Smart Grid Saves You Money with Transparent, Timely Energy Pricing

Those darn greenies and their good ideas, saving us money....

I was just reading my Sioux Valley Energy newsletter when I came upon another really good explanation (available here in PDF) of how the smart grid will save you and me money.

Sioux Valley Energy is getting $4 million in stimulus money to cover about half the cost of installing 23,000 smart meters—that's a meter for everyone Sioux Valley juices up. Once those meters are installed, Sioux Valley will be able to implement variable power pricing based on peak load and time of day. When demand spikes, utilities have to buy more expensive supplementary power. The power I use for my computer during peak hours costs more than the power I use in the middle of the night. Smart meters will allow Sioux Valley to charge me different rates for the power I consume based on when I use it.

Sioux Valley CEO Don Marker explains it this way in his column in the December newsletter:

The idea is that these smart meters will allow you to monitor, whether that be through the Internet, via email or by text messages, your electric usage at any given point in time. So you can make the choice whether or not to run your dishwasger when the price of electricity is really high, or wait until the price goes down. In the future, "smart" appliances will allow you to program them to coordinate with the price of electricity [Don Marker, "$4-Million Grant for Smart Grid: Unique Opportunity or SVE Members," Sioux Valley Energy Connections, Dec. 2009].

Smart meters will let us see electricity prices on our computers the same way we see gas prices on the signs all over town. We'll see the numbers right in front of us, and we'll be able to adjust our power usage to save some money. (Of course, I suppose it's possible that there could be some crazy reverse feedback spike when we pennypinchers see the electricity price suddenly drop, shout "Buy Buy Buy!" and all crank up our washing machines at once. Smart meters should make a great thesis topic for some eager MBA!)

Sioux Valley says the smart grid technology will help it put off building new power plants and infrastructure, which means of perhaps $4 million a year. In other words, Sioux Valley's eight-million-dollar investment—half from customers, half from taxpayers and deficit spending via the stimulus—could pay for itself in two years. Hmmm... looks like all that deficit spending could actually leave more money in our grandkids' pockets.

Smart grid technology makes sense whether you're a treehugger or a pennypincher. Let a few fringe elements try to stir Big Brother fears; I'm ready for Sioux Valley to hook me up and save me some money!

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Thank Family Farmers Michelle and Barack for Vegetarian State Dinner

As the Thank a Farmer® marketing campaign gets play on the usual industrial ag propaganda sites, I notice no grateful mention of the efforts of new urban farmers Michelle and Barack Obama, who've been returning land to productivity in a tough Washington DC neighborhood. The Obamas' microfarm has been feeding schoolkids and sparking a surge in interest in gardening and the kind of do-it-yourself spirit that would make our forebears proud.

And now, the Obamas' arugula is helping promote world peace. Michelle's garden greens were on the menu at the first White House vegetarian state dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister and respecter of cows Manmohan Singh. The menu included arugula and herbs from the South Lawn, as well as pears poached in honey from the White House beehive. (But no whirled peas... just chick peas. More glittering state dinner details at Obama Foodorama.) As the New York Times reports, the dinner was a lovely outdoor affair emphasizing some of the Obamas' "favorite themes, including bipartisanship, diversity and a focus on healthy meals."

Healthy meals. Vegetarian menu. Somewhere the Farm Bureau propaganda machine is revving up to belch some more smoke.

Thank you, small farmers and gardeners, for working for health and local self-sufficiency.

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Save Money, Save Lives: Skip Black Friday for Advent Conspiracy

What would Jesus do on Black Friday? I doubt he'd be clipping coupons.



It's consumer frenzy time again. Gorge yourself at the table Thursday, gorge your shopping cart at the mall Friday. I feel ill already.

KELO runs the usual "buy buy buy!" propaganda under the guise of sage advice for shoppers. "Especially with the economy absolutely, you have to get out there and get the most for your little bit of money and hopefully it will stretch further," shopper Joyce Plastrow tells KELO's Courtney Zieller. Coupon clipper Amanda Roth gets her second plug in a month for her blog efforts to help consumers buy-more-save-more.

So why not do something a little more Christmas-y: buy nothing. Give your money to someone other than Wal-Mart. Give your money to build water wells in Africa. Give to the Advent Conspiracy, which says $10 buys clean water for one child for life.

According to Living Water International, every 15 seconds, another child dies because of lack of clean drinking water. Run that countdown while you wait for an open cash register at Best Buy.

This Friday, do something that will matter more and last longer than any of the plastic junk you're thinking about buying from China. Do Reverend Billy proud. Stay home Friday. Donate online. Do the Lord's work, not the economy's.

