California Off-Shore Wind -- August 13, 2024

Locator: 48402CA_WIND.

Link here. 

Don't underestimate the Californians. Money is no object if they get a crazy idea. Exhibit A? The Bullet Train.

Top Story Of The Week -- Tell Me Again How Solar Energy Will Save The Planet? -- August 14, 2020

Updates

August 15, 2020: The WSJ noted the power outages.  

On Friday, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid, called for rotating outages throughout the state for the first time since 2001.

The system operator lifted the Stage 3 electrical emergency a few hours later, but only after PG&E Corp, one of the state’s largest utilities, had begun to cut power to about 220,000 customers. Service had been restored by late Friday night.

Original Post

If you put this in context of California wanting to put a gazillion EVs on the road, all requiring a gazillion gigawatts of electricity, this is truly the biggest story of the week.

From a reader:

Rotating power outages in southern California today.  Notice how close we came to maxing out today.  Also NO WIND to speak of and SOLAR disappears as sunset arrives.  Look at the curves at the bottom of this Supply page.

The screenshot was taken from ISO California at the time the state was going through rotating power outages in southern California.  

Wind is practically non--existent, and solar -- remember all those roof-top solar panels at great expense -- and this is in the sunniest state in the union.

To the degree that Californians have been sold a scam, this is almost criminal. On so many levels. And there is no indication things will improve. Again, imagine this same scenario with "all" EVs on the road. This is crazy.

The Incredible Bakken -- Random Update Of A CLR Helena Well In Brooklyn Oil Field -- June 7, 2019

For full production profile, see this post.

The well:

22679, 822, CLR, Helena 3-7H, API: 33-105-02579, Brooklyn, t10/12; cum 217K 4/19; no re-frack according to FracFocus; no sundry form to indicate a re-frack; new Helena wells are now being fracked; (#34768, 3/19)

Production jump from 750 bbls/month t0 12,000 bbls/month and then levels off at 5,000 bbls/month:

• 16x increase increase initially
• 7x increase later 
• a "mom-and-pop" mineral owner getting $100 / month on this well before the neighboring refrack, received upwards of $1,600/month for several months and then $700/month for an unknown number of months yet to come; in addition, that "mom-and-pop" mineral owner will now receive royalties on a several new Helena wells.

Recent production:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	4-2019	30	5145	5064	12051	7270	4321	2566
BAKKEN	3-2019	23	4344	4553	9897	6399	5856	300
BAKKEN	2-2019	28	11367	11336	26133	16559	15702	486
BAKKEN	1-2019	31	12548	12603	35977	17640	15723	1507
BAKKEN	12-2018	31	11854	11770	41824	14026	10550	3069
BAKKEN	11-2018	12	2557	2172	10359	2536	2438	0
BAKKEN	10-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	9-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	8-2018	28	625	780	685	1667	1309	0
BAKKEN	7-2018	31	798	845	867	2148	1738	0

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California Not Even Mentioned

California Wind Energy: All Talk -- June 3, 2019

Updates

Later, 8:56 p.m. CT: with regard to data below, a reader writes, citing a WUWT post, back in June, 2014:

Texas: almost 10 percent of installed wind capacity can be included as dispatchable, what they refer to as ELCC, effective load-carrying capability.

This (8.7 percent) is presently at 920 MW out of an installed base of 12,000 MW wind energy.

Note: comparable posting for the German grid concluded that Germany now (2018) having sufficient wind capacity to supply all their needed power under optimum conditions that the "substitution factor" for additional wind was 5% (the amount of conventional base load that could be retired. That is, 1000 MW of further wind addition enables shutting down 50 MW of conventional power).

This is the kind of "stuff" that:

• the German government and the state of Texas do not tell their ratepayers; and, 
• even if they did, the average ratepayer would not understand

The US federal government has stricter regulation on the transparency of calories in all food sold at supermarkets or in restaurants. Utilities and renewable energy companies are getting "away with murder." 

Original Post 

EIA link here, 2017 data. From twitter today:

Or as President Bush II used to say, "all hat, no cattle."

In land area, isn't California like the third biggest state and as far as wind goes, I think it has some of the best wind in the country, and yet California trails Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas. At 486 "units," CA, KS, and IA combined produce less wind energy than Texas.

April 18, 2019, T+6, Part 4 -- PG&E Collapses

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything your read here or think you may have read here.

