This interactive map shows all of the operable power plants in New York State. Not all of them ran in 2016 or some only ran occasionally, but they could be brought online at least part of the year to generate electricity.
A sixty years ago, under bright moonlight of rush hour, they were playing the popular hit song, Jonathan King's Everyone is Going to the Moon -- as Dan Ingram would describe -- in a Key of "R", because the tape deck playing the song would slow down as the electrical frequency dropped at the start of the Great Northeast Blackout. Definitely one of the great moments in radio history. A creepy song to be playing at the start of the blackout, especially under a full moon. Not to mention Jonathan King is a creepy individual -- he would later go to prison as a pedophile. As they said, the electricity slowed down, as the load on the grid exceeded what power plants could put out, as they started shutting down automatically as they lost power and circuit breakers overloaded. The great power failure happened when the grid was most strained -- it was rush hour, on a cold night with lots of electric heat operating, along with street lights on and office buildings still lit brightly. They say based on comparisons of this tape versus the normal speed recordings of Edward's Everybody is Going to the Moon, the grid frequency was about 50 Hz -- or the power had browned out to about 1/6th of the normal power. In an analog world, this meant lights dimmed, elevators ran slow, and tape decks played slowly -- until the power finally quit. Here is the normal speed version of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00XbDRuI78Y
The other day, I mentioned that with thyristors connected to buck and boost converters, we could have built a much more efficient Direct Current electricity grid without the inherent losses from impedance with Alternating Current. We use 60 Hz AC mainly because it works well with (large) mains transformers and has a relatively low impedance, but it still has a lot of losses from impedance compared to direct current — and causes radio noise and hum. A high-voltage, direct current grid would not only be more efficient, you could bury direct-current lines easier, and not have to worry about storm damage.
The one issue I didn’t really address is the inherent dangers of high-voltage direct current — namely the difficulty of quenching arching, due to the lack of zero voltage crossing point. Direct current, especially high voltage direct current is difficult to break, as if you break mechanically, it will arc over — quite a long distance as the natural quenching of the zero voltage crossing point doesn’t exist like with AC. You can safely break a DC current using a thyristor, but what happens if a power line mechanically fails? It could arc over for some time, before fully breaking, causing enormous amounts of heat to be produced in the mean-time, turning large sections of wire into plasma. A high-voltage alternating current line might arc over and burn for a while, but it would relatively quickly break the connection, once enough of the line vaporized and sufficient air gap existed and the zero-point was crossed.
Climate change action is important but let’s be cognizant of the environmental impacts of renewables
Burning fossil fuels has largely known and well documented impacts. From the much touted carbon emissions to air pollution and acid rain to acid mine discharge from coal mines and scarred landscapes from mountain top removal and strip mines to drilling cuttings, fracking chemicals and produced water to cracked casings and oil spills the impacts of fossil fuels are well documented and somewhat regulated and controlled but probably not to ideal levels as production and low cost is often emphasized over safety and environmental protection.
But what is much less discussed and documented is renewable energy impacts. It must be green so there is no environmental impacts or the impacts are de minimus. But that’s far from the truth. Renewable energy consumes enormous amounts of land, it in future years has a real possibility of urbanizing enormous parts of countryside, paving over farm land and forest, producing enormous amounts of toxic waste like wind turbine blades and discarded, broken solar panels to impacting watersheds and fisheries alike, reducing scenic beauty and take land out of other uses. Things that deserve serious consideration and environmental analysis.
To be sure we do need to build more renewable energy but we have to always thinking about the consequences of our choices, not blindly building it because renewables are good and climate change is really bad and scary. Being aware of the environmental impacts of renewables doesn’t mean you’re pro fossil fuels, it means that you are a thinking society, trying to avoid negative environmental problems down the road.
We need to take a serious look before we leap – is the solar plant or wind farm appropriate for the place we are sitting it
We need to mitigate like planting pollinators friendly or native grasses around solar farms
We need to look at building more renewables in cities – be it mandatory solar panels on buildings, over highways or in urban waste lands like old garbage dumps, highway medians, or contaminated industrial sites
Why build a solar farm over green farm fields or forests when you can build over Love Canal?
This interactive map shows the Utility Service Territories in New York State, including that of National Grid, Rochester Gas and Electric, NYS Electric and Gas, Central Hudson Gas and Electric, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Long Island Power Authority, Consolidated Edison and municipal utilities.
