I'm not sure what you mean by capacity to move it around - doesn't electricity just loose strength over long distances unless the wires are made of pure gold or silver or somesuch?
Power transmission over long distance is a science. If you take a course in circuit fundamentals and learn Ohm's law, you can calculate the power lost in a transmission system. All wire has resistance.. True. Current in the wire converts some power to heat making the wire warmer.. True. How much is lost?? That is the time to do the math.
If you feed 120 volt power from the circuit breaker at home on a 12 guage wire to the far end of the house and lose 5 volts to the AC drawing 15 Amps, then the power into the wire is 120 X 15 or 1800 Watts (Volt-Ampers for those watching reactive power). At the AC we still have 15 Amps, but only 115 Volts for a power of 1725 watts. Along the way we lost 75 watts heating the wire. Transmission lines use high voltage so the volts drop is a much smaller portion of the percent drop. For example, if we use that same piece of wire and use the same 15 Amps, but hang it on insulators and feed it 220,000 volts, now the power in is 3,300,000 watts. The same 5 Volt drop is counted for a voltage out of 219,995 volts out at 15 amps for a power delivered of 3,299,925 watts for a loss of the same 75 watts. A loss of 75 watts on delivery of 3 MegaWatts isn't bad. Increasing the power over 20 Amps will still trip the breaker, overheat the wire, or start a fire. This is the capacity they talk about. The delivery is effecient as a percentage lost along the way.
The wire does have a maximum safe aperage that it can carry. "When the SC upgrade program is completed some years into the 21:st century, the maximum current carrying capability over the Intertie AC lines has been raised from 1,800 Amperes to 2,700 Amperes. "
Often the moving of power and it's loss along the way saves money by not requiring extra generation capacity near a location of high demand.
Central and Southern California for example has very little cheap power sources. The Columbia river on the other hand is a cheap source in the Spring an early Summer with the spring rains and summer snow melt. You can either sell the power, or simply let the water go over the spillway of the dam.
The alternative to provide power to Central and Southern California is to burn Natural gas. Your choice.. move cheap power and take the loss, or use expensive fuel to generate power locally.
Take a look at the Pacific Intertie. It includes several sets of High Tension AC transmission lines and the DC Intertie. Notice they all go from North to South.
Capacity is much like an outlet in your house. You can only get so much power from an outlet before you pop the circuit breaker or overheat the wire at the risk of causing a fire.
"The Intertie includes three AC lines and one HVDC line. Together, they comprise the largest single electricity transmission program in the United States. The Intertie is capable of transmitting up to 7,900 MW - 4,800 on AC and 3,100 on DC."
In the case of the Pacific Intertie, the limit is 7,900 MegaWatts.
If California has power plants shut down, then has a heatwave, the demand for power for air conditioning can exceed the ability of the lines to transfer power and you have either rolling blackouts, brownouts, or tripped circuits resulting in blackouts.
This is what happened when Enron was pushing for de-regulation. They had a regulated sell price for power. They had rising fuel prices. They pushed for de-regulation so they could set pric
In my other reply, I mentioned that Hollywood would have taken liberties with the truth to make a drama. I have never seen the film, but I know Hollywood.
Even after the Clintons left office, they kept the pressure on. When the Enron collapse seemed imminent in November 2001, Robert Rubin called a senior Treasury Department official in the Bush administration and asked him to discourage the bond-rating agencies from downgrading Enron's debt. The Bush Treasury Department refused to intervene on Enron's behalf, and Rubin backed down.
As to Franjo Tudjman, he must have done something right. In November 1996, just months after Brown's death and one week after President Clinton's re-election, Tudjman traveled not to The Hague to be tried as a war criminal, but to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to have his cancer treated.
Needless to say, none of this - Mozambique, Croatia, Ron Brown, the Hillary connection, the Rubin call, the Bush refusal - makes the Enron movie.
Meanwhile, Gibney chooses instead to implicate both Bush presidents and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a series of tortuous plots that defy common sense and basic chronology. Indeed, Gibney somehow blames the California energy debacle on George W. and Schwarzenegger even though W took office six months after it flared up and Schwarzenegger took office three years after that.
The spirit of Leni Riefenstahl is alive and well. Hooray for Hollywood!
ALL electric and hybrid vehicles are priced way out of the reach of the typical american. Fact is the typical american makes less than $32,000.00 a year. The payment on a $24,000.00 car is insane and therefore not afforadble by the masses only by the few rich people. Most people can afford USED cars under $8000.00 some stretch to the $14,000.00 mark but not many.
Sorry for the late post. I bought a Prius. I thought lots about the costs involved and did some research. From what I found is what I based my choice on. Here are the important stuff.
1 Do you dirve a lot? If you don't, forget a Hybrid. 2 Do you trade in often? If you do, get a Hybrid. 3 Do you need reliability? If you do, get a Hybrid.
Short summary, if you want to spend less for transportation, drive a lot, and need reliability, get a Hybrid.
You're going, yea-riiight..
My hybrid has averaged 46 MPG since I bought it. My old car got 24 MPG. At $3.00/gallon of gas, 100,000 miles would use 4167 gallons in the old car for a cost of $12,500 and the Hybrid would use 2174 gallons for a cost of $6,522. You complain about high (Insane) car payments. Care to guess what gas prices will be in 5 years? I'll stick with a known car payment instead. The gas savings pays the extra cost.
In repairs, I have had none on the Hybrid in 100,000 miles. I replaced the starter tires at 18,000 miles and changed tires again at 80,000 miles. I checked the brakes at that last tire change. With regenerative braking, the pads have 80% remaining.
The car doesn't have a starter motor, bendix gear, starter solonoid or other starting system high failure items. The brushless motor/generator starts the car.
The car doesn't have alternator belts and bearings exposed to dirt for alternator failures. The Cabin battery is powered by a HV to 12 volt converter.
The only belt on the engine is for the AC. The new model has eliminated that belt as the AC is now a sealed electric compressor just like the old reliable refrigerator at home. This eliminates AC belts, clutches, leaking shaft seals, and hoses since the compressor is no longer mounted on the engine requiring flexible hoses.
Power steering is a linear electric motor. Eliminate power steering pumps, belts, fluids, and there goes another failure item.
Check out how the Prius transmission works. I believe it has a total of 7 moving parts. None of them are a friction part like a band or clutch. None of them are hydraulic such as a torque converter. None of the parts shift. This is true for all driving, including going from forward to reverse. No gears shift, no clutches or bands operate. It's a simple, reliable low parts count transmission with little to break, wear, or go out of adjustment. Here is information and pictures of the Prius transmission. Not a bad piece of fine engineering for a simple CV transmission with no shifting parts. http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmission Can a transmission get any simpler and relaible than this?
In 100,000 miles, the premium I paid has paid back itself and then some. Due to the increased reliability, I expect to keep the car for another couple hundred thousand miles. Elimination of a car purchase or two helps offset the cost of the higher priced car adding to the total lowered cost.
Care to add up repair cost and gas savings in 300,000 miles? Now which is the expensive car? People are catching on. My wife's 02 van and my 02 Prius blue book prices are no where close to each other. My Prius can be sold today for only 2,400 less than I bought it for. If I do trad-ins, this is a good deal.