PG&E.

Wow.

PCG (PG&E):

• pays no dividend
• from a recent high of ~ $50/share, now trading at $20/share

From The Financial Times: (most of this will be deleted later today) --

Californians like to think they show the rest of the country the way to a clean energy future.

Inconveniently, utility power purchase agreements (PPAs), which have been the principal economic model for renewable energy in the state, face legal collapse within two weeks.

The PPA crisis is one of the consequences of the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility. The immediate cause of PG&E’s filing on January 29 was the weight of its prospective liabilities for billions in wildfire damages allegedly caused by its transmission equipment.

The company took the opportunity afforded by the bankruptcy court’s protection to “reject” more than $30bn of its high-cost, long-term PPAs for renewable energy. With the support of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), PG&E’s renewables suppliers are fighting the company’s attempt to default on its obligations. So far PG&E appears to have the support of the judge, Dennis Montali.

On April 10, he announced that he would give PG&E and its PPA counterparties until May 3 to agree a resolution. Judge Montali stressed his concern about the practical effects of PPA rejection. These will not include any sudden termination of electricity supply, or of payments that would cover operations and maintenance costs. But the “morning after” will be a world-class hangover for investors in wind and solar. No one seems to believe a compromise will be reached: there is too much precedent and financial leverage at stake. Almost certainly, the case will wend its way through the courts for years.

Quite possibly it will reach the Supreme Court. There, the conservative majority is known to be sceptical of the powers of regulatory agencies such as FERC. That is probably not good for the renewables people, since in this case FERC is their friend. Until now, the apparent certainty provided by PPAs, made with consumer-facing electric utilities, has given the independent renewable energy industry its financial basis. 

The high fixed costs of wind and solar generation could be amortised with 15 or 20 years of secure revenue flows from state-regulated monopolies. As clean-energy mandates became more demanding, unit costs of wind and solar declined with improving technology and economies of scale. While that progress turned wind and solar into mainstream industries, it made older contracts less attractive. In PG&E’s case, though, the rapid lowering of the cost of renewables contributed to the undoing of its financial model.

PG&E and the other California utilities lost much of their profitable peak-demand revenue to rooftop solar installations. Their answer was to increase charges to remaining customers, who responded by subscribing to “direct access” and “community choice aggregation” programmes — allowing them to bypass at least part of the utilities’ rising rates. As more power supplies came from mandated renewables with low-to-zero marginal costs, gas-fired power producers were unable to cover their cost of capital. But PG&E and the other California utilities still relied on the gas-fired plants, along with hydro and imports from other states, to maintain reliable power.

With PG&E’s revenue squeezed, the company skimped on maintaining and improving its transmission grid. This may have contributed to the risk of wildfires, which eventually led to the bankruptcy. PG&E’s renewables counterparties felt the financial squeeze even before the company indicated its willingness to reject their contracts. Once the company formally rejects its old renewables PPAs, it is generally believed that it will be unable to back up new renewables contracts during or after the bankruptcy. Southern California Edison, the second-largest utility in the state, is also at risk of becoming an unreliable counterparty for long-term contracts due to its own potential liability for wildfire damages.

The state has recognised that its clean energy progress is seriously at risk.

Governor Gavin Newsom formed an advisory “strike force” to propose solutions to deal with wildfires and clean energy finance. On April 12 it came out with support for “new procurement support models, including a new state procurement entity that could enter into long-term (electricity) contracts”.

There is a history of state involvement in power purchases in California, and it is not an entirely happy one. PG&E filed for bankruptcy once before, in 2001. Out-of-state generators refused to give it commercial credit terms, and the state government had to step in to finance $6bn of hastily negotiated and expensive contracts.

Gray Davis, the governor at the time, lost his re-election bid, partly because of what was seen as his poor management of the energy crisis. So if, as seems likely, the PPA-based financing model has failed in California, it is not going to be easy to make the political case for direct state support. At the very moment there is increasing political pressure for 100 per cent renewable power, it is unclear how it can be paid for. 

Trouble In Paradise -- How's That Renewable Energy Working Out? -- March 23, 2018

Inquiring minds want to know:

• why is the California PUC not directing solar energy companies to start storing solar energy to prepare for this summer's grid demands?
• why is Governor Moonbeam not asking the sun to extend its summer hours?
• why is the California PUC not directing wind turbines to start spinning faster in anticipation of grid demands this summer?
• where is Elon Musk when you really need him?
• where are those batteries?