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Strong State Policies Mean Support Renewable Energy: Pass Those PUC Rules!

The PUC may have just gotten a some slam-dunk help from the feds to promote its Small Renewable Energy Initiative. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory just issuedits 2009 State of the States report. Among the key findings: states that have passed renewable energy portfolio standards and net-metering policies have generally seen more progress in developing renewable energy.

Even though South Dakota is among the handful of laggards on such policies, 50% of South Dakota's electrical production comes from renewable sources (see Table 2.1 in the PDF report). 47.5% comes from the dams the feds built for us on the Missouri. (But remember, we consume more juice than we produce, and we import lots of smoky coal power from Wyoming and North Dakota.)

And even without strong state policies, we lead the nation in growth of non-hyrdo renewable electricity generation, a whopping 17,000% from 2001 to 2007 (see Table 2.4). But huge growth numbers are easy to achieve when you start from almost zilch: wind generation in 2007 still provided just 2.4% of our total electricity production (Table 2.17). 5.5% of Iowa's electrical production came from wind; in Minnesota, that figure was 4.8%. And we're still only 19th in the nation for total wind generating capacity; the top four states are Texas, Iowa (15 times our capacity), California, and Minnesota (9 times our capacity). Declining output from the dams meant South Dakota saw an overall decrease in renewable enrgy output of over 10% from 2001 to 2007; over the same period, 35 states, including all of our neighbors except Nebraska, saw growth in their renewable electricity production (Table 7.5).

Compared to Minnesota and Iowa, South Dakota is woefully behind on passing policies that support renewable energy development (see Table 3.1). NREL finds that, among other things, net metering policies and even green power mandates (that's more than what the PUC is asking for) produce faster renewable enrgy adoption. According to the NREL report, we could boost our clean energy percentages faster and catch up with those darned Minnesotans and Iowegians if we got with the program and passed rules like the PUC's proposals for small renewable generation.

Read the report yourself—I'm sure our friends Dusty, Steve, and Gary will! It's chock full of tables (101!) for your number-crunching enjoyment.

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Sioux Falls Reinvents Education Wheel: What's Not "Real World" about My Classroom?

The Sioux Falls School District touts a new high school that KELO's Ben Dunsmoor says will focus on "real world skills." Perhaps this new school can teach Ben Dunsmoor the real-world skill of writing in complete sentences. A skill all professional journalists should have. (That's an example of the modifying sentence-fragment style that KELO appears to impose on all of its journalists. Dunsmoor commits this error twice at the end of his written report.)

Another real-world lesson the new "Performance Based Learning" school will teach that is specific to South Dakota: life is about the lottery. Instead of doing the hard work of reviewing applications and choosing the students best suited for this educational experience, the Sioux Falls School District will simply draw names out of a hat. That's just like how we fund our state budget, relying on the lottery instead of taking leadership and making hard tax choices.

But wait a minute: is the implication that all of our other schools are teaching imaginary skills? Must we all drop everything and join a project team in a one-to-one computing environment to learn anything useful?

Funny: I thought my years of lectures were helping pass on useful practical knowledge, not to mention instilling listening skills. I thought requiring students to spend hours in quiet contemplation of classic novels was developing appreciation of culture (which is part of the real world) and long-term attention spans (which should be part of the real world). I thought reading and discussion about literature, history, government, and philosophy developed critical thinking skills and well-rounded employees and citizens. I thought an education in the humanities helped make people more decent and interesting.

Silly me. Sorry to have wasted your tax dollars all these years on imaginary skills. Let's all do projects... until the next educational fad comes along.

Of course, if we want more projects and performance-based learning, we don't need to create a whole new high school and send money to California consultants. We could just encourage more kids to join the debate, interp, and theater programs in our high schools. Debate is a year-long project requiring research, writing, and collaboration. Interp requires months of cooperation and coordination with team members and coaches. Theater requires combination of creative and technical skills to produce a good show. Speech and drama activities require rigorous scheduling and test students' learning in the crucible of live performance. Our arts programs are already doing performance-based learning and long-term projects.

...But I guess educational trendiness requires that we reinvent the wheel. Sigh. (That's not a sentence fragment, Ben; that's an interjection.)

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3 Independent Analyses Agree: Stimulus Working

Conservatives like Sibby take predictable pleasure in citing increased unemployment as evidence that the stimulus package has failed. They further their schadenfreude by pointing out actual unemployment numbers have exceeded the overly optimistic predictions of job recovery cited by the Obama Administration at the beginning of 2009:

(click to enlarge!)

