Wind Power's Health Hazards

Wind turbine syndrome might just seem like a collection of unrelated health complaints to the untrained eye, but untrained eye is also a symptom of wind turbine syndrome. Stephen Colbert reports:

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Big Idea to Solve Energy Problem

Barney & Clyde solve the energy problem with a Big Idea (click to make Bigger):

Gas Bubble: Coal Market Share for U.S. Electricity Generation Declines from 50% to 43% in 2 Years

The good news: Electricity generation from coal is declining sharply in the U.S., from 50% 2 years ago to 43% today.

The bad news: The reason for the drop is that there is a "virtually infinite" supply of natural gas. The lowest gas prices in at least a decade ($2.34 Friday morning) are making coal-fired power plants uneconomical. Out of 350 gigawatts of coal capacity, roughly 50 gigawatts are at risk for replacement by cheap gas.

Kenneth Hersh, NGP Energy Capital Management Co. CEO was interviewed on CNBC Friday morning (January 20):

Breaking News: Keystone Pipeline Rejected

CNBC has confirmed within the past hour that the Obama administration will reject the application for the TransCanada Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. Energy prices are generally unaffected:


Other reports:
NPR: Reports: Obama Administration Will Reject Keystone Pipeline Proposal
NY Times: State Dept. to Put Pipeline on Hold, Officials Say
BBC: Keystone XL oil pipeline plan 'to be rejected'
Politico: Keystone XL pipeline to be rejected by Obama administration

The Quest for Energy: Good News and Bad News

The good news: There's plenty of oil.
The bad news: We're going to burn it all.
Author Daniel Yergin discusses his book The Quest on the PBS News Hour; unlike in some previous interviews, the subject of climate is actually raised:

Watch Author Daniel Yergin on U.S. Need for a 'Diversified Energy Portfolio' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Big Wind Ducks the Issue

Aasif Mandvi is on the case of wind turbines vs. ducks (Daily Show, Aug. 2) :

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Wind Power Found Dangerous

From The Onion:


In The Know: Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

Energy Market Shrugs Off NOAA's Above-Normal 2011 Hurricane Season Outlook

May 20 Update: Dr. Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seaosnal hurricane forecaster, conducted an online chat at USA Today's Science Fair blog this afernoon.

Original post:
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center announced its 2011 Atlantic hurricane season outlook at 11:30 this morning, calling for an above-normal level of activity:

• 12 to 18 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which:
• 6 to 10 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including:
• 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher)

The major factors affecting the tropical season include:

• Reduced wind shear and lower surface pressure over the tropical Atlantic
• Higher pressure in the upper atmosphere over the eastern Atlantic
• Warmer Atlantic sea surface temperatures
• Stronger African easterly jet stream

As this video from CNBC at 11:45 shows, Mr. Market couldn't care less. "Til it happens, we're just going to play it by ear", said a veteran trader.



If you think the market mechanism is a rational way to set energy policy, have I got a deal for you:

Note that the horizontal scale covers just a little over 2 and a half hours. The offering price for LinkedIn was $45. This is for a company which has no earnings and revenues which are about 1/30 of the IPO offering price.

Update: From someone who should know a thing or two about Internet bubbles, Henry Blodgett, see:
CONGRATULATIONS, LINKEDIN! You Just Got Screwed Out Of $130 Million

Massive Wildfires in Alberta Impact Oil Production

CNBC reported this morning (click image to view video) that massive wildfires in Alberta, Canada, fueled by high winds and very dry conditions, have forced some oil operations in the province to shut down. The fires, which at the peak numbered over 100, have burned entire towns to the ground. The town of Slave Lake, population 7000, has been one-third destroyed, with all residents evacuated.

The government reported on Wednesday that 87 fires were still burning, with 23 out of control, including the one in Slave Lake.

Slave Lake temperatures in the past week have been well above the May average of 9.7°C. The May total precipitation to date of 4.5 mm. is barely over 10% of the normal monthly total of 40.9 mm.; no more than 1 mm. has fallen on any individual day this month.

