--CPI be darned, you know your grocery and gas bills are going up. New York chef Dan Barber writes in the New York Times that those rising prices may bring the next great agricultural revolution away from the petro-industrial ag complex back to real family farms and small-scale agriculture:
In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown [Dan Barber, "Change We Can Stomach," New York Times, 2008.05.11].
And food from small farms and gardens tastes better, too!
--Maybe small-scale production is the way to go for energy as well as food. Those crafty Norwegians have figured out a way to use wind power when the wind isn't blowing. It sounds like an Ole and Lena joke, but the Norwegians are doing it on the island of Utsira in the North Sea. The trick: use surplus wind power to make hydrogen from water, compress the hydrogen, then use it for backup power when the wind dies down. A pilot project right now produces enough hydrogen to power 10 homes for two windless days. Sounds like a heck of a system! You tell me: when's the last time South Dakota had more than two days in a row without wind?
There's actually research going on at the University of Minnesota, Morris on the wind to hydrogen to ammonia technology. It's based upon the Norwegian work, I believe. Michael Reese is researcher working on it. There's some cool information on their website.
ReplyDeleteFrank James
Thanks, Frank! Here's the link to Dr. Reese's West Central Research and Outreach Center at the University of Minnesota-Morris.
ReplyDeleteNorwegians and eggheads will save the world!
This system for storing energy works well for fixed systems. It would allow building facilities in SD where the wind is without regard to powerlines.
ReplyDeleteThis is the start of why huge powerline building projects makes little sense.
Dr. George Olah?, a Nobel prize winning chemist or physicist has written a book on the "Methanol Economy which involves using fuel c ells in "reverse" to combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide in the air to make methanol which is a good "portable" fuel like gasoline.
SD "experts" seem fixated on the instantaneous efficiency of windpower to electricity without regard to the useful efficiency which produces energy when needed and in the most usable form even if overall "efficiency" is less.
Our SD colleges and research centers should be working on this so we end up controlling our own future and destiny rather than turning over a valuable resource to Florida, California, New York utilities and investors or to European manufacturers.
Too many of our SD "futurists" look backward.
Thanks for digging this up. Individuals in the US living in isolated areas or on US islands are also using the wind to hydrogen technology.
Someone needs to put a bug in T. Denny's ear - this is something he could spend money on that could really change the world.
ReplyDeleteGreat scoop. Can anyone tell us just why we have two engineering colleges in SD, and just what in heck are they doing for us? Why doesn't the governor leverage them for SD - for energy; wind, geothermal, solar, hydrogen. Inquiring minds want to know.
ReplyDeleteThey can't all work for John Deere.
More evidence that developing SD's wind power is merely a failure of will, a failure of thinking big.
ReplyDeletePickens is buying 667 wind turbines for the Texas panhandle. He'll figure out how to connect it to the Texas grid. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5781966.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5781966.html
ReplyDeleteTalking about alternative energy is fun.
Anon 1:45,
ReplyDeleteSDSU is already working on both solar and wind power. And biofuels.
Have no fear, Anon. A minority of SDSU grads works for John Deere.