Preventive Maintenance Fail

Going forward, I think I'm going to try to format my fail pictures as "demotivational" posters, because..... well, they just crack me up.

Why wind power is not the (only) answer

I don't even remember who brought it up last time, but periodically someone finds out what I do and the discussion seems to eventually go towards the trendy topic of green power, and wind power in particular.

They almost always seem surprised at my less-than-enthusiastic response. Wind power is not the answer to life's problems and the solution to the greenhouse gas apocalypse.

Don't get me wrong. Just because I work for The Man on the power side, I am not at all interested in ruining the environment by running more coal steamers just because coal is cheap. The reality is, though, that wind power is still indirectly harmful to the environment in the half-assed way that our government is implementing it.

You've got state and federal lawmakers wanting to please the ignorant constituency, themselves fueled by Saturday-morning cartoon feel-good PSAs about saving the environment and the world, symbolized more and more as late by the ubiquitous wind power turbine that will save us all. Mandate more wind, force the big bad power companies to install more green sources, because if they won't save the environment, by golly we in Congress will force them to.

Hold on there, Spike.

If necessary, review Tutorial 2 - AC Supply and Demand, Tutorial 3 - Generation Supply, Control and Scheduling, and maybe even Tutorial 4: Basic ACE, and Reserve Sharing.

Sorry for the big assignment review, but this won't make sense unless you understand what is going on behind this topic.

The short version is this: The AC system is instantaneously supplying demand with supply. There is no practical storage capability with current technologies.

Power plants run up and down all day to match the demand curve as people wake up, turn things on, go through their lives, end the day, turn things off, etc.

It's pretty hard for some systems to regulate. And wind power is largely uncontrollable, and on the supply side the forecasting of wind resources is still hazy and new.

So what happens when you've got a lot of wind blowing, sending you hundreds of megawatts.... then morning comes, people start turning on furnaces, ovens, coffee pots. Demand takes off fast. Then.... the wind stops blowing.

Your regulating power plants who are tasked with matching demand suddenly have to keep up with the load pickup AND replace the dying wind output.

Then the wind picks up, and they have to back out of the way. In a severe case, the wind picks up too far, and the wind farms cut out on overspeed. Now the regulation power plants have to recover the loss, and about the time they get there, the wind dies off, allowing the turbine farms to re-sync at near the maximum output. Suddenly there's way too much power, and you're backing the other plants out of the way. Again.

This is an extreme scenario, but not at all unrealistic. Less severe but still significant plotlines of this type play out every single day, all over.

If your regulating plants are hydroelectric, you can probably manage OK as long as you have the water to do it and are staying within FERC/DOE/DNR/Tribal/etc. flow requirements. If your regulation is coal plants, all that running up and down is beating the crap out of them, repeatedly causing thermal flexing and wearing them out decades ahead of their life span. Not to mention, coal steamers running at anything more or less than their highest-efficiency base loading (generally about 85-90% of capacity) are relatively speaking producing more pollution in proportion to their energy output than a base-loaded plant at maximum efficiency.

Yeah. When your wind turbines are running up and down, you are killing your steamers (costing more money in the long run) and creating more pollution with them than they would if wind wasn't messing with the supply/demand equation.

There is so much more to this story, but this post is already too long. I'll come back to this later. In fact, this will be a new running subject, under the tag "energy future." We'll talk current resources, green power, smart grid, nuclear, and whatever comes up that seems relevant.

If you have questions or want me to elaborate on anything, just pounce on that comment button.

Just a brief commentary

Just because you are a paid guy, or a part-timer, and you are collecting a paycheck for wearing the badge, does not mean you are the shizzle.

I don't pretend to know it all. In fact, the older I get, the more there is that I realize I don't know, and the scarier it gets.

That said, I've been doing this since before you were born.

Next time, don't walk away and pretend you didn't hear me when I try to first politely coach you. Don't act all pissy when I call you on it and hand it all back down. Yeah, you heard me right.

This is not a career/volunteer debate, it is about your attitude problem. Attitude problems are found on all sides, for a variety of reasons. In this case, yours comes from wearing the tin for $$ while thinking that automatically raises you to a higher class.  News flash: It doesn't.

You are not the shizzle, and thinking you are only goes further to prove my point.

That is all.

The last straw

It was raining.

Hard.

