Can you really monetize blog

Do you want to earn money the easiest way? There are much ways to earn money without exerting too much effort. Mostly, online businesses are the easiest way to gain money. Internet has made it possible for individuals to earn a living without the use of physical function. You only have to be skillful and knowledgeable about the different ways of dealing business online.

You will be seeing many letters over internet and most of them are about sales. For you to be able to earn money, you need to have your own website. But buying or creating one is extremely expensive. Even if you exert all you human efforts on researching, buying all the books but if you realize that you do not have millions; you will never be successful in this task. You obviously need a lot of money to finance your needs such as buying domain names, web space, advertising and other related expenses. However, there is another way to sell, it is by creating blogs.

Blogs are free and aside from that, there are many reasons way you can earn money easily by using blogs. This will be a sure success for you.

Remember that blogs do not require programming, web design and artistic skills, so it is easy to manage plus the set up is very easy. You can go to the different websites that accepts blogs. Register for a new account and you can start posting your advertisements right after.

Blogging does not require too many expenses. There is no associated cost with blogging. You can save up to piles of money by using blogs other than producing your websites. A typical domain can cost you a lot of money while using blogs; you can create account without spending heaps of money. You can add blogs as many as you want.

This type of business over internet is also known as affiliate marketing. It is one among the easiest way to gain money without spending too much on making websites. However, you need to pay the percentage of the merchandise that is sold through the site. It is better than building your own website. People use this type of business to describe their products through blogging and provide the links to their affiliate links to make commissions.

If you are always using the internet, you are aware of how difficult it is to get indexed on the different search engines online. Aside from that, getting a high rank on search engines is difficult as well. In blogging, you do not need to wait for long time to be indexed by a particular search engine. One week time is enough for your blog to be seen over the different search engines.

There are so many online marketers that use the different search engines to make money. Most of the search engines own a particular blogsites which allows anybody to post any type of blogs in any amount. Once that a person clicks your blog, you will be receiving revenues based on how many clicks your blogs have received. Imagine that easy?

By blogging, you will have the chance to earn money the easiest way. You only need to be patience and determined to be able to gain success in the business.

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Practice of Greed Vs Self Preservation

Personalized/concierge practices are designed to give you extended and personalized care and greater access to your doctor – including 24/7 pager/phone access and same day and longer appointments. Patients sign a contract and pay a monthly or an annual fee, typically in addition to other charges (i.e., your normal co-payments and deductibles). These fees are highly variable depending on the level and type of service, but generally do not cover specialist visits, laboratory tests, medical procedures, prescriptions, hospitalizations or emergency room visits. The leading company in the field, Florida-based network MDVIP (mdvip.com), has a typical annual fee of $1,500 per adult patient and an upper limit for practice size of 600 patients per physician. In upscale communities like New York City many doctors with a concierge practice charge twice that or more… deluxe boutiques in places like Miami Beach and Beverly Hills may have fees that exceed $100,000 (and include extravagant perks). Critics charge that concierge medicine is exclusionary and elitist, since not everyone can afford it, but Dr. Gruman points out that our medical system is already multi-tiered. If you can afford it and believe you would benefit from this kind of certain, focused medical attention, it is worth exploring the options available to you locally, she said.

Computerization of Health Records

On Feb 17, President Obama signed the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law that qualifies hospitals and physicians for $17 billion worth of incentive payments from Medicare and Medicaid over a five-year period. Under ARRA, specifically the HITECH Act, $40,000 to $60,000 may be available for each physician proving “meaningful use” of an EHR.

“It’s an investment that will take the long, overdue step of computerizing America’s medical records to reduce the duplication and waste that costs billions of healthcare dollars and medical errors that cost thousands of lives each year,” President Obama said at the stimulus bill signing on February 17.

While the exact definition of “meaningful use” is yet to be determined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the legislation outlined three requirements:

* E-Prescription – The EHR must include e-prescribing.

* Electronic Exchange of Health Information – The EHR must provide electronic exchange of health information.

