Thursday, July 01, 2021
City of Mesa's "Climate Action Plan" > Renewable Energy From Saints' Solar
Right - and as usual within an arms'-length "third-party middleman" in the deal, SRP Salt River Project. That's only when the city hasn't yet made contracts to guarantee reliable prices for providing other non-renewable sources for energy like natural gas or sometimes when the strategic planning for anticipated usage of municipal-owned utilities doesn't quite keep with the energy demands of booming growth.
=========================================================================
From KJZZ report today
Mesa Asks Citizens To Conserve Electricity Amid Concerns Over Energy Supply
Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - 6:21pm
Mesa is urging residents to conserve electricity as prices soar and energy reserves are diminishing.
The city of Mesa operates its own electric utility that serves about 18,000 residential, commercial and light industrial customers in the downtown area.
Frank McRae is the city’s director of the Energy Resources Department. He said the power supply markets are tightening to a point they had projected wouldn’t happen until 2023.
"There’s typically an amount of supply that exceeds demand amongst the utilities and the power providers in the western regional markets," he said. "That margin, or what we call reserve margin, has diminished significantly over the last several years." So as a result, energy prices have spiked.
Mesa is asking customers to conserve energy consumption from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., because energy costs for the city for that time period have increased tenfold over the past year.
McRae did not rule out the possibility that Arizona could experience widespread power outages, like those experienced in Texas in the spring.
“There’s more similarities with what happened in Texas this February, than there are differences," he said. "If a major electric generating station were to trip offline, or a wildland fire caused the utilities to shut down those high voltage transmission lines that go from remote electric generating stations into the major metropolitan areas — any one of those events could trigger something like the need to go to a rolling black out."
=========================================================================
Looking back to 2019 and before there were these deals: It started some time ago to find the right time and the right places to see off 'obsolete water-rights' to more than 11,400 acres on the Mesa Water Farm in Pinal County.
In 2012 they agreed to buy the land in three 5-year phases. (-2017, -2022. -2027)
"According to Natalie Lewis, assistant to city manager Chris Brady, and also lead negotiator on the deal, Mesa purchased the land in 1985 for more than $29 million for its water rights to create a water farm.
Eventually, the city found more cost-effective means to provide the city water
The buyer who was ready, willing and able?
Huge Land Sale in Pinal County Sets Up Planned 100-Megawatt Solar Project
Article originally posted on Phoenix Business Journal on May 28, 2019
“This is a desirable location for solar,” Miller said. “We are also working with two other companies looking to do large-scale solar projects in the area.”
Scottsdale-based Saint Holdings sold 1,027 acres to a company called Saint Solar, an entity controlled by Florida Power & Light Co., the principal subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc., according to real estate database Vizzda.
The land sold May 15 for $14.8 million, according to Vizzda. . .The solar project is north of the planned $1 billion, 2,000-job manufacturing plant for Nikola Motor Co. and its hydrogen-electric trucks.Saint Holdings LLC also sold the land to Nikola for its facility and to California-based Lucid Motors, which is planning a $700 million electric car plant in nearby Casa Grande.
Saint Holdings is a multi-faceted real estate investment and development company with holdings in industrial, land, multifamily residential, and agriculture.
Global Water Resources has signed agreements with Saint Holdings that will result in providing water services to Saint Holding’s Inland Port Arizona, where @nikolamotor is constructing their new facility. Contact us for shovel-ready opportunities. http://bit.ly/2lEAiWa
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
All The Liquidity In The Market Has To Go Somewhere / They'll Buy Anything
Somebody figured that out >
The SPAC Man Method: Inside the Billionaire Rush for Riches
As insiders have raced to push businesses into the public’s hands, they’ve employed a range of maneuvers to boost their fortunes.
"
Ok, here’s the play: Slip information to stock analysts, let whispers spread through the market — and watch the money grow.
Even for Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street billionaire known for sharp elbows, a move like that might sound close to the line.
But there was Lutnick, dialing into a videoconference, suggesting that very idea.
Relax, Lutnick told potential investors. Rules are rules, he assured the listeners — but you can be very smart about them.
All the more so because the investors were following Lutnick down the rabbit hole into the Wonderland of SPACs, those soaring — and now sinking — blank-check investments.
One of the most remarkable stories behind the Wall Street SPAC machine is the characters pulling the levers. SPACs — officially, special purpose acquisition companies — provide a shortcut to the stock market. As insiders have rushed businesses into the public’s hands, they’ve employed a range of maneuvers — some of them downright astonishing to the uninitiated — to win even when investors lose.
PUBLIC RELATIONS + MARKETING: Korean Company Hyundai Celebrates Acquisition of Boston Dynamics
Hope you all are feeling more Robot-Friendly > The dancing videos also help to show off the fun, playful side of the Spot robots, cementing them in the public mind as cute dancing machines, rather than the more controversial real-world uses in which the robots have been deployed.
Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot challenges BTS to a boy band dance-off in latest video
Hyundai celebrates its acquisition with some smooth dance moves
Hyundai has officially completed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, the creator of the internet’s favorite dancing Spot and Atlas robots (which only occasionally look like dystopian nightmare machines). And to celebrate, the company is collaborating with K-pop sensation BTS on a new video that shows seven Spot robots grooving to the band’s 2020 song “IONIQ: I’m On It.”
And while Spot’s smooth dance moves might bring a frisson of worry to any K-pop fans thinking that K-pop boy-bands might be the next industry that Boston Dynamics is targeting for its robots to replace human workers in, right now it seems that BTS isn’t too worried about the competition. A second video shows off the band celebrating the Hyundai acquisition alongside a Spot robot, and both boy band and bot come together for a brief dance-off . . .
“An athletic performance like dance stresses the mechanical design of the robot, and it also stresses the algorithms in the software,” says Marc Raibert, founder and chairman of Boston Dynamics, in an explanation as to why the company keeps making these videos. Raibert also notes that the dance routines force the company to create new tools to program the robots, like the “Choreographer” software used here — software that’s since been publicly released and is already being used by other Boston Dynamics Spot owners for entertainment purposes.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22688468/qAVfNwtrU2.gif)
That hits on the second reason for the videos, which Raibert doesn’t touch on: they’re incredibly popular online. The company’s last dancing video has over 32 million videos on YouTube, and a collaboration with BTS, one of the most popular bands on the planet with an extremely active fan base, is almost guaranteed to put up even better numbers. And given the fact that Boston Dynamics is actually trying to get companies to buy Spot robots — to the tune of $74,500 each — it’s easy to see why it’d want to get the word out.
The dancing videos also help to show off the fun, playful side of the Spot robots, cementing them in the public mind as cute dancing machines, rather than the more controversial real-world uses in which the robots have been deployed. That includes things like NYPD’s since-ended tests of Spot robots, or the recent use of Spot robots in simulated military exercises in France for reconnaissance work.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
-
Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
