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Mid October 2019 Bombogensis Coastal


Ginx snewx
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1 hour ago, BrianW said:

Electricity being sent long distances over powerlines with massive efficiency losses will be antiquated much sooner than you think. Solar and battery storage and small local microgrids are coming. 

My house is all electric powered 100% by my solar panels. I am totally ready to call Eversource and tell them I dont need their line anymore once battery storage comes down in price. That is already happening in Hawaii and New England is right behind Hawaii with the most expensive electricity in the US. Utilities are already using large scale battery storage here.

It's a nice idea, but I can't help but wonder what the energy cost is of mining, refining, packaging, shipping, installing and disposing of a gigantic battery. How much solar would you need to be reap to offset both your personal usage and all the fossil fuels spent to produce and dispose of it? I don't know the answer, but I suspect the payback period would be substantial.

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2 hours ago, BrianW said:

Electricity being sent long distances over powerlines with massive efficiency losses will be antiquated much sooner than you think. Solar and battery storage and small local microgrids are coming. 

My house is all electric powered 100% by my solar panels. I am totally ready to call Eversource and tell them I dont need their line anymore once battery storage comes down in price. That is already happening in Hawaii and New England is right behind Hawaii with the most expensive electricity in the US. Utilities are already using large scale battery storage here.

Part of that/those technological mode/attitude changes aren't just for the advent of new tech alone, either ... There was a veracious study released several years ago about the exposure of the grid to the sky as a nearly naked ground current problem - in the advent of solar storms reaching Carrington Event classification. That event now would knock out many hundreds of millions, in thousands of regions world over and probably descend the world into a global crisis that enter dystopian duress here [      ]  - though there are conflicting studies on the extent of said crisis. Mm... the dependence on electricity is both poorly planned, more fragile than many know ... and would cut deeply if it were lost in a more permanent status. Areas the grid service were customized - they don't have parts in storage for macro redundancy in the face of cascade systemic failure that involves physicality.  Such that it would take years to recovery many areas, including urban.

Yeah... few are aware of this while we carry about in the popularized issues of the day.   Also, there's a recent joint study out of Osaka Japan:

"...The September 1859 Carrington Event ejected concentrated solar plasma towards Earth, disrupting the planet's magnetic field and leading to widespread telegraph disturbances and even sporadic fires. New research in AGU's journal Space Weather indicates storms like the Carrington Event are not as rare as scientists thought and could happen every few decades, seriously damaging modern communication and navigation systems around the globe.

"The Carrington Event was considered to be the worst-case scenario for space weather events against the modern civilization… but if it comes several times a century, we have to reconsider how to prepare against and mitigate that kind of space weather hazard," said Hisashi Hayakawa, lead author of the new study and an astrophysicist at Osaka University in Osaka, Japan and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom..."

They are being careful with their diplomatic word choice.  While we are really using a ticking time bomb to plan for a future that won't explode on us ... We are ( rightfully so ...) ever preoccupied with GW and climate change stuff, while we are also but a light switch away from disaster regardless.

I just you know ... it's not the time or the place but, there are more examples all around us than one can count, that are existing proofs of how the Industrial Revolution surge humanity ahead without any checks-and-balance along the way.

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It's a nice idea, but I can't help but wonder what the energy cost is of mining, refining, packaging, shipping, installing and disposing of a gigantic battery. How much solar would you need to be reap to offset both your personal usage and all the fossil fuels spent to produce and dispose of it? I don't know the answer, but I suspect the payback period would be substantial.

1. ( to the post you are relying to) Energy losses at transmission voltages are not a huge driver for decentralization. The largest benefits are usually sub station upgrade deferrals and other capex/ demand (kW) driven reasons  

 

 2. The full life emmisions impacts of solar, wind, BESS are substantially lower than fossil fuel plants... . For example, solar is around 40 g/kWh( ~4x worse than wind but small scale wind has crap capacity factors so not applicable for a homeowner) over the life of a system and batteries are probably 100,000 g/kwh capacity. If you have a 10 kWh battery and use it every day for 10 years, that's around another 25 g/kWh.