I bought my Prius to save money and it paid off. I need reliable transportation for my commute. I got it. I've done the cheap car thing for years. Keeping the beaters running and passing DEQ was always a pain. Not anymore.
The poor kid making minimum wage will only be able to
I'm not sure why you're connecting HD movies with HD drives.
Because HD content on a CableCard is a complete failure in most cases. Most HD content online that works is unprotected so everyone can play it. Protected content online is mostly broken and expensive and consumers go to other places for content that works. If it doesn't work, I don't consider it an option. HD DVDs can be played on a Vista machine with a HD DVD drive.
I think your problem lies with the protected HD content, and not with Vista.
The problem is with protected HD content on Vista. Who was on crack when they decided it's a good idea to make it a requirement to turn off the headphone jack on a laptop when playing a movie if the content creator wishes it? (one option is no analog output permitted. (This includes your non HDMI big screen TV monitor and analog surround THX certified stereo system.)
HD Content using the protect this at paranoid levels is going to be a marketplace failure when users can't watch it with headphones on their long flight. Expect lots of use of reduced resolution instead of blocked analog output. Blocked analog output is a customer service support line overload waiting to happen followed by a sales slump.
On many systems, old DVDs will outperform the new HD content due to forced reduced resolution on analog output devices. What good is a home theatre system if you have to buy it all brand new again to play HD movies? I'm happy with my display and sound system. I'll stick with regular DVDs because they are compatible with my analog stuff.
Now it's been 4 1/2 months so far to try and get the expense information.
I read the request. It is comprehensive and complete. Please post the response you get. I am interested in the other information you requested such as the setting of the clocks, (you should have asked for time zone for all and if DST was in effect) as well as all the information on how the data was collected, even to the naming of the text file. Great job. I hope they provide the information. I can't wait to add the Media Sentry IP range to my blocklist.
I am sure others will want to block the username they use, but I don't have any P-P installed except the BitTorent that came by default on Ubuntu. Trying to remove it is a problem because it is used for program updates.
And if Microsoft, with 90+ percent of the market, said, "No, if you want to get your movies into our market, you'll get rid of this annoying, overhead causing crap that our consumers hate."
By default, Microsoft should have left HD playback out of the OS. MS should have a HD/Content protection option for those who want to pay for a HD drive and use it with HD content. Build in HD DVD content protection into on OS that is loaded on a PC that doesn't even come with HD drives is a terrible mistake.
The ball would still be in the media companies lap. They can either sell stuff that will play on the PC's, or sell stuff that requires a crippling upgrade to the hardware.
Some people will want the upgrade and others will want to avoid the upgrade. Either way HD content is protected even if it doesn't sell.
I don't have that kind of cable so I haven't tried it but it seems like a fully analog method should work.
One of the complaints of Vista was the shutting down of other processes when protected media was playing up to and including completely disabling analog outputs. Reduced resolution includes the streaming web radio station playing in the background. Try playing a HD movie while listening to a webcast. Either the resolution of analog outputs is reduced or shut off. DRM often shuts down the unrelated unprotected stream. Enjoy. The analog hole works as long as the input is on another machine and the content creator permits some analog output.
I haven't tried that kind of cable either. I haven't wasted my time or money on protected content to test it. Regular DVDs are broken enough to be useful. The Kalidascope case has deemed that not all home media servers are illegal. Protected content is broken enough to simply be not be useful.
Most people haven't tried to play HD movies on their Vista Boxes, simply because they don't have a HD drive, or haven't spent the money on the higher cost movies. What you are used to with standard DVD playback is easy compared to using protected HD content. If you are not using encrypted protected output devices, HD will often play back in lower quality if at all on the analog monitor and speakers you have.
Expect the HD DVD you just bought to fail to play on your headphones on your laptop. It is in the spec and is what the complaints are all about. Even if you don't play HD content, the DRM is still a major source of processor cycles and short battery life. DRM is a big part of the long boot times and slower than XP performance.
MS missed the boat on not releasing a non-media edition. The non-media edition would have HD playback disabled, no DRM, and should have fast performance. The DRM/HD playback module should be an optional upgrade. Most of us don't use it and don't want it.
If you buy that whole naive business owner argument, well you may be just as naive.
I've worked at some small businesses where the collection of hardware wasn't documented. The software wasn't pirated, but would still fail a BSA audit. Often the software licensing (ClickWrap) is such to ensure you are out of compliance. The old machine dies, the software is re-installed on it's replacement in violation of the clickwrap, etc. We bought the software. We are prohibited of taking the part of a system and relocating it to it's replacement.
Often mentioned is the failure to scrub a passed down system. Even if you totaly wipe the old system, a hardware upgrade is forbidden by the software clickwrap. I have software that came bundled with a camera. I replaced the camera when it died. Does the software die because I no longer have kept the camera? (Arcsoft product)
It is easy to have software you bought complete with packaging and original disks and be in violation. This is WRONG.
As a side note I use True Crypt on my USB drives - its free, cross platform
That is a fantastic point. The BSA is taking credit for a reduction in the percent of software piracy from it's high in the 1990's to it's current low level. The total amount pirated is "Quadrupled" simply because there is more software.
The biggie, is there are many more vendors in the software arena. The prices have come down, so affordable alternatives are easy to get. I don't need Photoshop. I can use Arcsoft which came bundled with my camera, or use The Gimp.
As the BSA pushes, the true price of software starts to show in not only the purchase price, but the liability. Then consumers start to make informed choices.
Seems like they're tricking the news services into running free scare-tactics PR for them.
Unfortunately for them, it is getting businesses into compliance. High risk high cost software is discontinued as a possible business buster as low risk software becomes good enough.
Missing reciepts for MS Office and Photoshop are high risk liabilities. Missing reciepts for The Gimp and Open Office is no problem.
I work in IT, and I pay for software that I use, if I can't afford it I find something else - its no excuse to copy it.
Do you have a copy of the reciept for every piece of software? That thumb drive that uses an encryption program... which is installed on the PC, where is the reciept for that $10 thumb drive? No reciept is a violation... Just ask the BSA or read the article. There is almost nobody in full compliance. My biggest violation is a lack of reciepts. All my copies of MS Office are in violation except the newest one simply because I haven't kept the reciepts.
These violations are being weeded out as I migrate to Ubuntu and dispose of the obsolete high liability software.
Over those years though I can't recount how many times a customer would need a windows re-install, or an office re-install, whatever. I'd ask for the original CD and they'd tell me "Don't you have a copy?"
At the same time, did you insist on a copy of the sales reciept?
The BSA is considering copies with certificates of authenticity as sketchy if they are missing the sales reciepts. At home, anything off warranty is missing the sales reciept. The news of the BSA audits is definately encouraging me to go 100% legit. I have a machine that came with Windows that was given to me brand new. I don't have a reciept. It is currently dual boot, but the next hard drive replacement won't include the bundled software.
The software license for some software is licensed for installation on only one PC. The license for some other software is licensed for any PC you or your family has, and may be freely copied and given away as long as you comply with the requirements of the license, such as providing a copy of the source code.
