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Vermont Launches 'Cow Power' System
odyaws writes "Central Vermont Public Service has launched Cow Power, a system by which power users can opt to buy 25, 50, or 100% of their electricity from dairy farms that run generators on methane obtained from cow manure. Cow Power costs only 4 cents/kWh more than market price, so a household like mine would only pay $5-6/month more at 100% usage. The big question now is whether Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream will use power generated from the manure of cows treated with Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone."
That idea really stinks!
Who would want to pay more for crappy power?
Way to go... let's marginalize every single attempt to seek out alternative power sources. This way we can be married to oil for that much longer. Look on the bright side.. your kids get to see the middle east.
bull shit....
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I don't get what you're saying. How is it a scam? They pay the farmer for the power, plus a little bonus as an incentive to use otherwise wasted gas to provide an environmentally friendly source of power. I personally think it's an awesome idea - I wish there were more incentive for people to use and produce alternative power sources.
$0.04 per kwh on top of the regular rates is about 50% higher.
I think someone misplaced a decimal point. I use about 1500
kwh per month. This extra cost would be $60 per month, not $6.
It would be cheaper to pay farmers not to farm than to come
up with kooky schemes like this that pay them twice - once for
their crazy milk subsidies then again to get rid of the methane
gas that it produces.
We might as well run power plants fueled by combusting dollar bills.
Ok, I get the whole "pay a bit more because it's a GoodThing(TM)" concept, but as a marketing strategy it stinks (forgive the pathetic pun).
So let me get this straigth: you (the consumer) enrols to receive a percentage of your "power" from these guys (up to 100% only from them), and all your money (including the extra 4 cent per kWh, no idea how much the actual price per kWh you have, but I personally pay only about 10-15 cent per kWh, so an extra 4 cent would increase my bill easily by 30% or more) and only "markert price" (no idea how that much that is, but definetely way less than what you get charged as end-user) goes directly to the "manufacturer".
In other words, you basically just make a donation to the "cow power" people, but a donation that's not regarded as donation per se (well, it doesn't specify that, I was just assuming).
So what's stopping you from just using regular power and donating as much $$$ as you want directly to the people involved ?
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
No, it doesn't, because the carbon was recently removed from the atmosphere by the growing of the plants that the cows ate to produce the, um, fuel. OTOH, when we burn oil, we're bringing up carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere millions of years ago, and putting it back into the atmosphere instead of leaving it in the ground. The only way this isn't closer to carbon-neutral than burning oil is if the cow manure that is going to be burned for power would otherwise be buried deep underground, which I kind of doubt would happen.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is really a mooving story.
But seriously, it's about time people started doing things like this en masse. We waste a shitload of resources we could otherwise make use of on a daily basis (no pun intended). If this catches on and becomes more widespread across the dairy sections of the country, and perhaps the world, people will quickly start looking at how to use other resources to their advantage - how about the methane from other farm animals, or perhaps human waste passing through sewers? Admittedly most will seek profit from it, but it's really what's happening that counts, not why in this circumstance.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
It looks like the plan was to NOT letting this get too popular. The fact that customers have to pay more for this power AND the plan is to pay the farmers more than the current rate is the exact technique I'd use if I didn't want too many customers picking this option. Who's going to make the choice to pay about 30% more for energy?
This looks like a scam to make this look like the "green" thing to do when in fact, the result is going to make very little difference in how their energy is produced. Sounds just like Bush's hydrogen vs hybrid strategies.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's also worth mentioning that methane is a greenhouse gas. It's actually worse than Co2 in this regard, though far less common and also less stable.
Since decomposing cow manure is going to emit methane whether we tap it for power or not (as will the cows themselves) it stands to reason that letting the methane go to waste is more of a greenhouse gas contributor than burning it. After all, the Co2 we release from combusting it will be resorbed by the plants the cows themselves eat, whereas the methane will not. And if we don't burn the stuff, it'll just end up in the atmosphere anyways.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Calculations, done correctly:
20 dollars = 2000 cents
2000/500 = 4 cents per kwh. Which then goes to the farmers.
40%? Where?
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Feed the cows lots of beans.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
A 200W PSU for a computer will consume 144 kWh per month. Just that comp alone would cost $6 extra to run.
Given that the submitter "odyaws" reports his electricity usage at about 150 kWh/month, that puts him smack in the middle of cheap-ass mom's basement dwellers.
Either the guy is blowing smoke outta his ass about the true cost, or he's the kind of guy that runs AC off the street lamp.