More video (click to play) from AP, via Google News:



More videos and images at Alberta News.

Image to right above (click to enlarge): May 2011 daily average temperature at Slave Lake, Alberta, Canada, from Weather Office/Environment Canada

Energy Policy By Wishful Thinking

From today's Zits:

Happy Anniversary, BP Oil Disaster!

This morning's Diane Rehm Show marked the one-year anniversary tomorrow of the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (audio here). Guests were:

• Joel Achenbach: reporter, The Washington Post; writer for Achenblog; author of "A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher."
• Frances Beinecke: president, Natural Resources Defense Council; former member of the National Oil Spill Commission.
• Randall Luthi: president of the National Ocean Industries Association and former director of the Minerals Management Service.

Luthi repeatedly praised the beneficial effects of the disaster as a learning experience for the industry. Investigative reporter Greg Palast suggests the industry may be somewhat learning impaired:
BP's Secret Deepwater Blowout

Pepco Failometer Update: 2778

Yes, failure fans, the wind has increased to over 20 mph, and your Baghdad Dys-Peptico power system has gone into failure mode. Currently there are 83 outages affecting 2778 customers.

Pepco Failometer Index: 11,000; Nation's Capital Electricity Supplier Fails in the Rain

The collapsing electrical system of Baghdad Washington, DC and its suburbs was reported to have over 10,000 customers without power tonight . . . in a rainstorm. Apparently the forecast of an ice storm, which has failed to materialize, was enough to knock the equivalent of a moderate size town off the grid. According to tbd.com:

More than 11,000 customers are out of power in Maryland and D.C. tonight, with the bulk of power outages in Montgomery County.

Pepco is reporting that 9,513 customers in Montgomery County are in the dark tonight.

And 1,802 customers are out of power in D.C.

This comes as Pepco announced Tuesday that it was sending hundreds of Pepco workers into the field to prevent power outages.

Customers and elected officials have been critical of the power company since Wednesday, when a snow storm hit the region and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers in the area.

Some Pepco customers didn't have their power restored until Monday night.

The WaPo reports nearly all were restored after 2 hours, so that's OK. Who really needs electricity 24 hours a day?

In the next installment: excerpts from emails to the Montgomery County Council.

Cold Weather and Rising Energy Prices

Oil prices are approaching $90 a barrel, reaching a high of $89.97 in today's trading on the NYMEX exchange and closing at a 2-year high. It's also cold in much of the eastern U.S. and western Europe where a lot of heating oil is consumed, so the weather must be causing the price rise, right?

Well, not really. CNBC's Squawk Box this morning had an extended interview with John Kingston, Platts Global Director Of News. He stated that of the major factors affecting oil prices, weather was perhaps third. The primary cause of the price rise is an imbalance between a probably unprecedented increase in demand and OPEC's inability to expand production at a sufficient rate. In particular, China's consumption has increased by 13% since November 2009, driven at least in part by conversion of electricity generation from coal to diesel.

Kingston's outlook for 2011: $100 per barrel is well within reach based on demand forecasts. Veteran oil analyst Charles Maxwell, interviewed on Bloomberg, sees $150 in the next several years.

Facebook Friends Carolina Climate; Building Data Center in "Isothermal" Area

An AP story, posted at wsj.com, reports that Facebook has picked North Carolina for its second dedicated data center. The site is located near Forest City in Rutherford County, which is in the western portion of the state near the South Carolina border.

One of the factors cited in the choice of location is "relatively inexpensive power", although the NYT Bits blog notes that "about half of the electricity in Forest City, North Carolina, is coal-generated, in line with the national average." On the other hand, the Prineville, Oregon site of Facebook's first data center has been criticized because the local utility there generates its electricity mainly from coal.