* Report Clinical Quality Measures – The EHR must allow submission of clinical quality measures.

In the words of David Blumenthal, M.D., the national coordinator for health IT, “This is the beginning of a conversation that will continue for some time,” adding “there is a long way to go” before a final definition of “meaningful use” is achieved. The task of defining “meaningful use” is assigned to the Meaningful Use Workgroup, which presented its initial recommendations to the HIT Policy Committee on June 16. The key goals postulated in the initial recommendations vis-à-vis a three-page preamble to the report and a well-defined, simple-to-understand matrix are:

* to improve quality, safety and efficiency, and reduce health disparities

* to engage patients and their families

* to improve care coordination

* to improve population and public health

* to ensure privacy and security protections for personal health information

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You Need A Web Site Traffic Measurement Tool

You’ve spent all kinds of time figuring out the proper keyword usage for your website. You’ve done a thousand things to make your site more attractive to search engine spiders and humans alike. Now it’s time to start using a traffic measurement tool.

It is as important for you to get into traffic measurement as it is for you to boost traffic on your website in the first place. Traffic measurement is how you can tell if your efforts to improve website traffic stats are paying off. How will you know if you never look at the stats?

You can’t look at the stats without a traffic measurement tool. Different kinds offer different things. For example, if all you want to do is find out how many returning and new visitors you have coming to your site, then all you need is a small invisible counter.

You can get one of those free, or you can pay a little for a few extra benefits. StatCounter.com offers free invisible web trackers that will allow you to look at some of your website traffic stats.

ShinyStat.com offers a free one also, but only if you intend to use it for a non-profit website. Generally, the more you pay, the more website traffic stats reports you get to see per month.

If you would like a more comprehensive traffic measurement tool, you can purchase software that measures all kinds of website traffic stats. Not only will you know how many people came to your site — but you’ll also peer inside the minds of your visitors, getting reports on behavioral statistics, as well as track search engines and ad campaigns.

Some of them will even keep an eye on your server, network, and the website itself, and send you a message if anything goes wrong — virtually eliminating downtime. If you are trying to boost the traffic on your website, one thing you do not want is downtime.

Another traffic measurement option is Google Analytics. Although you have to purchase strategic support and consultation services, the actual package itself is free to all site owners, advertisers, and publishers.

In fact, they just unveiled a new version on May 8, 2007 at the Emetrics Summit, a conference exploring issues surrounding the optimization of websites. Whichever traffic measurement tool you opt for, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your website’s traffic.

Not doing so is like studying as hard as you can, but never receiving a grade. You wouldn’t have liked it if your professors had told you to just wait until the end of your college career to see if you wound up with a degree or not — so don’t turn a blind eye to your site’s progress.

Shopping for Your Digital SLRs Camera

Sorting through the wide range of digital SLRs that are currently on the market can be a bit confusing. If you aren’t sure which options you really need and which options are best left to the pros, then you may end up buying a lot more camera than you actually need.

Worse yet, you may not buy a camera that does as much as you would like. The best place to start your search is by reading some ratings and reviews in a magazine such as PC World.

For those of us who aren’t quite sure, however, the amount of technical information on the topic can be confusing and alarming. Many people feel overwhelmed at the amount of information there is on digital SLRs and other cameras. These people often end up buying a lot of software or hardware that they don’t need and pay far too much for their package.

The first thing you’ll need to know is what you plan on taking pictures of. This will help you decide which of the digital SLRs is right for the job and narrow down your choice.

Read reviews available in camera magazines or look through online websites like PC World at www.pcworld.com to understand your own needs. This comes before you understand the technical jargon. If you do a lot of night shooting, for example, you’ll want a camera that does dark shooting well.

The truth about most of the digital SLRs on the market that the different companies won’t tell you is that they are all essentially the same. All digital SLRs are capable of taking great pictures and giving you what you’re looking for.

However, there are minor details with each one that can make a difference in the types of pictures you choose to take. Some SLRs are better suited to action shots while others are perfect for shooting landscapes.