Well, let's turn those frowns and grim statistical curves upside down, kids: the New York Times article I discussed this morning includes this graphic to demonstrate that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is working:

(click to enlarge!)

Three independent companies—IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers, and Moody's Economy.com—agree that, thanks to the February stimulus, more people are working and more money is flowing than if we had followed the Republican line and done nothing. Three independent sources—heck, that's probably more non-WorldNetDaily sources than Sibby will cite all week.

Did Obama's people botch their guess on the jobs picture? Sure. They underestimated the magnitude of the problem President Bush left them with. If Obama's number crunchers had adopted a more accurate and dire interpretation of job trends, they'd have had an argument for an even bigger stimulus package.

What the Obama Administration didn't get wrong was the net improvement the stimulus package would bring. And remember: there's still three-quarters of the stimulus money coming.

But hey, Moody's and I could be wrong. Watch Moody's Mark Zandi debate Obama's economic policies with a bunch of other economic heavy hitters (and Eliot Spitzer?!) on Intelligence Squared.

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Madison City Web: 1830 Visits (Visitors?) in July

In other interesting news from tonight's city commission agenda packet, the City of Madison website continues to get some visibility. Page 32 of the packet offers what appears to be a list of web traffic by page for the city website in July 2009. The table doesn't indicate whether it is counting views or unique visitors or what. But it says that in July, the city website drew 1830... something. Following documents from previous years give stats for unique visitors, so I'll asume the unlabeled July 2009 numbers are also unique visitors.

The home page gets fully two-thirds of that traffic. The next most frequently visited sites on the city web are the City Departments index, the police department, the jobs page, ordinance book (bet you'd get more traffic if it weren't PDFs!), and community links. Hey, wait a minute: the community links page includes KJAM and the Madison Daily Leader, but not the city's best online media? What gives?!

Also worth noting: the Sex Offenders page drew slightly more traffic than the Elected Officials page. Apparently my neighbors are slightly more worried about the creepy guys living down the street than the characters in City Hall.

Meanwhile, according to StatCounter.com, during July 2009 the Madville Times received 9,181 unique visitors, including 4,028 returning visitors, and delivered 14,381 page loads. And that was my lowest month of the year, since everyone was out mowing and camping and roasting wienies.

p.s.: Remember the Alexa web rankings I mentioned back in June? The Madville Times was the only Madison website in the top 100 most popular South Dakota sites (well, the K-12 Data Center is hosted at DSU, so I suppose you could count that as a Madison site). This blog ranked #96 back in June. I check this morning and find the Madville Times ranked as the 32nd most popular South Dakota website, just below the Legislative Research Council and just above South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Madison's professional websites—KJAM, Madison Daily Leader, MadisonSD.com—still nowhere to be seen.

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Madison to Discuss Wind Turbine Rules, Including Decommissioning Requirements

...decommissioning requirements: do we have that for pipelines?

The Madison City Commission has wind energy regulations on tonight's agenda. Evidently our city has yet to adopt any clear rules on wind turbines in city limits, and government naturally abhors a vacuum.

Actually, some clear rules on wind turbines are good for Madison. Established rules will make it easier for developers to calculate their cost-benefit analysis and get to work capitalizing on Madison's potential for energy independence.

The agenda packet (scroll down to page 20) includes a model ordinance draft from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. Section 14 of the model ordinance addresses decommissioning of wind power facilities. Here the PUC recommends laying out very clear rules establishing that the owner or operator of the wind facility is fully responsible for the cost of dismantling and removing the turbine and other equipment when it has reached the end of its useful life. The model ordinance requires the wind facility owner/operator to file a full decommissioning plan.

Holding developers responsible for the decommissioning of their energy facilities makes perfect sense. That same responsibility should apply to the owners and operators of oil pipelines, right? Dakota Rural Action thinks so; TransCanada disagrees.

The city of Madison is wise to get ahead of the curve and establish clear rules and responsibilities for any energy developers who might come to town to build big projects. The state should take its own advice and make the same requirements of big Canadian oil.

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Liberal Stimulus Working; More to Come

The New York Times reports on the consensus among economists that the stimulus passed last February is working.

What's that I hear? Liberal spin from that elitist New York paper? Actually, reporters Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper give White House a hard time for using overly optimistic economic assumptions last winter. And Michael Blake at Understanding Government says NYT overemphasizes bipartisan balance over the truth that the liberal side of the stimulus, government spending, is doing much more of the heavy economic lifting than the conservative side, the tax break concessions used to muzzle the Blue Dogs. Blake says Calmes and Cooper's "thesis statement" on the superiority of the combination of spending and tax breaks doesn't connect with the bulk of economic evidence finding that spending programs provide more bang for the buck.

