Once Upon a College

Monday, February 12, 2018

LD 1444 amendments

John Luft, our visitor Friday from Revision Energy, wanted you to see and have access to the current LD 1444 (net metering) amendments. These are up for a vote in the Maine legislature shortly.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8uPAggWv4r1JKDHMhVBQbvEfTSnAFLi/view?usp=sharing

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

NYT: Why a Big Utility Is Embracing Wind and Solar

This article follows an earlier report by Lazard:

"Xcel Energy is a utility company with millions of electric customers in the middle of the country, from Texas to Michigan. In booming Colorado, the company asked for proposals to construct big power plants using wind turbines and solar panels.

The bids have come in so low that the company will be able to build and operate the new plants for less money than it would have to pay just to keep running its old, coal-burning power plants."

Friday, February 2, 2018

Snow day late start at RSU 3

Dear Sustainable Energy students,

I'll be late today because of a snow day late start at RSU 3. I'll be there by 9.30am. Aimee will be there to open up and give access to materials, but will have to leave before 8.50am to teach her own class.

Please find your small solar modules and follow the following procedures:

1. Make sure the epoxy is set
2. Gently pry the module from the mold
3. Test the output (V) at the window. Make sure to use one of the working VOMs
4. Test for continuity (ohms) in the shade
5. Study this URL list of circuit diagram symbols (list is linked from my blog), where this assignment is repeated in more detail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_symbol

Sorry for any inconvenience

Mick

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Regional economic multipliers, for Env. Econ

We'll use this case study for tomorrow's class:

http://mainepublic.org/post/committee-hears-testimony-whether-continue-state-funding-downeast-correctional-facility

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Shock wind moratorium from Gov. LePage

https://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/24/news/state/lepage-blocks-new-maine-wind-energy-permits/

Modern brigandism -- for Env. Econ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172vr0rw86m233

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Trump solar tax

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/business/trump-tariffs-washing-machines-solar-panels.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

And another view from Vaughan Woodruff of Insource Renewables

http://www.insourcerenewables.com/solar-protectionism-gone-awry-impact-maine/

What this is about

A long time ago, in an educational universe far away and almost certain never to return, the professors of a certain small college experimented with experiential learning and taught their students not just to "read, write, think, and figure", but also to do practical things with that learning. Educational theory and research results from Kurt Hahn to modern scholars suggests strongly that experiential learning works better, particularly for active young people. It also matters greatly that young people have the physical and mental confidence to do something positive with their learning, particularly to make social and environmental change, in other words, to lead. This kind of confidence comes with physical challenge and being made to defend your ideas out loud, among other things. The small college was built around these ideas, deliberately, by a group of determined and innovative educators. With this success, along came the inevitable bean-counters who believed such a valuable education was way too expensive for those students. Wanting to keep more of the students' money (to pay their six figure salaries, of course), they cut the programs the first chance they got and went all-online where the teaching help is way cheaper and less demanding of budgets for tools and materials. I happen to think it was well worth the investment for any student who really engaged with the opportunity, but... bean counters gonna count beans. So the college is, for all useful purposes, gone, or at least changed beyond all recognition and not any good at teaching anyone anything practical at all. But the memories remain. And, despite the best efforts of the new administrators to erase them, so does quite a bit of open-source computer data to remind us of those memories, in the form of this and several other blogs and video pages online. In the case of this blog, the blog data were mine, not the college's, all along, even though they tried many times to get their cold dead bean-counter hands on them. So fuck 'em. Oh, and yes, this particular professor cusses more now that I don't have to worry about pointy-headed supervisors. Fuck them too. Enjoy. And remember, llegitimi non carborundum. If you're one of our former students and looking for stories you wrote or photographs or records of projects you worked on, just use the keyword search function or the chronological record to find your projects. They're all still here. Drop me a line using the comments section. I'd love to hear from you.