Sunday, March 30, 2008

Kunde on NG capacity on South Main

During last week's Council meeting, there was some discussion about the availability of natural gas (NG) on South Main Street (particularly in relation to the pool and CHS). The discussion touched on a two year old study that was conducted by Pan American Power to consider NG-powered microturbines. Working very close to this study was town resident, Bill Kunde. Here is his comment from another thread:

The comment about the gas supply is incorrect. When Pan American Power did their study and proposal two years ago they worked with Yankee Gas in particular about the gas supply issue. At that time they proposed to install microturbines for the high school and one for the pool. According to Yankee Gas the gas supply and pressure was more than sufficient. The problem came in when the plan to install fuel cells at the pool and high school was brought forward. With the 5 or 6 fuel cells there was not enough gas supply or pressure. Please do not get the two proposals mixed up and the facts need to be corrected. If you don't you will make another incorrect decision.

Tim White
Town Council, Energy Commission liaison

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There has been a lot of talk about saving the town government money on energy, but little thought or discussion on how the residents can save money.

We have seen the price of heating oil skyrocket and many in town have no alternative to this out of control commodity. We have seen F&S oil go belly-up with large losses to many of their customers. Natural gas is much cheaper for the same amount of actual energy and should be made available to the Cheshire residents. It's time for Yankee Gas to upgrade their system and expand their service lines.

Natural gas burns cleaner, is cheaper and doesn't require dangerous oil trucks barreling along our country roads. As far as a bad accident happening, it is just a matter of time.

I think one of the reason oil trucks barrel along is that time is money, just like Domino's pizza. The drivers are under a lot of pressure to maximize thier deliveries. At this time of the year it gets even crazier as the weather is warming up, the oil companies race to top off the tanks of all their automatic delivery customers. This end of season rush to topoff tanks probably contributes substantially to the price spike at a time when one would think the price should be declining. For the delivery companies, the price spike has little affect on them as they simple jack the price up on the non contract customers.