEO Armando J. Olivera. “Projects like this and our Next Generation Solar Energy Centers in Martin and DeSoto Counties give Florida the opportunity to create and attract clean-energy jobs and produce millions of dollars in new revenue for local governments while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting the effects of climate change at the same time.”

FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 227,000 tons over the life of the project, which according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is equivalent to removing 1,800 cars from the road each year. It will also save approximately 122,000 barrels of oil and 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas over its lifetime.

“Florida is poised to be a leader in America’s growing clean-energy economy, which naturally includes solar power,” said Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center. “Bringing new clean-energy jobs to our communities is one of my top priorities. This joint effort between NASA and FPL is an example of how we can create jobs while investing in common-sense solutions to the economic, environmental and national security challenges we face today.”

The facility features approximately 35,000 solar PV panels from SunPower Corp. (SunPower) /quotes/comstock/15*!spwra (SPWR.A 18.70, -0.60, -3.11%) /quotes/comstock/15*!spwrb (SPWR.B 16.70, -0.30, -1.76%) , a manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, solar panels and solar systems, across 60 acres at Kennedy Space Center. The SunPower panels, which are the most efficient panels available on the market today, allow FPL to generate 50 percent more power at the Space Coast facility than a comparably sized project using conventional solar panels.

SunPower designed and built the 10-megawatt system and a separate one-megawatt solar power system at Kennedy Space Center, as well as FPL’s 25-megawatt DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in DeSoto County, the largest operating solar PV power plant in the U.S. SunPower intends to locate a research and development center employing up to 50 employees in Florida if the state government continues to support the deployment of additional large-scale solar energy projects.

“We congratulate FPL for its global leadership in the development of solar technologies, and for making solar energy a key part of the nation’s economic recovery and the protection of the environment for future generations,” said Howard Wenger, president, utility and power plants for SunPower. “Solar power systems can be built quickly anywhere and at any scale, and we are pleased to partner with NASA and FPL on these important projects.”

FPL’s Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is the second large-scale solar facility that FPL has completed in Florida. The first, FPL’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, the country’s largest solar PV facility at 25 megawatts, was commissioned in October 2009 by President Barack Obama. Later this year, FPL plans to open the world’s first hybrid solar thermal facility to connect to an existing fossil fuel plant, FPL’s Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Indiantown, Fla. It will be the largest of FPL’s solar facilities at 75 megawatts. In total, FPL’s three solar projects combined are creating more than 1,500 direct jobs and more than 5,000 total jobs for the state during the construction period.

Florida Power & Light Company

Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) is the largest electric utility in Florida and one of the largest rate-regulated utilities in the United States. FPL serves approximately 4.5 million customer accounts in Florida and is a leading employer in the state with 10,500 employees. The company consistently outperforms national averages for service reliability while customer bills are below the national average. A clean energy leader, FPL has one of the lowest emissions profiles and the No. 1 energy efficiency program among utilities nationwide. FPL is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Fla.-based FPL Group, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!fpl/quotes/nls/fpl (FPL 49.12, +0.02, +0.04%) . For more information, visit www.FPL.com.

FPL Group and FPL: Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements typically express or involve discussion as to expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance, climate change strategy or growth strategies and often, but not always, can be identified by the use of words such as “will,” “expect,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” and similar terms. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical facts and involve estimates, assumptions and uncertainties.

Although FPL Group, Inc. (FPL Group) and Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) believe that their expectations are reasonable, because forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, the companies can give no assurance that the forward-looking statements contained in this press release will prove to be correct, including FPL Group’s and FPL’s expectations and assumptions with respect to the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center or FPL Group’s and FPL’s other development activities (including the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center and the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center).