The EIA graphic that leads to those questions:

From Forbes, 2016:

Besides having the most expensive electricity west of the Mississippi River in the continental U.S., California already has the least reliable electricity. California easily leads the nation with nearly 470 power outages a year, compared to 160 for second place Texas, which is really amazing because Texas produces 125% MORE electricity! California's reliability problems will be multiplied as more wind and solar enter the power mix, intermittent resources located in remote areas that cannot be so easily transported to cities via the grid.

It's crucial to remember that drought and less hydropower available in the Northwest was a determining factor in California's "2000-2001 Power Crisis" that cost the state $50 billion in added energy costs, illustrating the problems of California's over-reliance on outside energy (California also unsustainably imports over 90% of its natural gas, the nation's fastest growing major fuel, and the source that other states will increasingly lean upon most to meet the Clean Power Plan).

For the archives. It's March. Three months to June. 

Market Down 1% -- One Day After US CEOs Say "Good-bye" To Trump -- August 17, 2017

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Lynn Anderson  

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California Gas-Fired Power Plant Files For Bankruptcy

I thought I had posted this story; maybe not.

The La Paloma natural gas plant in California filed for bankruptcy last December because it was not getting enough operating time to cover its costs due to solar and other renewable energy receiving preference.

The plant, which serves as back-up to the state’s renewable generating technologies, was also denied a reliability charge by the state that would have allowed it to continue to operate.

The owners project an annual loss of $39 million without a reliability contract or other support. In its bankruptcy filing, the plant owners listed assets of between $100 million and $500 million and liabilities of $500 million to $1 billion.[i] La Paloma is a 1200-megawatt merchant plant located 110 miles northwest of Los Angeles and is able to serve both the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets.

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Trump Scraps Plans For An Infrastructure Council

Link here. Most likely, prospective panel members said, "no."

The California Duck Curve -- Re-Visited -- March 6, 2017

See if you can find the word "dispatch" as in "dispatchable" on this page. 

This is pretty cool. This has to do with the post of just a couple of days ago regarding $1,000 / MWH electricity in California (vs the typical $30 / MWH cost). We've talked about incredibly high spikes in the cost of electricity in New England during the winter due to misguided energy policies; I forget, but I think we were talking of $300 - $800 / MWH spikes in price that can often occur overnight during cold snaps in New England.

In California, because of the reliance on solar and wind energy, those spikes can go upwards of $1,000/MWH.

Today, a reader sent me this link from The Economist of all things. Bottom line is this:

• California peak electricity use is between 3:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
• solar energy "prematurely" peaks out at noon
• peak wind energy doesn't kick in until later in the evening /night

This is called a "duck curve." We talked about the "CALIFORNIA DUCK CURVE" on October, 22, 2015.

That was from Bloomberg. It looks like the folks over at The Economist finally got around to reporting it.

Two Can Play This Game: Wyoming's War On Wind -- August 14, 2016

From The Los Angeles Times:

Not long after it became clear that the robust winds that blow down from the Rocky Mountains and across the sea of sagebrush here could produce plenty of profit in a world that wants more renewable energy, some of the more expansive minds in the Wyoming Legislature began entertaining a lofty question: Who owns all of that wind?

They concluded, quickly and conveniently, that Wyoming did.

Then, with great efficiency for a conservative state not traditionally tilted toward burdening the energy industry, they did something no other state has done, before or since: They taxed it.

In the four years since Wyoming began taxing power generated by wind turbines, it has collected a little less than $15 million in revenue.

No, that is not much money in a resource state rocked by the simultaneous decline in the prices of coal, oil and natural gas, a state trying to close a budget gap that could reach $500 million.

But now, as one of the world’s largest wind farms is about to begin construction here on a project aimed at providing clean electricity to nearly a million homes in California and the Southwest — potentially transforming this fossil fuel state into a major player in renewables — some powerful state lawmakers are looking to raise those taxes.

And some in the wind industry, which has long benefited from incentives and subsidies, say they are worried. The company that has spent nine years trying to build the wind project says higher taxes could further delay or even halt the plan.