Thia puts you around 65 total g/kWh which compares favorably to ~400 for nat gas and ~ 800 plus for coal. These are pretty conservative estimates, but does compare favorably to the grid in most places (maybe not wind rich places).

 

There are some concerns like cobalt mining practices for lithium ion batteries, however those are already being designed around...

 

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As of last night, 95% of the town of Petersham, MA still had no power.  

Any thoughts as to why the town’s NW of ORH got hit pretty hard?  Elevation?  Just the amount of trees? Orange, Athol, Royalston, Barre, Hubbardston etc   
 

The airports didn’t seem overly windy  Orange had one gust of 49mph   

 

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3 hours ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

As of last night, 95% of the town of Petersham, MA still had no power.  

Any thoughts as to why the town’s NW of ORH got hit pretty hard?  Elevation?  Just the amount of trees? Orange, Athol, Royalston, Barre, Hubbardston etc   
 

The airports didn’t seem overly windy  Orange had one gust of 49mph   

 

Purely speculation but the wind force was coming at the entire region from an unusual direction ?  

It had more of an easterly component to it - I'm not absolutely certain of that wind direction in Petersham; it's just that there was limited/no antecedent boundary layer additional forcing from colder viscous air mass, which with the more typical coastal cyclone circumstance ... causes the wind to back more NE or even N when lows cut east of that region. 

This was an unusual storm ... elevation probably does play a role where it was affecting inland.  I am here in the Nashoba Valley - for example - and really didn't even hear a single wind gust. Yet a friend lives similar distance as the crow flies from the coastal zones in Auburn at an elevation of 700' and said he lost power for a couple of hours and there is sporadic limbs here and there around the neighborhood.  Immediately E/S of his location there were no outages ... until RI, where all hell breaks loose..  That does seem to suggest both an elevation inland, or proficient mixing nearer the warm ociean (perhaps), as the two primary exposures in this event.

Anyway, if the more easterly component were true, that may also add to it that foliage stress patterns may not have been accustomed to that wind direction. Tam' up in Maine might have some insight there as he seems to be a bit of tree guy

 

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41 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Purely speculation but the wind force was coming at the entire region from an unusual direction ?  

It had more of an easterly component to it - I'm not absolutely certain of that wind direction in Petersham; it's just that there was limited/no antecedent boundary layer additional forcing from colder viscous air mass, which with the more typical coastal cyclone circumstance ... causes the wind to back more NE or even N when lows cut east of that region. 

This was an unusual storm ... elevation probably does play a role where it was affecting inland.  I am here in the Nashoba Valley - for example - and really didn't even hear a single wind gust. Yet a friend lives similar distance as the crow flies from the coastal zones in Auburn at an elevation of 700' and said he lost power for a couple of hours and there is sporadic limbs here and there around the neighborhood.  Immediately E/S of his location there were no outages ... until RI, where all hell breaks loose..  That does seem to suggest both an elevation inland, or proficient mixing nearer the warm ociean (perhaps), as the two primary exposures in this event.

Anyway, if the more easterly component were true, that may also add to it that foliage stress patterns may not have been accustomed to that wind direction. Tam' up in Maine might have some insight there as he seems to be a bit of tree guy

 

I mean 50mph winds against foliated trees will take them down for sure. In addition to what Tip said, we seemed to have a downslope event in these areas. The lower elevations on the west side of ORH hiils into the CT valley all had some decent damage. Unlike winter events that have strong LLJs as well, we didn't have a cold airmass to work with. The cold air allows for the stable wedge to form and therefore prevents mixing.

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1 hour ago, CoastalWx said:

I mean 50mph winds against foliated trees will take them down for sure. In addition to what Tip said, we seemed to have a downslope event in these areas. The lower elevations on the west side of ORH hiils into the CT valley all had some decent damage. Unlike winter events that have strong LLJs as well, we didn't have a cold airmass to work with. The cold air allows for the stable wedge to form and therefore prevents mixing.

