Land of Enchantment Guest Blog: A Spirit of Brash Optimism

We're pleased to have a guest blog by Land of Enchantment, a frequent diarist at Daily Kos who lives in Northern New Mexico.

Back in the 90s, Governor Gary Johnson (R-legalize marijuana) vetoed a legislative proclamation to make "Red or green?" (referring to chili peppers) the New Mexico state question. He often said "I wasn't elected to get along with the legislature," and it sometimes seemed he was trying to exercise more vetoes than bizarro then-Arizona Gov. Evan Meacham. Johnson was replaced in office, in due time, by Bill Richardson, and the State Question is now officially in place. And this week, in Taos, the answer to that State question was definitely "Green!"

This week, a dedication celebration was held at the University of New Mexico, Taos. In a few weeks, the largest solar array in the state will come online at the campus. There's good news and there's bad news in that: New Mexico with its low cloud cover and southerly latitude is ideal for solar electricity - especially at high altitude, where insolation is more intense than at sea level.

The 500kW array is planned to fill all the electrical needs of the college, without storage batteries. It will feed excess juice into the grid, and draw from the grid at night or on overcast days in an arrangement called "net metering." The project is the first of several to be installed under the aegis of the local Rural Electric Coop.

The bad news is that this is the largest solar array in the state, at less than 4 acres total size. There is a larger one underway, 100 acres/15 megawats, over the front range on the high plains at Cimmarron, so this one won't be the biggest one for long. And that's good - we are way behind if 4 acres is the best the state's got!

The mood of the day was definitely festive, complete with a hot air balloon. I've never been in one before, but went up to get an aerial view of the array, still under construction.

It was a day of celebration, it really was. There was food, and information booths. Nowadays, the premium they charge for using "renewable energy" at the Kit Carson Electric Co-op has dropped down to 40 cents per 100kwh. I don't use a whole lot of electricity, so it should add less than $3 to my monthly bill. I decided to go for it. They gave me an "Energy Independence Day" t-shirt as a signing bonus. I was also astonished and delighted at the headgear for the day's festivities:

It was raining all through June, so the sunny weather was a celebration in and of itself. But it was also the hottest day of the year so far (still below 90) at 7000' altitude. So "passive solar" energy principles were clearly at play in the crowd - who clustered under the trees. This is what zoologists call "behavioral thermoregulation."

As is always the way at such things, there was a parade of speakers. And, it being New Mexico, we had a blessing from the cacique (above), head spiritual man for the Taos Pueblo, charged with keeping track of where the sun and the moon are setting, amongst other ancient and secret things of the tribe. I've seen him around a lot over the years, but never in such fine beaded moccasins before. So I had to take a footwear picture! He got one of those t-shirts too - it's the bright yellow thing in his hand.

Senator Bingaman

Even Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM, Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee) showed up. In addition to listening to him speechify, I got a moment to talk with him ahead of time. The man makes stuff happen, but he's so well mastered the art of not rocking the boat, it's not easy to even remember what's said when you talk to him. I asked him if he'd support the House ACES Bill as-is, and he said it would be changed. I asked him what in it he liked or that needed change, and he said they had over 1400 pages and he didn't know all that was there. The lady ahead of me said she wanted to see Los Alamos weapons lab remissioned to a green energy "Manhattan Project," so I echoed that sentiment. And got the name of an Energy Committee staffer to contact about the bill (Jonathan Black.) I'm sure he said the solar array was a good thing in his speech. That Taos is "showing the way." Beyond that? Not much! Which is to say, not much period. But I assume he helped the funding go through to the co-op to make this happen.

Congressman Ben Ray Luján was there, too. He spoke as well, and as he often does, encouraged citizen activism. "When you got pushback, you pushed back!" His father (above left, with state Rep. Bobby Gonzales on the right) is the Speaker of the House of the state legislature. They got t-shirts, too. After the experience with Dubya, there was a lot of skepticism about Ben Ray, Jr. running for Congress. But so far, people are happy with him. He's under 40, and can keep the seat as long as he likes since it's a very safe Dem district. He's already showing great coalition-building skills, and the nation could do worse than have this dynamic, strong progressive end up in the House leadership. Which just shows that being the progeny of a prominent pol doesn't automatically disqualify you for office. So far, so good with NM-03's freshman.

