Green Year

In the last two days, I’ve had two meetings with people where millions of dollars were discussed, and heard someone say with a straight face “well, 14 (million) is actually easier than 2 (million), so let’s see if we can scale this up.”

Scale this up. Hmm. Lessee: two months ago, someone asked me to find a home for a 30KW solar array that M. C. wanted to donate for use at the event this August. Yesterday, we were talking about scaling up from the 300KW they just agreed to the day before to a 2MW install ( half each in Gerlach and Lovelock). That’s almost two orders of magnitude in two days.

How this is coming together is a testament to the power of framing the discussion in big enough terms. Several weeks ago, I started repeating over and over “let’s make Gerlach the first town in the world to generate more energy than it uses, and let’s do it this year.” And there wasn’t anyone whose job or role it was to say no. So no one did.

Instead, people started seeing what they could do to help us get to yes. Which is why the Sierra Pacific energy company is sending teams into “greenlach” in April to do a conservation sweep of town. Net result: 18-40% energy reduction. In a weekend. Cost? Zero. PS-they’ll also sign up low income folks for energy rebates, which will end up covering about $850 per year for about 85% of the town.

Then, the solar guys got on board. How it will work is pretty elegant: Sierra Pacific rebates up to 30KW per meter at $5 per watt, or $150,000.  Cost per installed watt is normally $7. 20-30% of that, or $1.40 to $2.10 is labor. Sierra Pacific will provide the technical labor free, as a training exercise.  BWB will provide non-tech labor free, just ’cause. With rebates and labor, we’re now down to .60 to -.10$ per installed watt. Schools get free power. Funder works tax mojo to meet their needs.  If NV’s legistlature scales up net metering limits from 30k to 1m per meter this year and matches it with incentives, then we’re headed for 1MW in each town, this year. Kubota.

I know this is being repeated from earlier posts. and I feel like I should instead be writing about Jim Mason’s gasifier experiments and how they’re going to change power as we know it. But I want to pause just a moment and reflect. We went from can’t be done to may well be done in just a moment, it seems.

This thing in the desert is transformative. It can move mountains. I’m honored to be in the place I am. I hope I am up to meeting the opportunity for all it’s worth.

Aww, shucks. On message and everthang:

Burning Man goes green

Local gearheads turned reluctant environmentalists?

By Steven T. Jones

Burning Man founder Larry Harvey chooses the theme for each year’s event — such as 2002’s the Floating World and last year’s Hope and Fear — but it usually doesn’t have much impact on the basic character of the event. This year’s theme, Green Man, is different. More after the jump