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But this was requested in the first place by Eastern Washington Republicans, would you believe that they asked for it for ecological reasons. Then it was supported by Idaho Republicans because it would help salmon populations in their state. It's a somewhat muddy issue because it will affect so many people in different ways.
They don't even provide all that much electricity, I think it was something like 3% at peak times.
Eastern Washington Republicans have NEVER asked to remove the Snake River Dams. That would mean retirement for the politicians in the next election.
It was supported by ONE Idaho Republican who is trying to save the Snake River dams that are located in IDAHO!!! Those famous potatoes need irrigation water.
I assume your talking about the Snake River dams with the 3% number.
The total electricity generated by Industrial Wind Areas the Pacific Northwest and is 1.4%. We have destroyed well over a million acres by Industrial Wind Areas. That is four times the size of Mt. Rainier National Park. We really should be talking about taking out and restoring the Industrial Wind Areas instead of the Snake River dams in Washington.
In my professional opinion, we need to remove a few dams. The big one is the Skagit River dams. You cannot save the Orcas or have functioning salmon and steelhead runs in Puget Sound unless you remove the Skagit River dams.
The three Skagit River dams, owned by the city of Seattle, generate LESS ELECTRICITY than ONE of the Snake River dams. Yet, the Skagit River is in decline, but it was and can be in the future restored to its former glory rather easily. Part of the issue is that the city of Seattle only spent 25 million dollars on salmon recovery in the Skagit. This compares to billions by BPA and the mid-Columbia PUD's.
Times up for Seattle City Light. Take out the dams.
The city of Seattle is in the relicensing stage and it needs to look are dam removal as an option. The electricity generated by Skagit River dams can easily be replaced by ONE of the Snake River dams.
The difficulty with the Skagit River, is the lower river system needs also to be restored. The state of Washington should issue emergency rules stopping all development in the Skagit watershed. Then create a plan for restoring the lower river ecosystem.
With the restoration of the Elwah River, we need two or three more rivers in the Puget Sound area for complete restoration. The easiest ones are the Cedar and the Green. Study which of those can be restored easily.
That is the only chance that we have at saving the Orca's and the Puget Sound marine ecosystem.
Almost forgot...take out Dworshack Dam in Idaho. Last in first out.
California just about shut down their nuke plants last year or so, they provided 7-8% of their 24-7 electricity.
CA's problem is that when the sun is up and shining they have lots of electricity. When the sun goes down and there is a lot of demand after work, they often come up short as their solar generation stops.
That's when they have to start buying power from other states.
I would not hold my breath on getting them to send your state much power in the forseeable future.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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Somewhere I read that most of the Green energy sources in OR-WA was funded, built, or capacity bought by CA. Hence the Intertie is power capacity is more one-way. In the PNW, the months of low stream flows and where CA weather is more temperate, it was envisioned that CA would send back power to the PNW.
The server farms with Oregon's and Washington's PUD is a new calculus-they pay for power. Texas also has server farms issues in power shortages.
Q?: Is the PNW, Texas, subsidizing the Internet providers and internet consumers with cheap power-data?
California just about shut down their nuke plants last year or so, they provided 7-8% of their 24-7 electricity.
CA's problem is that when the sun is up and shining they have lots of electricity. When the sun goes down and there is a lot of demand after work, they often come up short as their solar generation stops.
That's when they have to start buying power from other states.
I would not hold my breath on getting them to send your state much power in the forseeable future.
In the PNW, the months of low stream flows and where CA weather is more temperate, it was envisioned that CA would send back power to the PNW.
That was the original plan. But NOW is the time that California is suppose to be shipping electricity north and if you follow on a day to day basis, it is NOT happening. Maybe for a part of a day, once a week or so!!!
Don't know the legality of the inter-tie agreement. AND who signed it. And does California have an absolute requirement to pay back the electricity.
I might have to call BPA and have them send me some documents.
Notice their imports. It includes Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho as well as Oregon and Washington.
California is incredibly stupid. Shutting down one of their nuclear power plants was dumb, but even dumber, was shutting down their natural gas plants!!
They could have a easily functional grid, without the need for imports with solar on rooftops, and natural gas plants for night and peaking periods.
BUT they have gotten rid of rooftop solar, since it doesn't benefit the large corporations and have been shutting down natural gas plants. As electricity becomes a rarer commodity, California will be less able to import electricity from out of state.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leastprime
Somewhere I read that most of the Green energy sources in OR-WA was funded, built, or capacity bought by CA. Hence the Intertie is power capacity is more one-way. In the PNW, the months of low stream flows and where CA weather is more temperate, it was envisioned that CA would send back power to the PNW.
The server farms with Oregon's and Washington's PUD is a new calculus-they pay for power. Texas also has server farms issues in power shortages.
Q?: Is the PNW, Texas, subsidizing the Internet providers and internet consumers with cheap power-data?
The green energy sources in OR-WA are funded by the state taxpayers and users of BPA power. The wind power MUST be purchased when available at triple the market rate. The corporations get to keep the revenue, while the taxpayers funded the costs!!!
In light gray is basically the inter-tie. In green are the Industrial Wind Areas. If you check on a daily basis you will notice that the inter-tie basically tracks the wind production (if the wind is blowing). BPA is shipping as much of that "green" wind power as it can to California.
That is good for northwest electric customers that are dependent on BPA power. They get Federal subsidized electricity at below market rates and California pays three times the market rate.
