Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I grew up on a remote cattle ranch in the middle of miles of forest in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains of California. We had our own hydroelectric power plant. It was built by my father and my brother-in-law. They put a two-foot high dam across the creek (blue line), and diverted the water into a mile of ditch that they dug from there to a lake that they built by the house.
Figure 1. Renewable energy, circa 1952
Then they built a penstock and dropped part of the water back to a powerhouse by the creek. Inside the powerhouse was a Pelton Wheel that drove an alternator. Poles carried the power (4,000 volt, 10 kilowatts) to the ranchhouse. That was the only power for the ranch, and there was only us to keep it running. That was my introduction to renewable energy.
When I was a kid, our grade school took a field trip and toured Shasta Dam, in Northern California. I was astounded by it. I loved the idea that it was just a bigger version of our little powerplant.
Figure 2. Shasta Dam, Northern California. Note the five large penstocks at the lower left leading to the powerhouse. MORE PHOTOS
These days, of course, it is almost impossible to build a small dam in the US, much less something on the scale of Shasta Dam. People raise hundreds of objections, any project is stalled before it starts. This has always seemed extremely foolish to me, since hydroelectric power is proven, 24-hour, baseline power. Despite that, there’s a whole branch of the environmental movement that considers dams as forces of evil.
Which is why I laughed out loud when I saw the latest numbers on the CDM. The CDM is the “Clean Development Mechanism” of the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM is the foundation of the carbon emission credit system in use in Europe. Companies which emit more CO2 than the regulations allow can purchase credits. The companies pay the money to sponsor an emissions-reducing project in a developing country, so in theory everything balances out.
There’s a New York Times article on the CDM here. This is the part that I found to be hilarious (emphasis mine):
Since it began operating in 2006, the board has validated 2,918 projects, 40 percent of them in China, according to the U.N. Environment Program’s database at the Risoe Center, in Denmark, which tracks every project in the C.D.M. pipeline. The center’s data show that 1,668 projects are in hydroelectric power and 1,060 of those are in China.
So the effect of the Kyoto Protocol is that it is OK for the West to burn fossil fuels, as long as the West is also subsidizing hydroelectric dam construction in China …
Does anyone but me find that truly and bizarrely hilarious? I’m sure the Chinese are busting up laughing, and saying “Give us 20 Kyoto protocols, this is great, we’ll let you well-meaning Western fools build all the hydroelectric plants China can hold” …
My great-uncle had a ranch in Igo, CA, just west of Redding, Willis. We went for a week almost every summer as a kid. Been to Shasta Dam many times (tho not recently). Very impressive.
There’s a romantic, almost hypnotic notion about returning Mother Earth to her most natural state. I get that. When we humans divert or dam-up a natural waterway, COMMON SENSE dictates (let alone scientific study), there is a price paid to the natural process.
It is our responsibility to weigh that price against the benefits.
This is where the Environmentalists come off the rails. They see literally ZERO benefit to the human side of the equation! I have no problem forcing a contractor to provide alternate (maybe expensive) pathways for fish, or the like. That’s responsible resource management. If we’re building a dam, some people may have to move, lest they be buried under the upstream lake! “The needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few.”
The final decision is still up the democratic process, right? oops…nvm…the Environs are running this thing after-all, and we voted them in there. I guess everything’s working exactly as it should.
kramer says:
October 14, 2010 at 7:06 am
“Companies which emit more CO2 than the regulations allow can purchase credits. The companies pay the money to sponsor an emissions-reducing project in a developing country, so in theory everything balances out.”
The important thing that this ‘balances out’ is wealth between countries. The redistribution of wealth, both within and between countries seems to be one of the ‘solutions’ of AGW…..
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/363369/we_shouldnt_expect_a_single_copenhagen_treaty_to_solve_things.html (This one from Mike Hulme of University of East Anglia)
Hulme, on “Copenhagen”: and whatever happened to making poverty history?
Finally, and most importantly, we need to tackle head-on the elephant in the background – the need for huge redistribution of wealth from North to South. The questions of economic development and human welfare in a world of scandalous inequality….
Feckless Communists that they are, Hulme and Sunstein have apparently never created any wealth to begin with, so they think it’s impossible and that the amount of wealth is fixed at a certain amount as a veritable Law of Nature, and therefore that it never decreases either. They also think that “fairness”= wealth redistribution to accomplish a mythical and undefineable “equality” – without a market, no less -will influence Natural Processes so that we’ll never have to deal with them again and, “Behold, the Horn of Plenty Shall Provideth!”
We can only hope that GM has also noticed these obvious examples of “ecological overshoot”, because it does seem clear that we can certainly not achieve “sustainability” with these kinds of parasitic mental midgets anywhere near the controls – which instead is where they presume without question is their rightful place!
We used to get American visitors commenting on the lack of dams on our rivers in the south of New Zealand.
“Why, back in the States, we’d have that danged river dammed up every mile generatin’ electricity.”
