Tesla-ism

The biggest mistake being made in The War Against Oil is Tesla-ism.

Nikola Tesla is the father of our modern electric grid. His work with alternating current proved that Edison was wrong, that you didn’t have to build big generators in peoples’ houses, and that you could effectively deliver power to them from hundreds of miles away.

There are some forms of renewable energy, especially geothermal energy, that require a lot of capital to tap, and should be tapped centrally.

But there are other forms of renewable energy, specifically solar and wind energy, that do not require a lot of capital to tap, and thus don’t need to be tapped centrally.

Unfortunately our current political decision-makers are so accustomed to the Tesla system that they really can’t conceive of anything different. So they’re backing huge solar energy projects which will lose more than half their power in today’s inefficient delivery systems.

When you think like that, and act like that, you’re not fighting The War Against Oil effectively. You’re wasting money and wasting energy.

The most important work we can do with capital right now is to improve grid efficiency, and to enable two-way transfer of power. The first will cut our requirements for new major energy generation. The second will enable individual homes and businesses to sell their own generated power back to the grid.

Some examples from the front lines:

• Opti-Power of California is building a 40 megawatt "solar farm" in Canada. This is a boondoggle. Most of the power will disappear in the delivery.
• New
  Hampshire has passed a bill that requires power companies to generate
  23% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025.  Burning wood is defined as renewable energy, and the plan envisions the utilities building new plants. This is short-sighted.
   
• Iowa is pushing an Iowa Power Fund, $100 million, most of which will go into the production of ethanol. Ethanol comes from plants, but ethanol is hydrocarbons. Ethanol is the methadone against our oil addiction.
   
• North Dakota passed a renewable energy plan, but over half the money is going into ethanol projects.

The use of ethanol hydrocarbons, which merely extend our present system into the future and don’t do anything about global warming, as well as the extension of centralized electrical generation, need to be fought if we’re to win the War Against Oil.