Thor’s Hall

So over the past couple of days the Dr. No ad came out.  Very clever advertisement I must say.  But tying it to firm examples of “no” was a little tough.  Well the folks over at Flopping Aces were able to tie it to a development in the Solar Energy industry that is disconcerting.

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land

Go read the whole post here.

Back at the turn of the century, I was working a project in Ft. Worth.  One of the buildings that I walked by on a daily basis was the Federal Building.  It has reflective, mirror like surface on it’s windows.  Even 2 or 3 blocks aways you could feel the heat reflected from those surfaces.  My suggestion to the Solar Energy industry, look at building level energy plants.  Seriously.  The wide open desert spaces of the west are great for large solar collection arrays but, you have to distribute that power either through existing lines, or most likely through an investment in new towers, lines, and networks.  That is going to take some time.  In the short term think small.  Put solar arrays around the outside exposures of some of the buildings in sun drenched cities.  Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Tuscon, Dallas, etc.  Use those collectors and a small turbine on the roof to produce power for the building itself.  You probably won’t be able to power the whole facility but you can power a good portion of it.  On flatter, more sprawling facilities you probably can get a good roof level array going.

The goal here is to penetrate the local markets quickly with small scale energy generation to reduce the overall demand on the utilities generation facilities.  This has the advantage of appealing to the building owners / tenants directly.  The large scale plants are going to sell their energy to the utility companies for distribution to the end user, and the associated markup gets passed on to the consumer.

Sorry… I got sidetracked on one of my pet ideas again.  Go see Dr. No

Everyone has their own memories, and triggers for their memories.  I recently was referred to “Home on The Range”.  So I have been following it and reading it for a couple of weeks.

Well Brigid put up one of those posts that nails life on the head.  Go read it and think back wistfully to those days of yesteryear.

So with the apparent major party nominees identified, each is beginning to develop their message and communicating it through the various media.  The folks over at Flopping Aces have pulled together some commentary around a couple of new ads that are out there.

The first is about McCain’s recent unveiling of the Lexington Project.  Now I have just seen limited peices of this but it seems very similiar to the Energy Policy that Bush and Cheney put together early in their administration.  Execution of that policy has been overcome by events.  From what I see of this it makes sense.  Take the immediate steps necessary to control what we can, with our own resources and let market forces work through which new / alternate energy programs are most viable in the long run.

Curt sums it up…

Pretty good stuff with the overall plan being to make a broader use of existing resources and letting the market solve the new problems associated with new technologies by giving tax breaks and/or rewards. A bit different then the Obama plan to confiscate profits and ignoring the resources within our own borders.