In case you didn't know, most of the hydro-electric power along the Columbia has large draws and large reservoirs - so this statement is still true even in summer. As a matter of fact, it's late summer and early fall where the draws are lowest, as glaciers stop melting as much.
True.. However we have had several years where the water was less than normal. At that time the AC use and irrigation diversion and pumping is above normal. I can remember being asked to not use Christmas lights in years past.
Look at the streamflow graph.. "Relative to present flows (dashed), the wetter winters and drier summers simulated by climate models are very likely to shift peak streamflow earlier in the year, increasing the risk of late-summer shortages. Though the Columbia system is only moderately sensitive to climate change, allocation conflicts and a cumbersome network of interlocking authorities restrict its ability to adapt, producing substantial vulnerability to these shortages."
The streamflow doesn't vary all that much overall. But the local population has changed.. Demand on the system is causing problems. Here is mention of the Seattle area, known for it's wet weather. "Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) experienced summer droughts and potential shortages in 1987, 1992, and 1998. Their responses to the three events illustrate institutional flexibility and learning. Summer 1987 began with full reservoirs, but a hot dry summer and a late return of autumn rains created a serious shortage in which water quality declined, inadequate flows were maintained for fish, and the main reservoir fell so low that an emergency pumping station had to be installed."
When the pond is low and the fall rains are late, the big pond is useless when it is empty.
The capacity of the ponds on the Columbia has grown little since the 1960's. In the meantime the population has more than doubled. "The region has seen several decades of population and economic growth nearly twice the national rate, with population nearly doubling since 1970. "
The population has doubled, but hydro capacity has not. The Pacific NW's 80% of the power from hydro will continue to shrink as demand continues to outgrow the fixed capacity of the hydro system.
Most electricity is shaped. When I was a Power Engineer at Tek-Cominco in Trail, BC, we shaped the power from one of the hydro dams with additional power from other sources - hydro however does not need much shaping, as you can kick in additional generators as demand increases.
Sorry for the late reply on this portion of your post. I have been looking for any training I could find on this "Most electricity is shaped" and drawing a blank. Other than some mentions of shaping policy and antenna design regarding beam shape, I have found nothing. Please provide some references.
I come from a family in the Hydro (Army Corps of Engineers) who later transitioned into distribution (Bonneville Power Administration). This concept of shaped electricity is unfamiliar to me. I understand generation, distribution and their issues of line twist, power factor correction, sources of reactive power, regulation problems from reactive power on long transmission lines, and even the DC Intertie. I know of the limitations of breakers and disconnects and problems when a system is upgraded and the breakers are not up to the new available fault current.
For your enjoyment, here is a disconnect opening hot. The load is a power factor correction reactor on a 500 KV transmission line. A set of SF6 (Sulfur Hexa-Florine) opens in series connected pairs. One failed to open. The other one of the pair flashed over while the disconnect opens. The breakers then re-close and the established arc on the disconnect heads skyward. Enjoy. The arc current is about 100 Amps.
The short version is that those outages where engineered to drive up the price of energy.
The long version is they were able to do it because there was not enough transmission capacity to import the power to replace the spike in demand from the heat wave and the shortage of online generation capacity.
Enrron was fighting price caps. It was done by selecting an upcoming period of increased demand as a time to shut down several plants for maintenance knowing the transmission infrastructure couldn't carry the load. They were hoping to use the shortage to force their hand. They pushed higher prices to ensure increased generation capacity. It fell apart when the books were examined. Somehow they didn't see that one coming.
look for the movie 'Enron That's the Hollywood version. They take some facts and then add scriptwriters to make a drams out of it. Often the facts are ignored to make a good drama even though the movie is based on a true story. The movie doesn't have time to educate the moviegoers into the VA limitations of transmission lines, the problems with high power factor loads such as air conditioning putting additional reactive power components on the line. (How many times was MegaVars mentioned?) I'll have to watch the movie just to see if they even mention the Volt-Ampers capacity of the line. I wonder if they simply mention Mega Watts and ignore Power Factor.
The delivery capacity is real. The GP was right. The parent missed some simple homework. Here is a couple items on the capacity issue.
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/001581.html "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees transmission, has been trying for years to prod power companies into forming new, multi-state regional grids with authority over planning and system reliability measures. But utilities in the Southeast and Northwest fear that a more wide-open system would allow their cheaper power to be siphoned away from their customers. They have made war on FERC's plans and some members of Congress are trying to block the commission's transmission initiative from going forward until 2005 or 2007."
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_california_bulks_provide/ "The Path 15 upgrade in California represents the first public-private partnership organized to improve a transmission system that has become seriously congested. Pointing out that Path 15 is not the only circuit that has suffered from congestion problems, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI; Palo Alto, California, U.S.), estimates that US$100 billion must be spent to upgrade the U.S. electricity grid."
"When the lights went out in Northern California in 2000-2001, a long-standing transmission bottleneck received national attention. A contributing factor to the crisis was a transmission constraint in Central California known as Path 15, where three 500-kV lines linking northern and southern California narrowed to two lines for 84 miles (135 km) through the Central Valley. The corridor's lack of transfer capacity hampered efforts to move available generation north from southern California and the desert southwest."
California may have enough Santa Anna winds to localy provide much wind power, but in the dog days of summer, the transmission system is not up to the task of importing sufficient power from out of state.
"By late 1998, load growth had become a significant factor for grid operators, who were prevented from moving power across the congested Path 15. The congestion hit hard in 2000 and 2001 when scarce generation forced the ISO to declare stage-three emergencies, indicating reserves were so low that rolling blackouts were imminent and resulting in several days of rotating outages of firm customer load. The emergencies extended into the winter with threats of outages continuing. Between Sept. 1, 1999, and Dec. 31, 2000, consumers spent an
When I was a Power Engineer at Tek-Cominco in Trail, BC, we shaped the power from one of the hydro dams with additional power from other sources - hydro however does not need much shaping, as you can kick in additional generators as demand increases.
Not true in the pacific NW. Often on the late summer and early fall, the pond levels are drawn way down. You can kick in additional generators as long as you have additional water to feed them.
On the second page of this report is the schedule of shutdowns due to low pond level for several dams.
The water needed to run extra generators isn't always there and non-hydro alternatives need to come online.
True, which is why most of the new hydro projects aren't "build more dams" but "make them more efficient". The generators can be significantly more efficient.
This is true, but it is a case of diminishing returns. Winn friction, not heat is the biggest loss in some hydro plants. When Ice Harbor dam was built, they had some Westinghouse and some General Electric generators. Using the same water turbins, it was easy to compare the output capacity of each. One was conservatively rated and easily met performance standards. The other barely met spec. Two generators with the same specifications can be as much as 10% different in performance.
Most of this type info is not public. Expansion by replacing generators is possible in some cases, but often the improvement margin is under 10%.
Also, did you know it takes petroleum to run a hydroelectric dam? With all the turbines, you need some pretty serious lubrication, which means you also need a bunch of huge pumps to push that oil around, and so you tend to have big ICEs running pumps. I know of projects attacking this problem, too -- one dam (I forget where) is apparently petroleum-neutral.
