Wind Energy: Plant Capacity Higher When Wind Blows -- EIA -- December 30, 2015

Stark County, North Dakota, puts moratorium on new wind energy projects. The Dickinson Press reports:

The Stark County Commission voted unanimously to stop accepting applications for wind farm conditional-use permits for a period of two years at a regular meeting Tuesday at Stark County Courthouse.

The move comes after the commission approved the 87-turbine Brady Wind Energy Center by Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources for southern Stark County during a special meeting December 22, 2015. 

Elkin said one reason for the holdoff is to see how or if NextEra works with landowners and county citizens with lingering issues with the wind farm that need to be addressed.

They can start with "promised" vs "delivered." See "wind capacity" story below.

***********************************

Wind Project Capacity 

Even without reading the narrative, the graphs tell the story.

See this link over at EIA and note "capacity factors."

Unlike conventional fossil-fueled generators, there is no fuel or other variable cost associated with wind power generation. As a result, a wind plant's capacity factor—a measure of the plant's generation as a percentage of its maximum generating capacity—is very closely related to the available wind resource, or average wind speed. In general, wind plant capacity factors tend to be higher during windier periods of the year.

Incredibly inefficient. Can you imagine building natural gas plants with 10% plant capacity? Don't even get me started.

Many, many story lines.

*****************************

The Big Dig

There's a nice article over at The Boston Globe with an in-depth retrospective on the "Big Dig" on its ten-year anniversary.

Enter Governor Michael Dukakis and the man who would become his transportation secretary, Fred Salvucci, who picked up on an MIT colleague’s audacious suggestion in the 1970s that instead of building a new elevated structure, I-93 should be rerouted through a tunnel.

US House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, for whom the mainline tunnel is named, cajoled and persuaded Congress to pay 80 percent of the project, taking advantage of New York’s decision to abandon a similar highway submersion project along the Hudson River. The concept was not entirely new; I-93 was already underground through the Dewey Square tunnel from Chinatown to South Station. Boston would simply finish the job, tear down the unsightly Central Artery, and reconnect severed neighborhoods in the process.

Early on, however, it was clear that depressing I-93 wouldn’t by itself be enough to ease congestion. Traffic would still snarl trying to access the Callahan Tunnel to Logan Airport, East Boston, and points north. To close the deal, plans were drawn up for the extension of Interstate 90 under Fort Point Channel, the South Boston Waterfront, and Boston Harbor. The Ted Williams Tunnel became the necessary appendage in the Central Artery and Tunnel project, appealing to the feds because it would complete an interstate highway system. But with expanded scope, costs and complications started ratcheting up. Planning for the new world order got underway in 1982.

Fast forward to today. For $15 billion, what does success look like? There are many ways to measure outcomes, but let’s start with the basics: How is motorized vehicle traffic moving through the new system?

After it opened, the Central Artery comfortably carried about 75,000 vehicles a day. By the early 1990s, that number had reached 200,000, making it one of the most congested highways in the United States — and projections into the 21st century were for many more cars.

Looking at the new roadway system by itself, the Central Artery and Tunnel project is solving that problem, with capacity to spare. It handles about 536,000 vehicles each weekday. Bottlenecks are minimized through the use of the add-a-lane design, where on-ramps become a permanent additional lane, requiring less merging.

The photograph near the bottom of the article may be iconic: one man with a shovel digging while six others look on. How many men does it take to dig a tunnel?

**********************************

Snow In Boston

Kennedy Clan Can Stay Home

From The Boston Globe today. 

I've been wrong. All these years I've been suggesting the Kennedy clan needs to head west to see snow. It turns out:

The past decade was the snowiest 10-year stretch ever recorded in Boston.

A total of 533 inches of snow — or 53.3 inches per season on average — fell in Boston between the winter of 2005-2006 and the winter of 2014-2015, more than in any 10-year period since records began being kept in the late 1800s.

Last winter’s record-setting snowfall certainly helped to boost those numbers, but the winters of 2004-2005 and 2010-2011 were also unusually snowy. The 10-year period that ended with the winter of 2013-2014 was the second-snowiest on record.

And the global warming apologist's analysis:

“A warmer global climate does not necessarily mean that New England’s weather will get progressively warmer year after year,” he wrote.

“A very simple way to look at it — warmer air globally means more energy in the atmosphere which means propensity for stronger jet streams. Stronger jet [streams] yield more amplified patterns — bigger ridges, deeper troughs. The warm periods are warmer, the cold periods colder.”

D’Aleo said in a followup interview that historical records of the 10-year rolling average of snowfall for Boston suggest that, at some point, the current trend will reverse — because it has in the past.

And not only, meteorologists can predict the "temperature of the earth" one hundred years from now to the hundredth degree based on one data point: today's atmospheric CO2 concentration.

The subject is closed.

Meanwhile, scientists still argue whether gravity is a law or a theory. Google sorts it out: "gravity is a phenomenon."