Recommended Reading, August 18, 2024

Robert Cox

Aug 19, 2024 — 6 min read

American Aaron Vale came in 3rd in the Rolex Grand Prix yesterday at the Royal Dublin Horse Show.

DUBLIN, IRELAND (August 18, 2024) — Loli and I are back in Dublin after trips to Scotland, England and Wales. Between a lot of driving and hiking we came back exhausted and I took a little break from writing (but not researching) stories after completing my two 4-part series (How Noam Bramson Was Hired as Sustainable Westchester Executive Director and The Mystery of the Authorship of the Anonymous Letter of New Rochelle.

I did manage to squeeze in an afternoon at the Royal Dublin Horse Show at the RDS Dublin.

Sustainable Westchester Q&A at New Rochelle Public Library Tuesday August 27

Next Tuesday the fraudsters from Sustainable Westchester will be at the New Rochelle Public Library for a Westchester Power information session (more like DISinformation session). I will have an article on this before the end of the week to raise some questions that should be asked.

If I was in New Rochelle I would go myself but I hope a few readers might go and ask questions. If you are not willing to ask questions then at least document others who do by taking out your phone and recording video — then send me your video clips.

My advice to readers is not to ask about prices or opt-in v opt-out because they have an elaborate song-and-dance about that. They are prepared for those questions and will skirt around them.

Instead, asked pointed questions like these:

Q. When he was Mayor of New Rochelle, your Executive Director Noam Bramson told residents “Westchester Power has been an extraordinary success, enabling communities across our region to deliver clean energy to residents and businesses…” What is the fuel mix of the electricity supplied to Westchester Power customers in New Rochelle? How does that differ from the fuel mix of the electricity supplied to Con Edison customers in New Rochelle?

Truth: Everyone in New Rochelle gets the same electricity, from the same source (Con Edison), with the same fuel mix (about 68% natural gas, about 15% nuclear, 11% hydro with the rest a mix of wind, solar, oil and coal). Westchester Power does not deliver “clean energy”, they purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) as offsets to the kilowatts used by their customers getting the same electricity as everyone else which mostly explains their higher costs — it is basically a tax used to subsidize operators of upstate hydro-electric facilities.

Westchester Power loves to claim they are adding more renewable energy to the grid but have never once provided a single example of a new hydro-electric facility (or even the expansion of an existing facility) resulting from their purchase of RECs. Ask them for the name of an operator that built a new facility or expanded an existing facility and the name and location of that facility so that more renewable energy was added to the grid.

TRUTH: Most existing hydro-electricity facilities in New York were built 75-100 years ago, many during the 1930s when the government was able to get away with it during the Great Depression. Imagine how a proposal to dam up a river in New York would be greeted today? Whole towns and cities would need to be relocated, school closed, businesses shut, environmentalists would go batshit crazy, and the costs would be astronomical.

“they're flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn state.”

You have repeatedly claimed for years that ratepayers who sign up for Community Solar will save 10% of their entire electric bill. Is that true? Please explain the math in detail.

TRUTH: It is not 10% but about 1% so they are lying, overstating the savings by 1,000%.

I linked 3 stories about how dreams of renewable energy solutions are turning into nightmares: Germany has wasted billions of Euros shoving heat pumps down the throats of consumers who do not want them (because they only work when it is not cold!), Gov. Hochul is looking at adding nuclear power plants as she realizes New York State cannot be powered by renewable energy alone, and a new study by the state’s grid operators shows state models have likely been too optimistic about how much electricity the state’s existing and planned wind and solar projects would generate.

When I moved to Ireland, the argument about Sustainable Westchester was over prices per kilowatt at 8-12 cents. In my first month here, the cost per kilowatt was 52 cents — 400 to 600 percent higher than New York. That was the highest cost per kilowatt on Earth. The push here has been for wind (which makes sense) and solar (it rains here a lot) and all things electrical but speaking from experience, not only is electricity outrageously expensive (I received a €1,200 monthly bill last winter for my 2 BR apartment) but heat pumps do not heat, washing machines take hours to wash a small load, dryers take hours to dry a few pairs of socks (everyone here has drying racks to dry clothes as the dryers do not work) and running these appliances during the day is massively expensive because peak electricity costs are much higher.

Because dryers do not work and everyone must dry their laundry indoors (because it rains a lot!) you have products like this.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan learned about Irish dryers on a trip to Donegal but missed the point. I doubt his hosts prefer drying their clothes on a drying rack (called a clothes horse here) but must do so as the dryers do not dry (the outdoors bit is funnier but I am confident the Irish know about the rain even in Donegal).

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