Average American person sucks up over 700 kWh/month. Traditional successfull 'geek' household (decent AC, two-car heated garage, freezer/fridge, range/microwave, CCTV, plasma in the basement, gadgets, 24/7 computers, VAX cluster (winter heating), wireless, hot tub) will eat up 10,000 kWh easily.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
The Bush Administration emissions could power the entire planet!
(And who knew Al Gore had such incredible ecological foresight in not contesting the 2000 election?)
I generally have better things to do than read up about burning cow poo but I'm curious about one thing...
I'm assuming this is marketed towards people who want some sort of "green energy" powering their homes. Is this really a clean(er) fuel source?
Sure, burning your favorite fossil fuel on a large scale isn't exactly clean. It is however heavily regulated and uses countless filters & scrubbers to clean up most of the nasty by-products. I'd be tempted to believe that a random milk farmer burning a few tons of cow manure in the back yard would be worse for the environment.
... there is no way you can actually draw power specifically from the farm. Electricity flows into The Grid, it flows out of The Grid, but once its on the Grid it doesn't care whether its coal, nuclear, cow flatulence, whatever -- there are no special ways to flavor an electrical charge. So what you're really doing is making a donation to the Cow Power farm to put a little juice back onto the grid... when they get paid already for doing that (you can, too: most states will let you bill the electric company if you use negative amounts, for example if you install a home solar system).
If you really have your knickers in a twist about global warming take the money you were going to spend on donations to Cow Power and use it on insulation. You'll reduce your heating/cooling costs and decrease your own personal energy consumption, which will have a bigger environmental impact (measured in units of "infintessimally small", of course) than just changing x% of your energy budget from fossil fuels to marginally cleaner methane.
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I have a commemorative "Vermont's Swinest" Ben and Jerry's T-shirt (complete with holstein styled pigs), they made them when they started a deal to supply a local pig farm (I believe near the Waterbury plant) with milk waste.
The milk waste would be fed to the pigs along with the ususal feed, I don't recall where the pig waste / methane was headed.
IIRC The first three pigs, by contract, were to be named "Ben", "Jerry" and "Ed" in honor of Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield and Ed Stanek - the Vermont EPA official who brokered the deal.
When I worked on the old NSF Student Originated Studies program, one of the 1980 projects out of Iowa was to use manure methane to fire a still, ferment leftover corn waste into alcohol, feed the leftovers from the fermentation back into the pig feed, and use the alcohol in the machinery. Decent efficiencies in the pilot, but a hard sell to the farmers, as they needed smaller farms to go in together to get the delta-t they needed for peak efficiency, and it smacked of big entities twisting little family farm arms. In fact despite the NSF badge, it was just a bunch of undergrads, but still no sale.
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While definetly greener than burning oil this still contributes as much to global warming? Right?
Wrong.
First, you're assuming that greenhouse gases are a significant contributer to global warming. This is not proved, beyond the obvious fact that without any greenhouse effect at all the average temperature of Earth would be around freezing. There is nothing to prove a causal relationship between elevated CO2 levels and warming. Indeed, it could be that warming (perhaps caused by increased solar output) has increased CO2 levels (warmer water holding less dissolved CO2, etc).
Second, even if greenhouse gases were causing global warming, you're assuming that the combustion products of methane (H2O and CO2) are significant greenhouse gases. In fact, methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 is. Water is actually a stronger greenhouse gas than either by about an order of magnitude, but burning methane (or fossil fuel, for that matter) doesn't significantly add to the atmosphere's H2O load because that's pretty much in equilibrium anyway, between 75% of Earth's surface being open water and the fact that it frequently precipitates out.
That said, reducing dependence on foreign oil is worth doing for other reasons, as is reducing dependence on any fossil fuel as an energy source (waste of a good chemical feedstock).
-- Alastair
Colorado requires the local utulity to sell wind and solar. They entered into agreements for all the power long ago. Now, the company is going to charge .1 more/watt than the oil does or the true costs of the energy, whichever is higher. But none of the extra will go to the alternative. IOW, they are not providing incentives to the generator.
Just like the monopoly for the net, we have issues with how we handle power distribution and generation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well in case you're not familar with the area, Vermont used to be something like 95% farmland in area that wasn't forested. We're losing that out to relatively large urban development and a huge influx of people to the Burlington area to hit our new array of large chain stores (WalMart, Home Depot, Circuit City, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc). Less than ten years ago, the only big store in the state was Costco, and that's about 20 miles north of everything else (which is a decent distance in VT, considering how freakin' small we are) and has been there for as long as I can remember. Prior to the development, there used to be nothing more than large open fields with a whole lot of nothing.
