Responses to Answers for Dr. John Cooper

Selected responses to Dr. John Cooper - Candidate for US Congress - Texas Economic Development are inserted below with my comments under each.

Please remove me from your email list. I am a strong supporter of
Congressman Ralph Hall. No one can match his record. His district also
solidly supports him. Therefore, my suggestion is that if you truly want
to make a difference and be effective, get behind Congressman Hall’s campaign
for re-election. Thank you.

Is this for The Who's Next? Project? http://www.klif.com/Events/TheWhosNextProject/tabid/675/Default.aspx

It is apparent from the number of emails in support that Congressman Ralph Hall is well liked in his district; however, term limits are needed; and Ralph Hall has been in Congress continuously since 1980.

How about drilling off the coast of California and Florida. Louisiana
{and Texas} should not bear the burden while other states are
ignored. Oil spills are not that common. Certainly, I realize that
the beaches are not at all the same; however, there is oil down there and it
belongs to us without its having to be imported.

California and Florida would be more open to drilling if those states got all of the royalties from those operations which now goes to the Federal Government.

To me the most important issue is our dependence on foreign oil with the
related national security and economic threats that are a result of wealth
transfer to hostile nations. I do not feel that air pollution from automobiles
is a major crushing issue and automotive technology, efficiency and
emission control, have made dramatic strides. In order to reduce prices the
demand must fall. While conversion of a major portion of the transportation
segment to natural gas could have an impact, how practical is this, and at what
cost?

Various equivalent approaches should be made available for consumer choice then the market will make the decision on the best mix of approaches.

I think you are proposing the generation of energy as close as possible to the point of consumption, but I think that generating electricity at the point of consumption has several problems:

- Lack of efficiencies of scale. Loss of energy distributing the electricity is more than offset by the large scale production. I don't think this is true for wind and other small scale energy production points, but there are other reasons to have those types of production in spite of their inherent inefficiencies.

- Lack of controls. As much as none of us care for government, there is a
need when the consequences have effect on everyone.

- Reliability. Actually our electric grid is very reliable. 99% would mean 3 24 hour days per year without electricity. My experience at home, work, and church tell me that actual outages are probably about 10 minutes per year, which were probably all localized, so the actual reliability is quite high.

- Simplicity. Electricity is so easy to obtain and use that sometimes we
take it for granted like the air we breath. Just move into a house or apartment, call the electric company and poof, you are in business. Reverting back to inspections of generating equipment, testing, failover planning etc required to 'roll your own' would be a huge drain of people's time. People need to
work, shop, go to school, not twiddle around with home power plants.

I have also heard about efficiencies of larger scale. But it does not seem to be holding up in real life applications e.g. http://cleantechnica.com/2008/06/26/electricity-generation-efficiency-its-not-about-the-technology/.

In fact, there are inherent inefficiencies of larger scale. Please let me know if you have any corrections to the table below. I am open to changing what I believe to be true but need to see an analysis.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ---------------- Efficiency -----------------
. . . . . . . . Engine . . Generator . . Transmission . . Overall . . .
Plant . . . Turbine . . . . . . 33% . . . . . . . . 33% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11% . . .
Home . . Fuel Cell . . . . . 66% . . . . . . . 100% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66% . . .

The Soviet Union implemented a centralized approach for generating hot water believing that people should not worry with hot water heaters, centralized generation is more efficient, and giving people options is not appropriate. The legacy of that approach, which persists to this very day, is a chronic lack of hot water for most Russians. If possible, we are better off doing things for ourselves or at least making our own decisions about how things are provided at our homes unless there is an overriding community need like safety, health, or property rights infringement (e.g. noise, pollution, appearance).

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