The City and County of Santa Fe are considering a joint Resolution to conduct a feasibility study of a City/County Electric Power Utility. In times of global warming and skyrocketing prices for electricity from very toxic coal plants, it is time to take a very close look at our energy choices. The resolution’s feasibility study could ask a number of heretofore unasked questions:
- How do we reduce our energy’s environmental impact at the lowest cost?
- Can locally produced energy cost less?
- How can we increase the efficiency of energy production at our power plants?
- How can the development of our energy resources benefit the local economy?
- How many jobs would be created by a localized energy infrastructure?
- Do any businesses require higher power quality than currently available?
- Is it possible to reduce the amount of toxic coal plant energy that we buy?
- How do we create incentives for energy resources that provide the most local benefit?
- Which energy resources can contribute the most tax base for the City?
- Do local energy resources triple economic impact through the multiplier effect?
- Where are the Greenest cities in the world? How did they do it? What was the benefit?
- How can decisions about our energy future be made democratically?
In the past we have only considered a narrow range of electricity options, mostly offered up by our investor-owned utility, PNM, whose executives have a fiduciary obligation to their stockholders to increase profits. PNM prices are regulated; they get back 100% of their spending plus 10%. PNM can only increase profits if they increase spending, and it’s our money, not theirs, that they are spending. It would be a breach of their fiduciary obligations to their investors if they ever did anything that would lower their spending of our money because profits would go down. I believe that if we have a fair and just forum to ask questions, and the resources to get the complete answers, we will find that we can make our electricity much cleaner and cheaper than an investor-owned utility.
what is going on around the world. Denmark is the world leader in new Power Grid Technology. Their new internet for power plants, the Active Distribution Grid is now operating and has made possible very high percentages of renewable energy at low total system costs.
To understand how the Active Distribution Grid works, let’s look at how the Internet was created. Originally we only had ARPANET, which used just a few mainframe computers linked to a central control protocol. The centralized control began to destabilize as more computers tried to connect. The large corporations who controlled ARPANET spent a fortune trying to maintain the centralized controls and bring online more computers. I remember my first search on ARPANET. It was $1,400 an hour, very slow, and it was one way; you couldn’t upload. Then some very smart guys realized that the destabilization problem was caused by the centralized control itself. They devised the protocols to eliminate the centralized control, and Boom! The Internet was created and we all have computers that can download and upload.
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