Long story short, you're actually exactly right - we don't want this becoming extremely popular in the area. The simple fact is that we don't have nearly as many cows as we did ten years ago, since it's all done in massive superfarms out west. We've had laws passed that keep the milk prices artifically high just so the few family-owned farms still in business don't go under - they're all operating on razor-thin margins as it is, and many are losing money but stay around out of love for what they do.
We actually have a fairly large percent of our population that ARE willing to pay more to be green. My neighbors coughed up for a hybrid not for the gas savings (my father did the math pre-Katrina - even at $3.50/gal, you need to drive about 250,000 miles before you break even after the premium over a standard model) but because it's green - they also paid what I'd imagine is a good bit more for an electric lawnmower instead of a gas-powered one. We've voted down at least half a dozen times a bypass that connects all of the largely-retail areas together, simply due to pollution. While we're largely divided on things like the same-sex civil unions, most of the people in my state put the environment before the economy.
So while the idea may sound like a load of shit to you, the fact is that there wouldn't be enough shit to go around. I hate to be cliche', but this is a perfect example of "if we all do a little, we can all do a lot". Yes, one person using an alternative energy source just makes that person feel good inside, but if we all do it, there's a significant impact. It's not our only alternative idea - we've also looked into using trees in a similar way to a potato-battery (which largely did nothing, one tree had less power than a potato) among several other out-there ideas.
If we've got a dozen different alternative energy methods out there, and each has just 2% of the population using them, we've gone and shifted a quarter of the country - 75 million people - away from oil. While vehicles do tend to need a standard, there's absolutely no reason for every house in the country to get their power from the same method. And already they aren't. But say that we can make all farms not only self-sufficient but even generate a bit of extra power. It may not do a lot out here where the farms are going the way of the Dodo, but out in the land of megafarms, it could actually make a significant impact. I actually know Jerry's (of Ben and Jerry's) wife and son personally (had class with him, in fact), and I can assure you that it would certainly be a B&J thing to do if they found yet another way to support the local community and do something good for the environment.
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Vermont is one of the poorer states in the nation, where a large percentage of the population has serious trouble during the winter heating their homes. But at the same time, Vermont has dairy farms every where you look, it's one of the dominant traits of the landscape. Might as well use what you've got!
Also, kudos to the people who thought to start this program in the summer, give it time to work out all the kinks. I've always admired Vermont for their forward-looking thinking, after all the yeller Howard Dean was their gov'na for long time (and despite his unfortaunte public persona, he's got great ideas too).
Here's an idea
Instead of growing food to feed the cows and having methane producing manure to contend with, we eat the food and not the cows !!
Meat production (especially from cows) is a crazily inefficient way to feed ourselves and at 50x the water consumption of potatoes.
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The manure isn't removed from the agricultural system. The stuff is piled -- mostly over the Winter because the cows spend most of their time in the fields when the weather isn't too awful. It is spread on the fields in Spring. The stored manure generates methane whether the methane is burned for electrical generation or not.
Nothing wrong with this idea, but if you ask me, what Vermont really needs to stabilize rates and reduce carbon emissions is two more nuclear power plants. The chances of 'environmentalists' embracing relatively non-polluting nuclear power appear to be close to zero. The panacea d'jour seems to be gargantuan windmills in someone else's backyard.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Actually, nuclear is a good match for vehicles.
If you read US Patent # 4,835,433, you'll see that a device about the size of a keg of beer will crank out about 7500 W for 29.1 years, if you put a small amount of Strontium-90 in it (one gram - about 2mm of 16 gauge wire worth of material). Since Strontium-90 is generally considered nuclear waste these days, it's very easy to "mine" it out of our current waste dumps. If you want something smaller, then something the size of a "D" battery will crank 75 W for the same amount of time.
Even if you don't want to carry it around with you (it emits only alpha and beta particles, not gamma, so it doesn't actually require heavy lead shielding), you can use the electricity generated to generate fuel for use in fuel cells, if you'd rather carry around something combustible with you, instead of a keg of beer with neck-bolts.
What really annoying about the whole nuclear fear in the U.S. is that it's really a very green source of energy. You get more radiation released into the atmosphere from a coal-fired plant, not to mention the sludge for your lungs to filter ut of the air. If the U.S. would follow the lead of France and Japan, and build breeder reactors, and did fuel cycling like Japan does, we could stop digging for more fuel (it'd be generated as a by product of the reactor running), and it'd never be in a form where it could be used to build a nuclear weapon.