An abbreviation for single lens reflex, SLR offers the photographer the ability to capture exactly what he sees. Since there is only one lens involved, the image on the screen or in the optical viewer is exactly what will be captured in the digital format.

Often with film cameras, heads get chopped off or people are squeezed out of the side of the picture because the film can’t capture the entire image.

As you sort through the various digital SLRs on the market, keep your focus in mind and look for a digital camera that you like. Make sure the camera feels right in your hands, and look through the viewer screen and see if you can understand the interface.

Whether you buy the new Nikon digital SLR or something from another company, you have to ensure that you are comfortable with the product before you take it home.

Expand Your Horizons with Free Audio Books

One of the best things about the online audio books industry is that companies and websites can offer free audio books because they do not have to buy music literature materials for production. With downloadable music books, there are no products to purchase, which in turn gives online companies the opportunity to offer free downloads.

This is not only helpful for the company, but it also opens up a wider selection of books for consumers who are otherwise hesitant about purchasing titles in genres that they are not accustomed to reading.

A great place to get a number of free audio books is free-books. Like other music literature websites, you can log on to their page and download a wide variety of free books for personal and educational purposes.

If you are looking for titles from classical literature, the website provides free MP3 downloads from over 200 titles in their selection. You can also find European history titles and various other selections.

For adults looking for educational books, free-books offers many books that you can listen to and come away with information you may have not had before. “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” is an example of one of the free audio books offered to people who might find this an interesting listen.

The recently published “1492″ is a book written about the expedition that brought Christopher Columbus to America and is available as a free audio book download on the website. Another notable section of books available for download on free-books include children’s music books. Titles like “Pinocchio”, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Andersen’s Fairy Tales” are just a few of the music books that kids will be sure to enjoy.

For more mature kids, the site also offers free audio download books like “Jane Eyre”, “Huckleberry Finn” and “Robinson Crusoe”. Children music literatures are a wonderful and exciting alternative to the popular video games or television programs that have flooded homes today. They not only help stimulate the imagination, they are more productive and educational than many other forms of entertainment.

You can find free music books online to satisfy any of your listening needs. If you like history, you can find historical works on websites that offer free music literatures. If you enjoy Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte, you can find free audio books of their writings as well.

You can add a large number of audio literatures to your audio book library just through websites that provide free audio downloads. You can expand your library even further if you are willing to buy music literatures because many of the newer best sellers are available for a discounted price.

FutureWeb – The Net of Tomorrow

A man switches on a tiny wireless chip that has been surgically implanted behind his ear, which then synchs up with the Web wherever he is in the world. The mere thought of logging in to the Internet triggers the system to turn on and connect to the Web. He could be on a bus or at the beach and from all outward appearances he is just staring off into space. But he sees a three dimensional artificial world before him that he can manipulate any way he chooses by thought alone.

By looking at the trends of today we can begin to develop a image of what the Web of the future will look like. I believe the Web will improve and grow in a way that will dwarf its present existence and will improve and enrich everyone’s lives way beyond what we can imagine today. The Net will become as integrated into everyone’s everyday lives as much as, and even more so, than the television or phone (in developed nations first, then everywhere). Television, communications and the Internet will merge.

The Web will become increasingly realistic, interactive, and three dimensional. Two dimensional displays will evolve into three dimensional displays. And the Web will probably incorporate more than just the two senses of seeing and hearing. It will first be incorporated into all other electronics found in household appliances, copy machines, automobiles, and anything else with a microchip. Then it will be integrated directly into our brains.

I also envisage this new Web creating an unimaginably sophisticated data sphere that surrounds and envelops the world like a warm electronic blanket, connecting everyone and everything. And it may some day become an autonomous and sentient entity in its own right that we may even come to depend on for life itself.

When a person switches on his wireless Web chip and connects with the Net, he’ll be looking at and interacting with the Web of the future. He’ll manipulate objects, click on links, download information, and communicate with anyone by simply thinking it. In fact, when he navigates to a grocery store to buy food, for instance, he’ll be able to “pick them up”, “feel them” and even “smell” the food he wants to buy just by thinking the appropriate thoughts.

