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https://transmission.bpa.gov/b...

If you look at the web page, you will see the wind hasn't blown in several days. And although we are almost back to 12 hours of sunlight it has been quite cloudy lately. So, your batteries would now be completely discharged.

I am not the AC, and I don't know anything about raptor mortality WRT wind turbines, but a simple google got me this as the first link. (Search: altamont wind new vs old turbines)

Raptor Mortality at Altamont Pass (CA) - Reported raptor mortality at Altamont Pass (CA), has ranged from 0.05 to 0.10 fatalities per turbine per year (Erickson et al . 2001). Pre- construction raptor use is generally lower at other wind projects compared to the Altamont area. Approximately 50% of the turbines currently in operation at Altamont Pass (CA) (approximately 3,000 out of 5,400) are Kenetech 56-100 turbines equipped on 18 m lattice towers, with rotor diameters of 18 m, down-wind blades spinning at approximately 60 revolutions per minute (rpm), with tips within 9 meters of the ground. These turbines are located in a high density and clustered arrangement within the 60 mi 2 WRA. Recent studies suggest the 56-100 turbines may cause higher golden eagle mortality than other turbine types (Hunt 2002). The cause of the higher raptor mortality at Altamont is likely a combination of several factors including those listed above (turbine types and confi gurations), as well as raptor use of the area.

Data Used in This Analysis Erickson et al. (2001) recently summarized the operational fatality monitoring data available through the middle of 2001. This report contains a meta-analysis 1 that extends the Erickson et al. (2001) mortality summary to include both baseline data on avian and bat use 2, raptor nesting 3 , and operational avian and bat fatality monitoring data, including recently collected data at the Foote Creek Rim (WY), Stateline (OR/WA), Klondike (OR), and Buffalo Mountain (TN) wind plants. Over 30 study areas from 15 Wind Resource Areas (WRA) were used in at least one of the following components of this synthesis: avian mortality, avian use, raptor nesting, bat mortality and bat use.

Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal)

I've heard this mentioned on Slashdot before, but can't find a reference on their web site to back it up. Here's a fact sheet that indicates BPA is generating (on average) 28,161 MWe, of which:

• 44.5% comes from hydroelectric dams (big surprise, it's the Pacific NW)
• 19.1% comes from coal
• 11.6% comes from combustion turbines (natural gas)
• 9.6% comes from "cogeneration" (reclaimed heat at coal/gas plants?)
• 3.7% comes from nuclear

There are other sources listed, but wind/solar/etc aren't specifically called out. So yeah, at a glance it doesn't even look like they generate a majority of their power from renewables, let alone 100%.

Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal), and is making money at it, it's important to notice that Slashdot's mod system says this can't be done.

A couple of issues here. One, at least according to their 2010 financial statement BPA isn't making money (they do have a small operating profit, but not enough to cover interest payments - not to mention that their operating profit was slightly less than the amount they received in treasury credits, meaning their operations were not profitable without government subsidies even before debt payments).

Second, BPA doesn't just use renewables - they also get power from a nuclear power plant, and several "other" power plants, presumably fossil fuel of some sort. Unless we've decided that nuclear is renewable, you can't say they get all their power from renewables even ignoring the "other" plants.

Third, there is no (well, little) doubt that in certain areas renewable power is currently viable. Hydro power, which is largely the basis of BPA's power, is generally pretty cheap and reliable - assuming you have a lot of precipitation and some appropriate topography to work with. It works great in the Pacific Northwest and some other areas, but we have pretty much tapped this resource everywhere it is available (in the U.S., at least). I don't doubt that large-scale wind and solar can be profitable now or in the near future, but again - the areas you can deploy these technologies to the best advantage (i.e., profitably) are limited.

Bonneville Power Administration shut down its nuclear plant for refueling and their coal plant was shut down because it was unnecessary and still had excess power to export -- 100% from renewables so please, please don't post stupidly about "baseline" power.

Since that is obviously an uninformed opinion, I will post about baseline power.

BPA operates 31 hydroelectric power plants in the Pacific Northwest which supply about 1/3 of the electric power in the region. They also operate around 3/4 of the high-voltage transmission lines in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, western Montana and small parts of eastern Montana, California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

Source: http://www.bpa.gov/corporate/about_BPA/Facts/FactDocs/BPA_Facts_2009.pdf

Regardless of why they shutdown their nuclear and coal plants, this means there is significantly more power generation demand than what BPA can provide. Since BPA's power is hydro, it does supply baseline power. But at only 1/3 of the region's power needs, that is not enough baseline power for the region. Since BPA operates most of the high voltage lines, they deliver (but do not generate) most of the power in the region. They are delivering power from a mixture of coal, natural gas, and renewable sources. These other renewables do not provide baseline power like BPA's hydro does, because they only work when the sun shines or the wind blows.

Hyrdo does serve as a baseline renewable power source, but we aren't going to be seeing any more of that. Environmental concerns have not only halted nuclear power, but also construction of new dams. Until we get an efficient and environmentally sound way to store wind and solar power, renewables will always be limited to providing just a fraction of our power.

