We moved to Hyde Street on Sept. 7, 2001, from California. During the last two decades of our stay in California, we suffered through five power blackouts. One of those was natural, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1987. The rest were caused by various state and local officials telling Pacific Gas & Electric that it could not build power plants. In 1999, Ron Gonzalez, Mayor of San Jose, stopped PG&E from building in Santa Clara County outside of San Jose. Two years later, Intel moved its wafer fab facilities to New Mexico or Arizona, saying that it was doing so because a reliable source of steady power was essential to its business.
So, when we met Fred Smith, we decided to build our house using a solar collector installed by SunFire Research as our electrical system. Smith completed building the solar collector prior to Sept. 7, 2001, and so it is not true to say that the solar collector was a "modification" or "change" to the household electrical system. At the same time, I built a small concrete block shed to house the inverters for the system as well as a Detroit Allison diesel generator as a back-up. Prior to building the shed, since it was a building capable of being entered by humans, I went down to the county offices and inquired about a building permit. They told me that since it was small, 10 feet by 11 feet, I wouldn't need a permit. That was my first contact with the building permit people. They seemed very reasonable.
By 2003, we decided to replace the back-up diesel generator with a cleaner method of charging the batteries, a wind turbine. The turbine is not part of the household electrical system. Its only function is to charge the batteries which were part of the original electrical system of the house and installed under the original building permit.
Since Carson Valley is not a heavy wind area, the wind generator does not run 24/7 as alleged by the county development office. It does not even run most of the time. However, when the days are cloudy, very often then, the wind is blowing which is exactly the time when the solar is not producing power.
Our electrical system was originally designed with the solar collector as its source, not Sierra Pacific. Sierra Pacific was added at the last moment because Fred Smith informed me of a law which Ronald Reagan had signed which allowed us to send electrical power into the grid. In fact, Sierra Pacific is required by law to originate a certain percentage of its power from solar and wind. If we had not built our system, Sierra Pacific would have had to spend money to build similar resources. We have saved the Douglas County consumers money.
Since Douglas County has moved to shut us down, we have received help from unexpected sources. Personnel from the Nevada Attorney General's office, the State Public Utilities Commission and the State Energy Department have all provided useful information, because, in their words, this is a test case. Douglas County is contravening the policy of the State of Nevada, which is to encourage wind and solar generation. The sound readings taken by the county employee are totally bogus. The state of Nevada knows that small wind turbines are not noisy and the clerks in the "community development office" are contravening the policy of the state of Nevada.
Incidentally, we actually feed electricity into the Sierra Pacific system. We add to the supply of electricity available to people on the grid. If the community development people have their way, that source of additional power will be eliminated .
Nevada revised statute 278.0208 was passed to put a stop to the backward thinking of people who carry on jihad against alternate forms of energy.
n David Schumann is a Gardnerville resident.