Reference please..
My dad was a power house operator on McNary dam and moved to Ice Harbor dam. When the powerhouse noise became a problem with his hearing and he moved to BPA as a substation operator. This big gas engine needed to pump tons of oil is news to me. I've never seen it even though I have had the cooks tour of the generator deck. They do have a gas back-up generator, but that is to provide control power to bring up the dam from a standstill. All the water gates are electric. Once the dam is operational, it isn't used. I've never seen it operate.
OK, I didn't realize that there was a minor hydro plant on the upper Mississippi. Thanks for filling me in.
It is a minor plant by comparisonl
http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3080,1-1-1_1875_4797_4014-16651-2_171_256-0,00.html "Power production capability (in-service dates): 12 Mw total Units 1,2, 3 and 4 (1954); Unit 5 (1955) The five units produce 2.4 Mw each." "The dam and falls create 49 feet of "head," or the height from the water surface to the turbines. The amount of electricity generated is determined by the amount of head and volume of water flow. "
This dam is less than 50 feet high and has a total of 5 generators.
How much power is this?
Even a few windmills scattered cross the Eastern side of the state out producte the Mighty Mississippi.
"The Stateline project straddles the Washington-Oregon border between Pasco and Walla Walla. Its first windmills began turning out power in July 2001. When complete later this decade, the wind farm's 400 turbines will be able to generate about 270 megawatts of power at peak capacity, with an average yield of about 100 megawatts." http://www.pnl.gov/news/2002/02-32.htm
For a comparison of just one of the hydro plants on the Columbia, the largest is the Grand Coulee; http://dams.org/kbase/studies/us/us_finalscope_sect2.htm "The Grand Coulee Dam is over five thousand feet long, stands 550 feet tall" "Grand Coulee Dam's hydroelectric generating facilities include four powerhouses" "with a total of 24 main generators, three station service generators and six pump/generators. These provide a combined generating capacity of 6,480 megawatts."
At 12 MW to 6,480 MW, it would take 540 dams of the same capacity of the entire generating capacity of the Mississippi river to equal the capacity of just Grand Coulee on the Columbia. We need to work on wind power near the windy city, not build dams.
There is no more water sources to feed any major hydro left in the USA. There are a few places where some very minor plants could be built, but they would be just that, minor.
In large portions of the US, we use this new-fangled thing called hydro-electric power,
The problem with hydro which is often overlooked is the fixed capacity of the system. Many are under the illusion that all you need to do is dam a river with a new dam and wow, free power. Often overlooked is that hydro is gravity power from falling water. That is water moving from one elevation to another. Many people have no clue as to why there is no major (or minor) hydro plants on the mighty Mississippi River. The sad fact is Chicago Illinois is at an elevation of only 700 feet. Just how many 80 foot drop dams are you going to put between the gulf and Iowa? If you put in a dam and let the water back-up.. how much land would be under water? The river is over 2,000 miles long, but most of the elevation is below 1,000 feet. There isn't much falling water in there. http://www.42explore2.com/missriv.htm
The river does have a system of Dams and Locks, but they are for Navigation, not power generation "Twenty-nine locks and dams on the Mississippi and eight on the Illinois replaced rapids and falls with a stairway of water for commercial and recreational traffic."
They connected it to one of the Great lakes with a canal. "The history of navigation on the Upper Mississippi River System goes back to the 1820's, when Congress authorized construction of a canal connecting Lake Michigan and the Illinois River and also authorized removal of snags and other obstructions in several reaches of the Mississippi River."
Remember that water flows downhill. Lake Michigan is at elevation 577 feet above sea level. The canal connects to the Illinois river which than empties into the Mississippi river. Let's face it, there just isn't a lot of elevation drop in the river to supoort power generation. There is barely enough elevation drop to drain a heavy rain.
Move on to the mighty Columbia, known for it's hydro. There are many dams in Oregon.
The Columbia River has the water from most of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It enters Oregon near the Idaho border. One of the major dams is the McNary dam near Hermiston Oregon. The dam has a nominal pool level of 340 feet above sea level. That dam dumps right into the pool of the next dam which has a pool elevation of 265 feet. This stair step drop from pool to pool continues all the way down to the Boniville dam near Hood river. From there the river has very little drop all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Any more dams along there would simply flood out the powerhouse of the next dam upstream. The last dam the bonivile dam has a pool elevation of 74 feet. It discharges into the lower river near Portland Oregon. The river in Portland is at a nominal elevation of about 9 feet above sea level. That is why there are no dams on the Columbia between Portland and Astoria on the coast 80 miles away. If you put in a dam and allowed the pool to fill, all of downtown Portland would be under water.
Hydro power is cheap to produce, but there just isn't any more places with a good head of water to feed the demand for hydro power. There are a few creeks which can support some small hydro, but these are backyard projects. The environmentalists and outdoors men also resist the damming of every little stream. The lower Deschutes river is known for it's white water rafting. Damming that up would be a major legal battle.
I've had good luck with the Simpleshare NAS. Take a look at the firmware revisions. Depending on what you want, you might not want the latest firmware. The new version is good at sorting photos, songs and such dropped into a special folder. This is nice. This version dropped the support for encrypted drives. Grrrr. The NAS is inexpensive, runs Linux, has 1 internal drive and has 2 USB ports which will do raid with a couple external drives.. Nice! I use the older software which supports drive encryption as I use it to back up my taxes and banking stuff. It supports both SMB and NFS, so it is very nice to both Windows (except Vista), Apple and Nix. The only downer is it doesn't yet support gigabit ethernet, so a large drive back-up on 10/100 could take a while. They come with a 3 year warranty except the discontinued 160 gig model.
I will not buy another CD as long as the music industry persists in these law suites. I will only buy music when I can buy it directly from the artist, without a music company in the middle and then only from artists that do not support suing their fans.
From there I learned which Christmas music to buy this year. As popular a Wizards in Winter was for annimated Christmas lights was last year, they are off the list.. TSO is on an RIAA label. On the other hand American Gramaphone is safe. I'll buy Mannheim Steamroller instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what you mean by capacity to move it around - doesn't electricity just loose strength over long distances unless the wires are made of pure gold or silver or somesuch?
Power transmission over long distance is a science. If you take a course in circuit fundamentals and learn Ohm's law, you can calculate the power lost in a transmission system. All wire has resistance.. True. Current in the wire converts some power to heat making the wire warmer.. True. How much is lost?? That is the time to do the math.
If you feed 120 volt power from the circuit breaker at home on a 12 guage wire to the far end of the house and lose 5 volts to the AC drawing 15 Amps, then the power into the wire is 120 X 15 or 1800 Watts (Volt-Ampers for those watching reactive power). At the AC we still have 15 Amps, but only 115 Volts for a power of 1725 watts. Along the way we lost 75 watts heating the wire. Transmission lines use high voltage so the volts drop is a much smaller portion of the percent drop. For example, if we use that same piece of wire and use the same 15 Amps, but hang it on insulators and feed it 220,000 volts, now the power in is 3,300,000 watts. The same 5 Volt drop is counted for a voltage out of 219,995 volts out at 15 amps for a power delivered of 3,299,925 watts for a loss of the same 75 watts. A loss of 75 watts on delivery of 3 MegaWatts isn't bad. Increasing the power over 20 Amps will still trip the breaker, overheat the wire, or start a fire. This is the capacity they talk about. The delivery is effecient as a percentage lost along the way.