Important factors could cause FPL Group’s and FPL’s actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements in this press release. Factors that could have a significant impact on FPL Group’s operations and financial results, and could cause FPL Group’s and FPL’s actual results or outcomes, both generally and specifically with respect to the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center or FPL Group’s or FPL’s other development activities (including the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center and the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center), to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include, among others:

– Inability to obtain the supplies necessary for the operation and maintenance of the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center or other FPL Group or FPL power generation facilities

– Inability to complete construction of or capital improvements to FPL Group or FPL power generation facilities, including the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center, the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center and the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center

– Failure of the solar photovoltaic panels or other equipment installed at the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center to generate the quantity of electricity anticipated or otherwise perform as intended

– Changes in laws, regulations, governmental policies and regulatory actions regarding the energy industry and environmental matters, in particular with respect to the deployment of solar power

– Inability to obtain the required regulatory approvals and permits for the construction and operation of other FPL Group or FPL power generation facilities

– Inability of FPL Group or FPL to access capital markets or maintain its credit rating

– Inability to hire and retain skilled labor for the operation of the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center, or other changes or disruptions related to FPL Group’s or FPL’s workforce

– General economic conditions

– Hazards customary to the operation and maintenance of power generation facilities, including unanticipated outages

– Unusual or adverse weather conditions, including natural disasters

– Transmissions constraints or other factors limiting FPL Group’s or FPL’s ability to deliver energy

– Volatility in the price of energy

– Failure of FPL Group or FPL customers to perform under contracts

– Increased competition in the power industry

– Changes in the wholesale power markets

– Costs and other effects of legal and administrative proceedings

– Terrorism or other catastrophic events

These foregoing factors should be considered in connection with information regarding risks and uncertainties that may affect FPL Group’s or FPL’s future results included in FPL Group’s and FPL’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which may be found at www.sec.gov or at www.FPLGroup.com.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and FPL Group and FPL undertake no obligation to update or review any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances, including unanticipated events, after the date on which such statement is made, unless otherwise required by law. New factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible for management to predict all of such factors, nor can it assess the impact of each such factor on the business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of facts, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement

The most important component of any solar power system is the solar panel, the part that actually handles the conversion of sunlight to electricity. Thanks to the increasing viability of solar panels, homeowners now have the chance to reduce their consumption of outside energy, which in turn lowers their electricity bills and eliminates the pollution that comes from the use of energy from non-renewable sources.

Solar cells themselves are made from smaller solar cells, which are housed within a weatherproof case. When they are struck by sunlight, the solar cells give off a small electrical current. A great enough number of solar cells when combined can produce a tremendous amount of current. Solar panels are generally equipped with more cells than they actually need, so that even if a small number of cells malfunction, the panel itself can go on working without any disruption.

In terms of production and reliability, modern solar cells are light years beyond previous cells. With modern solar cells, you get the same or greater power generation even with smaller amounts of sunlight. All solar cells have a specific threshold at which the quantity of sunlight with which they’ve come in contact results in electricity output. The most recent cells have a very low threshold, and as such they are able to generate power for longer every day and in a greater variety of conditions.

Now, it’s possible to produce enough energy for everyday purposes with fewer solar panels than ever before. It’s therefore possible to produce an equal or greater amount of power while dedicating less roof space and less in the way of startup costs to the project. These improvements have brought solar power to the point that it is now a real and effective option for many homeowners.

Solar panels now frequently have micro-inverters built in. Most early solar panel systems used just one large inverter instead, mounted near the electrical panel of the home. Solar panels generate Direct Current (DC) electricity, which would be sent to this single inverter to be converted to Alternating Current (AC) electricity for use in the home.

The power generated would be largely lost as it moved along the long wires between the panels and the inverter. This problem is solved by the inclusion of micro-inverters.

These additions make solar panels able to independently supply electricity directly to the home. They eliminate the need for a large inverter and make the process of wiring much easier than it was before. Users can simply increase the number of panels as needed, building up a solar power system in accordance with their own needs. If you would like more information about micro inverters, feel free to visit Solar Micro Inverter.

Advanced solar power panels are a good option for anyone who is looking into installing a solar power generation system. These panels offer affordable, long-lasting power,and have many advantages over conventional energy sources. For instructions on how to build your own solar panel, visit Build Your Own Solar Panel.

For another guide to building a diy solar panel, take a look at  Green DIY Energy Review.

A grid tie inverter is a particular kind of inverter that will allow you to take the electricity you generate with installations like solar panels or wind turbines and sell it back to the utility company.

As outlined in the 1978 Federal Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), private citizens have the right to sell renewable energy back to their local utility. With the return of outrageous oil prices, this law is perhaps even more welcome today than it was back then.

