But the one thing that the financial system (and indeed much of big business since they are more bank than factory) demonstrates is that money can be created and destroyed at will. Oh, to be sure, there are accounting systems (many of them) that with great ceremony treat the manifestations and currents of money as though it were a conserved substance. But I would suggest that at the root they are all social conventions and beliefs as rooted in reality as the pre-Copernican solar system or the views that race or religion ‘X’ is ‘naturally’ superior over ‘Y’.

So I suspect, given that this boom and bust cycle seems to be a fundamental feature of the current financial system, much like the current trends to socialize risk and privatize profit — we pay and ‘they’ get wealthy, that there really is no cure within the bounds of the system. The misery and disparity will continue. Austerity attacks the society it is supposed to heal making things worse. I think this is how the US slid into the Great Depression.

Somehow I think we need a new system to liberate us from the ‘rock exchange’ … although I am nowhere near bright enough to envision it. Just that I can see the harm our continued belief in the current religion of money is doing. And recognizing money for the artifice it is think that there must be some other way of persisting and exchanging value that will help all human society to escape this trap.

One of our neighbors is a retired Hydro worker who mentioned that the reason power interruptions are getting worse is that Hydro as a policy has offloaded their line maintenance to contractors — who are supposed to drop everything and come running when there is a disaster. This made me think of Toronto Hydro and the news that they abruptly cancelled a program of upgrades and laid off 1,000 contractors — after telling them that there was work for years.

At the same time we read about staff increases in the various power and distribution companies as partial justification for the relentless cost increases we are all asked to absorb. And of course the continued program of wind farm buildouts that follows from an auditor report that most of the premium power being bought from these cronies is wasted. And let us not forget that the Enron designed restructuring of the Ontario power market multiplied the number of business entities (and the pricy senior positions they contain) while simultaneously obfuscating any accountability relationships to businesses and consumers.  The mantra all along has been that by introducing a ‘modern’ market-driven mechanism power should become more available and affordable.  But the reality seems to be that we are following the Enron-California model where power becomes much more expensive and less reliable.  Politics (or more specifically failed ideologies) rather than sound engineering is driving the process. Curious. I wonder if anyone has succeeded in delivering on the promise?

And of course while the power producer market became increasingly Balkanized the grid itself is more tightly integrated. So during the storm the wind farm on Wolfe Island should have been producing power — but it supplies the grid, not the local area.  So Wolfe went dark. As did a large chunk of eastern Ontario between Belleville and Gananoque.  But the issues are not publicly reported and there appears to be no followup on preventing these issues again — so just another broken branch hammered into another hole in the dike.

The 2004 blackout report made fascinating reading — from the original maintenance reductions that caused the initial line break to the monitoring equipment that was unaccountably offline to the communications and management issues between the multiple operating companies that compounded and expanded the failure.  The report concluded that part of the problem was the complexity of the grid and the potential interactions that must be managed exceed the capability of the human and automatic management processes.  It is just too complex to manage effectively.

One thing I learned in my years of contingency planning consulting is that  loosely interconnected systems are pretty fault-resilient. This is quite different from the massive centralized systems that attempt to control everything and because of the complexity of their interactions are difficult to replicate or recover. Even the approach to alternate energy is done in a centralized manner — rather than producing power for local use and drawing from the grid to top up, the big solar and wind plants feed directly into the central grid. This maximizes the loads on the central grid rather than minimizing it as a more distributed approach might produce.  I think that Ontario is moving from a collection of local power systems into a huge, brittle structure — looks like the standby generator is going to get a lot more work.

The American Founding Fathers held a similar view — politics, or more precisely public service, was something that one engaged in after a successful life as planter, business man or military leader. One did their duty to the country and then retired. It is hard to see how someone coming to Ottawa or Washington for a few years would be motivated to cultivate a network of syncophants and campaign contributors in the manner that today’s career politicians do. And to some extent it really does bother me that the career politicians on both sides of the border seem to march to drums different than the apparent needs of the country. In the old days, as my father advised, one simply tried to vote for the person who would likely steal the least. But in the current atmosphere of disinformation and spin that kind of decision is getting harder than ever to make.

Personally, I would prefer a system where my lifetime of business experience solving real world problems could be put to work assisting my country. Or that any successful person could at least have the option to serve at the end of their careers. But the role or citizen-advisor is already filled with career pols and favored consultants with very little room for a concerned citizen.

So I continue to watch things go down the drain, in wonder as decision after decision is made for reasons that are quite opaque. But as one poster to the Stronach piece observed — politiicans are smart and their lifetime in the system gives them a viewpoint different from the rest of us. Problem is that I know and that makes it hard to sleep at night.

