49 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

  1. If an energy crisis doesn’t happen, you have to MAKE it happen.
    And then don’t let it go to waste, right?

  2. What would Charlie Sheen say about this? I am betting he wouldn’t stand for it.

  4. I suppose we should get ready for the middle ages again: monthly baths, mass starvation and the like.

  6. Here’s hoping Daddy Dalton doesn’t read this.
    “Called the Energy Saver Partner program, the system utilizes smart meters to communicate with web-programmable thermostats and high-usage appliances in the home like electric water heaters and pool pumps. During times of high electricity usage across the state, the system can be used to increase thermostat settings by a few degrees or cycle off air conditioning systems for short periods of time.”
    Link:
    http://www.metering.com/node/11120

  8. In other words- stupid group-think has given the British an opportunity to live life as their great-grandparents experienced it. Perhaps the experience will reactivate independent thought.
    We should pay attention to how the British handle this because it’s something Ontarians will need to deal with as we live through the Dalton Minimum.

  9. To rephrase that headline so it more closely resembles sage adivice; “Era of politicians regulating energy production supply has ended.”
    Get the grafting politicos out of the supply curve and return to consumer driven productivity. The idiotic concept of a “shortage” of a life-sustaining commodity which can be indefinitely replenished through water course ot nuclear engineering, is nothing more than creating false shortage expectation to benefit government-connected energy speculators and energy supply chain exploiters.
    There is no shortage of oil, gas, water, electricity or food. There IS a shortage of consumer self respect in accepting such contrived “shortage” exploitation by the corporate-government axis.

  10. If that pronouncement surprised you then you are paying attention to who is leading the western world at this time in history.
    Marxists!
    The mission is to take humanity back to hovels and work sheds of the past. We are apparently not worthy of a comfortable modern life. Obama and the twits who run Britain have a better idea for us all.
    Many fewer of us to begin with and a much less demanding population for those who are left to do the bidding of the ‘betters’.

  12. Coming soon to Ontario…we all know it.
    We MUST rid of that train wreck of a provincial Liberal government.

  14. No power along with the global warming we have had in Calgary this year, could be a few broken water pipes.

  15. A poster at another site commenting on this…said he was putting the finishing touches on his reproduction tumbril….
    This is why the lefties are so desperate to enact firearms control…….

  16. These guys tell more lies in a few sentences than most normal people tell in their entire lives.
    The reason the cost is 10x to bury cables is because of union labour. And what he is really trying to say is that when you rely on something as useless as wind power you need to string power cables all over the place.
    How the Empire has fallen. From a nation that ruled the seas and nations, to a sissy wimp of a nation whose citizens resemble those in 1984.
    But at the end of the day the Brits were *always* liberals at heart, and all the chickens are now coming home to roost. Understand that the average Briton today *wants* to be told what to do by government. They feel incomplete if government is not controlling every aspect of their lives.
    No wonder there is an exodus of those in Britain who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall. Intelligent freedom loving Brits are always welcome in Canada!

  17. Understand that wealthy liberals will *never* be subjected to the restrictions that they want to place on everyone else.
    Just look at the Google founders for example, who preach green green green. Larry Page recently bought a 194 foot superyacht. Typically for that sort of size boat you are looking at 3000 hp or more of diesel engine power.
    Green energy is the new form of class warfare, and it is a particularly dangerous one.

  18. If an energy crisis doesn’t happen, you have to MAKE it happen.
    And then don’t let it go to waste, right?
    Posted by: grok at March 7, 2011 8:44 AM ”
    hi grok !!
    you got it, just like john snobelen the drop out minister of ‘edjukashun’ for the CONSERVATIST mikey ‘six toes’ harris.
    here’s a link: en dot wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snobelen
    feel free to do a search on that page for ‘useful crisis’.

