Anybody else starting to think that maybe economically illiterate leftwing politicians steeped in Marxism may not be the best choice for designing a command-and-control economy? — and that maybe would should let a free market dictate where our “investment” money goes? Reuters:
Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program.
The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra — a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee — also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create “green energy” jobs.
Beacon Power drew down $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan to fund a portion of a $69 million, 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.
There are several key differences between the two loans, an Energy Department spokesman said on Sunday, noting the Beacon plant continues to operate, unlike Solyndra, which shut down shortly before filing for bankruptcy.
The Energy Department also had agreed to restructure Solyndra’s debt in a last-ditch effort to keep the company alive, a deal which put taxpayers behind $75 million in private investment. But for the Beacon project, the government loan is the first debt the company must pay, the spokesman said.
But the new bankruptcy will stoke criticism from Republicans in the House of Representatives who are investigating whether Obama campaign donors who were investors in Solyndra played a role in decisions on the loan — allegations denied by the White House and Department of Energy (DOE).
“This latest failure is a sharp reminder that DOE has fallen well short of delivering the stimulus jobs that were promised, and now taxpayers find themselves millions of more dollars in the hole,” said Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican who is leading the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s probe.
Actually, this latest failure raises the question, why is the DOE pretending it’s a venture capital firm — and what right does it have to make unilateral decisions about how to spend our tax money?
Go on. I’ll wait.
(h/t VerumSerum)
Right? Well science, of course!
Oh, this ain’t Marxism: this is the Chicago Way, pure and simple.
So, as October winds to a close, what did we learn?
If you were paying attention, you learned that people who run up $130,000 in debt getting a basketweaving degree misunderstand pretty much everything about life in America. You learned that the privileged 1%ers at OWS refuse to cook for those less fortunate than themselves, because the 99% doesn’t include those people. You learn that letting innumerate bureaucrats hand out money to their friends is not a good way to stimulate an economy. You learn that third-rate “journalists” will print any thinly-sourced accusation they can find against a Republican frontrunner, and that the other second-rate “journalists” will jump at the chance to run with it. You learn that Obama’s friends can literally get away with murder and not get called to account, simply because they’ve installed themselves at the top of the law enforcement heap.
If you’ve been watching CNN and reading NYT, you learned that OWS is a huge movement across America that demands Good Things, and wants Bad People to Pay. You learned that an extremist Tea Party-controlled Congress refuses to let Obama fix everything. You learned that Cain is a sexual predator. And you learned nothing at all about the rivers of blood on Eric Holder’s hands.
Remember: your vote carries the same weight as theirs. Less, really, given that you generally vote just one time in a given election. Slacker!
20 megawatts stored in a flywheel?
Pardon me if I stand back a ways – like the other side of the state…
The DOE isn’t pretending to be a venture capital firm. A VC firm would make sure it got paid first.
As a resident of Opposite World, when I hear Frotus ask, “I mean, pretty soon you have enough money, right?”, to me it means, “I’m going to tell everyone I’m trying to get money from the rich and give it to the poor, but that’s just going to be cover for me to launder money to companies that will soon be bankrupt and forgotten, and then I’ll have the most money int he world after I’ve also pocketed hundreds of billions from the unused stimulus.”
Well, that’s what I hear anyway.
Some green-tech writers are claiming the collapse of green-tech funding is caused by Big Dirty Fossil Fuel playing unfair by being more innovative than the green-tech start-ups.
#OccupyEeeeevilInnovation
What else have we learned? Elections matter-if the last House elections had gone the other way, how much investigating and probing would be going on in the Energy and Commerce?Committee? Probe-I like that, I hope they probe the administration good and hard…
I hear you. I wonder what sort of damage it could do if it came apart.
I guess you put it in a hole in the ground. A deep one, very far away from people.
Like Solyndra, I would bet cronyism is at the heart of this failed loan. This cronyism is systemic throughout both partes.
Consider also what just happened in a federal court in Texas as explained at http://LawInjustice.com. A Dallas business owner was involved in a civil dispute and paid millions of dollars to lawyers, and when he objected to additional fees after settling the case, they had a “friendly” judge seize all of his possessions, without any notice or hearing, and essentially ordered him under “house arrest” as an involuntary servant to the lawyers. The business owner has been under this “servant” order for 10 months and is prohibited from owning any possessions, prohibited from working, etc..
…and some quotes from the judge:
THE COURT: “I’m telling you don’t scr-w with me. You are a fool, a fool, a fool, a fool to scr-w with a federal judge, and if you don’t understand that, I can make you understand it. I have the force of the Navy, Army, Marines and Navy behind me.”
THE COURT: “You realize that order is an order of the Court. So any failure to comply with that order is contempt, punishable by lots of dollars, punishable by possible jail, death”
Government gets involved in the design of an energy storing flywheel:
Someone who should have known better says, jokingly: “Hey, how about we build a 10′ flywheel that rotates at 20,000 rpm? It would store a lot of energy and once spun up to speed, it would take a long time before it stopped.”
Government guy: “Is larger better?”
Guy who should have known better (and is now thinking “Uh oh”) “Uh yeah, I suppose, theoretically.”
Government guy: “Make it a 20′ flywheel, then.”
As a complete neophyte when it comes to things electrical, I must ask: what exactly does it mean to store 20 megawatts in a flywheel?
Based on my (admittedly out-of-practice and rough) calculations, 20MW released very quickly is “only” the energy of a pound or so of TNT.
(1 W == 1 J/s, 1 kg TNT ~= 4.2 million J, 1 lb == 2.2 kg )
Not something I’d want to be around, but not nuclear.
dicentra, more than likely the plan is to use excess power during off peak hours to spin a flywheel up to a certain rotational speed. Then, during peak demand, draw down the energy stored in the flywheel by turning the energy back into electricity.
Basically, di, you convert the electrical energy to rotational energy. The idea is you would use some kind of electric engine to spin up the flywheel. The faster the flywheel spins (and the heavier it is), the more energy stored in the flywheel that can be extracted later, say by running a generator. Since the energy can be extracted as electricity, one could say that you are storing a certain amount of electrical energy in the rotating mass of the flywheel.
Losses abound, of course. One might want the flywheel in a vacuum to avoid windage losses, for instance. The bearings supporting the flywheel have losses, though superconducting magnets might be used to create “air bearings.”
Still, the losses when converting electrical to mechanical energy, and back, are pretty high.
You were off by an order of magnitude, I think. I got 10 lbs of TNT.
However, I’m surprised it’s that small a number. In that case, one could probably build an adequate containment vessel using concrete.
I learned something today. For a change.
Okay, just so you know, I’m new at figuring this out.
Anyway, I came up with roughly 628 lbs of TNT.
Figuring the flywheel plant is measured in megawatt hours, rather than seconds.
60 x 20,000,000/1,909,090
(a kg of TNT weighs 2.2 lbs which works out to 1,909,090 J/s)
(a kg of TNT weighs 2.2 lbs which works out to 1,909,090 J/s)
*(a kg of TNT weighs 2.2 lbs which works out to 1,909,090 J/s for lb of TNT)
Crap.
Try 60 x 60 x 20,000,000/1,909,090
I’m now up to 37,714 lbs of TNT.
(I’m open for mockery. Of course, the PW commentariat generally doesn’t need an invitation)
We also learned that intentions are most important and results are distractions.
Good point. MWh would be more what utilities work with.
Okay, you guys have gotten much closer. I didn’t seem right that it would be just 10 lbs of TNT. I think Blake’s last is likely close to the truth.
As always, one must be careful with the units, lest the wings fall off the airplane.
And it’s way cool when they don’t!