“Just about every legislator we’ve met with asks us, ‘You tell us how much we can tax you before we put you out of business,’” said Bill Miller, chief executive of the Power Co. of Wyoming, which is planning the wind farm. “I just shake my head and say, ‘Zero.’

California Wind Farm Investors Feel A Huge Sucking Wind -- February 15, 2016

I talked about this wind farm back on July 24, 2011. It is amazing what goes around, comes around.

Now, The Miami Herald is reporting that investors in this wind farm may be on the hook for millions in "pay-back:" Investors in huge California wind farm might end up repaying federal subsidies.

A giant wind farm in California’s southern San Joaquin Valley is blowing gusts through a faraway federal court, with tens of millions of dollars potentially up in the air.

Some of the wind farm’s early investors want more than $200 million in additional subsidies that they say the federal government owes them. Obama administration officials, in turn, argue that the government paid $59 million too much. This week, a judge sharpened the administration’s side of the sword, agreeing that the U.S. can try to retrieve some of the taxpayer dollars paid.

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas C. Wheeler said in a decision Monday that the Treasury Department could counter the claims from investors in the Alta Wind project, the largest wind farm in the United States.

The wind farm investors, Wheeler wrote, “have no guarantee of keeping the amounts that Treasury paid them.” He noted that “a refund always was a possibility given a proper understanding of the issues.” As a result, an upcoming trial will determine who owes money to whom.

Wheeler’s ruling seems an unexpected turn for the Alta Wind Facility, located in the Tehachapi Mountains of Kern County. When some of the Alta Wind investors first started suing in 2013 to get a bigger share of federal money, the possibility that they could be the ones owing $59 million did not appear to be on the table.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article59876436.html#storylink=cpy

Don't mess around with Jim, don't spit into the wind, I came to get my money back:

Don't Mess Around With Jim, Jim Croce

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Nevada Solar

Meanwhile over in Nevada, regulators are thinking of phasing in rate increases over 12 years rather than over 4 years.

The Nevada Public Utilities Commission has voted to phase in higher rates for rooftop solar customers over a longer period of time than previously approved.

Regulators voted 3-0 on Friday to implement the new rates over 12 years, rather than four years.

Commissioners approved new rates in December for customers who use net metering, or sell excess energy from their solar panels back to the utility.

Regulators say the rates better reflect the declining cost of solar power and phase out a subsidy traditional energy customers pay to support a much-smaller group of rooftop solar customers.

Solar customers say it means their panels will take years more to pay off. Solar companies have responded by laying off employees and staging large protests outside PUC meetings.

And the vote wasn't even close: 3 - 0.

Minor Notes -- As Many As Six Air Forces Might Now Be Flying Over Syria -- November 1, 2015

Minor Notes

Mideast natural gas: updating the natural gas fields in Egypt and Israel.

Chinese buying US oil assets: Business Insider has a story on private equity giants selling their shale to China. This may come back to be a story that we see in the Bakken. Just saying. The most recent Chinese - Texas deal was posted on the blog.

Very interesting story unfolding this week in the U.S. energy sector; showing several twists emerging amongst the players in this space, old and new.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story Sunday that a new operator is breaking onto the scene in shale. Namely, billion-dollar Chinese property development company Yantai Xinchao. [Referred to as "Yankee Ka-Ching-Ka-Ching" in Beijing.]

According to filings, that firm has reached a deal to acquire a package of oil assets in west Texas. Few details were given on the properties -- but the price tag for purchase is significant, at around $1.3 billion.

The company did specify that this billion-dollar property package is located within Texas' Howard and Borden counties, an area that would put the assets within the shale oil hotbed of the Permian Basin.

I try to track some of these deals over at "Asian Connections." While the government seems forever to approve the HAL-BHI merger, and killed the Keystone, it has no trouble approving the sale of crude oil assets to China.

Flipping crude oil producing property: at this website, click on the asset to see acquisition date and exit date.

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Downed Russian Jet

Updates

November 2, 2015: Russian airline rejects human, technical causes for Egypt crash.  Link here. 

Original Post

 

First hunch may have been correct. Immediately after news of the downed Russian a/c killing 224 on board, I wrote Don:

• most dangerous aspects of commercial flying, non-terrorist-related mishaps: take-offs and landing
• once at cruising altitude, most likely reason for unexplained crash: terrorists

The plane was 25 minutes into flight; well past take-off and leveling off.

