Month: November 2013

Why Is the Affordable Care Act Having Such A Difficult Roll-out?

In the opening Page of this blog (‘About this blog and me’) I reserved the right to “…occasionally discuss ‘random thoughts’ on other issues that catch my attention….”. Well, today’s Post is this blog’s second such occasion – the first was sharing a delicious and easy-to-make cheesecake recipe.

As I’m sure is true of many people in this country, and perhaps in other countries, the U.S. Government’s difficult roll-out of the Affordable Care Act ( ACA, aka as ‘Obamacare’) has attracted great attention. How could such an important Government activity be so poorly handled? The following Post is my take on that frustrating question.

(Note: my next blog, which I should publish in the next few days, will be a return to the blog’s focus on energy and water and related issues. It will discuss ocean energy.)

Why is the ACA having such a difficult rollout?
I am not an IT (information technology) expert but I did serve more than 25 years in the U.S. federal government and have spoken with an IT expert about the Affordable Care Act’s (Obamacare’s) startup problems. Here are my thoughts based on this experience and discussion:

I would first refer you to an article by Walter Pincus that appeared recently in the Washington Post on this topic (the story can be found at wapo.st/19wHvHL). It is a piece worth reading for the perspective it provides on an issue that has grabbed public attention. He offers several examples of other government roll-out problems and concludes that “the new health care law’s computer issues are not unique.”

Unique or not, the ACA roll-out has given the U.S. government a bad name and there may be a fundamental problem behind it. While contractors were hired to develop the computer code needed to allow people to apply for health insurance online, and presumably these contractors were competent in this area, final decisions on roll-out, etc., were in the hands of federal officials. In most cases I’m willing to bet that these officials were not IT specialists and under the gun to get something out by the legislated deadlines.

Another problem is that the major contracting companies in the area have proven that from time-to-time they do not hesitate to accept less-than-appropriate direction from their underqualified government managers. As is with most time and material contracts, they stand to benefit more from going along.

There are clearly places in the federal government where this expertise exists (e.g., selected parts of the National Security Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the U.S. Department of Energy) but why should we expect the Department of Health and Human Services, which was responsible for the roll-out, to have this expertise? It is not a routine part of their mission function and their ability to attract IT-qualified staff is limited by USG pay scales. Even if one is hired as a GS-15 or -16, considered to be at the top of the pay scale, the maximum salary is about $170,000, well below what such expertise can bring in the private sector.

This is not a problem unique to HHS, as many of us who opted for public service did it for reasons other than salary can attest, but at a time when IT expertise is at a premium it does mean that government agencies are at a disadvantage in competing for the best IT talent. Given Congressional attitudes this situation is not likely to change.

Perhaps a more serious issue built into the system is that decisions made by inexperienced, IT-unqualified and hassled government officials can have major impacts, as the ACA case seems to illustrate. Why was system testing delayed until just two weeks before roll-out? Why wasn’t there more timely coordination among federal and state agencies in planning the system and its roll-out? Where was the necessary oversight by senior HHS officials? Were the best IT contractors hired for the job or was this a lowest bid situation? Many other questions can be asked as well and I’m sure will be.

As someone who believes strongly in public service I get upset when public servants are demeaned. My experience in government taught me that the vast majority of government workers are dedicated to their tasks and committed to helping the public and providing value for money. Obviously not true in every case, but this is the case in the private sector as well. What is disturbing about the ACA situation is that an important and critical national policy (access to at least a minimum level of health care for all U.S. citizens) is being damaged by carelessness on the part of the U.S. government, a pay system that keeps needed expertise away from government service, and opportunistic political attacks that put political party loyalty above national needs. ACA undoubtedly needs to be improved in the future, as was true of social security in its day, but it is needed by the American public. How can the richest country in the history of the world deny even this level of protection to its citizens?

ObamaCare

Wind and Hydropower: A Natural Partnership

This blog was stimulated by an article published in the October 30, 2013 Washington Post: ‘Perfect’ winds blowing Brazil to new era of renewable energy (http://wapo.st/16nattl). It describes a rapid increase in Brazilian onshore wind deployments (the government’s goal is for wind turbines to supply “up to 10 percent of its generating capacity” by 2021) and quotes a Brazilian wind energy company president as saying “Wind is the perfect complement for the hydro base that we have in Brazil.” The purpose of this blog is to put increased focus on the too-little discussed importance of this natural partnership between wind and hydropower.

Hydropower and wind energy are closely related in that both are systems that use turbine blades to convert the kinetic energy of a moving fluid into electricity. In the case of hydropower the fluid is water and in the case of wind energy it is air. In both cases the energy available for conversion is proportional to the third power of the fluid speed V past the turbine – V squared from the kinetic energy in the flow and V from the rate at which fluid is moving through the blades.

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Wind energy is a variable (intermittent) renewable energy source that be used as an energy saver for fossil-fuel powered generating systems when the wind is blowing but requires some kind of storage of excess wind-generated electricity if it is to supply electricity at other times. Water reservoirs associated with hydropower dams serve as a natural “storage battery” for variable wind (or variable solar) as hydroelectric generators have short response/startup times as well as flexibility as to when water can be released to the generators from reservoir storage. The combination of wind and hydro thus provides a system capable of firming up power availability even when the wind is not blowing and reduces complementary water releases when the wind is blowing.

But this hybrid system has its limitations. It works extremely well as long as the wind component is not too large and the variations can be handled by the hydropower system’s flexibility. When wind generation gets too big that flexibility no longer exists or becomes increasingly expensive and excess wind energy must be utilized elsewhere. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration, underway in five Pacific Northwest states, is exploring options for addressing this growing problem.

A few more words about onshore wind (today’s dominant form of wind energy; offshore wind, an emerging technology, is discussed in an earlier blog on this web site) and hydropower, both of which are considered mature technologies.

Falling water first became a source for generating electricity in 1879 at Niagara Falls. Today hydropower provides about 20% of global electricity, with China, Canada, Brazil, the U.S. and Russia being the largest producers. There are about 78,000 MWe of hydropower generation capacity from 2,500 dams in the U.S. at present, with an additional 22,000 MWe in pumped storage capacity. Depending on rainfall and water availability, hydro provides about 6-7 percent of U.S. electricity and is currently the largest U.S. source of renewable electricity.

An interesting aspect of U.S. hydropower generation is that while further development of large hydropower projects is problematic (the best sites have already been developed) considerable potential exists for increased hydropower through development of new small and micro hydroelectric plants (59,000 MWe), development of new hydroelectric capacity at existing dams without hydropower facilities (17,000 MWe), and generation efficiency improvements at existing facilities (4,000 MWe).

Onshore wind energy capacity now totals more than 60,000 MWe in the U.S. and more than 300,000 MWe globally. Both numbers are growing rapidly. An interesting aspect of U.S. onshore capacity is the limitation imposed by existing highways – components for wind turbines beyond a given size (about 3 MWe) cannot be accommodated by existing roads. In principle the bigger the wind turbine the better the economics (ignoring the visual and noise impacts), a major argument for putting wind turbines offshore where size is not limited and other impacts are mitigated. One response being examined is manufacturing turbine components (towers, generators) in place using movable manufacturing systems.

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In sum, hydropower and wind energy are important sources of renewable electricity with significant growth potential individually and as hybrid partners. Both will be important parts of our inexorable march to a renewable energy future.