The wire does have a maximum safe aperage that it can carry.
"When the SC upgrade program is completed some years into the 21:st century, the maximum current carrying capability over the Intertie AC lines has been raised from 1,800 Amperes to 2,700 Amperes.
"
Often the moving of power and it's loss along the way saves money by not requiring extra generation capacity near a location of high demand.
Central and Southern California for example has very little cheap power sources. The Columbia river on the other hand is a cheap source in the Spring an early Summer with the spring rains and summer snow melt. You can either sell the power, or simply let the water go over the spillway of the dam.
The alternative to provide power to Central and Southern California is to burn Natural gas. Your choice.. move cheap power and take the loss, or use expensive fuel to generate power locally.
Take a look at the Pacific Intertie. It includes several sets of High Tension AC transmission lines and the DC Intertie. Notice they all go from North to South.
http://www02.abb.com/GLOBAL/GAD/GAD02181.NSF/viewunid/C1256D71001E0037C1256B7D00349F7A/$file/PACIFIC+MAP+608x700.jpg
http://www.abb.com/cawp/gad02181/c3e8e6cc588aa8c3c1256d8800402284.aspx
Capacity is much like an outlet in your house. You can only get so much power from an outlet before you pop the circuit breaker or overheat the wire at the risk of causing a fire.
"The Intertie includes three AC lines and one HVDC line. Together, they comprise the largest single electricity transmission program in the United States. The Intertie is capable of transmitting up to 7,900 MW - 4,800 on AC and 3,100 on DC."
In the case of the Pacific Intertie, the limit is 7,900 MegaWatts.
If California has power plants shut down, then has a heatwave, the demand for power for air conditioning can exceed the ability of the lines to transfer power and you have either rolling blackouts, brownouts, or tripped circuits resulting in blackouts.
This is what happened when Enron was pushing for de-regulation. They had a regulated sell price for power. They had rising fuel prices. They pushed for de-regulation so they could set pric
In my other reply, I mentioned that Hollywood would have taken liberties with the truth to make a drama. I have never seen the film, but I know Hollywood.
Even after the Clintons left office, they kept the pressure on. When the Enron collapse seemed imminent in November 2001, Robert Rubin called a senior Treasury Department official in the Bush administration and asked him to discourage the bond-rating agencies from downgrading Enron's debt. The Bush Treasury Department refused to intervene on Enron's behalf, and Rubin backed down.
As to Franjo Tudjman, he must have done something right. In November 1996, just months after Brown's death and one week after President Clinton's re-election, Tudjman traveled not to The Hague to be tried as a war criminal, but to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to have his cancer treated.
Needless to say, none of this - Mozambique, Croatia, Ron Brown, the Hillary connection, the Rubin call, the Bush refusal - makes the Enron movie.
Meanwhile, Gibney chooses instead to implicate both Bush presidents and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a series of tortuous plots that defy common sense and basic chronology. Indeed, Gibney somehow blames the California energy debacle on George W. and Schwarzenegger even though W took office six months after it flared up and Schwarzenegger took office three years after that.
The spirit of Leni Riefenstahl is alive and well. Hooray for Hollywood!
Taken from;
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44355
Hollywood makes entertainment movies. If you want the facts, look elsewhere.
ALL electric and hybrid vehicles are priced way out of the reach of the typical american. Fact is the typical american makes less than $32,000.00 a year. The payment on a $24,000.00 car is insane and therefore not afforadble by the masses only by the few rich people. Most people can afford USED cars under $8000.00 some stretch to the $14,000.00 mark but not many.
Sorry for the late post. I bought a Prius. I thought lots about the costs involved and did some research. From what I found is what I based my choice on. Here are the important stuff.
1 Do you dirve a lot? If you don't, forget a Hybrid.
2 Do you trade in often? If you do, get a Hybrid.
3 Do you need reliability? If you do, get a Hybrid.
Short summary, if you want to spend less for transportation, drive a lot, and need reliability, get a Hybrid.
You're going, yea-riiight..
My hybrid has averaged 46 MPG since I bought it. My old car got 24 MPG. At $3.00/gallon of gas, 100,000 miles would use 4167 gallons in the old car for a cost of $12,500 and the Hybrid would use 2174 gallons for a cost of $6,522. You complain about high (Insane) car payments. Care to guess what gas prices will be in 5 years? I'll stick with a known car payment instead. The gas savings pays the extra cost.
In repairs, I have had none on the Hybrid in 100,000 miles. I replaced the starter tires at 18,000 miles and changed tires again at 80,000 miles. I checked the brakes at that last tire change. With regenerative braking, the pads have 80% remaining.
The car doesn't have a starter motor, bendix gear, starter solonoid or other starting system high failure items. The brushless motor/generator starts the car.
The car doesn't have alternator belts and bearings exposed to dirt for alternator failures. The Cabin battery is powered by a HV to 12 volt converter.
The only belt on the engine is for the AC. The new model has eliminated that belt as the AC is now a sealed electric compressor just like the old reliable refrigerator at home. This eliminates AC belts, clutches, leaking shaft seals, and hoses since the compressor is no longer mounted on the engine requiring flexible hoses.
Power steering is a linear electric motor. Eliminate power steering pumps, belts, fluids, and there goes another failure item.
Check out how the Prius transmission works. I believe it has a total of 7 moving parts. None of them are a friction part like a band or clutch. None of them are hydraulic such as a torque converter. None of the parts shift. This is true for all driving, including going from forward to reverse. No gears shift, no clutches or bands operate. It's a simple, reliable low parts count transmission with little to break, wear, or go out of adjustment.
Here is information and pictures of the Prius transmission. Not a bad piece of fine engineering for a simple CV transmission with no shifting parts.
http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmission
Can a transmission get any simpler and relaible than this?
In 100,000 miles, the premium I paid has paid back itself and then some. Due to the increased reliability, I expect to keep the car for another couple hundred thousand miles. Elimination of a car purchase or two helps offset the cost of the higher priced car adding to the total lowered cost.
Care to add up repair cost and gas savings in 300,000 miles? Now which is the expensive car? People are catching on. My wife's 02 van and my 02 Prius blue book prices are no where close to each other. My Prius can be sold today for only 2,400 less than I bought it for. If I do trad-ins, this is a good deal.
I bought my Prius to save money and it paid off. I need reliable transportation for my commute. I got it. I've done the cheap car thing for years. Keeping the beaters running and passing DEQ was always a pain. Not anymore.
The poor kid making minimum wage will only be able to
I'm not sure why you're connecting HD movies with HD drives.
Because HD content on a CableCard is a complete failure in most cases. Most HD content online that works is unprotected so everyone can play it. Protected content online is mostly broken and expensive and consumers go to other places for content that works. If it doesn't work, I don't consider it an option. HD DVDs can be played on a Vista machine with a HD DVD drive.
I think your problem lies with the protected HD content, and not with Vista.