We have a strong local organization for single-payer here, and two of the top volunteers for the Obama campaign last fall were busy collecting petition signatures, with about 1800 presented to Bingaman at the event. Ben Ray, formerly head of the Public Regulatory Commission which regulates insurance companies, is already a co-sponsor for single payer, and needs no convincing. Rumors abound that the Senate may be moving towards the public option. Taos is behind that, no question!

Anyway we were celebrating the solar energy installation, so here's a little more on the tech side of it. The array is set up to tracking the sun throughout the day, and adjust incline by season, too, to maximize the power collected. Each row's collectors are wired in series, and then the separate rows feed in in parallel, allowing single rows to be taken offline for service while the rest keep working. They feed into this panel:

These inverters convert it to standard AC, over 400 volts which is stepped down in an associated transformer.

This panel has the "smart" part of the array, that directs the rest of it, on top. On the bottom is the AC output from the inverters, feeding into the transformer.

The Dean of Instruction from UNM Taos had a little powwow with the had of the Regional Development Association out of Santa Fe, who wanted to make sure UNM Taos had a funding proposal in for stimulus funds. There's a nice mix of Youth Corps, vocational training at the college, the electric co-op, and a few other entities forming up. Looks like it's working into something like the best of the New Deal days with the CCC and so on.

Town Meeting with Rep. Luján

Congressman Luján, along with the dedication and some private meetings, held a Town Meeting on Energy in the evening. It was billed as that, but he only took two questions on Energy, giving the rest of the time over to health care. Show of hands showed that most of the people who were happy with their health coverage were on Medicare - public option!

I hate the lighting in the rooms where political meetings are usually held, because it sucks for photographs. And so the quality of this picture isn't great. Ben Ray did what I've seen him do at a lot of public meetings - "Can you hear me OK without the microphone? Good!!" The only reason he had this one in hand was for the crew that was videotaping the event. And he was reading a bit of text from a bill on green jobs from his blackberry. Which is delightfully modern.

A lot of people who weren't pleased with Ben Ray, and didn't support him in the primaries, are definitely coming around. He's a good match for our very progressive town and county.

The second question he took on energy was mine. It was a softball, but something I wanted to hear about: "Please share your vision about how to remission the national (weapons) labs at Los Alamos and Sandia for development of new energy technologies." The guy who was picking the questions knew the boss wanted to talk about this.

He got specific about something called NERP's - National Environmental Research Parks. LANL to be one of those. It will be a welcome transition to move the lab away from killing towards protecting life instead. To get those labs off weapons, we've got to get them onto other tasks. And why not have a "Manhattan Project" for energy at the home of the original Manhattan Project? The idea has tons of local support.

The Congressman is also active in initiatives for tribal and "Hispanic-serving" institutions, UNM-Taos being one of the latter. The Rocky Mountain Youth Corps was out in force at the Town Meeting, and will be involved in a variety of green jobs projects. When my house was built, they had a radon project going on, and installed my mitigation system as part of training for that crew. The guy who designed my passive solar house is now involved with the green energy and building curriculum at the college, too. (Did I mention that it's a small town here?)

Luján also heads the Green Jobs Task Force on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He's paying attention to, and doing what an energetic freshman legislator can, to move forward on a variety of initiatives dear to progressives. He came to Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas last year, and in his one-on-one time with me, asked about this year's event. I told him I was scheduled to be on a panel, but if he could make it, I'd gladly give up my slot for him. Schedule depending, he might just do it. He came away from Austin last summer very jazzed, not having realized what the Netroots was about previously. So we shall see on that. With luck, we'll see him in Pittsburgh.

Congressman Luján, in both speeches he gave on Wednesday, emphasized the importance of bottom-up activism. His message, always, is "Help us get these things done." I'm lucky to have a House member who's such a good match for my own views. Please, Ben Ray, take care of yourself: exercise regularly and eat well. I'd like to see you stick around for a good long time, finding your way to House leadership in time.

Back to that solar array that was the catalyzing reason for all the day's events: I can't call it more than a step in the right direction. So much damage over the past decades to be undone. So, perhaps "brash optimism" is too strong a phrase. But we are seeing steps in the right direction. And, as the old saying goes, that's how every long journey begins.

This is a guest blog by Land of Enchantment. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the page.