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In the previous paper I proposed that we put on the ballot for voter approval a new state department called the Department of Energy Management.
It would control and manage new Washington State sources of energy production and manufacturing. It’s purpose is to
keep energy cost to Washington State citizens and businesses, at the lowest price possible. I looked at sugar beets for ethanol
fuel production as well as raising cattle for methane and methanol production.
In order to have cheap energy
you have to remove the for-profit motive from energy manipulation that determines the spot price for energy. You cannot expect
a for-profit corporation not to want to give more wages and benefits to their employees in an effort to stay in pace with
inflationary pressures that increase the cost of living. For-profit companies also have shareholders and corporate officers
that must be kept satisfied.
As far as I am concern, energy is among the most important of all national security
issues, right up there with air, water, food, and shelter. In order to have a prosperous and healthy economy, it's necessary
that we have a surplus supply of energy to meet all of our needs, as well as unexpected needs caused by natural disasters.
Energy is a part of nearly everything in our lives and is a portion of everyone’s monthly budget. The quantity and quality
of these energy derivatives are dependent upon the user’s standard of living and preferences. When you take away these
preferences, you take away choices and remove competition to out-produce, and thus lower prices. This is a form of price fixing
and a form of monopoly in which a consortium of business enterprises are manipulating supply and price in an attempt to keep
their business profits high.
We are stuck with the need for electrical power for our homes and businesses,
so we need to produce more electrical power to meet our population growth demand. I do not know what deal the State of Washington
made with the Federal Government to build Grand Coulee Dam but our state gave up to the Federal Authority its own right in
so many respects to manage its own river system. Just as President Carter gave away the Panama Canal that took so much American
life and expense to build, why can’t the current President give back to the State of Washington the Grand Coulee Dam?
Hydrocarbon rich states in our country receive royalties to their General Fund and their citizens from annual sales of their
hydrocarbon products. What does Washington State receive for hydroelectric power generated on our own river system? Don’t
think for a moment that Grand Coulee Dam has not been paid off since it was built. It has paid for itself several times over,
so that is not a factor. The Grand Coulee Dam is responsible with irrigating large arid portions of state that lack water
to produce food in some of the most fertile soil around. To enjoy this bounty indirectly from building the Grand
Coulee Dam, natural trade-offs were made, such as the loss of salmon and steelhead in our creek and stream tributaries that
feed the Columbia River system. Also prehistoric human settlements and all of the natural shoreline habitat that took nature
ten to hundred thousands of years to develop were lost. Sediment from accelerated erosion processes have silted many streams
and creeks as well as destroyed fish spawning beds. Bank and slope erosion along the dam system, as well the tributaries,
contribute sediment that make it necessary to constantly dredge bars and sediment buildups that constrict the river system.
Since we have limited control over our current energy sources to our citizens, our citizens are at the mercy
of whatever these energy providers want and can charge for their products. There is no serious incentive for these energy
providers to lower prices for their products. And since they are not willing to invest their profits into developing new cheap
energy for the good of the people, and since that investment is so great that an individual cannot fund it, I would like our
state to develop tidal, wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources for the people.
Additionally I feel we
should support a requirement that every new business of substantial size, will themselves have some form of alternative energy
production plant that at minimum will help meet their power usage requirements. Major benefits of this include that they are
not competing against people on fixed incomes who are using power for their own basic home living needs. Of course this requirement
is unlikely to happen without government regulation.
I
would also like our major counties and cities that have waste treatment plants, to go to the next level by becoming 100%
green. The next phase is for them to build methane gas generators from the BILLIONS of gallons of human bodily waste. Everyone
sees the pictures of landfills and the piles of waste dumped there, but few ever see the sewers that are underground creeks
and rivers of human bodily waste. We already are paying a lot of tax dollars and monthly service fees for sewage treatment
and if we went to the next step, I believe we can cut energy costs and be more environmentally friendly. From this waste it's
readily possible to generate enough methane gas to produce a good deal of power, as well as convert the methane gas into liquid
methanol to fuel all of the government vehicles belonging to the police, fire, and school buses. Methanol is a very clean
fuel with very high octane. There are hundreds of landfills throughout our state. We should be lining these areas to trap
their methane gas to utilize for our power needs.
It is very hard for me to understand why we have not developed
more geothermal power generators when we live in a state with so many active volcanoes. It is also hard for me to believe
that we have not developed any tidal generator facilities when we have so many tidal areas in our state. These forms of power
production could be localized and have a known rate of cost and power production.
Solar and wind power production
are not totally dependable as these require fluctuating natural conditions to generate power. I would like to see a percentage
of the cost of generating methane, bio-fuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, and petroleum-based production, to go to
funding solar and wind power generators for individual and commercial use. I believe the cost to make home and business
power systems will drop considerably in the future due to mass production. The first VCR, computer, and HDTV all cost many
times more when they first came out and look what they go for now.
Wind Power Electrical Generation
Project
I have been researching wind power and solar
power as a passive source of electrical power to help offset our high demand and prices. If we could make them affordable,
more people would purchase them. The only way to make them affordable is to mass produce them ourselves, which would help
with our unemployment numbers. I am looking at large industrial scale windmills for power generation. I fully support us funding
a statewide effort to construct 6,000 10 megawatt windmills for power production in our state. One of these 10 megawatt windmills
can produce enough power for 5,000 homes. These windmills are not cheap and cost well over a million dollars apiece to manufacture.
