A wooden beam holding up the front of my house fell over (dry rot) in a strong wind a few months ago, whacking the hood of my Yaris. We're talking a 12x12" square beam about 20' long. The hood had to be replaced but it cushioned the engine quite well; in fact I could have lived with the cosmetic damage but insurance covered the cost of repair top to bottom, as it wasn't a collision.
Already added to the Wiki entry on interstellar molecules. Now if we could only find some gasoline floating around out there, if only to make pundits' heads spin...why is our oil (product) floating in their planetary nebula!?!?!?
Assuming a 50mph limit, most drivers will err on the side of caution, and their speedo will read 48.
You have instrumentation mounted on skimpy swimwear? Cor Blimey...
A 2007 study estimated that traffic congestion lead to a loss of 2.8 billion gallons of fuel = 182 kbarrels of oil per day - a large amount, to be sure, but remember that we still consume about 18.5 million barrels of oil per day in the US. Eliminating congestion would be helpful but not lead to quite the dramatic savings one might expect.
Really. The travelers on the Oregon Trail said the most desolate part of the whole journey was in the area of where the Boardman Bombing Range and PGE coal fired plant are now, east of the Shepard's Flats project. Lotsa scrub, juniper trees, sand, rock, ideal for those modern applications.
How much volume does it take to justify building pumped storage, anyway? The Columbia River's canyon around this area has a lot of 1000 ft ledges - perhaps bores could be drilled through the basalt and water pumped up from the river, then back down as needed?
Alternatively, you could flood some of the empty canyons, like Blalock or Philipi west of Arlington. Dunno if that would provide enough head or gradient to create viable amounts of storage, especially compared to the monstrous lakes the dams form on the Columbia. If those can't get the job done, well, then this is a bit of a problem.
Organization: Stranded Wind Initiative. Interesting idea. Matt Simmons (peak oil guy) wants to do the same with wind offshore Maine. I believe a lot of US fertilizer is sourced from the Middle East now, too, part of their move towards petrochemicals, in the wake of US NG prices spiking in the last 10 years. Dunno if any of the production has moved back since NG's price collapsed here.
I grew up in the area around the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, which will be the world's largest onshore wind project when completed, and pumped storage would be great to utilize if it weren't bone dry in this area - 15 inches of rain or less per year. The Columbia River is nearby but that's already a series of lakes created by hydro. There really aren't many lakes to utilize in this area, beyond a few manmade reservoirs. Perhaps you could tap into streams coming down out of the Blue Mountains ala the Willow Creek Reservoir, which is behind a shoddy Army Corps of Engineers roller compacted concrete dam; but when you get to projects on that kind of scale it might be cheaper/simpler to just build out HVDC lines. The farmers in the area have already shown they're OK with the turbines themselves.
Incidentally my elderly father still has a subscription to the Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner is the town in the shadow of the Willow Creek Dam. Latest edition had a brief story about some kids taking out local high speed internet service when they were shooting at birds on phone lines and took out a fiber optic line. Cost to renew service? $45k. Puts me in mind of Pulp Fiction and $5 milkshakes. "$5! What, does it have bourbon in it?"
Hope birds aren't interested in wind turbines. But I can bet with confidence that someone's already taking potshots at the blades anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jesus.
A wooden beam holding up the front of my house fell over (dry rot) in a strong wind a few months ago, whacking the hood of my Yaris. We're talking a 12x12" square beam about 20' long. The hood had to be replaced but it cushioned the engine quite well; in fact I could have lived with the cosmetic damage but insurance covered the cost of repair top to bottom, as it wasn't a collision.
Already added to the Wiki entry on interstellar molecules. Now if we could only find some gasoline floating around out there, if only to make pundits' heads spin...why is our oil (product) floating in their planetary nebula!?!?!?
1,158.3011583011583 sq perches.
Assuming a 50mph limit, most drivers will err on the side of caution, and their speedo will read 48. You have instrumentation mounted on skimpy swimwear? Cor Blimey...
A 2007 study estimated that traffic congestion lead to a loss of 2.8 billion gallons of fuel = 182 kbarrels of oil per day - a large amount, to be sure, but remember that we still consume about 18.5 million barrels of oil per day in the US. Eliminating congestion would be helpful but not lead to quite the dramatic savings one might expect.
Really. The travelers on the Oregon Trail said the most desolate part of the whole journey was in the area of where the Boardman Bombing Range and PGE coal fired plant are now, east of the Shepard's Flats project. Lotsa scrub, juniper trees, sand, rock, ideal for those modern applications. How much volume does it take to justify building pumped storage, anyway? The Columbia River's canyon around this area has a lot of 1000 ft ledges - perhaps bores could be drilled through the basalt and water pumped up from the river, then back down as needed? Alternatively, you could flood some of the empty canyons, like Blalock or Philipi west of Arlington. Dunno if that would provide enough head or gradient to create viable amounts of storage, especially compared to the monstrous lakes the dams form on the Columbia. If those can't get the job done, well, then this is a bit of a problem.
Organization: Stranded Wind Initiative. Interesting idea. Matt Simmons (peak oil guy) wants to do the same with wind offshore Maine. I believe a lot of US fertilizer is sourced from the Middle East now, too, part of their move towards petrochemicals, in the wake of US NG prices spiking in the last 10 years. Dunno if any of the production has moved back since NG's price collapsed here.
I grew up in the area around the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, which will be the world's largest onshore wind project when completed, and pumped storage would be great to utilize if it weren't bone dry in this area - 15 inches of rain or less per year. The Columbia River is nearby but that's already a series of lakes created by hydro. There really aren't many lakes to utilize in this area, beyond a few manmade reservoirs. Perhaps you could tap into streams coming down out of the Blue Mountains ala the Willow Creek Reservoir, which is behind a shoddy Army Corps of Engineers roller compacted concrete dam; but when you get to projects on that kind of scale it might be cheaper/simpler to just build out HVDC lines. The farmers in the area have already shown they're OK with the turbines themselves. Incidentally my elderly father still has a subscription to the Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner is the town in the shadow of the Willow Creek Dam. Latest edition had a brief story about some kids taking out local high speed internet service when they were shooting at birds on phone lines and took out a fiber optic line. Cost to renew service? $45k. Puts me in mind of Pulp Fiction and $5 milkshakes. "$5! What, does it have bourbon in it?" Hope birds aren't interested in wind turbines. But I can bet with confidence that someone's already taking potshots at the blades anyway.
Really: $50 and Up Underground House Book – Underground Housing and Shelter