Solar energy initiative for Gore, WF and Belleayre

Coach Z wrote

There is a vast global conspiracy but it ain't right wing.

Please tell us what the "vast global conspiracy" entails, what their goals are, and how they're going to achieve them.

Extra credit for saying Al Gore is rich and flies around in jets so all of his arguments against global warming are moot.

as per WNYT's web site , Jiminy Peak is going solar. the mnt is claiming to offset 90% of its enegy needs from solar and the wind turbine they have. this got me thinking about gore and wind energy. the top of showcase near the lodge seems like an ideal spot for a wind turbine.

When the subsidies were started we were a much bigger player. But government programs are slow to wind down even after the benefit is significantly reduced.

I don't view this as a conspiracy. The government subsidizes all sorts of things including ski mountains, roads, education, home mortgages ....

tom

subsidy circle:

Govt gives (subsidizes) a ski mountain, a business or anything else, including not taxing for x years. $3M for a lift as example.    Money is fungible.  The mountain or business then go green and use 100% solar/wind energy and pay an offset.  Gov't also subsidizes the solar/wind manufacturer.  The CO2 energy producer offset is paid/made up by higher prices somewhere.  The new green mountain willingly pays 12c kwt vs 8c kwt---4c is the offset. Because money is fungible, its the gov't that is paying the offset and the people or customers are paying the higher real costs of the lift.      Or the gov't subsizies and then resubsizizes while 20T in real debt with major entitlement programs having a real end date.     We are happy that Gore gets a new lift and cheep electric and really don't care that our social security check is delayed a few more years or is reduced.    Hey, that's 10-20 years away and we "hope" that will get resolved.  But know it won't.    

I have $500 in my pocket for rent.    It is due tomorrow.   I want to go skiing.    I ask you for $100 to go skiing.  You laugh.   I regroup and take $100 from rent and put it in my left pocket.    I tell you I have $400 in rent money and need $100.  You give me the cash which I add to my rent and pay my landlord.   Now I reach in my left pocket and go skiing.   NYS is now giving corporations tax free status for x years to move to NYS.  New money for management's bonuses, let's move.      

There's a lot of speculation in this thread, and not much real information about the ORDA/Borrega deal.  I've looked around and I can't find much about elsewhere either.

From what little I can find, it looks like a good deal for the ORDA  IF it's true there was no up front money and the annual savings for Gore are 20% of the electricity budget.  That's an impressive number to me, even if 20% applies only to the energy supply, and not the delivery charges.  ORDA also keeps the REC (renewable energy credit) which they could sell, but I think it's becoming a common marketing strategy for ski areas to say they are using renewables.  If they sell the REC, they can't say they are using solar in their marketing materials.

NY also has a requirement under the federal Clean Power Plan to reduce its electric system carbon emissions by 9%.  That's going to take a lot of renewables, and this will contribute to that.  You should expect to see more of these kinds of deals in the net few years.  I know of 3 or 4 others that are going on right now.
 
The Kmart poop plant is kind of a joke.  The Vermont electric system is already 100% carbon free, so it's not clear what the environmental benefits are.  

 

So you are saying that the Kmart poop plant is um.........bull shit?

Cute RA.

But really, farmer's be makin some good coin from cow chips-to-electricity. Why isn't this catching on more ? There are mega size cow, pig, chicken farms around, many fight a constant battle with the locals over the huge stench they create. Turning poo to power eliminates the odor. Besides making money, it greatly reduces methane releases which is said to cause 20x the greenhouse effect as CO2. Plus the left over can still be used for fertilizer and even bedding for Bessie.

So, next obvious ? is.......

Anybody ?

No ?

Nobody ?

Huh, Ok, here it is.....

What about human Poo ? Can it be used to generate electricity ? Don't we spend millions treating it already ? Why not turn that around and make millions PLUS generate some green electricity from a renewable, nonfossil fuel ? Doesn't every town have a large, renewable supply of poo ? Farmers make money off of their cow poo, could cities make large coin off of their chit ?

Sometimes you gotta stop following the herd and think outside the pile.

Snowballs - Power to the poopers is just not sexy. We need to do this.

Everyone is missing the big picture.  Hydro power is the solution to ALL our problems.  All we need to do is dam the Raquette and Moose rivers and flood a couple of million acres west of the High Peaks. That will make enough electricity to replace all the dirty power AND provide a water source for natural snow at Gore and Whiteface!  Problem solved.  