Another factor reported in the AP/WSJ article is the climate, since "extremes of cold and heat are a challenge for facilities with huge amounts of sensitive electronic equipment." Isothermal Community College, in nearby Spindale, was in fact named for the moderate "thermal belt" in the region. Interestingly, the current Weather Underground forecast for Rutherfordton, the county seat, shows a variation of only 5° in the high temperatures for the next 5 days. However, the daily record highs and lows for Rutherford County-Marchman Airport (KFQD) show maximums over 100° in August and minimums below 10° in January.

A more likely explanation for picking this location is the business climate, in the form of considerable tax breaks and government incentives. The NYT's Bits reports that "Facebook will receive approximately $17 million in local subsidies and tax breaks over 10 years" and "will also be exempt from paying state taxes on all equipment, electricity and construction materials for the data centers."

More from Information Week:
Facebook 'Friends' North Carolina With Data Center

Image (click to enlarge): Campus sign from Isothermal Community College; Daily record high and low temperatures at Rutherfordton, NC from Weather Underground

Memo to Pepco: It's Not the Trees, It's Not the Weather; You Suck!

Evening Update: This week's Montgomery Co. edition of the Gazette has an article on Monday's Public Service Commission hearing:
County residents demand greater Pepco regulation

Original post: Last night was the last straw. I was waiting for the midnight (standard time) report to confirm the final record-breaking summer average temperature for Washington when the electricity went out (again).

It doesn't take a power systems engineer to determine that Pepco has fundamental problems with reliability of its electricity grid. It's not the trees! Our subdivision, which was built in 1968, has totally underground utilities. Last night was the second time within about 6 weeks that we've had a multi-hour outage completely unrelated to weather.

In July, we had a 4-hour outage the weekend BEFORE the major storm. The day of the storm, I was watching radar at the time it was approaching. The power went out before the core of the storm reached us. There were no trees down in the neighborhood, but we were out for 21 hours. Friends in an adjoining subdivision, which has above-ground utilities, were out for only a couple of hours.

Last night, after a completely calm day, the lights went out with no warning about 11:50. The entire subdivision with underground power was dark, but I could see the street lights from the above-ground lines 2 houses up the street. The Pepco automated outage reporting system at first gave no estimate of repair time, then 6 am, 4 am, and 2 am. A Pepco truck arrived about 12:30, reset the transformer directly across the street from my computer room, and the lights came back on shortly after the truck had left. After I went through the lengthy process of rebooting the computer and logging back online, the power went out again and didn't come back until about 1:15 or 1:20.

It seems pretty obvious that Pepco has made an economic decision to favor outage reaction over outage prevention. It certainly must be cheaper than upgrading or replacing deteriorated and unreliable 40-year-old infrastructure to instead send out a truck and minimal crew to drive around a neighborhood for a couple of hours of overtime setting and resetting circuit breakers when the system fails repeatedly. As a business decision, that seems to be working for them, since as I write this, their stock is hitting new 52-week highs:

Last Trade [tick] 18.36[+]
Volume 1,240,727
Net Change 0.4100
52 Week High 18.1000 on 08/23/2010

On the other hand, this is not working for customers. It's more than an inconvenience; it's an economic and potentially a public safety issue. I've already taken advantage of the WGES Constellation Electric fixed-rate electricity supply offer, even though I think dropping natural gas prices will lower Pepco's exorbitant rates in the next year. At least it sends a signal. The only further actions I can think of are to spend upwards of $10K on a full-house generator or multiples of $10K on a solar photo-voltaic system.

There must be a solution that is less burdensome on the customer, however. Since Pepco is a monopoly, the only solution is to make it too expensive to continue this policy. I propose the following:
- Establish a level of acceptable service. Given that this is now the second decade of the 21st century, a late 20th century concept of Six Sigma would seem appropriate. This is 3.4 defects per million, or about 1.7 minutes of outage per year per customer.
- If any segment of the system fails to meet the standard, the company should be required to pay a fee at least equal to the cost of replacing the failing segment.
- If the same segment fails again within a year, the company executives and board of directors should be personally liable to pay the fee.