We now learn that the plane was cruising at 36,000 feet when something happened:

The Egyptian officials said the aircraft was cruising at 36,000 feet when contact with the jet was lost. Flight-tracking service FlightRadar24 said the plane was losing altitude at about 6,000 feet per minute before the signal was lost, Reuters reported.

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Wages

The mystery of the vanishing wage increase -- the New York Times -- the jobs market is "a lot softer" than a 5.1% unemployment rate would indicate -- exactly what I've been posting  on the blog for six years:

Amid the global economic turmoil and seesawing markets, millions of Americans have one overriding question: When will my pay increase arrive? The nation’s unemployment rate has fallen substantially since the end of the Great Recession, sliding to 5.1 percent from 10 percent in 2009, but wages haven’t accelerated upward, as many had expected.

In fact, the labor market is a lot softer than a 5.1 percent jobless rate would indicate. For one thing, the percentage of Americans who are working has fallen considerably since the recession began. 

This disappearance of several million workers — as labor force dropouts they are not factored into the jobless rate — has meant continued labor market weakness, which goes far to explain why wage increases remain so elusive. End of story, many economists say. 

But work force experts assert that economists ignore many other factors that help explain America’s stubborn wage stagnation.

Outsourcing, offshoring and imports exert a steady downward tug on wages. Labor unions have lost considerable muscle. Many employers have embraced pay-for-performance policies that often mean nice bonuses for the few instead of across-the-board raises for the many.

Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, noted, for instance, that many retailers give managers bonuses based on whether they keep their labor budgets below a designated ceiling.

In recent years, wage increases, before factoring in inflation, have averaged about 2 percent annually. But real, after-inflation wages have remained dismayingly flat since 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, even though real wages did bump up last fall when the drop in oil prices pulled down inflation. (In a minority view, the Heritage Foundation and some other conservative groups say the bureau has underestimated wage increases.)

"After -inflation wages have remained dismayingly flat since 2009." What year did President assume ... office ... oh, that's right. 2009. 

We're gonna need some multi-lingual air traffic controllers (air) and forward air controllers (ground) to deconflict all manned air forces and all the unmanned air forces in Syria (US, Russia, Syrian, Israeli, Iranian, Saudi, Turkey). The Syrian conflict has become a) a free-for-all; and, b) a Turkey shoot. Currently being tweeted:  Israel carries out airstrike on Syrian regime base in Qalamoun, destroying 3 warehouses holding Scud-missiles.

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Wind

800 Slicers And Dicers Coming Down In California

This deserves a stand-alone post, but I'm trying to de-emphasize intermittent energy and stay focused on the Bakken, but it's very, very difficult. This is a most interesting story. Maybe someday when I have time, I will re-post this as a stand-alone. It's a huge, huge story.

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that 800 wind turbines in the Altamont Pass (California) are coming down. A win for the birds:

A wind power provider that operates about 800 turbines in the Altamont Pass -- where thousands of birds are believed killed by them each year -- is shutting down its operations.

Altamont Winds told the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service in an email Oct. 23 that it is ceasing operations as of Sunday.

The decision was applauded by environmental groups, which for years have been fighting to build awareness around the large numbers of golden eagles, raptors, burrowing owls and other birds that are killed by turbines.

There's a lot more to the story, but that's where I will leave it for now.

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Notes From All Over

Notes from my daughter / son-in-law in Portland, OR, regarding Halloween last night:

We had one little boy about 4, maybe, come through in a group of 4 kids. Anyway, he was a minion, very cute, and he stumbled on our step and hit his head (not hard, just a tap) on the door frame and then nearly toppled into our house. After he left, I told Tim, "He was dedicated to being in character."

Huge Rain Returns To All Of Texas -- October 23, 2015; The Williston Wire; Slicers And Dicers; Texas Sets Wind Record

Updates

Later, 7:06 p.m. Central Time: after posting the note below regarding the PBS News story on wind turbines, a reader sent me this note (again, why I love to blog; the things I learn). FuelFix is reporting:

The Texas electric grid hit a new record for wind power use early Thursday, as the state continues dominating the rest of the nation in wind farm growth.

At 12:30 am Thursday, the main Texas grid operator reported that nearly 37 percent of demand was met with wind power. The Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, which manages nearly 90 percent of the state’s electric needs, said it used 12,237.6 megawatts of wind power at the time. That bested a previous record set on Sept. 13 of 11,467 megawatts.

