Mo STUFF

Our North American grid runs @ 60 cycles. Electrons change direction in the wires 60 times/sec. Does it awe you or what? It still awes me. If E supply/demand doesn't match up every instant, our system can get out of sync. Does Aug '03 come to mind? So. On New Year's Eve AES Energy Storage, a subsid of a DC area company, opened up their Johnson City NY plant that sells frequency regulation. It absorbs/delivers E @ 5 second intervals ordered by a computer at the NY ISO (Independent System Operator) which runs the state grid. With thousands of lithium ion batteries built by AONE. BCON is working on an Albany plant to do the same thing with flywheels. Flywheels lose 15% of the E, the batts 10%. The AES project had a fed loan guarantee of $17M, ~ 80% of cost. The project could eventually absorb/deliver 20MW for >15 min. AES eventually to use 800k batts - each ~ size of a D battery - installed in 53-foot shipping containers.

A new study suggests that the level of the hydroxyl radical - formed in the atmos when UV light from sun reacts with gases causing an atom of O to link with an atom of H - is much steadier than previously believed. It's like an atmos detergent. May mean future pollution levels can be predicted with more confidence. Those newly formed compounds are so chemically reactive that they disappear in less than a second. THAT's what I've been seeing in the sky! They combine with other compounds - often a pollutant, initiating the breakdown of the pollutant into less dangerous chemicals. Bottom line: Mother Nature seems to be suppplying a steady dose of detergent to clean up some of the human mess. Bad news is that CO2 is not among those pollutants broken down. And NOx and S are rising in fast-growing countries.

"Normal weather" will become "new normals" this year. Temps, rain, snow. The 70's - relatively cool - will be replaced by the '00's, the hottest decade on record. XcelE went to 20-year normals 20 years ago. The new normals will be released in June, then revised at year-end.