Fool Rooster

No, not another chicken post. But just a note that I headed on down to Take a Chance Tuesdays at The Ark with some friends this evening for a free show by Joshua Davis. Now I actually knew this show would be good because I've seen Josh play before and his band Steppin' In It but seriously people how can you pass up a free show? Come on down to a fabulous venue to support fabulous (often regional) talent. I'll expect to see more of you on down there for the next Take a Chance Tuesday concert (they're typically the 4th tuesday of the month) on February 26th: Chris Bathgate who is also quite good.

So it was a very excellent set - whatever you want to call Josh, roots/americana/blues/folk - definitely excellent and he surrounds himself with the best. Quite fun to have some of the other Earthwork Music label folks - Seth Bernard and Laura Bates - get up there for a few tunes and of course Madcat stepped up to blow his harmonica a bit as well. Josh's two year old danced it up in the aisle a bit too with some nice western looking boots on. All and all, great fun. Eric sitting next to me even won one of the raffle prizes at the end.

Afterward, I went ahead and signed up for GreenCurrents from DTE, one of the sponsors for Take a Chance Tuesdays this year. Heck they were throwing in Josh's CD Fool Rooster and the most basic entry level GreenCurrents option amounts to an extra $2.50 a month so why not. Been meaning to sign up anyway. If I could just editorialize for a second though... [editorial] one thing that bothered me was the DTE guy was saying how renewable costs more, which I'm sure is the official DTE meme they try to propagate. But I'm sorry folks it's just not that cut and dry. I'm here to tell you I saw a presentation by Larry Flowers of NREL a few months ago and newly constructed wind farms are beating newly constructed coal plants, and well ahead of some other newly constructed types of plants. So I think it is a bit disingenuous for DTE to lay it out there like that. Sure they're just trying to keep it "simple" but here is my suggested meme: "Power generated from newly constructed wind farms costs a bit more than power we continue to generate from existing plants using coal and nuclear, since a lot of the costs of that infrastructure has already been spread out and since we tend to not factor in (or externalize) certain costs of those operations. In terms of all new construction, wind is an excellent option and can even be cheaper. Factor in subsidies and the true costs of those things we are externalizing (acid rain, longterm storage of waste, etc.) and we have a winner. An investment in GreenCurrents at the least shows DTE the "market" of people starting to think about these things, and hopefully at the most is an investment of future power generation for future generations." See, DTE that's not so hard, and you don't really come off sounded like a dinosaur to boot. Anyway, I just would like to see diversification of the DTE portfolio happening a little quicker that's all. Please do more than pushing this GreenCurrents. Get out ahead on the issue. Don't wait for government to give you a portfolio mandate. The state of Michigan has ton of wind generation potential - as part of their national plan for the year 2030, one of NREL's most popular scenarios actually has us as the third highest wind generation state. You read that correctly, third. Thats partly because our proximity to transmission infrastructure and markets. Sure they model other scenarios too but we are definitely in the top tier in those as well. Anyway we are close to last among all states right now. We have the potential but a long way to go. [/editorial]