In the future, Web-based software agents will constantly build dynamic lists and instructions to help people in personal and professional activities. These software agents are subroutines, or small programs, which may be part of a responsive ‘Internet Operating System’ that serves humanity, or possibly even destroy it. Programs may become responsible for doing some of the basic thinking that we get stuck routinely doing today. Additionally, it may be responsible for storing a percentage of our memories as well.

The Web has already become something we rely on for memory, and that reliance will only grow. We’d rather look something up on Google two or three times instead of trying to remember it initially. And eventually, we’ll come to rely on the Web for memories and immediate information so that it will seem like we are missing a part of our own brain when not “jacked in” to the Net, to borrow a phrase from science fiction writer William Gibson. The Net will be such a part of our existence that we may even feel profound separation and isolation when not connected.

The Evolution of the Web Display

Of course we’re not going to jump from flat screen LCD monitors of today to displays that exist only “in our minds”. Three dimensional displays may be the bridge. There is a device in existence today called a Heliodisplay(TM) that produces holograms which exist in three dimensions and are created with photographic projection using advanced laser technology. It’s possible that all displays will employ this technology in the future. The gaming industry ceaselessly works at making their artificial gaming experiences more realistic and is a powerful driving force in computer display technology.

The Web of our future will first be truly device independent where each piece of equipment is a different window that peers into the same global Web. From handheld devices not unlike the Star Trek Communicators, to cell phones, televisions, automobile dashboards, embedded refrigerator displays and MP3 players, all will be portals into the same World Wide Web.

And of course everything will be connected. Instead of applications running on individual personal computers and devices, applications will operate on the Net and be accessible to anyone, creating a loose Internet Operating System.

Ultimately, the Web of our future will most likely abandon standard two dimensional and even three dimensional displays and instead be projected right onto our corneas, skipping the middle man, so to speak.

FutureWeb is Closer Than We Think

Already demonstrated in the lab is the ability to cause a computer to react to thought alone. Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis works in the field of BMI (brain-machine interface). In an experiment involving a monkey, a computer and a monitor, Nicolelis and his team successfully caused the monkey to communicate with and control a robotic arm through its brain’s neural signals alone.

The monkey’s brain activity and signals were first monitored with numerous electrodes inside its scalp while it manipulated a joystick. The scientists taught the monkey to move the joystick with its arms to accomplish movement on the monitor. Nicolelis’ team then took the joystick away, but continued everything else the same way. Since the monkey’s brain was hooked up to the computer, each time it had the thought of moving its arms, the desired affect actually happened anyway on the monitor, triggered by the monkey’s thoughts alone. In fact, the monkey was even able to control an artificial arm over the Web 600 miles away in the same manner.

There are two important applications for this technology that are driving its research: medicine and war, two constants in all of human history. Doctors will someday be able to attach a prosthetic arm to a patient, wire it up to her brain, and succeed in enabling her to control the prosthetic fingers by simply thinking it.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) manages the research for the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2003, DARPA invested $23 million in BMI programs, including the one at Duke University cited above. Their goal is to allow soldiers to control weapons of all kinds by thought only. These super soldiers will be able to stealthily navigate through a battlefield willing robotic gliders above to drop their payloads of smart bombs on the enemy over the next hill, without endangering their own lives.

Ethical questions aside, brain-machine interfacing will someday mature and become integrated into our lives. Since the Web is already such a part of our world, the marriage of the two is inevitable.

This technology can be utilized in the other direction as well. Just like a thought can produce computer behavior, the computer will someday be able to send back sensory data other than just sight and sound. If a computer is hooked directly up to the brain, then smell, taste and touch can be affected as well. The Web will literally come to life.

