Robot Pirate Ninja

Extra water, wind strain Northwest power grid – OregonLive.com

This is a nice example of the adage, which I’ve found repeatedly to be true, when it rains it pours.

The Northwest is awash in electric power this spring.

Rivers are swollen. Columbia River dams are running full bore. Wind farm blades are spinning.

That should be good news for the Northwest, where hydropower is cheap and wind is a leader in renewable energy. And it should be good news for California, a huge electricity consumer that often sucks up Oregon’s springtime surplus.

This is also the result of all those “tree-huggers” setting up a system to utilize natural resources in an efficient  manner.

Oregon and Washington can’t use all the electricity that’s available. And southbound transmission lines that are at capacity can’t take the extra power California consumers otherwise would eagerly devour.

In some cases, power producers are paying customers to take electricity off their hands.

Operators of the Columbia-Snake River dams say there’s enough give-and-take in the system to handle large fluctuations in water flow and wind generation. But pressures have steadily increased, and they’ll intensify as more and more wind power comes into play

So now the next step is to increase our internal capacity and infrastructure.  It is in these areas that the U.S. is most in need of maintenance and expansion.  Instead of blowing things up, we should be building to help achieve the next level of national independence, that of energy.