Bonneville Power Administration shut down its nuclear plant for refueling and their coal plant was shut down because it was unnecessary and still had excess power to export -- 100% from renewables so please, please don't post stupidly about "baseline" power

I'm sorry, why is that exactly? If you're referring to this Bonneville Power Administration, then the renewables you're referring to are its 20,300 MWe worth of hydroelectric dams. I mean hell, their logo is a fsk'ing RIVER flowing out of a MOUNTAIN. As you may have noticed, river continue to flow at night, and hydroelectric dams are built precisely because of the stable, reliable "baseline" (it's actually called "base-load," but we knew what you meant) power they produce. So the rest of your post about solar is a bit of a bait-and-switch, don't you think?

BPA always exports a lot of power... they have lots of hydro resources to take advantage of. Large nearby cities do not. The economics are very simple. Unfortunately here in the US, we've pretty well tapped out our available hydro resources. The TVA and similar federal/state infrastructure projects built pretty much all of the dams worth building.

"Baseline stupidity," as you put it, quite simply isn't. Sorry.

"renewable" isn't going to cut it, either."

I love how something which is being done, ie. power being 100% generated by renewables, today, can still be denied by people who don't want to accept that it is. Reality is no match for anyone's ego gratification. Here's BPA's power output by power source:

http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

So what happened on 9th to 10th june? Oh, zero MW were generated by wind. Good thing they had all that hydro.

Hum, hydro. Lets not build nasty nukes in earthquake prone Italy, let's build lots of dams. What could possibly go wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

I love how something which is being done, ie. power being 100% generated by renewables, today, can still be denied by people who don't want to accept that it is. Reality is no match for anyone's ego gratification. Here's BPA's power output by power source:

http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

Yes, if you distribute wind turbines then you get nice consistent generation. As you can see below, the Bonneville Power Administration (which hasn't even distributed its wind turbines yet) is generating two gigawatts from wind alone -- and another twelve gigawatts from hydro (what the Swiss are focusing on) which is more than twice the BPA demand. They've shut down their coal plant and taken their nuclear plant off-line for refueling and still had so much extra power (all renewable) that they were forced to give it away for free a few weeks ago:

Bonneville Power Administration Live Graph of Output

http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

Windmils ain't free; they need maintenance, and do break in unexpected ways. The right kinda land ain't free, either; gotta survey, find sealable underground where there's wind, which is not a common combination. And, the compression/decompression process loses about 80% of the original power. However, this is needed; the federal Bonneville Power Administration revealed the surges in wind power nearly fried the NW portion of the Western Grid in 2008 by overload, in a report announced on KGW news last night. And, since http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/ shows wind is reliable 4% of the time, we have to store it somehow. But, it won't be cheap.

But we're already doing it. See the Pacific DC Intertie. 1300 km of 500 kV DC power. Or, see the marketing literature of Bonneville power.

It's expensive to run all those lines and make all those towers, but the overall cost is less. If you can plug wind power into this sort of system (which is a huge if) then the overall system can be even better.

My house is on a main tie power line substation that once was connected to a Al plant here. Now the power goes to two large
semiconductor fabs that have contracts for power with massive penalties for loss of production. I think I have had less than a hour of outage in 20 years.

When California disconnects my lights do get a little brighter. http://www.bpa.gov/power/pl/columbia/4-gal-1.htm

However, the problem they can't solve is that in the US, the town water authority would be in direct competition with a private company, a big no-no. The existing players would raise hell if it were tried in a community on more than a point to point basis (and even that would get a lot of attention).

Transmitting DC over long distances doesn't work very well

I've heard this before, but I haven't heard a terribly good explanation for why.

HVDC Pacific Intertie between Oregon and California:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Intertie
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/cigresc14/Compendi um/PACIFIC.htm

I worked on a transmission sales automation project at BPA, and I seem to recall some very good explanations for why they had a 2000+ MW, 400kV transmission hop.

Yes, it's sad to see a symbolic engineering marvel like the EV1 go, but all this does is shift the pollution elsewhere.

Two thoughts: 1 - Even if what you say is true, at least the pollution is moved to a central source, where it is easier to control. 2 - This is all the more reason to move more and more of our electricity generation over to cleaner sources such as nuclear.

Not to mention not being very practical at all.

Is any new technology "very practical" when it first comes out? Also, were you aware that the Toyota RAV4 EV easily attains over 100 miles per charge? Considering that the average person drives less than 40 miles a day, that sounds pretty dang practical to me.

Why not concentrate on GM's current hybrid timeline, or on vehicles that are actually useful and that normal people might buy...

Why not concentrate on something more innovative, like electric cars? They're better than you think. The only reason they're not "actually useful" is because big coporations refuse to throw all their money behind them.

And no, in fact my electricity does not come from fossil fuels.

see this excellent PDF on the subject.