The problem is with protected HD content on Vista. Who was on crack when they decided it's a good idea to make it a requirement to turn off the headphone jack on a laptop when playing a movie if the content creator wishes it? (one option is no analog output permitted. (This includes your non HDMI big screen TV monitor and analog surround THX certified stereo system.)
HD Content using the protect this at paranoid levels is going to be a marketplace failure when users can't watch it with headphones on their long flight. Expect lots of use of reduced resolution instead of blocked analog output. Blocked analog output is a customer service support line overload waiting to happen followed by a sales slump.
On many systems, old DVDs will outperform the new HD content due to forced reduced resolution on analog output devices. What good is a home theatre system if you have to buy it all brand new again to play HD movies? I'm happy with my display and sound system. I'll stick with regular DVDs because they are compatible with my analog stuff.
Content that doesn't work doesn't sell.
Now it's been 4 1/2 months so far to try and get the expense information.
I read the request. It is comprehensive and complete. Please post the response you get. I am interested in the other information you requested such as the setting of the clocks, (you should have asked for time zone for all and if DST was in effect) as well as all the information on how the data was collected, even to the naming of the text file. Great job. I hope they provide the information. I can't wait to add the Media Sentry IP range to my blocklist.
I am sure others will want to block the username they use, but I don't have any P-P installed except the BitTorent that came by default on Ubuntu. Trying to remove it is a problem because it is used for program updates.
And if Microsoft, with 90+ percent of the market, said, "No, if you want to get your movies into our market, you'll get rid of this annoying, overhead causing crap that our consumers hate."
By default, Microsoft should have left HD playback out of the OS. MS should have a HD/Content protection option for those who want to pay for a HD drive and use it with HD content. Build in HD DVD content protection into on OS that is loaded on a PC that doesn't even come with HD drives is a terrible mistake.
The ball would still be in the media companies lap. They can either sell stuff that will play on the PC's, or sell stuff that requires a crippling upgrade to the hardware.
Some people will want the upgrade and others will want to avoid the upgrade. Either way HD content is protected even if it doesn't sell.
I don't have that kind of cable so I haven't tried it but it seems like a fully analog method should work.
One of the complaints of Vista was the shutting down of other processes when protected media was playing up to and including completely disabling analog outputs. Reduced resolution includes the streaming web radio station playing in the background. Try playing a HD movie while listening to a webcast. Either the resolution of analog outputs is reduced or shut off. DRM often shuts down the unrelated unprotected stream. Enjoy. The analog hole works as long as the input is on another machine and the content creator permits some analog output.
I haven't tried that kind of cable either. I haven't wasted my time or money on protected content to test it. Regular DVDs are broken enough to be useful. The Kalidascope case has deemed that not all home media servers are illegal. Protected content is broken enough to simply be not be useful.
Most people haven't tried to play HD movies on their Vista Boxes, simply because they don't have a HD drive, or haven't spent the money on the higher cost movies. What you are used to with standard DVD playback is easy compared to using protected HD content. If you are not using encrypted protected output devices, HD will often play back in lower quality if at all on the analog monitor and speakers you have.
Expect the HD DVD you just bought to fail to play on your headphones on your laptop. It is in the spec and is what the complaints are all about. Even if you don't play HD content, the DRM is still a major source of processor cycles and short battery life. DRM is a big part of the long boot times and slower than XP performance.
MS missed the boat on not releasing a non-media edition. The non-media edition would have HD playback disabled, no DRM, and should have fast performance. The DRM/HD playback module should be an optional upgrade. Most of us don't use it and don't want it.
obsolete high liability software.
Any software that can drain the entire year's profits of a company in one shot is Obsolete and High Liability.
Any questions?
If you buy that whole naive business owner argument, well you may be just as naive.
I've worked at some small businesses where the collection of hardware wasn't documented. The software wasn't pirated, but would still fail a BSA audit. Often the software licensing (ClickWrap) is such to ensure you are out of compliance. The old machine dies, the software is re-installed on it's replacement in violation of the clickwrap, etc. We bought the software. We are prohibited of taking the part of a system and relocating it to it's replacement.
Often mentioned is the failure to scrub a passed down system. Even if you totaly wipe the old system, a hardware upgrade is forbidden by the software clickwrap. I have software that came bundled with a camera. I replaced the camera when it died. Does the software die because I no longer have kept the camera? (Arcsoft product)
It is easy to have software you bought complete with packaging and original disks and be in violation. This is WRONG.
As a side note I use True Crypt on my USB drives - its free, cross platform
That is a fantastic point. The BSA is taking credit for a reduction in the percent of software piracy from it's high in the 1990's to it's current low level. The total amount pirated is "Quadrupled" simply because there is more software.
The biggie, is there are many more vendors in the software arena. The prices have come down, so affordable alternatives are easy to get. I don't need Photoshop. I can use Arcsoft which came bundled with my camera, or use The Gimp.
As the BSA pushes, the true price of software starts to show in not only the purchase price, but the liability. Then consumers start to make informed choices.
Seems like they're tricking the news services into running free scare-tactics PR for them.
Unfortunately for them, it is getting businesses into compliance. High risk high cost software is discontinued as a possible business buster as low risk software becomes good enough.
Missing reciepts for MS Office and Photoshop are high risk liabilities. Missing reciepts for The Gimp and Open Office is no problem.
There are several high profile companies using open source.
http://www.aaxnet.com/design/linux2.html
http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/ Click on each catagory for the list of companies.
As of 2003-03-18, there are 557 entries in this list.
I work in IT, and I pay for software that I use, if I can't afford it I find something else - its no excuse to copy it.
Do you have a copy of the reciept for every piece of software? That thumb drive that uses an encryption program... which is installed on the PC, where is the reciept for that $10 thumb drive? No reciept is a violation... Just ask the BSA or read the article. There is almost nobody in full compliance. My biggest violation is a lack of reciepts. All my copies of MS Office are in violation except the newest one simply because I haven't kept the reciepts.
These violations are being weeded out as I migrate to Ubuntu and dispose of the obsolete high liability software.
Over those years though I can't recount how many times a customer would need a windows re-install, or an office re-install, whatever. I'd ask for the original CD and they'd tell me "Don't you have a copy?"
At the same time, did you insist on a copy of the sales reciept?
The BSA is considering copies with certificates of authenticity as sketchy if they are missing the sales reciepts. At home, anything off warranty is missing the sales reciept. The news of the BSA audits is definately encouraging me to go 100% legit. I have a machine that came with Windows that was given to me brand new. I don't have a reciept. It is currently dual boot, but the next hard drive replacement won't include the bundled software.
The software license for some software is licensed for installation on only one PC. The license for some other software is licensed for any PC you or your family has, and may be freely copied and given away as long as you comply with the requirements of the license, such as providing a copy of the source code.
Guess which software license I prefer.
In case you didn't know, most of the hydro-electric power along the Columbia has large draws and large reservoirs - so this statement is still true even in summer. As a matter of fact, it's late summer and early fall where the draws are lowest, as glaciers stop melting as much.