If you use solar panels or wind turbines, chances are you already have a standard inverter, which is used to convert DC electricity to AC. Also, they can convert 12 or 24 volt electricity to 120 volt. While inverters are a common part of any system using renewable energy, you can’t use just any inverter to sell power back to the grid. The AC power that you get from an inverter is basically the same as that which comes directly from the grid: 120 volts, 60 cycles per second. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that both sources are cycling in phase with each other. If your inverter’s electricity is cycling up when the grid’s is cycling down, sending your electricity there won’t be possible. This is where a grid tie inverter comes in, as it will make sure that your inverter stays in sync with the phase of the grid’s electricity.

Grid tie inverters offer other benefits as well. In a way, electricity always goes downhill: it flows from higher voltage to lower voltage. This is the principle under which battery charging, for example, operates. The battery is connected to a charger that outputs at higher voltage, and the electricity flows to the location of lower voltage: the battery. This also shows why it takes more than 12 volts to charge a 12 volt battery.

Therefore, moving electricity back to the grid requires electricity which is at a higher voltage than the grid’s electricity. A grid tie inverter will also keep track of the voltage levels to make sure that this happens. Your excess higher voltage electricity will flow out to the grid, and your power meter will run backwards.

The extra functions of a grid tie inverter make it more costly than a standard inverter. However, the investment is justified by the profits that can be gained using a grid tie inverter. Since they also provide AC power for household use, grid tie inverters are a great overall solution for your energy needs.

 

The idea of off grid living appeals to many people. If you are interested, take a look at Off Grid Living.

If you need information about the components of solar power system, visit Solar How To.

If you want the best DIY solar charger guide, please visit DIY Solar Charger.

 

 

Electricity-generating wind turbines have been widely used for about 100 years now, and they continue to evolve even now. The most important change, in the eye of the average consumer, involves the price tag. Each basic category of wind turbine, of which there are a few, has its own specific characteristics and is suited to certain applications.

One type of wind generator that has seen serious improvements in recent years is the large-scale commercial-use turbine. Among these advancements are high-tech blade design (which is made possible in part by newly available materials), increased efficiency, and improved reliability. This variety of wind turbine is different from residential-use turbines in that it’s constructed from stronger and heavier materials, as it’s usually intended to handle higher winds.

Additionally, it’s standard practice to have large-model wind turbines in areas such as shorelines that see consistent, strong winds. Durability is key for these types of wind turbines, as their out-of-the-way locations mean that frequent repairs are undesirable. Large-scale turbines are the most expensive of all modern wind turbines, usually starting in the $25,000 range, and often exceeding $100,000.

Residential-use wind turbines have become more common in recent years. The main difficulty suffered by the first generation of wind turbines for residential use was that they weren’t able to easily adjust to shifting wind patterns, which are especially common amid the buildings and other obstacles in a residential setting.

Early models also had problems with regard to weight. Essentially, they were still too similar to their larger cousins. The cost of a tower or other support structure would often push the total price of installing a turbine beyond the means of homeowners.

Micro turbines, the most recent step in the development of wind turbines designed for residential environments, address the problems that plagued earlier versions. Micro turbines are designed to generate power even from lower-speed winds, which means that it’s often unnecessary to have them mounted on a support structure. Some users even mount micro turbines directly on the roof. Although small models like these don’t output the same amount of power as large-scale turbines, they make up for this by turning constantly. At a price range of about $600 to $5,000, these models are significantly more affordable than larger ones, but will still provide enough energy to provide huge savings on electrical bills over the long term

Depending on numerous factors, wind turbine cost can vary greatly. It’s possible to lower the cost even more by building your own wind turbine. Though it may sound like a big project, anybody can learn to build a wind turbine with good instructions, and this will allow them to save a lot of money and get free electricity for life.

If you would like to know the pros and cons of solar energy, take a look atAdvantages and Disadvantages of Wind Power.

For the greatest guide to building your own homemade wind turbine, including detailed diagrams and videos, visit Earth4Enegry Review.

For another guide to building a diy solar panel, visit How to Build a Wind Turbine.

NOTE FROM EDITOR OF GLOBALWARMINGNEWS.INFO: The views and opinions expressed in the following article are not those of this web site. We do not condone the recreational use of any drugs including marijuana.