The Semantic Web, Web 2.0 and the Collaboration of Humanity

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, wrote an illuminating book called Weaving the Web that I recommend all Web professionals read. Among the many profound ideas expressed are two concepts relevant here. One is the Semantic Web, which is explained as “The Web of data with meaning in the sense that a computer program can learn enough about what the data means to process it.” Metadata is the term used for data about data. Most Web pages today have embedded in the html code metadata that gives information about the Web page. Eventually, this information will become much more robust, allowing more intelligent searches to become a reality.

The Semantic Web may have the potential to help make the Internet an entity in its own right. Parallel processing, the connecting of computers to make super computers, has been in existence for some time now. In fact, that’s how the human brain operates, by conducting many operations at the same time.

The other fascinating idea Berners-Lee expressed in this landmark book is that his original idea for the Web involved much more of a two-way exchange of information. His original vision for the Web was one of collaboration. He wanted people to be able to post information to the Web as easily as it was to view information. Unfortunately, the latter has been embraced more readily by the general population.

But now we see the emergence of “Web 2.0″, a fairly new term that describes an innovative type of website that is built on the participation of its users. Blogs, wikis Podcasts and social networks all fall under the Web 2.0 umbrella. Today we are finally achieving what Berners-Lee had in mind all along. With websites such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Squidoo, and Digg, non-technical users can now post information and contribute to the Web as easily as they can access it. The Web of the future will embrace this concept even more, causing its speed of growth to eclipse today’s rate.

It’s not difficult to see that the Web could be a vast parallel processing farm, that given enough artificial intelligence programming, the infusion of Semantic Web systems, and the constant additions from billions of intelligent beings (namely humans), it could have the potential of becoming something of a unified intelligence, a data sphere that surrounds the planet and is more powerful that the sum of its parts.

This concept of technology’s exponential growth turning onto something we cannot even imagine with the possibility of the Web becoming sentient is not new. Vernor Vinge, a retired Professor of Mathematics at San Diego State University, a computer scientist and a science fiction author, wrote about the Singularity in a 1993 essay.

A super-intelligence emerging out of the Web was also written about by Kevin Kelly in Wired Magazine in August 2005 and also published on KurzweilAI.

“. . . we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

This planet-sized computer is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages). Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks. That adds up to a trillion “synapses” between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number, but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The Machine (the Web of the future) is.”

An online search will yield many examples of bizarre concepts that existed only in science fiction later becoming reality. The Web is something that Earth has never seen before. It not only has the potential to connect everyone, but it can also extend every brain and grow exponentially. It may take a lot longer than anyone thinks, but eventually the Web of our future will be immensely different and much more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine today.

Pointers for Podcasting

Podcasting is the sharing of audio or video files. For example, radio programs or music videos broadcasting over the Internet using specific web feed formats such as RSS or Atom syndication. This has become one of the new hottest trends to hit the Internet right now. Its popularity is growing along with the hype.

To create audio content should be very easy, considering it can be anything you like at all. Music, audio books, or radio shows. There is no set method on how to compose audio content. Whatever the individual likes is what these shows should be in reference to. Depending on if you have a Mac or a PC, you will want to consider using Garage Band for the Mac user, or if you are a PC user, you will want to use Audacity. Both are excellent choices since they are powerful and seem to be very popular. The best part about both these programs is that there are both free.

When finished with your audio show you will want to save it at the highest quality in the original format of audio application. That way if you need to go back and do some editing, there will already be a good version saved. Once audio subject matter is finished, it should be saved in MP3 format. This is to all intents and purposes the standard format for podcasts. MP3 format seems to be the best format to stick with. It seems to be very universal and user friendly. Plus, if you go to any other format some users may not be able to use your podcast. And you want to make it available to as many people as possible.

Some suggested settings to use that offer superior outcomes that have minimum bit rate are as follows:

48 to 56k Mono, sermons, audio books, talk radio

64k plus stereo, music, music and talk combinations

128k stereo, good quality music

.mp3 file extension is how all these files should be saved.