I pulled into the grocery store, parked, stepped out into the downpour, flopped up my hood, and started walking to the door.

I was in a bad mood already, not important or even interesting as to why.

A car pulled up in right front of me in the fire lane outside the front, stopped, made me stop walking so I didn't walk smack into the passenger door. A really nice car. I get paid well by the power company, but I cannot afford this kind of car.

The driver's door opened.

Are you freaking kidding me?

You are honestly going to park there so you don't get wet and don't have to walk too far, and make us walk around your sweet ride to get to the store? In the fire lane?

I just stood there for a second, in the rain, and watched in disbelief. Then I conspicuously checked for a disabled parking permit or plate, even though this spot was well beyond that privilege, but there was none. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he's an inconsiderate doofus who just wants to grab a newspaper from the machine or toss some garbage.

No, he walks in the store, grabs a cart. A cart!

That was the last straw.

I had just finished several hours working on a project at one of the stations, and was still wearing my uniform T-shirt under my decidedly non-uniform plaid pullover/coat. Nice. I walked in, took off the coat, found him, and stood directly in front of his cart until he was forced to look up to see who was blocking his importantness, glaring back at him.

I didn't even ask.

Move your car out of the fire lane and park it. The fire lane is for emergencies, and you are not an emergency. You can walk through the rain like the rest of us.

His face curled. I thought he was going to say something, but a few other witnesses were nearby, maybe that gave him second thoughts. He left his cart right there without a word.

I watched him walk out. I don't think he even came back in the store.

I know I wasn't supposed to do it like that. But it felt wonderful!

The rest of my day was great.

Brilliance of copper thieves, or lack

We've been dealing with copper thieves for quite a while now. The small timers start out by stripping old abandoned houses, or raiding construction sites.

When a new level of desperation sets in, or they just feel competent enough, they start going after live stuff, or the grounds in substations. These guys pretty quickly end up like this unless they have some common sense and practical awareness of electricity, in which case they probably have some success for a while. But even the "good" live wire thieves get cocky, push their luck, and frequently end up dead in the end.

Some of the guys have figured out that, in some substations, there are large reels of brand new cable, begging for the taking. These are the smartest thieves, because they've found large quantities of wire that is not live, nor picking up potential like grounding straps. These reels are massively heavy, requiring a small crane to lift and move, so you're not going to get them onto a truck unless you bring some serious resources and a substantial flatbed. Sure enough, some guys do that, and they make off with reels of cable worth big time $$$$$.

The reel thieves cause such a big loss, in fact, that power companies now commonly install a device that is somewhat like the LoJack to catch car thieves, by placing the device inside the inner void of the reel through the side. When the crew needs to use the reel, they call the detection company and report which device is going to move, to preempt the alarm. Don't bother trying that yourself, though, there are way too many layers of protection to prevent outsiders from disabling or preventing the response. The only ones who succeed at that are on the "inside", and soon get caught anyway because we all know it's someone in the know, and it narrows the suspect list. Yeah, that actually happens.

But when the devices get activated without authorization, that's when the fun begins. The alarm company notifies us which one went off, and then we get to call the closest law enforcement agency and set them loose. On the screen, we get a live updating point on a map that we can see move, and we guide the cops in like an airstrike.

Yep, that is one of my favorite little sidebar parts of this job. When these get set off once every other month or so, and I get to hear the police dispatcher report back that a black and white has made the stop, I'm like.... YEAH. Freaking awesome. Bang baby, game over.

Anyway, I digress from the intent of this post, on the brilliance of the amateurs, or lack thereof.

A news story was being discussed here tonight, concerning an event that took place somewhere in Minnesota. I don't know what they were stealing from, but the upshot of the deal was that one of the bad guys apparently fell a good distance onto concrete and injured his back. Ouch dude, was this all worth it?

But the best part was that his two "friends" subsequently left him a jacket to keep warm, and then left him there. No 911, no first aid, just a jacket and so long sucks to be you see ya.

They eventually did call 911 after driving over an hour to get out of the county. I don't know if their motivation was guilt (perhaps they intended to just let him die and thus stay off the hook), or if they figured that the statute of limitations was also geography-based and that they were scot-free once across the county line.

But don't take my telling for granted, read it for yourself.

So, there's your latest installment of tales about people that are allowed to vote even though we shouldn't have to even share our air with them.