A megawatt powers about 500 typical Texas residences during periods of normal demand.

The new record came the same day as the American Wind Energy Association reported Texas accounted for nearly half of the nation’s wind power growth in the third quarter of the year. Texas added 771 megawatts of wind generation in the third quarter and, nationwide, about 1,600 megawatts were put online. Texas now has about 16,400 megawatts of wind power, according to the AWEA, which is about 10,000 megawatts more than the second and third windiest states, California and Iowa. [Boone Pickens was ahead of his time; came out for wind too soon; couldn't get the transmission lines built.]

Texas is expected to exceed 20,000 megawatts next year. Further growth after 2016 may depend on whether Congress extends the production tax credit for wind projects.

The wind association praised recent project announcements like SunEdison saying it will build the 300-megawatt South Plains II wind farm northeast of Lubbock to power Hewlett-Packard data centers, and Monday’s announcement that EDF Renewable Energy will build a 123-megawatt wind project north of Dallas to power Procter & Gamble plants that make its laundry, dish-washing and other cleaning products.

Some companies are even studying ways for wind to power the production of oil and gas. Norway-based DNV GL has partners with Exxon Mobil Corp., Statoil and others on the “WIN WIN” joint industry project to use floating wind turbines to power offshore oil and gas production. [Too bad XOM is saying "goodbye" to California; the state and XOM could have been great partners. LOL.]

Original Post

 

Be sure to check out Hurricane Patricia at this site, "Winds." (This is a dynamic link; it will change over time.)

The city of Houston, TX, is being told to expect as much as a foot of rain from this hurricane which will moderate to a tropical storm over the weekend as it heads for southeastern and eastern Texas later this weekend.

The weathermen and weatherwomen on local television are being advised to take their medication to moderate their "enthusiasm." They are almost jumping out of their clothes reporting all this rain.

Meanwhile back in the Bakken, from The Williston Wire:

The City of Williston, North Dakota, has entered into a partnership with Buxton to strengthen the city's retail development strategy. Buxton's advanced consumer analytics will reveal the best retail options for the community and also help city leaders to better understand the differences between business visitors and tourists. By partnering with Buxton, Williston will utilize the same advanced consumer insights relied on by retailers for site selection decisions.

The City of Williston is getting ready to open new office space in Downtown Williston. The Williston Development Center will be ready for move-ins beginning November 9, 2015. The building, located at 113 4th St. E., is most commonly known as the former Hess Corp building. The two-story site has been completely renovated to make room for the Williston Planning and Zoning Department and Department of Building Safety on the second floor. Williston Economic Development, the Small Business Development Center, Williston Convention & Visitor Bureau and Tri County Regional Economic Development Association will be housed on the main floor.

Williston residents are invited to attend the ribbon cutting for the Main Street Reconstruction project on Thursday, Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. The celebration will be held at the intersection of Main Street and 4th Street. Representatives from the North Dakota Department of Transportation, City of Williston, Knife River, DowlHKM, Williston Area Chamber of Commerce and Williston Downtowners Association will participate in a short program. The Main Street Reconstruction project replaced and improved under and above ground infrastructure in Downtown Williston.

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PBS News Hour Had A Segment On Slicers And Dicers 

October 23, 2015

PBS News Hour had a segment on slicers and dicers. It turns out only "older" wind turbines kill migratory birds; new turbines don't. LOL.

One slicer and dicer is known to have killed one eagle each year for ten years. It was torn down, but the 149 wind turbines on the same farm are still standing. The US government now allows wind turbines to kill up to five eagles every year, or something like that.

Bottom line: wind energy has not one redeeming factor. That was always true and will always remain true. Great Britain figured that out.

And This Is Why It's Called Intermittent Energy -- August 11, 2015

An "intermittent energy" graph:

The Obama administration is reporting that a drop in average wind speeds in the western United States during early 2015 led to reduced generation from wind plants in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Lots of gobbledygook at the the link, but the graph pretty much tells me all I need to now.

But close reading of the article suggests that it's much more than just the wind speeds. One wonders about the state of these older wind farms.

Also, this is a chance for folks to re-acquaint themselves with "capacity factor," something I just blogged about a few days ago.

