Colorado Fires: Xcel Energy Will Start Rolling Electric Outages To Preserve Natural Gas Supply

[NNadir]

Xcel Energy Will Start Rolling Electric Outages In Several Counties To Preserve Natural Gas Supply

The Marshall Fire and Middle Fork Fire currently burning in Boulder County has impacted Xcel’s natural gas infrastructure that supports systems in Summit and Grand Counties. Periodic electric outages in Summit, Grand, Lake, Eagle, Saguache, Rio Grande, and Alamosa Counties can be expected for roughly eight hours. The outages are planned to last roughly 60 minutes.

Xcel customers in Summit and Grand Counties are being asked to conserve natural gas in an attempt to keep system reliability steady through the mountains. Law enforcement throughout the mountains are reminding people that these outages are planned and are asking them not to call 911.

It's a little timely for me, as when my son asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said I wanted my friend Meredith Angwin's book Shorting the Grid, the Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid. (I only know Meredith on line and via email; I got to know her when she was trying to save the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant from willful destruction as well as from interactions on a now defunct energy related website.)

This sort of thing is the tip of the iceberg. Our infrastructure, including the infrastructure responsible for climate change, is not ready for extreme weather, precisely at the time that some people are calling to make electricity availability a function of weather, an effort that has done absolutely nothing to address climate change even with the expenditures of trillions of dollars.

The event in Colorado yesterday is an extreme weather event, drought and unprecedented winds, and we are going to see more and more and more of the same.

One measure of poverty is a lack of access to reliable electricity.

[lapfog_1]

1. chances are very good that the "grid"

was responsible for the Marshall fire.

downed power lines in wind storm.

Already proven to be a cause of some of the worst fires in California.

[NNadir]

2. True. In California, those wires were added to connect thousands of square miles of...

...unreliable systems that work when the wind is blowing too.

There, as well in Colorado, the wind drives fires.

[lapfog_1]

3. there are videos of the wind whipping the power lines

in colorado and setting up what looked like harmonic oscillations... proving once again that even something as thin as a power line is subject to the forces of the wind.

[NNadir]

4. Ralph Towner and Jan Garbarek once recorded an album using the Aeolian Harp.

It was one of the first, the second actually, Ralph Towner album I owned.

JAN GARBAREK: DIS (ECM 1093)

They set the "harp" on the coast of Norway, and the wind set up harmonic oscillations in the strings, which were thinner and more taut than power lines. Towner chose which strings to damp.

[Finishline42]

5. Towner and Garbarek???

What a surprise. Garbarek is at the top of my favorite sax players. 'Dansere' and 'In Praise of Dreams' are two of my favs.

Happy New Year to you and yours...

Edited to add - big fan of Oregon as well.

[Finishline42]

6. Interesting spin there...

Ever notice the power lines that connect any power plant (including your favorite type - nuclear) to the grid? Where do they go? To a main distribution point for the grid. A solar or wind farm does the same.

I'm sure most of the power lines in Calif or Colorado connect baseline power plants to customers because most of their power comes from coal, gas or nuclear plants.

[NNadir]

7. It's not spin; it's something called "reality."

Wind turbines are spread over once virgin wilderness, and take up thousands of square miles. These lines from thousands of wind turbines, set in destroyed wilderness, serve the CAISO grid randomly and unreliably, requiring addition wires to redundant systems.

It should be obvious to anyone who can think, that connecting tiny unreliable plants, which what wind turbines are, together over thousands of square miles takes more wire than connecting a single power plant like the Diablo Canyon plant located on a physical foot print of 12 acres.

If one can't think through something as simple as this, one is clueless and probably beyond help.

If one looks at the CAISO grid information on line over a period of weeks and months, as I do, which one would only do if one gives a shit as opposed to waving one's hands insipidly, one could count the huge number of 5 minute periods that the single nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon is producing more power than all of the wind turbines in the State.

Alternatively, all the wind turbines in California, not to mention all the solar installations produce power when not needed, thus unnecessarily impacting grid stability as well as the economics of reliable plants.

I note that the power lines from say the trashed wilderness in the Tehachapi "Wind Resource Area" which represents 800 square miles laced with access roads, is in area of grass lands and other flammable vegetation. The power lines contain power only when the wind is blowing.

As for their fire potential in extreme droughts, I refer to this text from the Environmental Impact Statement released for this unreliable garbage in 2016, here: Alta East Wind Project Eagle Conservation Plan

It contains the following text:

The North Sky River project consists of approximately 162 MW of wind energy generation capacity with 100 turbines installed in 2012. It is located 10.5 miles north of Alta East within topography substantially more rugged. Vegetation is typified by pinyon-juniper woodland and oak woodland on the west side of the project and grasslands and chaparral scrub on the east side of the project. The North Sky River environmental documents contain information on numerous sightings of golden eagles and golden eagle nests (Kern County 2012; Erickson et al. 2011; CH2M HILL 2011).

It's not like the people calling for this crap give a shit about the environment, wilderness, ecosystems or anything else, and certainly not about fire safety. Pinyon-Juniper, chaparral scrub, and grasslands light up like anything, as grasslands did in Boulder County two days ago, when cooked by droughts driven by the fact that half a century of bullshit talk about wind energy has done zero to address climate change.

Indeed, some asshole here once suggested that similar lines be run from Wyoming to California, making the unacceptable external cost of so called "renewable energy" even higher. Let's burn the shit out of the States of California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming by lacing them with copper wires to serve systems that inherently require more redundant wires to serve redundant power plants.

None of this crap has done anything to address climate change. The wind industry is not about climate change and never was. It's about ignorance, wishful thinking, and irrational fear of nuclear energy.

It never ceases to amaze me that the people hyping this disaster think I'm stupid and uninformed, even though the quality of their thinking is obviously unimpressive.

We're finished the year at about 417.5 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured at Mauna Loa this week, blowing our way to better than 422 ppm by April or May of 2022.

I congratulate all anti-nukes on their big win.

Play stupid games; win stupid prizes.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

[Finishline42]

8. What difference is there between

this station and one at any centralized power plant?

The Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project 500kV eastern transition station in Chino Hills, California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Renewable_Transmission_Project

It's not like there are above ground power cables from each windmill to the transition station, they are buried at every windfarm I've seen. Same for solar farms.

I think HVDC lines are buried by the way.

[Finishline42]

9. really?

not to mention all the solar installations produce power when not needed, thus unnecessarily impacting grid stability as well as the economics of reliable plants.

Doesn't solar typically correspond to A/C use?

And by 'the economics of reliable plants' do you mean that they produce electricity for less cost? Were you also against the internet for what it has done to newspapers?