Nice pipedream (we won’t speculate as to what was in the pipe…). Somehow it sounds like another ethanol project — where due to the processing costs and depressed efficiency of the product as a fuel this oil-saving initiative, mandated by law, ended up increasing oil consumption.

Somehow I think the carbon capture process will work like this — the exhaust gas stream will need to be cooled and run through a separator of some sort, maybe a gas centrifuge or liquification process. And did I mention that there will be a lot more heat rejected into the atmosphere? The extracted carbon dioxide and other combustion gases will be shipped to a distant reservoir and pushed underground. I have seen little on the energy cost of the basic process but guess it would be substantial. And it is likely that not all of the waste gas could be captured. To compensate for the power absorbed by the separation process the plant will need to be much larger to produce the same level of useful power — also increasing the amount of fuel it consumes proportionally. So we will blow (literally) through our fossil fuel reservoirs faster than ever. And the underground reservoirs will be a ticking bomb waiting for the next geological stress (local fracking?) to set the demon free.

But on the plus side, politicians can claim for years how much they are doing for (to?) the planet. And lots of money will be made by the lucky construction companies who get to create these monsters. And our electricity bills will be even higher. But between the excess heat from the process, increased fossil fuel consumption and higher costs for everyone will the planet start to cool down? Probably not. It has been noted that the seafloor methane deposits have already started to sublime so I suspect that some critical temperature has been exceeded.

And will this do one thing to help the millions who are already suffering from the impacts of climate change? Or the countless millions yet to be affected? I am afraid that the answer will be no. All we have really done is fight some more about who gets to use this issue to make money. And the world continues to be worse off because of it.

But one aspect of the event really stuck in my mind — why do they bother to ‘consult’ with the affected folk when there is nothing in the process that gives the victims the right to say ‘NO’? The turbines are going where they are going, new roads will be cut through the fields, priceless stone fences leveled — and there is nothing that the affected folks can say about it.

My problem with the whole thing is that this is a mixed neighborhood — we have farmers who have been on the island for generations side by side with retired folk who came here to escape the city. And recognizing that small farms may be labors of love (and maybe not much more) that it is not unreasonable for someone to augment their income by leasing land for a wind farm. I hope they don’t get treated as poorly as some — be a real shame to go through the whole process (to say nothing of the anger of their affected but otherwise uncompensated neighbors) and not realize the income they were hoping for.

But there is another problem — the province cannot absorb the wind power it is currently generating and frequently dumps it at firesale prices. As the Europeans realized some time ago, wind power is available when the wind blows. And the wind has the depressing tendency to blow best when the power is not needed. So why are we building even more of the things? And if the affected people cannot say no, why annoy us with senseless meetings that simply dish out spin?

Well, we went to the open house and were amazed at what was being proposed.  Makes me even more curious as to the real economic driver for the project. Engineering best practices for wind farm design call for separating the turbines by six to 10 rotor diameters (113m blade circle or roughly 800m minimum) and yet these appear to be less than 500m apart. Inter-turbine turbulence degrades power output and the latest research suggests even larger separations are needed for best results.  And more disturbing was the clustering of turbines around island bird refuges and the world famous Owl Woods.  And the project folks were claiming an achievable capacity factor higher than any in Ontario — even higher than Wolfe Island (next island to the east) that has far better winds but only manages to produce 1/4th of the time.  And it could be just my imagination, but the turbine placement managed to miss the locations shown on the Ontario Wind Atlas for the stronger winds.  And the ‘experts’ available from the company to ‘answer’ questions seemed to be unaware of even basic physics — one ‘expert’ claimed that sound does not propagate through rock (the basis of seismology and most oil prospecting) so transmission from the turbines to our homes could not be a problem.  (My guess is the real reason is that they will spend most of their time standing still — except during the occasional violent storms that we get.  But if one of these beasts blows over (Scotland last week) or throws a blade (New York last year) it probably won’t hit us.)  But then these ‘experts’ have an economic incentive to favor the company over even recognized and established science — so all potential problems are denied out of hand.  I guess we will all have to wait until all the partisans are dead before we even know the truth about this whole issue.  As is often the case the supply of truth greatly exceeds the demand. This was clear from the way the meetings and protests were covered — most of the material published came from those who will make money from the project.  Very little was printed from those who are being sacrificed. It is curious, considering how much has been written about the poor economics of wind turbines and the harm they inflict, that the answer to the question of ‘how many people does it have to harm before it becomes wrong’ seems to be everybody but the advocates.

