HOLIDAY HEAT “Fireplaces in Houston are kind of like spleens or tonsils; probably used to be necessary, but really just for decoration now, until they flare up and cause a problem, or allow racoons, birds and rats unfettered access to your living room. Along with all the other picturesque images of family life I gleaned from Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney, I always envisioned my home with a fireplace. The only trouble is, Drew makes so much of his own heat that he can barely stand to be near himself without sweating. I’m always moments from losing a limb to frostbite, so it’s difficult for us to agree on a mutually comfortable temperature. But, as you can tell, the fireplace is lit in this photo, so we must be learning to compromise. Indeed. All I have to do to make Drew thrilled to sit in front of a lit fire in December is turn on the fan. And the air conditioner.” [A Peine for Your Thoughts]
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Utilities
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND UTILITIES Don’t want a hurricane knocking down your power lines again? Move out to a brand new neighborhood! “CenterPoint Energy, the power distribution company for much of the Houston area, has installed 12 times as many miles of underground residential lines as overhead lines in the past two years: 924 miles versus 77. ‘In the marketplace for new homes it’s assumed you’ll have underground lines,’ said Doug Konopka, president of DHK Development. Going back, however, and burying existing lines in older areas, or even the higher-voltage lines that feed new developments with underground lines, is significantly more expensive. Where an above-ground line might cost about $20 per foot, below-ground service can exceed $400 per foot, said Terry Finley, vice president of distribution engineering and services for CenterPoint.” [Houston Chronicle]
From the company’s website: a current (as of this morning) map of Centerpoint Energy power outages resulting from Hurricane Ike.
It sure looks a lot like Houston.
- Outage and Restoration Updates [Centerpoint Energy]
Photo of W. Alabama near Dunlavy: Swamplot Inbox
AND JUST IMAGINE HOW WELL THEY’D DO IF THERE WERE JOBS OR SHOPPING NEARBY! Discovery at Spring Trails, Land Tejas’s gated and solar-panel-badged community north of Spring, is selling well, says Lisa Gray: “. . . only a few weeks after Discovery put itself on the market, and without even a finished house that would-be buyers can tour, most of the lots ready for building have been optioned, and the developer is scrambling to make more available fast. In fact, Discovery is off to the fastest start of any development in the company’s 11-year history, and Land Tejas expects demand to pick up even more this fall. Already, propelled mostly by Google searches, 200 to 300 people a week are touring the neighborhood’s ‘Discovery Center.'” [Houston Chronicle]
Since February, about half the residents of Oak Ridge North, a small city just across I-45 from the Woodlands, have been getting their electricity from chicken fat. The nation’s first entirely biodiesel-generated electrical plant, run by Biofuels Power Corp., supplies power to the community. The fuel comes from a sister company, Safe Renewables, which runs a plant two miles away that can create biodiesel from vegetable oils too. But chicken fat is apparently plentiful around here, so Oak Ridge north gets powered by schmaltz.
The power facility has the capacity to produce approximately 5 MW of electricity using three used diesel Caterpillar generators that act as a single source of power. At full load, they use 72 gallons of biodiesel per MW hour. An interesting feature is that waste heat from the generators is used to keep the fuel tank warm and prevent . . . the biodiesel from gelling. The company is experimenting with various additives to decrease emissions and increase efficiency. “We hope to get down to 60 gallons per megawatt hour,†Crimmins says.
When’s poultry power coming to the rest of Houston? Well, there’s that pesky nitrogen-oxide-that-becomes-ozone emissions problem. We hope they’ll be able to keep that French fry smell out of the AC, too.
- Electricity by the Gallons [Biodiesel Magazine, reprinted by Safe Renewables]
- VIDEO: City is getting electricity from chicken fat [Houston Political Blog]
- Oak Ridge North goes green with biofuel [The Villager]
- Chicken fat fires energy plant [Austin American-Statesman]
Photo: xgray‘s childhood home in Oak Ridge North
