Richard Ha writes:
There have been fireworks lately around the subject of geothermal over at the Big Island Chronicle blog.
Robert Petricci is leader of the anti-geothermal group that include Senator Ruderman and Mayor Kim. Petricci never answers the question, “What about the rubbah slippah folks?”
Read the article and, especially, the comments here: Lively online geothermal discussion
I’m sorry… I hate to personally dig on anyone personally online…
Have you met Robert Petricci personally?
My personal belief is that when anyone meets Petricci in person… they will be able to make a better judgment of him then his online rants.
Until folks have met him personally like I have… I will let others make their own opinion of him.
Me myself… I think the guy is a fricking KOOK!
Had to chuckle at you entering the arena there, Richard. Now that geothermal development is out of Big Island hands, BICC needs to focus on getting on AKP disapproved. PUC needs to be bombarded with testimony against it, primarily because it means a justification for raising electric rates to subsidize AKP until oil reaches $200 per barrel, when AKP starts getting a net energy return. The developers behind AKP are ready to invest $500 million (half a billion) into it. Why not a business arrangement between those developers, HELCO and Hawaii county to put in a Waste-to-Energy plant instead? A W2E plant could bring a 30 to 60MW plant online in 3 years, pay itself off in a few years and return profits as long as there is “feedstock”. There was a recent news article that Hawaii county couldn’t justify a W2E plant because there wasn’t enough “feedstock” volume. I believe this is because they are looking at HPOWER which is still an incinerator system and is limited by the rubbish it can process. Hawaii county should look at a plasma converter W2E plant and get an analysis there. A plasma converter plant can handle a much wider range of rubbish including tires, plastic, old mattresses and many other types of rubbish that now require expensive manual sorting. A plasma converter W2E would not have to be subsidized, gets rid of rubbish, lowers electric rates and starts returning a profit to the investors in a few years.
Just went over there and there are over 100 comments, some just way too long to read.
The main tactic by the geothermal haters is to demonize the word “grid” and then associate geothermal with that to demonize it. But, the grid also means Baseload Power that is 24/7/365. So, we should work at changing the connotation of the word “grid” with “24/7/365 baseload power”, power that is there whether it is day or night, windy or calm. Right now, only fuel oil burning plants and geothermal provides that. And geothermal is, without argument, the only alternative energy source that is paying royalties to the state, not asking for any state subsidies.