Also there is investment in land, powerhouses, lines, installation, and maintenance. These warranted machines have a 20-30
year operating life. Most aging is due to bearing fatigue and rotor balance problems. However parts can be replaced.
Instead of buying the windmills from another entity, we should manufacture them ourselves with Washington State employees.
By manufacturing these windmills ourselves, we can produce them at the lowest cost possible since we would have no profit
motive. We would establish several facilities to manufacture 100 windmills a month. This will employ in our state many skilled
laborers and technicians. We will need windmill installation crews and site development workers to prepare an area for each
windmill.
It will take roughly five years to install all 6,000 windmills under this Washington State Wind
Power Program. This power project is something akin to the building of Grand Coulee Dam, but unlike with Grand Coulee Dam,
this time the citizens of only Washington State will be the ones reaping the benefits of this new abundant supply of
cheap electrical power.
It is my intent to give every Washington citizen a bonus royalty of 25,000 kilowatt
hours of power annually for partnering with the state in funding this very important project. This bonus is in addition to
the marked financial savings in the energy expenses Washingtonians would enjoy. It may take five years or more for this royalty
to begin to be available. The annual production of all 6,000 windmills is estimated to be almost $9 billion in electrical
power at five cents a kilowatt hour at 33% efficiency. Every 5% increase above 33% mean an extra $1.25 billion in power production.
It may be necessary that we allow new state residents to become part of this royalty program only until a certain breaking
point where we must stop so as to be fair to the original Washington State citizens that were taxed for this and thus are
it’s early investors.
I figure that 25,000 kilowatt hours is enough power to provide for an individual
of modest means. It comes out to $1250 at five cents a kilowatt hour over the entire year. Thus a family of four or more would
come out with a windfall under this royalty package. More specifically a family of four would receive annual credit of 4 x
25,000 kilowatt hours i.e. 100,000 kilowatt hours, and for every child more, another 25,000 kilowatt hours. If your 4 member
family uses only a third of the 100,000 kilowatt hours you’re entitled to, you can sell that surplus to a private power
company. In this case it would mean an extra $3300 for the family to use for other things like food or clothing. Though it’s
the customer’s money to spend as they wish, I would prefer they use it to purchase home power windmills and install
solar cells to become almost 100% self-reliant, even in cases of power outages and storms. Installing these home power units
would have the added benefit of appreciating the value of a home.
The cost of the windmills being used in
this Washington State Power Generation Project is expected to be $10-12 billion. I have broken down the project into a five
year plan costing $2 billion a year for the five years. We would see $12 million dollars every month for every 100 windmills
on the grid and should be producing almost $350 million annually in two years and $550 million annually in three years. I
estimate the day we have all 6,000 windmills on the energy grid we would have already paid off a lot of the construction cost
by also selling the power to private power utilities brokers who then resell it to others at a higher rate. My intent however
is not to enrich private utility companies with cheap power for them to profit off of. Instead my intent is to produce power
more efficiently without having to buy the power companies out and make them into public companies. Maybe later on into the
project we may have enough surplus money to make an offer to buyout these private companies and incorporate them into a state
public works type program. Again it is my intent to make inexpensive electrical power so readily available in our state that
our citizens share in its success financially. The private power companies will not be upset with possibly losing you as a
customer as they can sell their electrical power to the National Power Grid. Private power companies would no longer be obligated
to provide full power to our homes and businesses and can act as power flow regulators to provide power at peak consumption
periods and when the wind isn’t blowing and/or when it’s night and the solar cells aren’t working.
In ten to fifteen years of power generation, these windmills will need substantial maintenance and parts replacement. Even
though they are built to last twenty to thirty years, it would be prudent at all times to have replacement parts available
for 1,500 units. It is hoped that down the road technology will advance and even more efficient wind-powered generators will
be developed that can produce power in the gigawatt range. A gigawatt generator would produce a hundred times more power than
the 10 megawatt generator being used. If we had 6,000 windmill generating a gigawatt of power, it would produce over $2 billion
of power every day. It's my desire for our state to become a major producer of wind and solar power in our nation. Remember,
in return for this huge investment for cheap power, you will receive not only generous credits for your own electrical use
but the opportunity to sell your share back to the system. It is very likely that some or more of these windmills will be
upgraded in twenty years or less with higher producing generators. This upgrade can be done with comparatively less expense.
Our state could be a major power broker of the nation and businesses will flock to Washington State. We would improve our
employment market in a variety of ways including by becoming major manufacturers of wind turbine power assemblies and solar
cell equipment for industrial and home use. We would not only be producing electricity and products for our own use but for
national and global use, creating major industries in our state.
I hope you enjoyed reading about this wind
energy program and I hope we can fund something like this soon. It comes out to under a dollar a day for the next five years
for every citizen in our state to fund this project. This is just a little over $300 a year for something that will pay back
perhaps a hundred times that amount over its life, and maybe a thousand times if upgraded in another 20 to 30 years. We wouldn’t
care if a Washington State citizen received their bonus royalty of 25,000 kilowatt hour (which is separate from the standard
discounted energy Washingtonians would receive) each year to use or sell. By becoming power brokers ourselves it will lead
to energy self-reliance for Washington State.
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Washington State Energy Self-Reliance Program