PeeTex wrote

Snowballs - Power to the poopers is just not sexy. We need to do this.

 Exactly. The water at/in sewage treatment plants shouldn't be an issue either. Some towns have been viably removing the water and returning it to the water cycle for human consumption. Bill Gates recently came out with another system to remove the water so it can be used for consumption. What is left is mostly " dry " poo that then could be utilized to make power much like the farmers do.

PT, check this out.....

 Existing Hydro power is VASTLY under utilized. Observe a hydro plant and you will see huge, extremely powerful streams of water shooting out of them - 24/7s 365.  Foolishly, at that point the horsepower is lost. IMO, those ponies should remain harnessed in pipes that travel down stream until sufficient " head " regained to turn turbines. Water is incompressible so basically it exits the power plant with " almost " as much power as it enters the plants. As such, not much more head is needed to regain pressure. You can observe this at the bottom of hydro dam plants where the water that exits is absolutely friggin roaring with huge horsepower.

 Once the river is harnessed, those ponies should remain harnessed all the way to the sea were possible turning many generators along the way.

Huge net gains could be made this way at " pumped storage " hydro facilities. These facilities use electricity at night when demand is low to pump water up a mtn to a man made storage lake. Then it is released daytime when demand is high. The idea was it enables a hydro reservoir to make more power when demand is high and eliminates the need to build other plants. Sounds good on paper BUT,,,,,

Pumped storage facilities use more power than they produced. That's right. This is self admitted by the operators. Sounds dumb, eh ? Wasteful says I.

So, if the pumped part were eliminated with pipes connected to run downstream a distance the net gain of power production would be huge. Even one stage would be huge. Many stages.....

Kinzua dam in north Pennsylvania is a good example. It's a mere 200' ftish high. Not many miles are needed to be traveled to regain the FULL 200' head. BUT not all of the 200' would need to be regained to turn turbines. It's a long way from Kinzua to New Orleans. Many turbines could be turned along that way all from one dam.

There are many pumped storage facilities around that could go from " using more power than they produce " to making mega power. Indeed non-pumped storage hydro dams could also turn turbines downstream.

Once hydro ponies are harnessed, they should be made to run all the way to the sea, 24/7s 365. Clean, never ending, very cheap, not effected by night or lack of wind, no deadly radiation to store for eternity.

This PSA is brought to you by...... SNOWBALLS!

@snowballs, you are right but you physics is a little whack. Hydropower is generated not by changing the pressure of the water but rather by dropping the weight of the water by the difference between the elevation of the outlet and the water level behind the dam. Since water is incompressible it contains no energy due to compression as energy or work is force times distance and although you can apply tremendous pressure, the volume does not change. It's the difference between a spring and a brick. It is the elevation of the water that stores the energy.

PeeTex wrote

 It is the elevation of the water that stores the energy.

Uh, exactly. It is that elevation that would drive it all. Pressure is merely a word to express the horsepower generated by elevation. Pressure against the turbine blades turns them.

No whacking involved, just head.

Multil level hydro plants without "wasting'' the water seems quite logical......


As for human poop.    A firm down south began buying the sludge and selling it as lawn fertilizer...it was great.   Soon as the environmentalists got involved, of all people, it ended.     "could be heavy metals or drugs in it"   Even though testing found none or permissible limits.      Then I ask, why not solve that issue, rather than throw the poo out, with the bath water.          

Human poo for fertilizer may be problematic, IDK. Viruses, diseases etc. FWIW, cow poo after being processed through poo power plants is said to be "clean " and they use it for bedding for cows, fertilizer.

Multi level hydro plants (excellent phrasing I:)skiing!) would be a very huge gain, especially for pumped storage facilities. Take Kinzua dam. It and all pumped storage facilities use more energy than they produce by virtue of pumping water UP for storage. If you no longer need pumped storage, it would go from a energy loss to a positive gain 24/7/365 - year after year after year after year.... That alone would be huge. Add the second/third/fourth turbine facility downstream and you have WOO HOO ! Clean, green, renewable and relatively very cheap power !

Snowballs wrote

Human poo for fertilizer may be problematic, IDK. Viruses, diseases etc. FWIW, cow poo after being processed through poo power plants is said to be "clean " and they use it for bedding for cows, fertilizer.