In order to publish an MP3 file, you will need to save it to your web browser. It can then be tested on any MP3 player. It is easy to manage and find your files that you may want to put them all into a directory. These file can go anywhere on the site, but for convenience keeping them in the same directory seems to be the best in the long run.

Podcast feeds are RSS files that explain your podcast. They also contain information for each show. An RSS file is a text file that associates to MP3 files. Any text editor can be used to generate RSS news feed. Blogging programs really seem to be very popular right now with most podcasters. This automatically generates news feeds.

If you are have a blogging tool that lets you position enclosures, produce an item for each MP3 file that is available and use the URL of an audio content as an enclosure. If blogging tool does not maintain enclosures, do not worry. With the growing recognition of podcasts, there for sure soon will be one day.

For the time being, all of your editing of your RSS file can be done with any type of text editor to insert the enclosure tag. And you always want to make sure to save RSS file with the .rss or .xml extension. Generally, you will be looking for a news feed that holds all of your podcasts in the order from the newest to the oldest.

To publish your podcast news feed you will need to pass on your RSS file to your web server. Validate it using the RSS validator. If it is valid, it is ready to be published on the Internet. The last things you will really need to do are checking your podcast and publish it. There are several great podcasting logos out there so you will want to make sure you can find yours easily enough. With all of this said and done do not forget to ad your website to your podcast directory.

With the growing popularity of podcasting it seems to be catching on everywhere. It is becoming more common. No matter what it is for whether it is audio books, sermons or for educational purposes. Whatever the reason may be it seems to be one of the easiest forms of distributing information over the Internet so far.

iPod Video Downloads Sites – Home of iPod Junkies

iPod video downloads are more popular than some of the hottest Hollywood stars. Statistical figures do not lie. Everyday, millions of video files are downloaded online. Ever since our iPods transform themselves into Video iPods, everyone has been busy downloading video to feed our little gadgets.

Everyone knows iTunes, the granddad of iPod video downloads. Very soon, Amazon and other major players also entered the market. Getting a video online is a breeze since all you need is your PC and an internet connection. You can even do it in your boxer shorts, sitting comfortably in your living room.

If you have been downloading music for a while, you should have heard of peer-to-peer P2P file sharing networks. You would find not only music files, but iPod video downloads for TV shows, movies and music videos. In short, you can find practically any media file that has been produced. But that is provided you know how to search and have the right P2P client application to do the job. Some of this P2P software such as MP3 Rocket and Fast Torrent are freeware and can be downloaded at places like Download or Snapfiles.

Websites such as Geek Entertainment TV, Vidblogs, VideoJug, Flurl, Daily Motion, StumbleVideo, Metacafe, Joost and MySpace Videos are great places to search for iPod video downloads. Though most of them are videos filmed and uploaded by amateurs, more professionals are using them to promote their movie and music video previews. You should be able to find rather entertaining videos and movie clips there.

No matter where you have gotten them, other than from iTunes, there is a likelihood that they cannot be played on your iPod. Well, they are not faulty. The only problem here is the format these files are created and downloaded in. Our iPods only read iPod video downloads in MPEG4 or H.264 format. Fortunately, it is not the end of the world since some smart software developers have created special video to iPod convertors to overcome this shortcoming. Such video converters are mostly paid, but there are exceptions. You can try Free iPod Video Converter Version 1.32 which can be downloaded at freeware sites. It is capable of converting AVI, WMV, DivX, ASF and VOB files into iPod compatible format.

The content of this article is provided for the purpose of education and illustration only and is in no way associated with Apple, iTune, or any company or subsidiary of Apple.

