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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (11896)	7/31/2009 2:55:37 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 86352

Excellent example of how wind is just not suitable for baseload generation. However, I do support it for non-critical energy requirements. One other thing left unsaid in that article. When water is diverted around the dam, it effectively advances financial reward to the wind turbine owners over the utility that owns the hydro dam. That's presuming the wind turbines are non-utility owned, of course. Hawk

To: Brumar89 who wrote (11896)	7/31/2009 11:29:28 AM
From: Eric	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86352

At certain times of the year (mainly late spring) depending on the rate of snow melt a number of the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers have to spill water just because there is too much water running down the rivers. When Grand Coulee was built they used to spill a lot of water over the top virtually every late spring. I remember being on the top of Grand Coulee and looking down the face and watching all of that water falling over the edge in the late 60's, it was an impressive sight. That was all lost power generation! Then in the mid 1960's the idea of building the third powerhouse on the dam was begun to tap into that lost power. Finished in the early 70's it now produces more power than the original dam! When stream flows are low it's very easy to integrate the wind turbines. But at certain times of the year we dump a lot of water anyway. Most of the dams are being upgraded to take advantage of this excessive water situation.