Yes, the system is vulnerable to weather, but this is not the only place in the world where electricity coexists with trees. Pepco's business decision to trade off repair and recovery costs against reliability and redundancy results in far too much collateral damage when there is a storm. The pictures of tree damage in limited areas like Gaithersburg, White Oak, and Silver Spring were very dramatic, but there were nowhere near 300,000 trees down. Yet, 300,000 customers were without power, many for days.

The existence of repeated non-weather-related outages proves that Pepco's attempts to shift the blame from its own system mismanagement are phony.

For more happy campers, see PepcoSucks.
To file a complaint with the Maryland Public Service Commission, go here.

Image (click to enlarge): Pepco Holdings, Inc. stock price for last 12 months, from Fidelity Investments

Pre-Season Preview: Preliminary 2010-2011 Winter Outlook

There are still a few more days to summer, but preliminary winter outlooks are already being issued. Bloomberg reports that Rockville, MD based MDA Federal is forecasting a relatively warm winter for the U.S., the warmest in 5 years. The prediction for 2,515 heating degree days in the U.S. is slightly less than the 10-year average of 2,577 and considerably below the 2,767 last winter.

The temperature forecast calls for temperatures in New York to be 2.5° above the 30-year average and in Chicago 2° above.

The latest 3-month outlook for December through February from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center also shows near to above normal temperatures for most of the country.

Expectations of lower demand for the winter have done little to support natural gas prices, which have dropped 31% so far this year.

Positive Feedback: Oil Discovered off Greenland

After damaging the Gulf of Mexico with the BP well blowout, the petroleum industry is set to exploit another sensitive environment with the discovery of oil in the Arctic off Greenland. The UK Guardian is reporting online, in a story to appear in tomorrow's (Tuesday) edition:

A British oil firm will tomorrow announce that it has struck oil off Greenland, a find that could trigger a rush to exploit oil reserves in the pristine waters of the Arctic.

Cairn Energy, the first company to win permission to drill for oil in this sensitive environment, will break the news to the London stock market along with its half-yearly financial results.

The company declined to comment tonight, but sources confirmed that hydrocarbons had been found, and Greenland's foreign office said it was hopeful Cairn would have something positive to reveal.

The news will delight the oil industry, which has long believed the Arctic harbours some of the last huge reserves.

Gulf Gusher: Worst Case Scenario

From xkcd (click to enlarge):

Model Simulates Likely Spread of BP Gulf Oil Into Atlantic

A study released today by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) shows that oil spreading from the massive BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to move around Florida, along the southeast U.S. coast, and into the western Atlantic. The computer modeling is not a specific forecast, but it shows the likely flow based on average ocean currents in the region. The 6 simulations which were run provide an "envelope of possible scenarios for the oil dispersal." One of these is shown below:



Description from NCAR:

This animation shows one scenario of how oil released at the location of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico may move in the upper 65 feet of the ocean. This is not a forecast, but rather, it illustrates a likely dispersal pathway of the oil for roughly four months following the spill. It assumes oil spilling continuously from April 20 to June 20. The colors represent a dilution factor ranging from red (most concentrated) to green (most diluted). The dilution factor does not attempt to estimate the actual barrels of oil at any spot; rather, it depicts how much of the total oil from the source that will be carried elsewhere by ocean currents. For example, areas showing a dilution factor of 0.01 would have one-hundredth the concentration of oil present at the spill site.
The animation is based on a computer model simulation, using a virtual dye, that assumes weather and current conditions similar to those that occur in a typical year. It is one of a set of six scenarios released today that simulate possible pathways the oil might take under a variety of oceanic conditions. Each of the six scenarios shows the same overall movement of oil through the Gulf to the Atlantic and up the East Coast. However, the timing and fine-scale details differ, depending on the details of the ocean currents in the Gulf. The full set of six simulations can be found here. (Visualization by Tim Scheitlin and Rick Brownrigg, NCAR; based on model simulations.)