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The three-hour Northern California drive from San Francisco to Nevada County passes through some of the cream of the state’s agriculture industry: dairy, alfalfa, rice, almonds, grapes. On both sides of the freeway stretch enormous crop rows, interrupted only by the state capital of Sacramento and a number of small towns.

Last fall, I made the trip north to visit a medical marijuana farm in the mountains above Grass Valley, a scenic town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The area is well suited to marijuana cultivation: The land is cheap and sparsely populated; the climate is mild.

When I arrived, I found a ragged property — a small home at the end of a rutted dirt road and a couple of rudimentary drying rooms constructed of plywood and tarps. Enclosed by a wooden fence, the farm overlooked a pristine, pine-filled valley.

The garden was impressive and unimpressive at the same time. Compared to the expensive industrial farming operations I had passed on my way up, it was tiny and unsophisticated. And yet the plants were remarkable. Many were taller than 6 feet and of extraordinary girth; they were held together by an elaborate system of plastic netting. From their limbs hung heavy, densely crystallized buds, each waiting to be dried and trimmed.

Since California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996, and particularly since the state Legislature specified how much pot could be cultivated for medical purposes, in 2003, growing marijuana in California has become extremely lucrative. The street value of the state’s crop was roughly $14 billion in 2008. Walking through the garden, it wasn’t hard for me to see why — each pound of buds harvested from the enormous plants would fetch upwards of $3,000 at medical marijuana dispensaries.

Farms like the one I visited have helped guarantee stories about marijuana entrepreneurs. Last year it netted a healthy profit for its young bohemian proprietors, who ensured that it stayed within legal cultivation limits. During my visit, one of them told me the cliché is true: A second gold rush has hit Northern California.

But in all of the press coverage of marijuana, one story has been overlooked. It has to do with the health of California’s agriculture industry. The most bountiful farming region in the world, the Golden State is contending with three potentially catastrophic problems: population growth, dwindling water resources and climate change. Marijuana could potentially provide a bulwark against a future of steadily declining crop yields.

California is a farming utopia. Its mild climate and rich soil have allowed farmers to build on it an agricultural system of unparalleled sophistication and value. Half of America’s produce, and a large portion of its dairy, comes from California.

And yet the idyll evoked by the Golden State’s nickname, while not misplaced, conceals a dark and abiding problem. Ever since the end of the 19th century, when systematic irrigation was introduced to California, water — or, more accurately, a lack of water — has shaped the state’s agricultural history.

In the last 90 years, a vast network of reservoirs and aqueducts has been built to capture and transport water throughout California. It is an enormous feat of engineering, and so far it has delayed the detonation of what Mark Reisner (who wrote Cadillac Desert, the definitive history of the West’s water woes) referred to as the “ecological time-bomb” hovering over California.

But that detonation may be on the horizon. Most of California farmland is semi-arid, and each year, the state’s population grows by an average of a half million people. By 2040, this makes for 50 million Californians, and competition for water between farmers and city dwellers will be intense.

So it does not bode well that the flow of the Colorado River, from which Southern California gets a substantial portion of its water, is declining steadily. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada are all taking their full allotments of water from the West’s largest river, which has been so deeply desiccated over the decades that it no longer reaches the ocean, in Mexico.

Nor is it comforting that groundwater — much of it fossil water that cannot be replenished — is being sucked dry across the state.

But particularly alarming is the likelihood that climate change is going to permanently shrink the most important source of water in California: the snow that amasses in the Sierra Nevadas. Every year between the months of November and April, when temperatures drop below freezing and Pacific storms slam into its western flank, the range named for its white-tipped peaks becomes a natural reservoir, collecting an enormous volume of frozen precipitation. As the snowpack melts in the spring and summer, a steady flow of freshwater is released into the valleys below. That water accounts for the Sacramento Delta, California’s primary aboveground water source.

In 2004, a group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers used complex modeling tools to project what will happen to the snowpack if climate change continues to progress under a “medium-warming scenario.” The results were bracing. By 2050, the researchers found, global warming will shrink the snowpack by up to 50 percent. By 2100 the figure rises to 90 percent.

The gravity of this finding, which has since been supported by research out of Purdue University, is difficult to exaggerate. It led Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist appointed energy secretary by President Obama, to tell the Los Angeles Times last February that should climate change continue at its current pace, “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

For 50 years running, California has been the No. 1 agriculture state in the nation. What threatens farming in California threatens the state as a whole. Agriculture employs more than 1 million Californians and generates more than $100 billion in economic activity, excluding marijuana revenue. If California faces a future of diminished cropland, could pot break some of the fall?