Follow the mesos paths, highest gusts and most damage. Radar velocity,  vorticity mesoanalysis, highest gusts, most damage. Damage was worst with each east meso traveling along the wind shift line. 

Screenshot_20191019-125235_Gallery.jpg

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1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Follow the mesos paths, highest gusts and most damage. Radar velocity,  vorticity mesoanalysis, highest gusts, most damage. Damage was worst with each east meso traveling along the wind shift line. 

Screenshot_20191019-125235_Gallery.jpg

Whoever comes up with the technology to bury wires without huge cost will cash in.  It’s out there somewhere.  

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33 minutes ago, weathafella said:

Whoever comes up with the technology to bury wires without huge cost will cash in.  It’s out there somewhere.  

Wires are so old school...above or below ground.  If we’re going big, why can’t each home/apt or whatever harness and store its own energy. Granted, we’re probably a generation or two away and we need public policy changes/support, but let’s go big. 

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6 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Purely speculation but the wind force was coming at the entire region from an unusual direction ?  

It had more of an easterly component to it - I'm not absolutely certain of that wind direction in Petersham; it's just that there was limited/no antecedent boundary layer additional forcing from colder viscous air mass, which with the more typical coastal cyclone circumstance ... causes the wind to back more NE or even N when lows cut east of that region. 

This was an unusual storm ... elevation probably does play a role where it was affecting inland.  I am here in the Nashoba Valley - for example - and really didn't even hear a single wind gust. Yet a friend lives similar distance as the crow flies from the coastal zones in Auburn at an elevation of 700' and said he lost power for a couple of hours and there is sporadic limbs here and there around the neighborhood.  Immediately E/S of his location there were no outages ... until RI, where all hell breaks loose..  That does seem to suggest both an elevation inland, or proficient mixing nearer the warm ociean (perhaps), as the two primary exposures in this event.

Anyway, if the more easterly component were true, that may also add to it that foliage stress patterns may not have been accustomed to that wind direction. Tam' up in Maine might have some insight there as he seems to be a bit of tree guy

This storm was odd, in that winds probably never gusted to 40 near my place and leaf drop was already well over 50% before the event started, yet we lost power for 29 hours.  The unusual wind direction for peak velocity may have some validity, however.  Looking back 2 years, when even fewer leaves remained on the trees (because it was nearly 2 weeks later), Maine was hammered and some think it was because our strongest gusts and most frequent strong winds are from the NW, so the SE winds of 2017 broke more trees than expected.  Also, many observers report that all the damage occurred in a short period, 15-30 minutes at any particular location though different times as the storm moved northward.  Resembled catching the edge of an eyewall or an extraordinarily widespread downburst.

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2 hours ago, tamarack said:

This storm was odd, in that winds probably never gusted to 40 near my place and leaf drop was already well over 50% before the event started, yet we lost power for 29 hours.  The unusual wind direction for peak velocity may have some validity, however.  Looking back 2 years, when even fewer leaves remained on the trees (because it was nearly 2 weeks later), Maine was hammered and some think it was because our strongest gusts and most frequent strong winds are from the NW, so the SE winds of 2017 broke more trees than expected.  Also, many observers report that all the damage occurred in a short period, 15-30 minutes at any particular location though different times as the storm moved northward.  Resembled catching the edge of an eyewall or an extraordinarily widespread downburst.

Like here, edge of dry slot gravity waves along with embedded mesos. I watched whole good oaks bend completely over with one gust, thats when I saw a blue flash twice. I was looking out the back with my hand held spot light at the time. The blue flash was a tree branch on the power lines across the street blowing the breaker on the transformer.  Cool stuff. 

We have had multiple SE big wind events here since Irene. The demise of the oak forest is in full swing.  Acres of dead trees.

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