By the way, wind data has only been collected for a few years. I doubt anyone really knows the "normal wind" pattern in the western US. Perhaps this is normal, and the last five years have been a bit better vis a vis wind.

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Speaking of Wind -- From The Field Of Dreams

A reader gives an update of the new MDU wind farm going up in North Dakota, some data points:

• Thunder Spirit Wind, 43 turbines, 107.5 MW
• to be completed in December, 2015
• progress of project can be seen from US Highway 12, approximately two (2) miles east of Hettinger, ND
• blades and rotors were arriving on August 4 (2015)
• convoys of turbine towers headed toward this project on August 10 (2015)
• using only two small cranes; no tall cranes on this plateau; no tower assemblies erected

The reader thinks it unlikely the project will be completed on schedule. And, of course, the completion date is the beginning of North Dakota's infamous winters. Fortunately the "North Dakota winters" have been tamed by Algore Global Warming. 

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

The Apple Page

Macrumors is reporting:  RiteAid reverses course, will accept Apple Pay.

Rite Aid today announced that its 4,600 stores across the United States will begin accepting Apple Pay and Google Wallet starting August 15, nearly one year after the drugstore chain and CVS infamously disabled support for the iPhone-based mobile payments service nationwide. Rite Aid will also support Google's forthcoming Android Pay service when available. 

Rite Aid and CVS spurred a controversy last year after disabling Apple Pay and Google Wallet as payment methods last year, likely because both are members of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium, which has its own mobile payments service called CurrentC. MCX launched in August 2012 with a three-year exclusivity period for all members, which ends this month.

This tells me CurrentC is toast. CurrentC had a 3-year exclusivity period. I had completely forgotten about CurretnC. And that's why Apple doesn't worry one way or the other about the success/failure of the Apple Watch -- look at all the free advertising Apple got with that controversial launch.

And, as usual, the comments over at Macrumors are always the best, mostly from Apple haters.

Has CurrentC even been launched yet? Nope: in "the coming weeks," just when the three-year exclusivity pact ends, CurrentC will be launched. Some say "DOA." Others say,  "dead by January 1, 2016."

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The Literature Page

I'm re-reading Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno, c. 2014. If one is interested in JD Salinger this has to be one of the best biographies of him. The "stuff" he experienced before he was 30 years old is indescribable. Shields and Salerno went to the original sources to get the story.

His relationship with Jean Miller, whom he met when she was fourteen (14) years old is a must-read. One wonders about her parents. The story is told in three or four pages but is worth the price of the book, and well worth the time spent reading the book. It is incredible that another life-altering experience for Salinger was not even mentioned in the wiki post. One wonders if there is a reason that story is not there.

As usual, it took a English newspaper, The (London) Daily Mail to tell the story.

From the linked article:

Their 700-page Salinger biography has new information well beyond any possible posthumous fiction.

Nine years in the making and thoroughly documented, Salinger features many rare photographs and letters, unprecedented detail about the author's World War II years and brief first marriage, and a revelatory interview with the former teenage girl, Jean Miller, who inspired his classic story For Esme - With Love and Squalor.

It also has an account of how Salinger, who supposedly shunned Hollywood for much of his life, nearly agreed to allow Esme to be adapted into a feature film.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

In preparation for my wife returning to Texas from her summer vacation in southern California, I spent some time sprucing up the apartment. There are two "things" that show their age in an apartment: the carpet and the stove top drip pans. I can't do much about the carpet except vacuum; it's in great shape except for worn spots where most used.

The stove's drip pans get really bad over time. My daughter said a Brillo pad would work well, but I don't think so, and even if it did, it would have taken a lot of elbow grease and time. And they would not have looked all that new when all was said and done.

So ... off to Wal-Mart. I did not bring the old drip pans with me. I assumed they were all the same. Nope. At least four common types: Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type D, each with two different sizes.

Back home to bring the old drip pans in to compare. Type C.

Wal-Mart had the other three types but not Type C. But it makes sense. So ... off to Target.

Target had Type C, but just barely. I took the last set.

May has not yet noticed the "new" stove top. We'll see how long it takes.

But it was well worth it. Makes the apartment look new.

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Baltimore and Ferguson

Among all public high school students, Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest graduation rate (93 percent), followed by Whites (85 percent), Hispanics (76 percent), and American Indians/Alaska Natives and Blacks (68 percent each).  -- google search