To call the growing scene in Northern California a hippie redoubt would be an exaggeration. Many rural Northern Californians have been growing pot for decades. But an environmentalist ethos is common. The proprietors of the farm I visited ate organic food and did their gardening listening to podcasts of NPR and Democracy Now. (One grower I met had listened, over the course of the growing season, to the New and Old Testaments, Dante’s Inferno, Moby Dick, and more than 50 This American Lifes.) Many farms have solar panels; high-grade growers commonly mix their own organic fertilizer.

Still, by no stretch of the imagination is outdoor pot farming — even at the high end — an environmentally benign process. That was one of the first things the lead grower on the farm I visited pointed out. They work to be environmentally responsible, he said, but there’s no way to get around the fact that marijuana is a thirsty crop, and growing big plants requires a considerable amount of water.

Worse, most of the low-grade marijuana in the state comes from vast, entirely illegal growing operations tucked deep into national parks and national forest up and down California. Funded primarily by Mexican drug gangs, these farms are violently ecologically destructive. Their growers run miles of irrigation pipe through pristine wildland, cut down sections of forest and chaparral, apply enormous amounts of toxic synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, and abandon the detritus of a five-month growing season immediately following their harvest.

By the end of California’s most recent drought, which began in 2007, state and federally operated reservoirs were at their lowest levels since 1992. Many farmers were forced to let their lands lie fallow. If this and worse represents the state’s agricultural future, shouldn’t marijuana eradication efforts be stepped up, not relaxed? Pot isn’t food, and while more and more Americans consider it a benign recreational stimulant, most still do not. The idea that valuable crop water is being used to grow pot is upsetting to many people, including farmers.

But stepped up eradication is not the direction in which California is heading. Last year Tom Ammiano, a state senator from San Francisco, introduced legislation to fully legalize marijuana as a way to create new tax revenue for the state, which is in a deep fiscal trough. In the fall, Californians will vote on a ballot initiative that would fully legalize marijuana cultivation and make smoking pot legal for Californians over the age of 21. (It’s import is mostly symbolic, though — should it pass, the federal Justice Department almost certainly would move to invalidate the measure or yank out its teeth in court.)

Proponents argue that legalization would drive the enormous, ecologically disastrous farms run by Mexican mafias out of business. Legalization, they say, would lead agribusiness to take over the low-grade, mass-cultivation sector of the industry; those companies, in turn, would be regulated by the state to ensure responsible farming practices.

But they have so far failed to note a potentially more important virtue of marijuana legalization, namely that in an increasingly dry century, it has an enormous ecological — and by extension economic — advantage over California’s other cash crops. The advantage derives from a simple metric: price. No crop in California, including the most expensive wine grapes, even remotely approaches the price of marijuana by volume. In 2008, a comparably tiny marijuana harvest, concentrated in a handful of Northern California counties, generated twice as much revenue as the state’s second leading cash crop, dairy.

According to an analysis conducted by state officials, the market price for marijuana would likely drop by half or more if it were fully legalized. But they also believe the drop would be accompanied by a significant growth in the number of people buying pot — they put the figure at 40 percent.

That projection is deeply provisional, but it’s reasonable to assume that the overall market for marijuana would grow significantly were it legalized. Such growth wouldn’t be painless — many small Northern California pot economies would suddenly have to vie with lower prices and, potentially, competition from powerful agriculture corporations. And of course the “October Millionaires,” the Northern Californians who rake in cash at the end of every fall harvest, would have to develop new business models — perhaps modeled after Northern California’s rich boutique wine industry — or risk extinction.

But while fewer individuals would get rich, the industry dedicated to the cultivation and sale of marijuana would expand. That would mean more work for agricultural workers, more associated economic activity and more taxes. Of course, it would also mean more resource use. More marijuana would be grown, requiring more land, more energy and, critically, more water. And when that marijuana is harvested and sold, it would cost less. What then would separate it from any other of the state’s major cash crops, other than the fact that it’s not food, and thus unessential?