True.. However we have had several years where the water was less than normal. At that time the AC use and irrigation diversion and pumping is above normal. I can remember being asked to not use Christmas lights in years past.
http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overviewpnw.htm
Look at the streamflow graph..
"Relative to present flows (dashed), the wetter winters and drier summers simulated by climate models are very likely to shift peak streamflow earlier in the year, increasing the risk of late-summer shortages. Though the Columbia system is only moderately sensitive to climate change, allocation conflicts and a cumbersome network of interlocking authorities restrict its ability to adapt, producing substantial vulnerability to these shortages."
The streamflow doesn't vary all that much overall. But the local population has changed.. Demand on the system is causing problems. Here is mention of the Seattle area, known for it's wet weather.
"Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) experienced summer droughts and potential shortages in 1987, 1992, and 1998. Their responses to the three events illustrate institutional flexibility and learning. Summer 1987 began with full reservoirs, but a hot dry summer and a late return of autumn rains created a serious shortage in which water quality declined, inadequate flows were maintained for fish, and the main reservoir fell so low that an emergency pumping station had to be installed."
When the pond is low and the fall rains are late, the big pond is useless when it is empty.
The capacity of the ponds on the Columbia has grown little since the 1960's. In the meantime the population has more than doubled.
"The region has seen several decades of population and economic growth nearly twice the national rate, with population nearly doubling since 1970. "
The population has doubled, but hydro capacity has not. The Pacific NW's 80% of the power from hydro will continue to shrink as demand continues to outgrow the fixed capacity of the hydro system.
Most electricity is shaped. When I was a Power Engineer at Tek-Cominco in Trail, BC, we shaped the power from one of the hydro dams with additional power from other sources - hydro however does not need much shaping, as you can kick in additional generators as demand increases.
Sorry for the late reply on this portion of your post. I have been looking for any training I could find on this "Most electricity is shaped" and drawing a blank. Other than some mentions of shaping policy and antenna design regarding beam shape, I have found nothing. Please provide some references.
I come from a family in the Hydro (Army Corps of Engineers) who later transitioned into distribution (Bonneville Power Administration). This concept of shaped electricity is unfamiliar to me. I understand generation, distribution and their issues of line twist, power factor correction, sources of reactive power, regulation problems from reactive power on long transmission lines, and even the DC Intertie. I know of the limitations of breakers and disconnects and problems when a system is upgraded and the breakers are not up to the new available fault current.
For your enjoyment, here is a disconnect opening hot. The load is a power factor correction reactor on a 500 KV transmission line. A set of SF6 (Sulfur Hexa-Florine) opens in series connected pairs. One failed to open. The other one of the pair flashed over while the disconnect opens. The breakers then re-close and the established arc on the disconnect heads skyward. Enjoy. The arc current is about 100 Amps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEDqmVaamSY
The short version is that those outages where engineered to drive up the price of energy.
The long version is they were able to do it because there was not enough transmission capacity to import the power to replace the spike in demand from the heat wave and the shortage of online generation capacity.
Enrron was fighting price caps. It was done by selecting an upcoming period of increased demand as a time to shut down several plants for maintenance knowing the transmission infrastructure couldn't carry the load. They were hoping to use the shortage to force their hand. They pushed higher prices to ensure increased generation capacity. It fell apart when the books were examined. Somehow they didn't see that one coming.
look for the movie 'Enron
That's the Hollywood version. They take some facts and then add scriptwriters to make a drams out of it. Often the facts are ignored to make a good drama even though the movie is based on a true story. The movie doesn't have time to educate the moviegoers into the VA limitations of transmission lines, the problems with high power factor loads such as air conditioning putting additional reactive power components on the line. (How many times was MegaVars mentioned?) I'll have to watch the movie just to see if they even mention the Volt-Ampers capacity of the line. I wonder if they simply mention Mega Watts and ignore Power Factor.
The delivery capacity is real. The GP was right. The parent missed some simple homework. Here is a couple items on the capacity issue.
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/001581.html
"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees transmission, has been trying for years to prod power companies into forming new, multi-state regional grids with authority over planning and system reliability measures. But utilities in the Southeast and Northwest fear that a more wide-open system would allow their cheaper power to be siphoned away from their customers. They have made war on FERC's plans and some members of Congress are trying to block the commission's transmission initiative from going forward until 2005 or 2007."
http://tdworld.com/mag/power_california_bulks_provide/
"The Path 15 upgrade in California represents the first public-private partnership organized to improve a transmission system that has become seriously congested. Pointing out that Path 15 is not the only circuit that has suffered from congestion problems, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI; Palo Alto, California, U.S.), estimates that US$100 billion must be spent to upgrade the U.S. electricity grid."
"When the lights went out in Northern California in 2000-2001, a long-standing transmission bottleneck received national attention. A contributing factor to the crisis was a transmission constraint in Central California known as Path 15, where three 500-kV lines linking northern and southern California narrowed to two lines for 84 miles (135 km) through the Central Valley. The corridor's lack of transfer capacity hampered efforts to move available generation north from southern California and the desert southwest."
California may have enough Santa Anna winds to localy provide much wind power, but in the dog days of summer, the transmission system is not up to the task of importing sufficient power from out of state.
"By late 1998, load growth had become a significant factor for grid operators, who were prevented from moving power across the congested Path 15. The congestion hit hard in 2000 and 2001 when scarce generation forced the ISO to declare stage-three emergencies, indicating reserves were so low that rolling blackouts were imminent and resulting in several days of rotating outages of firm customer load. The emergencies extended into the winter with threats of outages continuing. Between Sept. 1, 1999, and Dec. 31, 2000, consumers spent an
When I was a Power Engineer at Tek-Cominco in Trail, BC, we shaped the power from one of the hydro dams with additional power from other sources - hydro however does not need much shaping, as you can kick in additional generators as demand increases.
Not true in the pacific NW. Often on the late summer and early fall, the pond levels are drawn way down. You can kick in additional generators as long as you have additional water to feed them.
On the second page of this report is the schedule of shutdowns due to low pond level for several dams.
The water needed to run extra generators isn't always there and non-hydro alternatives need to come online.
www.srbc.net/docs/Publication_242%20%20Conowingo_Mngt_Plan/ConowingoMngmtRpt_LR.pdf
True, which is why most of the new hydro projects aren't "build more dams" but "make them more efficient". The generators can be significantly more efficient.
This is true, but it is a case of diminishing returns. Winn friction, not heat is the biggest loss in some hydro plants. When Ice Harbor dam was built, they had some Westinghouse and some General Electric generators. Using the same water turbins, it was easy to compare the output capacity of each. One was conservatively rated and easily met performance standards. The other barely met spec. Two generators with the same specifications can be as much as 10% different in performance.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:OrJTCRPTx2cJ:www.nww.usace.army.mil/html/offices/pa/FactSheets/ICH2005.pdf+Ice+Harbor+dam+generators&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
Most of this type info is not public. Expansion by replacing generators is possible in some cases, but often the improvement margin is under 10%.
Also, did you know it takes petroleum to run a hydroelectric dam? With all the turbines, you need some pretty serious lubrication, which means you also need a bunch of huge pumps to push that oil around, and so you tend to have big ICEs running pumps. I know of projects attacking this problem, too -- one dam (I forget where) is apparently petroleum-neutral.