  20. Neo-AGW Progress Report.
    “The solar surge began April 1,”.
    April Fool’s Cold: ““Investors are starting to get cold feet.””
    Here is the Madgadaffy Howler: “‘What’s the future? Should we go off to North Africa and develop there and forget about the U.K.?’””
    …-
    “Solar ‘Gold Rush’ in U.K. May Die With Incentive Roll-Back”
    “Cornwall, the poorest county in England, said five months ago it expected a “gold rush” of $1.6 billion in solar energy investments. Now, the U.K. government may get in the way.
    The central government said this month it’s considering cutting incentives and reducing the size of projects, concerned that the above-market rates it promised through April 2012 may lead to too many solar farms.
    Britain is moving faster than any other European country to contain a surge in solar power and prevent the boom-and-bust seen in Spain and predicted for the Czech Republic. The risk is scaring off the investors who would create the “green jobs” Prime Minister David Cameron is seeking to revive the economy.
    “It’s going to completely kill the market,” said Tim German, renewable energy manager for the local government in Cornwall at the U.K.’s southwest tip. “Investors are starting to get cold feet.”
    Sharp Corp., the Osaka-based electronics maker which employs 1,100 U.K. workers after doubling the size of its panel factory in Wales, says the government may cripple the industry. Already, companies are scaling back. Matrix Group Ltd. and Ingenious Media Holdings Plc suspended solar funds seeking 55 million pounds ($89 million). Low Carbon Solar Ltd. says it can’t spend the 70 million pounds it secured from pension funds.
    At Good Energy Group Plc, a clean electricity retailer based in Chippenham, England, Chief Executive Officer Juliet Davenport says she may only get 4 percent of the 100 megawatts of solar power-purchase agreements she wanted.
    ‘Rug Has Been Pulled’
    “It was an industry that for the first time was moving fast and attracting investment,” Davenport said. “Suddenly, the rug has been pulled and everybody’s saying ‘What’s the future? Should we go off to North Africa and develop there and forget about the U.K.?’”
    The solar surge began April 1, when the government brought in so-called feed-in tariffs guaranteeing prices as much as 12 times the market rate for electricity generated from the sun. Last year, developers doubled the capacity of solar power generation in the U.K. to 66 megawatts, enough for 9,000 homes.”
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-28/solar-gold-rush-in-u-k-may-die-with-fastest-roll-back-of-incentives.html

  21. TJ – The reason the cost is 10x to bury cables is because of union labour. And what he is really trying to say is that when you rely on something as useless as wind power you need to string power cables all over the place.
    What ridiculous statements. Clearly you have no idea about power distribution systems and shouldn’t be commenting on them. For one thing Union labour is also used in building overhead powerlines and that is hardly the reason that underground is so much more expensive. As for Holliday he is just as simple apparently. While there is great new technology being developed constantly that will allow both customers and utilities to better control power usage to save costs and work through uncontrollable system outages todays society will not stand for a system where power is only available some of the time. Especially when there are options such as nuclear. What should happen though is some of the green wing nuts should be put entirely on the wind produced grid and you can be sure they would soon see the light, after they couldn’t see the light for a time of course.

  22. Why do Lefties like this think that anything more than a small fraction of fellow Lefties are going to tolerate moving from the First World to the Third World when it’s all so unnecessary?! If Democracy persists then the Leftards will get voted out and replaced with competent people. End of Kumbaya, overnight.
    Incidentally, if such a change were actually to take place, I have ZERO doubt that the “smart” metering system would be setup in such a way that the Leftist Elites would continue to have power 24/7 while everyone else was in the dark. And if given a lie detector test, they would respond, with honest conviction, that this made perfect sense and was “necessary”. Such is how zealotry warps the mind!

  25. wafer it is you who do not know what you are talking about.
    Yes, underground will always be a bit more expensive than overhead, but the huge 10x factor is primarily driven by union costs.
    Utility companies today are what the telcos were 30-40 years ago. Bloated beasts, that have no competition, and that thus gouge customers. And to add to the insult, they screw up the landscape royally with hideously ugly poles because they are beholden to union workers.
    Power generation and supply companies are bloated dinosaurs that feed off society like leeches.

  26. TJ, don’t be stupid. Union labour costs are irrelevant to the cost difference between suspended and buried transmission cable.
    How much insulation do you think is needed to bury a 400 kV transmission cable? There’s no insulation on transmission towers; that’s what the air gap is for. But to reproduce that air gap insulation for a buried 400 kV cable, insulation is needed around the conductor.
    So work it out. The average cost of a high voltage transmission corridor is about $10 million a kilometre just in straight materials cost. Now you’ve got to dig several dozen parallel trenches at least one metre in diameter each. And add in the cost of millions of tons of XLPE cable over conventional aluminum conductor on top of a gigantic excavation project. A typical wire truck will only move about half of a conventional load if it’s XLPE cable, given its size and weight.
    If anything, the guesstimate by the pinhead of ten times the cost is too small by at least an order of magnitude. This is precisely why submarine cable is so hideously expensive.
    Oh, and the frequency of repair of buried cable is higher than tower suspension because of insulation breakdown, not to mention the fact that maintenance costs are much higher for any given repair. You have to dig it up first, and you can’t work on a live line the way you can with tower conductors.

  27. cgh I was not talking about high voltage transmission corridors.
    I’m talking about power distribution after substations, which in Canada anyway is turning into nothing more than a make-work project for unions.
    Non-union shops can do the work for half the cost or less, but the government doesn’t encourage competition.
    We had power brought to our farm and I was stunned to see how many union workers showed up to put in a pole and a transformer. There were about 10 in total, one to cut wire, one to lift the pole, one to tie the wire in, one to remove insulation, etc. At one point they sat around doing nothing for 2 hours because one of them went to run an errand, and none of the others would do his job even though they knew how.
    The analogy between power companies and telcos from the 70’s-80’s is exactly right.