One other ugly thought has been on my mind of late.  Researchers are starting to realize that wind turbines affect climate by promoting a higher degree of atmospheric mixing downwind than would otherwise exist.  The net effect appears to be that the downwind areas get warmer and drier.  This should make an interesting combination with a forecast rapid increase in Canadian wildfires. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111216084215.htm

Somehow I suspect they will not quietly or obligingly go away. And not everyone has the opportunity, ability or inclination to become an advanced knowledge worker. So as the total population grows (and there really are too many people) there will be this growing population of the displaced. So how does one keep this growing underclass from generating social unrest or worse? Government handouts and reality TV? Turn them into Soylent Green? It is clear that if governments and employers do not come up with a productive and socially beneficial way of redirecting these people they will remind us of their presence. But so far our dear leaders seem glibly impotent about this issue. But the numbers keep growing.

I am suspicious that the much maligned ‘Occupy’ movement is just the start. My dark pessimism is thinking Russian revolution but there are probably other destructive forms of social unrest. But as I wait for my self-drive car to take me home, I hope it will not be across a countryside being ravaged by gangs of the unemployed and dispossessed. But so far there is nothing on the political landscape to suggest that this will not happen. I hope I am wrong.

The electric grid is a complex and delicate beast. Most of our devices are very touchy about the quality of the power that they consume – shift the line frequency by too much and motors overheat or stop working; vary the voltage too much and TV pictures collapse, light bulbs explode and so forth. So maintaining stability is a major challenge that involves careful matching of supply and demand. This problem has gotten worse as grids are expanded and interconnected to move power across great distances. Not only does the management problem get worse but these large scale wiring plants are also subject to other disturbances – induced currents from geomagnetic events or cascading faults that disturb power over huge areas.

Problem is that while electric loads can vary over short time intervals, many forms of generation take time to ramp up or down, sometimes many hours. This exacerbates the problems of grid management. Power sources are categorized as to whether their output can be scheduled or not – this is referred to as dispatchable power. The problem with the current fascination with renewable power (see http://glatiak1948.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/the-myth-of-sustainable-energy/) is that neither solar nor wind power is dispatchable. What is worse, wind can vary by 100% within a few minutes so any large scale usage will have grid stability side effects. The approach so far has been to build backup power generation capability – largely turbines fueled by natural gas. These have to be kept spinning all the time – burning fuel to keep the equipment ready to provide power at a moment’s notice. (The side effect is that whatever greenhouse gasses were saved by using wind are more than made up for by the backup generators – but both wind advocates and politicians ignore this little detail.  Recently there have been studies showing that because of wind backup the GHG production actually increases.) And power companies introduce geographical diversity to the wind farms – spreading them far apart to catch the wind someplace. Problem is that across a small place like Ontario, winds tend to be correlated – so much larger distances are needed. And let us not overlook transmission and conversion losses – which run 15% to 20%, sometimes higher.

What is generally talked about is that the ‘smart grid’ involves computer management and enhanced communication to enable better coordination of the grid. What is not really talked about is that this coordination also involves coercive user demand management. Power companies have for the last few years been offering inducements to allow them to deploy ‘managed’ thermostats – that would permit the company to override local settings to reduce user demand when it suited them. You want to cool or heat your house when there is a power shortage? Not any more – the power company will tell you when you can and cannot do this. This idea is no doubt brought by the same people who introduced time of day metering, another demand-management approach.

If one reads the latest report on IESO about the future Smart Grid and how wonderful it will be (someday) there is this oft-asserted phrase that consumers will be able to monitor and manage their energy us.  What is not mentioned is that over the last few years the offpeak rate has been raised aggressively and is now very close to the onpeak rate — since the supplemental charges are now 57% of the total bill this TOU differentiation is becoming increasingly meaningless.  We think $0.25/kw is likely the real net net.  So all the talk about how wonderful this will be is likely from the viewpoint of the utility people (the 1997 Ontario utility restructuring brought to us by Enron, by the way.)  The bottom line really is it is all about relentlessly higher prices and loss of control in anything but an illusory sense.

The smart grid is more of this – allowing the power company to change your electricity demand remotely to suit themselves. They feel this will allow them to cut back on backup power, which produces those green house gasses and add even more wind to the power mix. The idea, I guess, is that when the wind drops in Ontario a whole lot of houses go dark. All the virtues of a third-world power system but under modern computer control and at power prices that are predicted to be among the highest in the world.

And I am sure that because these are all controlled blackouts that some areas will be hit harder than others. And to administer all of this there will no doubt be a huge bureaucracy added for the statutory exemptions to come. In effect, instead of expanding the power supply in Ontario they are looking for ways to reduce it and to some extent make it less reliable. Power consumers in Ontario are being put on a procrustean bed to have their ‘excess’ lopped off when it is not convenient. I am sure there will be some side effects. Most electrical equipment fails quicker when provided with a varying supply — not that the current generation of appliances has been engineered for long life anymore. Ontario grew because it had a cheap and reliable electricity supply. It will be interesting to see how expensive and unreliable power will help correct the local economic downturn. The problem with this solution is it is yet another form of coercion that we will have to live with and suffer the consequences.