Dan at the Power Company and Other Dead Things

My friend Dan works at the power company and he sent me the article below.

It's a thrill to know that farmers are thinking about their waste. And interestingly, they are doing it on their own gas. No need for regulation. I guess a time comes when people are willing to change. Especially when energy and money are involved.

Perhaps I need to finally admit to being a Libertarian. I didn't want to be one, but I seem to be moving in that direction. People balk at regulation. Good ideas may really and truly follow if Libertarianism reigned.

The first thing I would do in a Libertarian society is to build an electricity generating incinerator for dead bodies. Why waste all these good dead bodies putting them in the ground or cremating them with nothing positive to gain from their slow or very fast decay? Why not a nice slow, steady burning of the dead so that we may have a net increase in kilo wattage?


The Cow Gas article from Dan at the Power Company:



Farmers get charge out of cow manure | Methane is converted into
electrical power

Anne Krueger
STAFF WRITER
© 2005 San Diego Union Tribune Publishing Company. Provided by ProQuest
Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.


LAKESIDE -- Tons of cow manure won't be going to waste at the Van Ommering
dairy.


The family farm is the fifth in California -- and the first in San Diego
County -- to make use of a technology that converts the gases produced by
cow manure into electricity. Rob and Dave Van Ommering, two brothers who
operate the dairy, began running the equipment in March and say their most
recent electric bill was half the usual amount.


The $900,000 system, known as an anaerobic plug-flow digester, was
financed in part by a $244,000 state grant and a $150,000 federal grant.
Representatives from the state dairy industry and government agencies plan
to attend an unveiling at the Van Ommering dairy tomorrow.


Spurred by economics and environmental concerns, California is at the
forefront of building the devices that turn poop into power.


"If we can ever develop a market for this power, instead of having it go
up in the atmosphere, we can have the farmer get paid for the energy he's
producing," said Mark Marsh, who heads the nonprofit corporation
administering the state grants. "This would electrify a lot of homes in
California."


Fourteen dairies in California have received a total of $6 million in
grants to build the methane digesters. Only nine dairy farms outside the
state have them now, Marsh said.


With 500 cows at their Lakeside dairy, the Van Ommerings have plenty of
raw material for their digester. Each cow produces about 80 pounds of
waste each day, or almost 15 tons a year.


The manure is carted to a concrete-lined, 130-foot-long holding tank
covered with a polyethylene tarp. It stews for about 30 days while
bacteria creates a gas that is funneled to a generator producing more than
100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power more than 100 homes.


Dave Van Ommering said a key to the operation is ensuring the manure is
maintained at about 100 degrees, the optimum temperature for the bacteria.
It puts a whole new spin on those California milk commercials featuring
happy cows.


"Instead of happy cows, we have happy microbes," he said, quickly adding
that his bovines are also contented.


The Van Ommerings are the second generation to run the Lakeside dairy;
their parents started the farm after emigrating from Holland 45 years ago.
It's one of seven dairies in San Diego County.


The process of getting the digester built took longer and cost more than
the Van Ommerings anticipated when their grant from the California Energy
Commission was accepted in December 2001.


Dave Van Ommering said he was interested in building a digester because he
felt dairy farmers will be facing increased environmental regulations.
Methane gas, created when manure decomposes, is a greenhouse gas that
affects the Earth's temperature and climate system.


Van Ommering said he started thinking about methane emissions after
hearing that scientists at the University of California Davis were
studying the amount of the gas produced by cows through belching and
flatulence -- "the front end and the back end" of the animal.


The digester seemed to offer an answer to some of those environmental
concerns. In addition to generating electricity, manure that goes through
a digester is less smelly and has fewer weed seeds, making it a more
desirable fertilizer.


"We knew that we had to change our operations," Van Ommering said.


The Van Ommerings had hoped to have the digester operating by September
2002 and had expected it to cost about $480,000. It took 2 1/2 years to
obtain county approval of their application. By then, the costs of
construction materials had risen, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars
to their expenses.


The energy produced by the methane digester is subtracted from the amount
of power the dairy purchases from San Diego Gas & Electric Co. The dairy
and the seven houses on the Van Ommerings' 200 acres consume about 80
kilowatt-hours of electricity, Rob Van Ommering said.


He estimated that the electricity savings will result in the digester
paying for itself within 15 years.


SDG&E is not required to pay for any excess electricity produced by the
digester beyond the needs of the dairy. That's a sore point for Marsh, who said California utilities fought legislative efforts to require that they
pay retail rates for the power.


"The utility gets the additional power for nothing," he said.


Anne Krueger: (619) 593-4962; anne.krueger@uniontrib.com

Cow gas for electricity. Dead bodies for electricity. Banana peels for electricity. Whatever it takes to get the FUCK out of that greasy mess called The Middle East.


Note to Dan: Thanks for the article. And, I only used the title for this entry because it sounded funny.


FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO AREN'T UP TO DATE WITH SIX FEET UNDER, STOP READING RIGHT HERE.


Scroll down a bit for those who have seen it.














Even though you just had to know that Nate was going down once they announced this was the last season, it was still so surprising when he dropped dead. When my grandmother had cancer, I knew she was going to die. It's never the same when they're dead as compared to the knowing it's coming, even a fictitious character on television.

The future:

Will David and Keith raise Maya?

Will Brenda have another miscarriage and then kill herself?

Will Clair end up an office drone?

What a show.