The server farms are the new Aluminium smelters. Those were closed down in the late 1990's to supply BPA electricity to urban areas.
I am not sure how much electricity they use. Some PUD's were fine with supplying them with electricity particularly Douglas and Grant. Douglas has lots of surplus electricity when Alcoa Wenatchee Works closed down.
Chelan has NEVER provided power for the server farms.
MicroSoft is opening a server farm outside of Malaga and Chelan told them them would route electricity to their server farm but NOT PROVIDE it. MicroSoft has to find its own electricity. The server farms generate very few jobs, compared to aluminum plants!!!
It was the same reason the PUD's shut down crypto-mining.
I suspect the Apple, and Facebook server farms in Oregon, as well as Google are using BPA electricity, but don't know for sure. They also use lots of water. Google is hiding how much water they use in the Dalles, Oregon. My feeling is the tech companies are EVIL. I would NOT do business with them for that reason. Those folks have no ethics.
The server farms were suppose to become more energy efficient, but that is not happening.
My knowledge of the electrical grid came from the Sierra Club lawsuit on the firewood program on the Naches Ranger District. Their argument in court was that shutting down firewood cutting would result in people using clean hydro power. I was the economist on the team, and quickly learned that Yakima's electricity came from ColStrip coal plant in Montana. And then it was off into the never, never land that is electrical grid management in the US.
A friend was an editor for a large eastern Washington newspaper and closely followed the Industrial Wind Area issue, as well as salmon. He retired about four years ago, and refuses to follow politics and energy anymore except to rant about it at random times.
I try to keep up on these issues, but it is difficult since newspapers no longer cover these issues and have no one that even understands energy markets.
I read a lot of web pages and documents published by the BPA and other sources. It is the private companies that publish self-serving press releases, oh and Seattle City Light.
This is an ON-TOPIC post, that just came in from my friend!!
There are rumblings in the comments on social media about what appear to be rolling blackouts around here. No current bad weather, no snow or ice or wind, but blocks of outages, different area each time, always two hours in duration. Enough to control the usage, not long enough for anyone to freeze - (hopefully!). Of course there's no proof, but we have become suspicious.
Perhaps this was a bad time to shutting down coal power plants and trying to get people to switch from gas to electric... when there is not yet a reliable replacement, there is actually a growing population and growing need.
I’m retired steamfitter and mechanical contractor.
I never did quite understand shutting down our power sources and demanding electric vehicles, electric heating and things of that nature.
Exactly how does this plan work?
I must ave missed that topic in class .
I’d like an audit done on this situation.
Having this audited is not to much to ask.
From my view the only one benefits from this is big business.
We are to conserve electricity for a relatively mild cold snap??
The Biden Administration and the Democrats are moving ahead with moving the Snake River dams.
Might be time to write Inslee, Murray, and Cantwell and your local representative that you like your electricity and want to keep it
This is the main reason why I have zero interest in buying an EV. We need more nuclear plants if these ridiculous "zero emission" goals are going to be met without us returning to the Stone Age first.
Eastern Washington Republicans have NEVER asked to remove the Snake River Dams. That would mean retirement for the politicians in the next election.
Then you wouldn't be surprised that that was exactly what happened. The two Republicans in question even said they knew it was political suicide but thought that it was the right thing to do. I can't find the article about it, I thought it was pretty interesting at the time, but that was years ago now.
I thought I would look up the number for the dam production. The four Snake River dams in Washington have 3500MW total capacity. Wa state produces 7000 thousand MW (according to https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1), so 0.05% and even lower than what I remembered. But in reality they operate well below capacity, for an average of 900 MW. (https://www.bpa.gov/-/media/Aep/powe...ment-study.pdf) But the electricity production is only a small part of what they do, since most of the argument against removing them is about water for agriculture.
For some reason, people always wait for demand before building new power stations, rather than building ahead. This country is large enough that there should be a standard nuclear plant design that just gets built where there is new demand. For some dumb reason they feel the need to make a new design for every one they build.
One thing I notice about these kinds of requests to the public to reduce electricity use is that a certain group of people online start spreading lies about blackouts occurring and blaming it all on green energy policies. There have been no blackouts in Washington due to over-demand, just like there weren't in California over the summer, despite people lying about it. Texas, however...
Then you wouldn't be surprised that that was exactly what happened. The two Republicans in question even said they knew it was political suicide but thought that it was the right thing to do. I can't find the article about it, I thought it was pretty interesting at the time, but that was years ago now.
I thought I would look up the number for the dam production. The four Snake River dams in Washington have 3500MW total capacity. Wa state produces 7000 thousand MW (according to https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1), so 0.05% and even lower than what I remembered. But in reality they operate well below capacity, for an average of 900 MW. (https://www.bpa.gov/-/media/Aep/powe...ment-study.pdf) But the electricity production is only a small part of what they do, since most of the argument against removing them is about water for agriculture...............
What were the politicians names?? Can you do a search??
I spend a couple of weeks camped next to Little Goose Dam every year.
At 4:00 pm the dam ramps up to meet demand in western Washington. Keeps going for quite a while into the evening.
I do think western Washington and Oregon, and California need to develop their own sources of electricity and not rely on eastern Washington.
[quote=509;66311157I do think western Washington and Oregon, and California need to develop their own sources of electricity and not rely on eastern Washington.[/quote]
Not until they start building Nuclear plants.
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