Growing and going outside the box
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
If San Diego County were a simple geometric shape it would be a square with sides of 65 miles. Within those four sides the resources, both natural and man-made, the intellectual heft and techno-talent are incredible. The effectiveness of what’s in the box is magnified by what lies beyond the perimeter. In our case it is Imperial County and Mexico. The economic development description of this outside-the-box-thinking is the Cali Baja Bi-National Mega-Region.
This past week I participated in a two day Discover Imperial County tour organized by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Council. For most of us, we rarely have any contact with the sources of our food and energy. Food comes from an aisle at Vons and electricity from a wall plug. Just two hours from the center of our box is a different world where every resident has an up-close view of innovative technologies which make our food and energy available and affordable.
The Imperial Valley is an energy cornucopia. I doubt if there is any comparable space in the world that can harvest energy from solar, geothermal, water, wind, algae, biomass and piped-in natural gas. Their ability to add new electrical production is only tempered by the timing of construction of new transmission lines.
The first stop on our tour was at the east edge of San Diego County at the Kumeyaay wind farm on the Campo Indian Reservation. Three square miles of tribal land adjacent to Interstate 8 are home to 25 giant Gamesa wind turbines rated at 2 megawatts each. The winds which cross the Tecate Divide provide electricity sufficient to serve more than 12,000 homes while saving 110,000 tons of green house gas emissions annually.
By the numbers: Towers 70 meters (230 feet). Blades 41.5 meters (136 feet). The area swept by the blades of each tower = 1 1/3 acres. Total swept area for the 25 towers = 33 1/3 acres. (Swept area refers to the area in square feet of the rotor. It is also called the ‘capture area’. pi x Radius² = Area Swept by the Blades).