“We can’t do that here,” my father would reply.
“Why not?”
“Well, we have to let the water run for 25 miles to get its electricity back!”
Good post, Willis, and parellels my youth as well. Brought up on cattle farm, generated our own electricity (1,800 feet of 4″ pipe, 600 feet of head, 1/2″ nozzle driving a 15″ Pelton wheel producing 21 kW.)
Went fishing, like you, and wound up in the tropics also like you. And indeed, I think we’ve met – think car turning over after Cyclone Kina January 1993 🙂
Cheers from Pacific Harbour
Golf Charley says:
October 14, 2010 at 2:57 am
I don’t think that’s enough head for conventional turbines (could be wrong about that though!) but if there’s sufficient flow rate a slow rotating water wheel shaft can be geared up to generator shaft speed. It takes one horsepower to lift about 55 gallons of water one foot in one second. One horsepower is 750 watts. If you know the flow rate and the height of the drop you can calculate the potential energy available then subtract efficiency losses from tranmission gears and generator which is largely a matter of how much you want to pay for them (especially the transmission gears!) but I’d figure around 50% (more or less) efficient conversion of potential energy to electrical energy.
As the Sun ages, it gets brighter. It’s estimated to be 30% brighter now then when the Earth formed. In about 500 million years, it will have brightened enough that the habitable zone will move past Earth’s orbit, rendering Earth lifeless.
Renewable doesn’t mean eternal, or indefinite. Eventually, even the Universe dies.
FYI How tides enlarge the Moon’s orbit and slow Earth’s rotation. The Moon is still comfortably within Earth’s Hill Sphere, the Mood will still orbiting the Earth long after the seas have boiled away. Which will be long before the Sun leaves the main sequence.
what really annoys me is the environmentalists who use China as an example of a Green country – “China is right into renewables” they say – “China has 30% of it’s power from renewable energy” they spout.
That’s because China has 196GW of Hydropower!! That’s Canada’s hydro and the total US hydro combined.
China’s solar and wind is still in the low MW range, just enough to test wind generators and solar cells so they can master the technology and sell them to the west.
Ok here is a thought. Lets just say the U.S. government is more or less banning development of energy sources, oil, gas, coal, inside its borders under the guise of enviromentalizm. We know the U.S. has more than enough energy reserves to be self sufficient. So under the guise of enviromentalizm the idea is to save the reserves in the U.S. for the future while using everone elses.
Just thinking, haven’t had breakfast yet.
Hydro electric power basically utises gravity. Now there’s an underestimated supply of cheap endless renewable energy. It’s probably green enough for the ecofascists too.
Isn’t it?…
Golf Charley 2:57am –
My old home town of Blairgowrie in Perthshire used to have several flax mills powered by water. One of them had the biggest water wheel in the country. Several of the weirs and mill lades are still functional and a micro generation plant is to be built, theoretically producing income of £30k pa.
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Perthshire/article/2841/work-begins-on-blairgowrie-hydro-project.html
You will see that even when the basic infrastructure is there the company requires up-front funding of £500k, and various bureaucratic hurdles have had to be overcome.
R. de Haan says:
October 14, 2010 at 7:34 am
…And Agenda 21 too:
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/?utm_source=OldRedirect&utm_medium=redirect&utm_content=dsd&utm_campaign=OldRedirect
But my hopes rest in the fact, which you pointed out long ago, of the big consumption by these “kids”of a certain white powder, which, inevitably, will render them useless for the main purposes of their master. (HE must be very worried watching the “aspirations” of their beloved sons and daughters). 🙂
Suggested reading: Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee.
More on the River Ericht Hydro Project here –
http://www.barrc.co.uk/hydro%20project.htm
Prof. Richard Muller explanes why what we are doing is nonsense if you believe that CO2 is a problem. It´s the China (and India) problem.
Berkeley Prof. Richard Muller on Copenhagen and Global Warming
In my country most of the mid to large streams and rivers got dammed up and put to hydro electrical production. Then came 1968 and the the go’damn hippies, on the far left side, and put a stop to all the hydro electrical craziness. To save all the local environments (’twas a “local shop for local people” perhaps). Since the 70’s and 80’s, and even though the nuclear power scare at those times, it was enforced to even ban enlargement of the streams and river hydro plants. And imagine if you will a the stupidity of spending literally billions on wind power (that really is like a viral disease on the “local shop”) to produce what the installed hydro power can produce without breaking a sweat if the maniac greenies would’ve allowed for a enlargement of something like 10% of the modern largest dams with 5% (and that was compared to our wind power’s installed capacity if memory serves.)