Clearly, the evidence Cooper and Calmes martial about economists’ views on the stimulus should point to one conclusion: economists believe that liberal Democrats who wanted to spend billions of government money on economic stimulus are absolutely in the right. Republicans who instead want tax cuts not stimulus spending are absolutely in the wrong. Maybe Cooper and Calmes or their editor felt uncomfortable with the unmistakably partisan consequences of their analysis. But it was someone at the Times who chose the premise: What do economic experts, not politicians, think about the stimulus? It was a good idea for a story, but Cooper and Calmes obscure their results and, in the process, confuse their vast readership [Matthew Blake, "In Stimulus Piece, New York Times Chooses Bipartisan Balance Over The Truth," Understanding Government, 2009.11.20].

Also worth noting: we've spent only a quarter of the stimulus money. In other words, Captain Obama has managed to pull the Enterprise back from the economic black hole at one-quarter impulse. There's much more to come. Contrary to the desires of the instant-gratification Republicans, slow and steady is going to win this recession race.

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Twitter Ads: Why I'll Never Get Rich Blogging

The New York Times reports on the continued depressing infiltration of every interesting nook of the Internet by advertising. Vancouver blogger John Chow got $200 for allowing online advertiser Ad.ly posting this one Tweet flogging customized M&Ms. Such simple ads in October earned him $3000.

I'll admit, my reaction is not pure anti-commercialism. I run ads myself here on the blog. If someone offered me $3000 a month for occasionally telling you to go get M&Ms, I'd jump at the chance. But I don't buy the advertiser Joey Carone's claim that “We don’t want to create an army of spammers, and we are not trying to turn Facebook and Twitter into one giant spam network.... All we are trying to do is get consumers to become marketers for us.” Turning consumers into marketers feels like a double dronification of the masses. It's not enough that we eat corporate stuff; the corporations want us talking about their stuff.

Twitter ads are a step up from brand-name clothing and other logo-laden consumer goods. Kids marching around in their Aeropostale and Adidas gear are actually paying for the privilege of acting like billboards for those corporations. Online advertisers are at least compensating their Twittering marketers for their button-pushing.

But when money buys speech, it changes the public discourse. Every moment spent talking about what to buy is a moment lost to talk about what we could make in our gardens, our garages, and our culture.

I'm guilty of the same compromise. I could certainly use the advertising chunks of my sidebars to promote good causes, run polls, promote more conversation. Instead I take some pocket change and allow others to promote their wares on portions of my online real estate.

Last spring, I did consider creating a separate, more aggressively commercial blog. I imagined sidebars stacked with Google Ads and main content consisting of nothing but fluff, search-engine-optimized celebrity gossip and images dutifully tuned to the fads of the moment.

I also imagined being physically ill over the complete surrender of authenticity such a meaningless website would entail. I couldn't bring myself to create a public space where all I care about is that you keep clicking and consuming. That media model doesn't even ensure financial security: corporate TV networks and newspapers have followed that model, and we can plainly see the decline in their quality and their profitability.

I'll still take ads. I especially love the ring of the tip jar. Voluntary donations don't buy speech or change the discourse; they're just another way of signaling the value of the service or entertainment you find here... and that signal just happens to help me buy a RAM upgrade, or dinner at El Vaquero for my lovely wife. (No, El Vaquero didn't pay me for that mention; I just like their food!)

But you won't see me turning my blog content or Twitter space over to any advertiser. My pockets remain light, but my words remain mine and mine alone.

---------------
p.s., arguably related: in the fledgling Cuban blogosphere, the government may be paying students to write pro-Castro comments on dissident blogs.

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DENR Cites Manure Violations at Millner Veblen Dairies

Factory feedlot owner Rick Millner continues to break the rules, threaten the environment, and blame everyone but himself. After flagrant and repeated environmental violations at his CAFOs in Minnesota, Millner's two cattle concentration camps in the Big Stone Lake watershed around Veblen are finally drawing attention from South Dakota's environmental authorities.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Tom Meersman, Millner's Veblen operations, including the biggest single dairy in the state, have been breaking the law, filling their manure lagoons to the brim, and risking pollution of the Little Minnesota River and Big Stone Lake. Dairy operators are supposed to keep the manure two feet below the edge of their lagoons to prevent heavy rain from flooding the lagoons and spilling manure. Millner's Veblen dairies have apparently let the manure levels rise so high that the dairy has piled hay bales around the lagoon edges in an attempt to stop crap from lapping over the edges.

