Thursday, August 02, 2007

Energy Conservation Happy Hour- TODAY

"Energy Fans,

Where does electricity come from? If you live in Oak Ridge North, a small just north of Houston, it comes from chickens. For the last few months, biodiesel generators there have been producing up to five an hour of chicken-fired power for the city, and what they don't use to the rest of us.

Yes, biodiesel is more famously made from vegetable oils, but around here fats are far more plentiful. It takes about 2230 chickens to a megawatt-hour of electricity from the Oak Ridge North plant.
That's 2230 x 5MW x 24hrs = 267,600 chickens a day. Of course, biodiesel uses the chicken fat. The rest of the (now presumably very lean) is still used for food.

How much of this chicken energy do we use in Houston? That's hard to say. But one way to avoid doing so is to make smarter use of air during peak-usage hours, late on summer afternoons. Instead of rushing home after work each day to your own private of (possibly chicken fired) cool air, why not stop on your way spend some time with friends, where there's plenty of shared -- and therefore cheaper -- cool air to go around?

That's the idea behind our get-together this Thursday, August 2nd, at the Onion Creek Coffee House, 3106 White Oak -- just off Studemont, a block north of I-10. We'll be there from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., meeting and making friends, and discussing the energy demands of our own days in a safe, friendly, mostly poultry-free environment. Please join us. Do it for the chickens."

-Larry Albert

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