The oddest thing is that getting those 5% more is just utilizing a bit more of the hydro generators installed capacity (what with they’re not using 100% but is in effect more like nuclear reactors at 80-95% which seem to mean limitation on the dam itself rather than what the turbines in optimal reality can handle) which can be had by allowing something like less then a yard higher water levels in the dams, which wouldn’t really eat up all that much land (since dams aren’t exactly located down below in the flat field lands, but higher up and tend to have natural barriers that protect that “local shop”.) It’s odd because the evil hippies think it is more rationale to chopping “local shop” down totally for wind power rather than making it a little wet for hydro and getting vastly more electricity produced for a fraction of the price which spells money saved is even more money earned (in less tax’s too.)
Joe Lalonde says:
October 14, 2010 at 4:23 am
“Torque is the desire of power generation as the resistance increases the amount of power you can get to change into electricity.
Current hydro power has to be exact in location for an exact flow rate as this was created 150 years ago or it will no run….”
Take your meds, boy! And then go learn something about the conversion of “potential energy” and its relationship to hydroelectric power production.
In the US, new hydro is something of a moot point. During those long-lost years when humans mattered more than fish, most of the good locations were dammed, and nearly all of them have continued in operation.
Not just in the Northwest, but even in Kansas, for example:
http://www.bowersockpower.com/
Now the important mission is not to build new dams, but to prevent the fish-worshippers from tearing down these national treasures.
Claude Harvey,
I wish you would stop reading the fantasy books and get real.
Water is energy already in stored pressurized gases rotating at 1669.8 km/hr.
Any energy NOT touching a blade is inefficient as deflections and interference occurs.
A turbine uses a full circle in which to turn and any energy in that circle NOT being harnessed is wasted. LOOK AT THE WIND TURBINES!
The green’s hate for hydro is irrational for the most part. I live by a big hydro project that has a couple of big lakes and about 10k acres of wild land. It is a great spot to play, and it makes power too.
When a Chainsaw Al Duncan type threatened to dismantle the power co for the land, we got the state to turn it into a state forest. We had to reopen the dam license with FERC, the DNR, USFW, and endless other agencies. There were endangered species surveys adnuseum, cultural surveys on and on. The dam license was about 40,000 pages and took 8 years to get past the first time. A small hydro project could never get through the government.
A lot of people around here really like our hydro projects, but the harassment from the riverhuggers is endless.
The craziness has gone beyond the rivers. In my state they blow up every beaver dam that gets built, and the beavers are trapped. A view of the land shows that it used to be bejeweled by little lakes, and now there are just scars.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=45.426407,-88.487148&spn=0.049154,0.108662&t=h&z=13 .
In my opinion it has actually changed the local climate draining all of those wetlands. The trout fishermen are mostly behind that.
I have a little stream about 600′ behind the house. I’d love to put in a small paddle wheel and make a couple of KW, but the notion is absurd in the current regulation environment.
@Lucy “Willis, we need a new textbook of Basic Science.”
If science was easy, we’d all be doing it, so this is an ambitious project, if the intention is to foster critical thinking in the lay population. As a member of that lay population, aghast at the degree to which shoddy climate “science” is blithely accepted by the general population, can I suggest that a much more readily achievable objective would be to create a textbook of The Scientific Method, which is readily grasped by anyone properly instructed in it. It could start with this quote from Darwin “To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact”.
The Ultimate renewable:
http://www.blacklightpower.com/
I especially like the “CIHT” concept for cars:
http://www.blacklightpower.com/pdf/MotivePower.pdf
Who knows, might be……
Joe Lalonde says:
October 14, 2010 at 5:57 pm
“Claude Harvey,
I wish you would stop reading the fantasy books and get real.
Water is energy already in stored pressurized gases rotating at 1669.8 km/hr.”
Joey,
My eyes have been opened! Thinking of all those hydro plants I built over the years (and one 1,740 MW pumped storage project) without having discovered the “1669.8 km/hr factor” just makes my ears burn.
Take your meds, Joe.
“This has always seemed extremely foolish to me, since hydroelectric power is proven, 24-hour, baseline power. Despite that, there’s a whole branch of the environmental movement that considers dams as forces of evil.”
It has never been about “clean” electricity or renewable electricity or any of the other myriad of slogans and icons of the Green movements. It has always been about and will always be about political power and money.
Just to add – not only does there seem to be widespread misconstruction of the Scientific Method, there seems also to be an even more worrying inability to distinguish between the Scientific Method and the science itself. The most common example of the thinking to which this gives rise is the warmist retort that “x has disconfirmed y’s hypothesis. But x has done no original work in y’s field. Therefore x’s disconfirmation of y’s hypothesis in invalid”.
“A Layperson’s Guide to The Scientific Method” would preempt this and similar canards. And seems to be eminently doable. I would particularly like to see a chapter where Willis deals with post-normal science.
FijiDave says:
After Cyclone Kina, the roads were all trashed. I was moving too fast when I came upon a very bad patch … my car ended up rolling. I remember thinking about Newmans Law as I went over. Named after the actor Paul Newman, the Law says “There’s no use putting on the brakes unless your wheels are one the road …”
Anyhow, Dave was the first person to stop, and he gave me a ride back to town. Many thanks, Dave, good to hear from you after all these years.