There are two answers. First, while growing outdoor pot is not especially ecologically benign, it’s far more benign than raising commodities like cattle, rice or alfalfa. Consider: Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s developed water supply; alfalfa soaks up a full 20 percent of that. The alfalfa is used primarily to create forage for feedlot and dairy. That means that 1 gallon out of every 5 used in California goes to a crop that humans can’t eat.

People don’t make a meal of marijuana either, of course. But measured by water, marijuana barely registers on the California’s water scale. A pound of pot requires, at the outermost limit, 250 gallons to grow, which means that a large serving of it requires about a half pint of water. By contrast, an orange takes 13 gallons water, a glass of wine 32 gallons, and a hamburger 600 gallons.

The second reason marijuana has an ecological advantage again is price. Even if it were legalized, it would still take far less of it to generate substantial economic activity for California than any other of the state’s crops. If following legalization market prices for the pot grown on the farm I visited dropped by half, a pound of it would still cost $1,000 to $1,500 dollars.

Many advocates believe that California and other states will soon fully legalize marijuana. Whether they’re correct is a matter of considerable doubt. Although popular support for the legalization of medical marijuana is growing stronger in some parts of the country, experts say it is unlikely that the Justice Department would agree to look the other way if a state legalized marijuana outright.

If that’s true, it means that for any state to fully legalize pot, Congress and the president will have to create legislation granting them the right to do so — not an unfathomable event, necessarily, but also one unlikely to occur any time soon.

But even presuming that a substantial portion of California’s pot crop continues to come from illegal, ecologically destructive farms — as well as high-grade medical marijuana collectives like the one I visited — the overall environmental footprint, including the cumulative water usage, of California marijuana industry is barely worth mentioning compared to the industrial farming operations that produce the state’s other leading cash crops.

As of the writing of this article, in late February, California has spent three months inundated by El Niño-driven rainstorms. And yet reservoirs around the state were still only half full — a testament to the severity of the state’s most recent drought. Due to El Niño, 2010 looks less bleak than it did three months ago. That is a welcome development, considering that the drought forced 23,000 farm workers out of work in 2009 and idled 300,000 acres of cropland in California.

But El Niño is a temporary reprieve. Circumstances are conspiring to produce in California a water crisis of unprecedented proportions. Although the U.S still retains a statistically relevant proportion of citizens who are skeptical about the greenhouse effect, there is no scientific question that significant climate change is now inevitable. California is going to get hotter and drier; the question is not for how long, but how much hotter and how much drier.

Although the press has paid the issue relatively little note, scientists and state officials are acutely aware that California’s agriculture industry is facing an uncertain future. They are likewise cognizant that marijuana is a potentially substantial economic resource, in a state roiled by fiscal and economic crises. But very few people seem to be talking about the two in combination.

In researching this article I called scientists, academics, drug policy experts, marijuana legalization advocates, representatives of various state agencies related to agriculture and water, and the U.S. Forest Service. All were apologetic; none could provide me with specific knowledge or insight into the relationship between marijuana, agriculture and the state’s ecological future.

The explanation was simple: Marijuana is illegal, and therefore there exists only the most basic data on it. But there may be another explanation, too: When we think of agricultural, we think of citrus and cattle, grapes and almonds. We don’t think of pot.

Recently I drove from Wolverton, a backcountry ski area high in Sequoia National Park, down Highway 198 into Fresno, and on to San Francisco. The 198, which skirts a large portion of the southwestern Sierra Nevada, is among the most breathtaking of California’s beautiful drives. For the first hour, I was sandwiched between redwood trees and 6- to 8-foot-high snow banks.

But I soon descended into the Central Valley, and the verdant grasslands of Tulare County. At one point, near the town of Dunlap, I drove through an enormous citrus farm; lining the road for more than a mile were 30-foot-tall orange trees dripping with fruit. It was a stunning reminder of California’s status as an agricultural powerhouse; it seemed totally alien to consider marijuana in the same context.

But from an economic and ecological standpoint, marijuana is an agricultural product, like any other. Out of sight, it nevertheless dominates the rest of California’s farming bounty, as impressive as that bounty is. This in mind, it seems worthwhile for any discussion of the merits, or demerits, of California’s marijuana industry to take into account the state’s warming future. What role will marijuana play in an agriculture landscape less golden than parched?