Multi level hydro plants (excellent phrasing I:)skiing!) would be a very huge gain, especially for pumped storage facilities. Take Kinzua dam. It and all pumped storage facilities use more energy than they produce by virtue of pumping water UP for storage. If you no longer need pumped storage, it would go from a energy loss to a positive gain 24/7/365 - year after year after year after year.... That alone would be huge. Add the second/third/fourth turbine facility downstream and you have WOO HOO ! Clean, green, renewable and relatively very cheap power !

And you don't think cow, pig & chicken poop don't carry diseases? I'm for using all poop until we are pooped out. Multi level hydro is good as long as - as snowballs points out, you've got enough head and usually we can never get enough head.

I:)skiing wrote

Multil level hydro plants without "wasting'' the water seems quite logical......

Exactly my point.  Dam the entire river with a series of high dams to capture all the energy and create pondage for a water source for God's snow machine.  Make the western Adirondacks the Saudi Arabia of hydro power and the High Peaks the  Wasatch of the East. Win-win.
MM

Snowballs wrote

But really, farmer's be makin some good coin from cow chips-to-electricity. Why isn't this catching on more ?

Yesterday I got an e-mail from the NY Cow Power Coalition, so I guess that's a real thing now.  

MM

Snowballs wrote

 Existing Hydro power is VASTLY under utilized. Observe a hydro plant and you will see huge, extremely powerful streams of water shooting out of them - 24/7s 365.  

No. at least not in NY.  The only time water is spilled is when there is no load to take the power.

Snowballs wrote

Huge net gains could be made this way at " pumped storage " hydro facilities. These facilities use electricity at night when demand is low to pump water up a mtn to a man made storage lake. Then it is released daytime when demand is high. The idea was it enables a hydro reservoir to make more power when demand is high and eliminates the need to build other plants. Sounds good on paper BUT,,,,,

Pumped storage facilities use more power than they produced. That's right. This is self admitted by the operators. Sounds dumb, eh ? Wasteful says I.

No. Pumped storage creates value by using cheap electricity to make expensive electricity.  In NY, overnight prices can be as low as 2 cents/kWh, but peak prices can be as high $1 or more.  The amount of carbon in electricity is approximately proportional to the price (because the price depends on the amount of fuel), so using pumped storage takes more carbon out of the system in peak hours than it uses in low load hours.  It's not wasteful at all.

The truth is that the hydro resource in NY is fully developed, and no one will allow even one new dam, or even worse, replacing rivers with pipes.  But I'm still dreaming of giant reservoirs to cover the High Peaks in pow.

MM

This makes no sense pricing is not cost.  Pricing is lower during the night because demand is low.  Supply is actually higher during the day as solar is on line and its windier during the day.  Mixing supply and demand up.

Pumping water up hill for hydro may make a business money due to the pricing but it is not green.  There are many inefficiencies in the system such as the motor losses in the pump, losses in the generator, transmission losses, etc that end up costing more energy than you create when the water goes back down hill.

Coach Z wrote

This makes no sense pricing is not cost.  Pricing is lower during the night because demand is low.  Supply is actually higher during the day as solar is on line and its windier during the day.  Mixing supply and demand up.

Pumping water up hill for hydro may make a business money due to the pricing but it is not green.  There are many inefficiencies in the system such as the motor losses in the pump, losses in the generator, transmission losses, etc that end up costing more energy than you create when the water goes back down hill.

In NY, the hourly price is equal to price of the most costly generator that needs to run to meet the load.  That works out to be the generator that uses the most fuel.  Price is approximately proportional to the fuel use of the generator that sets the price.  As I'm writing this, the wholesale price in the ADKs is less than 2 cents/kWh, which means that Canadian hydro is probably setting the price.

Pumped storage makes more hydro available in peak hours, when the least thermally efficient generators are running, but uses power when the system is mostly imported hydro and nuclear.  The energy used in mostly carbon free, the energy from pumped storage on peak would need to be replaced by the most thermally inefficient and costly units. It makes the overall system more thermally efficient, and reduces the total amount of fuel used and carbon emitted.

The electric system has only a limited capacity to accept wind and solar power.  To use more solar, you need enough load to accept the power whenever solar is generating and you need enough conventional generators or storage to make up the loss of solar power when the odd summer shower takes it out. (Google "duck curve")  More pumped storage works on both ends of that problem, and increases the system's capacity to use solar.  It doesn't matter that there are inefficiencies and losses in the process.  There are inefficiencies and losses in every system.  That's the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

It's not really feasible to build more hydro or pumped storage in NY, but wind/solar combined with pumped storage might be huge in the Pacific Northwest or eastern Canada.

MM