On September 18, the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources formally cited Millner for his illegal manure levels at both Veblen dairies. However, it took citizen action to prod Pierre to do its job:

Big Stone Lake Association, a citizens' group with Minnesota and South Dakota members, complained to South Dakota regulators last July about ponds brimming with waste at the Veblen dairies, and submitted aerial photos showing hay bales stacked along the rims to keep liquid waste from lapping over.

...The company has been pumping manure out of the ponds and spreading it on nearby farm fields in recent weeks, but the citizens' group said the ground is too wet to absorb the wastes and manure is running into streams.

Steve Berkner, president of the Big Stone Lake Association, said he and Big Stone County Commissioner Roger Sandberg flew over the area on Nov. 9. They observed a chocolate-brown plume of pollution swirling into Big Stone Lake from the Little Minnesota River, and traced the pollution north for about 45 miles, up the meandering river and one of its tributaries to the dairies.

"The water the whole way up there was brown, and we saw lots of foam on the creek when it was going around rocks," said Berkner [Tom Meersman, "SD Dairy Producer Cited for Pollution Violations," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2009.11.18].

Meersman follows up on a Joe O'Sullivan Watertown Public Opinion article from Oct 31-Nov 1 (updated online Nov. 3, available to online subscribers). O'Sullivan and Meersman both note that the state has not confirmed any manure runoff, and both run Millner's usual assertions that he's not to blame for any problems. Millner blames wet weather last year and this year that hasn't allowed him to empty his lagoons as quickly as he'd like. Of course, he never mentions the possibility that, to obey the law, he might have reduce his manure output and stop bringing new cattle into the Veblen facilities. (Meersman mentions that Millner "removed all 1,500 cows from Excel Dairy last winter, and moved them to the company's four other dairies"—I wonder how many he moved into his evidently maxed-out Veblen dairies?)

In 2007, the state of Minnesota fined Millner's company $17,400 for dumping too much manure on neighboring fields and other waste-handling violations at its New Horizon Dairy near Hoffman, MN. In 2008, Millner's Excel Dairy near Thief River Falls, MN, stunk neighbors out of their homes. This year the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency shut down Excel Dairy, then issued a one-year permit with strict conditions for Millner to clean the place up. Millner has flouted those conditions and continued to violate state and federal clean air standards.

In other words, Millner has repeatedly conducted business in such a way as to poison the environment around his industrial operations. He won't obey legal orders or even contracts with suppliers.

Now I suspect that defenders of the ag-industrial complex will say I'm just an enemy of agriculture and that I'm "scared of family farmers telling their story." Nothing could be farther from the truth. I share a desire to protect family farms and see independent agriculture remain a strong part of South Dakota's economy. But as Jay Gilbertson, East Dakota Water Development District director, tells Meersman, Millner's factory feedlot "is not a mom-and-pop operation.... This is an industrial milk production facility and needs to be treated as such. This is no one's definition of a family farm."

Veblen East and Veblen West are environmental hazards, operated by a man with a history of breaking the law, breaking contracts, and showing no regard for the well-being of the land or his neighbors. South Dakota has waited far too long to take action against Millner and his bad business practices.

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Humane Society Just Can't Win with "Advocates" for "Agriculture"

Troy Hadrick demonstrates the impossibility of rational discourse with Farm Bureau propagandists. In a Tuesday, Nov. 17 post on his Advocates for (Big Corporate Masquerading as Family Farm) Agriculture, Hadrick reasonably decries an act of CAFO vandalism in northwest Iowa that led to the death of 3800 hogs. Naturally, Hadrick has to turn this incident into spin for his anti-Humane Society agenda:

...does anyone think HSUS will come in and offer a reward on this case? If someone intentionally killed a dog or a horse in this manner, they would have already done so. I guess I won’t hold my breath, but it shows the hypocrisy of this group [Troy Hadrick, "Suspected Act of Vandalism Kills 3800 Northwest Iowa Pigs," Advocates for Agriculture, 2009.11.17].

This just in (Thursday) from the Humane Society:

The Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for intentionally suffocating 3,800 pigs in Hull, Iowa.

Surely Hadrick and his readers celebrate this development, right?

Well, there's no apology, correction, or acknowledgment from Hadrick yet. But his commenters show the Farm Bureau's true spirit. Says commenter Dawn Heublein Rohrer from Kansas:

Oh, the hypocrites are at work! They will find a way to spin this to fit their agenda, just like always.

Hadrick publishes this comment, but leaves my query about hypocrisy unpublished in the moderation queue.

You just can't win with some people.

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