  28. The future is the Thorium MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) or LFTR (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor). The Chinese have declared their intention to develop this technology. This is an excellent decision for them – since they have a huge supply of Thorium recoverable from their rare earth mining operations. We do too. Has anyone heard of Thor Lake? 58 million tons of indicated rare earths – if only a fraction of a percent contains Thorium it would have the potential of providing a gargantuan amount of power. (The entire planet can be powered by about 7000 tons of thorium a year utilizing LFTR technology)
    For those interested Google Kirk Sorensen Thorium, LFTR, Thorium MSR.

  29. geothermal plants to produce energy were brought to a halt in Switzerland when it was discovered that the drilling could trigger an earthquake
    I have always wondered if drilling for oil might not also be contributing to earthquakes
    anyone who has more knowledge if you could comment I would appreciate your input
    google Geothermal Switzerland good articles at Wikipedia
    consumers need to wake up and keep ahead of the game
    fh

  30. There are other reasons the crew may have been that large, TJ. In Sask., SaskPower construction crews are usually apprentice linemen. These construction crew(s) work together as a group under the supervision of journeymen linemen. This accounts for the number of workers at the job site. It may also be why the job shut down while the journeymen went for parts. The work rules for apprentices are quite detailed and dictated by safety and labor regulations.

  31. fh,
    Everytime a Morlock gets hit in the head with a drill bit they retaliate with their earthquake machine. Google “hollow earth” for some good articles.

  33. “Geothermal Switzerland good articles at Wikipedia”
    Well… if Wikipedia says so, it must be true. There are no people with agendas against energy production writing there. No sirree.

  35. To Do:
    Check Passport
    Check Flights out.
    Contingency:
    Shopping List
    2nd Back up-Generator
    Bigger Tank for fuel
    More Barbed Wire
    More Cartridges

  36. TJ, two comments:
    1. the idiot Holliday in the article was talking about transmission, not distribution.
    2. if you want to see what the real costs of moving overhead distribution underground is, you just have to look at the nightmare Toronto Hydro went through in the late 1980s converting their 4 kV system to 28.5 kV. Union labour had nothing to do with it. The project ran years late and with huge overruns, all caused by political interference, neighborhood activism and the messy complications of trying to upgrade a century old system in the middle of urban subterranean architecture.

  37. The people who think Cornwall is a good place for solar power have obviously never been there or looked out a window. Its one of the foggiest place on the planet!!

  38. Welcome to the third World folks. Amidst riches we will become poor, for the Religion of environmentalism & its sadistic imps.
    The EPA will bring revolution at the least.
    No one with any brains will put up with this when half their pay is taken in taxes, while power companies screw their customers.
    Governments in the name of “sustainability” will make us all beggars. Except of course the entitled Political Elite with the Mob.
    JMO

  39. This really doesn’t make any sense. We’re only going to get to use a service we pay for when it’s available? I’d be willing to pay more to use the power whenever I want to. Looks like I’ll be going deep woods sooner than I thought 😛

  40. The great thing about all these wind turbines is that they will provide a great place to hang traitors.

  42. … but critics complain they only generate on windy days.

    Ah, so we’re back to saying truth-telling is criticism.

  43. Ontario rolled out Smart Meters last year. My hydro bill reflects it. All they do is jack the prices during the time when everyone is home and actually -using- electricity. Cheaper hydro at 2AM to 5AM, yeah that’s useful. I’ll be sure to be doing my laundry then.
    Just another tax hike. Yawn. Wake me for the election, I’m voting early and often.

  45. I would expect buried conductors to be copper not aluminum. Aluminum is used for overhead because it is lighter.

  46. No, tranio, it would not. Aluminum is used even though it means heavier conductor, as the conductivity of aluminum is lower than copper. So you need a lot more of it to reduce the flux density. No one uses copper for transmission because it’s so expensive. If you use copper conductor, you just increased the cost by another two to three times at least.

  47. “In other words- stupid group-think has given the British an opportunity to live life as their great-grandparents experienced it.”
    So that explains the popularity of those British TV shows that have people trying to live as they did in Victorian times.

  48. Well, I don’t have a problem. I’ll get Obama to stop flying his personal trainer from Chicago. One flight would more than cover my energy needs for a lifetime.
    Wahat are you going to do?

  49. Since we are the second largest country in the world, and one of the coldest, with a mere 34 million inhabitants contributing approx. 1 % of so called global warming I think we should wage war on the manufacturers that produce windmills and drive them out of the country, along with any politician or greenie that has supported this stupidity. With the lead/lag time required to produce cheap reliable power we will all be shivering by candle light by the time these mental midgets realise they are destroying this country. One look at my Hydro bill confirms we are on the wrong path. Once all these granola crunching, foam at the mouth tree huggers move out of their parents basement and have to pay their own electrical bills they will reap what they have sown. By the time they learn about the real world, ma and pa will have taken in boarders just to help pay the hydro bills and the kids will be on their own. Cold and hungry. Damn…..I love a happy ending.

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