Reference please..
My dad was a power house operator on McNary dam and moved to Ice Harbor dam. When the powerhouse noise became a problem with his hearing and he moved to BPA as a substation operator. This big gas engine needed to pump tons of oil is news to me. I've never seen it even though I have had the cooks tour of the generator deck. They do have a gas back-up generator, but that is to provide control power to bring up the dam from a standstill. All the water gates are electric. Once the dam is operational, it isn't used. I've never seen it operate.
http://www.nww.usace.army.mil/html/pub/pertdata/ihpert.htm
http://www.ee.washington.edu/energy/apt/nsf/previous/powimage.htm
I've been on this deck and the one below.
http://www.ee.washington.edu/energy/apt/nsf/previous/mcnary2.jpg
For all you back to the future fans, take note.. McNary dam produces 1,200 Megawatts of power. (Hint, convert to GigaWatts)
OK, I didn't realize that there was a minor hydro plant on the upper Mississippi. Thanks for filling me in.
It is a minor plant by comparisonl
http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3080,1-1-1_1875_4797_4014-16651-2_171_256-0,00.html
"Power production capability (in-service dates): 12 Mw total
Units 1,2, 3 and 4 (1954); Unit 5 (1955)
The five units produce 2.4 Mw each."
"The dam and falls create 49 feet of "head," or the height from the water surface to the turbines. The amount of electricity generated is determined by the amount of head and volume of water flow. "
This dam is less than 50 feet high and has a total of 5 generators.
How much power is this?
Even a few windmills scattered cross the Eastern side of the state out producte the Mighty Mississippi.
"The Stateline project straddles the Washington-Oregon border between Pasco and Walla Walla. Its first windmills began turning out power in July 2001. When complete later this decade, the wind farm's 400 turbines will be able to generate about 270 megawatts of power at peak capacity, with an average yield of about 100 megawatts."
http://www.pnl.gov/news/2002/02-32.htm
For a comparison of just one of the hydro plants on the Columbia, the largest is the Grand Coulee;
http://dams.org/kbase/studies/us/us_finalscope_sect2.htm
"The Grand Coulee Dam is over five thousand feet long, stands 550 feet tall"
"Grand Coulee Dam's hydroelectric generating facilities include four powerhouses"
"with a total of 24 main generators, three station service generators and six pump/generators. These provide a combined generating capacity of 6,480 megawatts."
At 12 MW to 6,480 MW, it would take 540 dams of the same capacity of the entire generating capacity of the Mississippi river to equal the capacity of just Grand Coulee on the Columbia. We need to work on wind power near the windy city, not build dams.
There is no more water sources to feed any major hydro left in the USA. There are a few places where some very minor plants could be built, but they would be just that, minor.
In large portions of the US, we use this new-fangled thing called hydro-electric power,
The problem with hydro which is often overlooked is the fixed capacity of the system. Many are under the illusion that all you need to do is dam a river with a new dam and wow, free power. Often overlooked is that hydro is gravity power from falling water. That is water moving from one elevation to another. Many people have no clue as to why there is no major (or minor) hydro plants on the mighty Mississippi River. The sad fact is Chicago Illinois is at an elevation of only 700 feet. Just how many 80 foot drop dams are you going to put between the gulf and Iowa? If you put in a dam and let the water back-up.. how much land would be under water? The river is over 2,000 miles long, but most of the elevation is below 1,000 feet. There isn't much falling water in there.
http://www.42explore2.com/missriv.htm
The river does have a system of Dams and Locks, but they are for Navigation, not power generation
"Twenty-nine locks and dams on the Mississippi and eight on the Illinois replaced rapids and falls with a stairway of water for commercial and recreational traffic."
They connected it to one of the Great lakes with a canal.
"The history of navigation on the Upper Mississippi River System goes back to the 1820's, when Congress authorized construction of a canal connecting Lake Michigan and the Illinois River and also authorized removal of snags and other obstructions in several reaches of the Mississippi River."
Remember that water flows downhill. Lake Michigan is at elevation 577 feet above sea level. The canal connects to the Illinois river which than empties into the Mississippi river. Let's face it, there just isn't a lot of elevation drop in the river to supoort power generation. There is barely enough elevation drop to drain a heavy rain.
Here is some stats on a couple of the dams. Both of them have a drop of less than 20 feet. These are not suited for commercial power generation.
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA105334
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA104703
Move on to the mighty Columbia, known for it's hydro. There are many dams in Oregon.
The Columbia River has the water from most of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It enters Oregon near the Idaho border. One of the major dams is the McNary dam near Hermiston Oregon. The dam has a nominal pool level of 340 feet above sea level. That dam dumps right into the pool of the next dam which has a pool elevation of 265 feet. This stair step drop from pool to pool continues all the way down to the Boniville dam near Hood river. From there the river has very little drop all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Any more dams along there would simply flood out the powerhouse of the next dam upstream. The last dam the bonivile dam has a pool elevation of 74 feet. It discharges into the lower river near Portland Oregon. The river in Portland is at a nominal elevation of about 9 feet above sea level. That is why there are no dams on the Columbia between Portland and Astoria on the coast 80 miles away. If you put in a dam and allowed the pool to fill, all of downtown Portland would be under water.
Hydro power is cheap to produce, but there just isn't any more places with a good head of water to feed the demand for hydro power. There are a few creeks which can support some small hydro, but these are backyard projects. The environmentalists and outdoors men also resist the damming of every little stream. The lower Deschutes river is known for it's white water rafting. Damming that up would be a major legal battle.
I've had good luck with the Simpleshare NAS. Take a look at the firmware revisions. Depending on what you want, you might not want the latest firmware. The new version is good at sorting photos, songs and such dropped into a special folder. This is nice. This version dropped the support for encrypted drives. Grrrr. The NAS is inexpensive, runs Linux, has 1 internal drive and has 2 USB ports which will do raid with a couple external drives.. Nice! I use the older software which supports drive encryption as I use it to back up my taxes and banking stuff. It supports both SMB and NFS, so it is very nice to both Windows (except Vista), Apple and Nix. The only downer is it doesn't yet support gigabit ethernet, so a large drive back-up on 10/100 could take a while. They come with a 3 year warranty except the discontinued 160 gig model.
Erh... who'd click no?
Someone who has pop-ups enabled and don't read them but just look for the close or no thanks button to get rid of it.
Wonder where the professional level processors are.
You mean these..
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1886368.html
Any post that starts off "I hate the RIAA as much as the rest of you, but..." is usually highly suspect.
I also happened to notice he is a foe of yours. This is a good sign that he is in dissagreement with what you are doing. Keep up the good work.
I will not buy another CD as long as the music industry persists in these law suites. I will only buy music when I can buy it directly from the artist, without a music company in the middle and then only from artists that do not support suing their fans.
May I recommend;
http://www.riaaradar.com/
From there I learned which Christmas music to buy this year. As popular a Wizards in Winter was for annimated Christmas lights was last year, they are off the list.. TSO is on an RIAA label. On the other hand American Gramaphone is safe. I'll buy Mannheim Steamroller instead.