-- Terry
Over here in good old-jock-land, we've been doing this for years. When we are not drinking whiskey we are building hydroelectric dams and wind power farms. Several of the electicity companies offer schemes where you pay a little more for your energy, but get a guarantee that it's coming from green sources.
It's not the feel-good factor or the money that's important. What matters is that you aren't pissing in your childrens swimming pool.
YEAH! Cos like, the domestic farm industry is litteraly rolling in money, right? In actual fact they need government subsidies and regulation to stay afloat. That's the simple matter of it.
And if the best you can do is "bad because someone receives money from it", then how the hell do you live your life? Do you mind your oil money going to even richer and textbook-"evil" Saudis?
The laws of thermodynamics aren't proved either. Evidence is examined, and tentative theories are formulated. Nothing is proved. Welcome to science.
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A small correction; Chernobyl happened because of very bad reactor design (the four reactors were RBMK reactors). It was inherently unstable. because it used water moderation, and as the water converted to steam, it had a runaway power increase (this is called a positive void coefficient), leading to the steam blowing the top off the building.
Reactors don't have to be built that way, and not all designs are intrinsically risky. For example, a Pebble bed reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor can't melt down, and is self-moderating due to neutron dopplering.
Even so, Japan, the only country which has ever had an atomic bomb dropped on it by a foreign power, has a lot more to fear from nuclear energy than the U.S., and they have 23 breeder reactors and 30 other reactors that commercially generate a little over 25% of Japans total electrical needs. Their current plans are to increase this by 30% by 2011 as part of their compliance with the Kyoto accords on CO2 emissions.
-- Terry
I can and do offset the carbon emissions from my small truck for $50/year, and get all of my energy from green sources (mostly wind and biomass) by paying an extra 1.6 cent/kwhr.
I am almost completely green for $120 a year. Why aren't you?
50% of people (and 99% percent of liberals) whine about the environment, and what the government should do to force everyone else (especially big business) to do something about it. 1% do something avoid hypocrisy and do something themselves.
Join the one percent...
Being from Vermont, I think you have a skewed view of dariy farmers (in VT). I don't know about where you're from but most of the dairy farms here are small family owned business that have been operating for generations, and out of all of the ones I know, NONE of them have mansions. They all have small family farms, work long hours for low income and constantly worry about being able to do it again next year. They do it because they've always done it, because they love it, and its a vermont way of life. They don't do it to get rich, they do it to keep Vermont's agriculture industry alive.
What I see is a local family owned farm which was suffering the same fate as most of the other farms in the state (1-2 bad years from being broke and out of business) finding a unique way to increase their income (and be sustainable, hey novel idea), provide "green-power" in the state where there is a huge demand for it, and be kind to the environement.
These people don't own mansions, these people work hard, bust their ass all day long, and continue a tradition dating back generations, while at the same time doing good for the state, and the environment.
Now, it may not be efficient, but it is a good use of what was being wasted before. What exactly is the problem you have w/ it again?
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
New Belgium brewing http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability.php not only uses wind turbines, but also harvests methane from their waste water used in brewing. Between the 2, they claim to be fully sustainable in energy, using zero fossil fuels.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I read an article about a family who installed enough solar energy panels to cover their yearly costs... or so they thought.
The math was simple, they added up their kwh and sized their system accordingly. Winters would be balanced by summers, etc. During the summer they'd build a credit with the power co. and during the winter they'd consume the credit. Their mistake was assuming that the power company would buy the power at the same price at which they sold it. The power company actually purchased at about 50% of the charge rate for the power. So, this family (after a good effort to live 'green') ended up with a power bill anyway.
This story is interesting because they're taking methane (which is 'free' as in 'sunk cost') processing it (probably with gov't subsidy) and charging the customer more for it.
I love the idea. It's efficient, and useful. However, I hate that the power co. is charging marginally more for the 'BS energy' (which is truly BS because the energy would be produced regardless of consumption).
I recently changed my plan here in Houston, Tx from Reliant Energy's standard plan to their 100% wind power. The difference in cost was negligable, maybe $5/month, and now my 2000-3000kw/h per month are totally green. They replace at least 100% of the energy I use with wind power. I figure this is about 2/3 of my total carbon footprint I have reduced in one swoop, and I have cast my vote for clean energy.