The glaslight industry

Mechanical inefficiency cannot be blamed an the region’s age or geographi¬cal deficiencies; it is the result of administrative decisions. Two generations ago, Samuel Insull, the man who did for electricity what Henry Ford did for the automobile, showed the power industry that it was much more efficient to use large generating plants serving as many people as possible. No one believed him at first, and it might appear that many private company executives in New England still don’t. On average, the public utilities companies of the country serve three times as many people as do the companies of New England, and there are more than one and a half times as many people for every generating plant. This means for New England more executives, more plants and lines to maintain, more secretaries, more maintenance workers, more pensions and insurance, and higher labor costs per customer. New Englanders are paying to perpetuate a quaint private industry organization that is not nearly as charming as a covered bridge and much more expensive.
Attempts at consolidation have been made, but the pace is slow. In some places in New England, covered bridges have rotted away before the public realized what was happening. It is unlikely, however, that any private utility in the region will collapse, for they are protected by the state regulatory agencies and an apathetic public. Almost all of the region’s utilities make the maximum profit allowed by law, and a few are considerably above the prescribed limit. Blackstone Valley Electric Co. of Rhode Island earned in 1965 a return Of 9.34 per cent, almost twice the limit.
Only Vermont’s Public Service Board seems to take seriously its Obligation to set reasonable rates. New Hampshire and Connecticut appear indifferent at best, and the regulatory agencies in Maine, Massachusetts and The Maine and Massachusetts agencies have been hostile, almost insulting, to recent appearances by public-power groups.
Part of this situation results from the fact that none of the agencies has money or staff to do an adequate job. Most are so short of skilled help that they are forced to accept company operating statistics as a basis for deter¬mining rates. Unless the public demands it, the regulatory agencies are not likely to hire qualified accountants or engineers, and the prevailing public attitude is that the cost of electricity has formed a triumvirate with death and taxes. The result is that the regulatory agencies are permitting monopo¬lies to earn good profits with equipment and organizational structures that would drive them to the wall if they were faced with even moderately ag¬gressive competition. Allowing each utility exclusive control of its sales ter¬ritory prevents wasteful duplication of plants and lines, but it also creates an attitude of status quo complacency. Creative regulatory policies could im¬pose penalties for continued use of outmoded steam plants, instead of allow¬ing them to be included in the rate base.
However, conventional steam plants have had their day in New England. After 1969, the region’s power industry will most likely build only power-cost nuclear plants. It already has an experimental nuclear plant, Yankee, at Rowe, Mass., and five others are either under construction or committed. These five are part of what the private companies have dubbed their “Big 11 Power Loop”; the other six installations consist of five conventional steam plants and a pumped storage plant. All eleven are scheduled to be finished by the end of 19′72 and will be connected by 9oo miles of 345-kilovolt transmission lines. The cost of the project is about S9oo million, and the plants will provide about 6.3 million kilowatts of power.
The narre “Big 11 Power Loop”-but not the plants or transmission lines -is a gimmick, pure and simple. No engineering plan or study supports the location, type or design of the plants an a system-wide basis. It all started with
a Full-page newspaper advertisement announcing the “Loop” and implying that the whole thing was thought out well in advance. The campaign, carried an with television commercials costing about S200,ooo a year, was devised by the private companies’ trade organization, the Electric Coordinating Council of New En¬gland (ECCNE), in response to the threat of the federal government’s Dickey¬Lincoln School hydroelectric project. . . .
The darr at Dickey is the practical reality left over from the dream of harnessing the tides in Passamaquoddy Bay at the eastern tip of Maine. . . . By 198o it will provide only i per cent of the area’s electrical requirements. But it will probably bring with it a Northeast Power Commission to market the power. It is expected that the cheaper power of Dickey, combined with the Thereupon, the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners contracted for low-sulfur oil to burn in the city’s generators. The only oil then available came from the Mideast, so the commissioners took that. industrycurrent The Arab oil embargo in October knocked out 48 per cent of the city’s fuel supply overnight, and its only firm source of electricity was the federal Bonneville Dam Project along the Columbia River, which sent power south via the Pacific Intertie to supply io per cent of the city’s needs. But Jong periods of drought in the Northwest had been followed by an early and massive cold wave. Streams that fed the Columbia froze, drastically reducing the runoff that supplied the Bonne¬ville reservoirs. business current Coming at a time when its customers in the Northwest were drawing heavily an Bonneville for additional heat, the reduction in power forced it to cut all service to the Southland.