Cut-in (installation)

Cut-in describes what spurred me to edit this handbook on harvesting some of the 1,030 billion kWhs of wind power South Dakota enjoys (but not all South Dakotans) each year. With electricity and water rates going up here in Watertown, we should have 5 megawatts of windfarming to counter-balance those increases. (I can be "the squeaky wheel" so locals will act.)

All through grade and high schools in Watertown, I disliked the wind; it made riding a bike into town work during summers and numbed fingers during winters. Those memories and dozens of others resurfaced as I drove from Des Moines, Washington to Watertown that howling August day. The gas gauge was close to “Empty” as I exited I-90 near the Wyoming-South Dakota border to fill the tank.

“What an odd place for a gas station,” I grumbled as the winding secondary road led up to a broad, flat hilltop where the pumps were, along with a heavy-truck repair depot and a restaurant.

My mood was further soured by having to struggle to open the car door against that “God-forsaken wind” (a long-unused, but not forgotten phrase). It almost made me forget about the $3.10 per gallon gas I was burning- almost.

Gasoline prices mushroomed into crude oil prices which mushroomed into energy. Costs are a problem; problems mean opportunities for earning money; and other random thoughts bounced around in my head as the gasoline/money flowed. What can I do here, in this situation? Pieces of paper flew, clumps of tall grass were bent nearly flat, a stop sign jiggled, and my partially-open jacket billowed and strained at the zipper. Energy was all around me, “as plain as day,” but still untappable in my “forsaken” mind-set.

“Oh crap! Thirty-four dollars!” my penny-pincher screamed, jerking me back to the here-and- (painfully expensive) now. As I “swam” through the gusts in to pay, “What can I do?” continued to nag, as troublesome as a slow fly in mid-September. Of course returning to the car was a case of being hurled, one stride becoming 2 and a-half, clutching for the door handle like grab-bing a handrail during a stumble.

Safely at the door, once again I fussed with the door, stewing “What can be done with this shtuff?!” Still no answer (apparently it's easier to nag than to solve, I mocked.) Returning to I-90, the view from the hilltop was exquisite: lower hills softened by golden grass, purplish valleys, and a few puffy clouds overhead. I continued to gawk at it all, eventually finding the interstate ingress (I've always wanted to use that word instead of “entrance.”) without taking too many “scenic routes,” and was, as Willy Nelson might say, “on the road again.”

[Continued in next post.]

See current wind speed and direction at the Watertown Municipal Airport.

Rural Electric Co-ops and Wind Power

The Realities of Consumer-Owned Wind Power For Rural Electric Co-operatives, a 16-page Power Point PDF, was presented originally as Power Point slides by

Steve Lindenberg, U.S. Department of Energy; and Jim Green, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; WINDPOWER 2006; Pittsburgh, on June 4-8, 2006.

P3
The Market for Small Wind Turbines is in Rural America
• Better access to good wind resources
• Zoning is less often a barrier
• Larger parcels provide adequate space for wind turbine installations
• Most of rural America receives electric service from rural electric cooperatives

P8
Net Metering for Wind Only 22 states have net metering for all rural customers [map]

P9
Wind Interconnection Dispute in Iowa
FERC ruling in February 2006 backed away from the net metering enforcement action of June 2005. Provisions of EPAct 2005 are changing the scene; outcome is uncertain for net metering

p10
Understanding the Co-ops

p13
Times Are Changing
• Member preferences turning to renewable energy
• Price of electricity is going up
• Opportunity for rural economic development–Wind is an untapped resource
• Wind power is a hedge for an uncertain future with respect to:
Price of coal; Price of natural gas; Carbon taxes; [Congressional mis-steps one and two].

P 15
Conclusions

p 16
Carpe Ventum
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Carpe Ventum? The Latin roughly means "Seize Wind." Does the Latin phrase spur us to install a wind turbine compared to an English phrase? Does the Latin make us more clever, smarter, or more likely to be a successful wind farmer? For me, all "carpe ventum" did was send me looking for a Latin-English dictionary and after looking at two Google pages of them, then futzing with "that looks right." Gad, no wonder we have less and less time to accomplish useful things; we're often required to do preparation tasks in order to understand something that has been "clarified."

It's best to have cheese with whine, so I'd better stop now.
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Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) is a five-page PDF produced by The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) a national service organization dedicated to representing the national interests of cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve.

{Surprisingly, the PDF is encrypted to prevent abstracting the document for easier comprehension. Perhaps not fully serving consumers' interests.}

The doc is an overview of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) where the tax credit bond serves as a tax credit to the bondholder. The doc has these headers

• qualified projects
• qualified issuers
• how CREBs work
• availability
• application process
• terms of CREBs
• credit rate
• spending the proceeds of CREBs
• board action needed for re-imbursement
• parties involved in issuing CREBs
• partnering with private entities
• marketing CREBs
• CREBs versus the Production Tax Credit
• steps to take immediately and
• other resources.
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Even though we enjoy 1,030 billion kWh of wind power every year, there is the rare boring day-
6 PM Jun 05, ENE at 3 mph
1 PM Jun 05, Variable at 3 mph
10 AM Jun 05, NNE at 7 mph
5 AM Jun 05, Calm
9 PM Jun 04, N at 16 mph.

Do contact me if you want to buy any of this blog's content or would like to have other specific wind power-related content uncovered.

'Til next time. Best Wind.