watching NBC Nightly News yesterday the 11-17-2008 broadcast and there was a segment on clean energy and the hurdles it had as far as becoming a mainstream source of power... problem is there is plenty of power, be it wind turbines in North Dakota or solare in the Mohave, all places with an abundance of land to use, but no infrastructure and no way to get the power to where it needs to be. now they also mentioned building a national grid using super efficient power transmision lines which would reduce line losses to less than 1%. cost would be $60 billion and provide the ability to transport power over much greater distances. now this figure is quite a bit cheaper than other things i have seen on the subject...most run around 90 to 110 Billion... but at 60 billion, that is a 2 month oil bill... a grid like this would reduce the need for coal fired plants, reduce carbon emissions by 19 million tons a year and make a plug vehicle network all that much more inviting. with cheap available power, places like the Northeast where power is expensive and most people use heating oil to heat their homes, they could convert to electricity further reducing the oil thirst... this national power grid would also elminate the ocean of localized regulations and owners that control the power grid now. there is now over 500 different companies now that control the grid we use today. also eliminated would be power outages. a lot of up to this grid...what is the down side??? cant be money... we got plenty of that to throw around lately... at least this money will benefit us...not so sure about the bailouts
Easements for structures. Red tape and the powers that be. Not in my back yard. I would think you could run it along side interstates as much as possible or county roads with wide easements. Bury it where you have to. (if possible) Hell, 60 bil is nothing after this last fiasco. And it's an investment, not a rescue or bailout. Jobs!
thats right. money spent that will benefit us... also give some of them autoworkers something to do. have a cousin who works parts distribution for Ford, already been told that they will have a total of 5 weeks off during holidays, will get a total of 48 hours paid, 16 each for Thanksgiving, X-mas and New Years. that is in contrast to getting 10-12 days off and getting paid for every week day (they used to get two days for Thanksgiving, and anywhere from 8 to 10 days off starting around Dec 24th. all of it paid) also probably looking at a lot of 32 hour work weeks... not bad considering how many are getting laid off, but kinda sucks since it looks like 32 years of seniority isnt pulling much weight anymore
