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Author Topic: Dam Hydropower  (Read 4332 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #15 on: April 01, 2017, 03:11:54 pm »
 

Building Hoover Dam, in pictures (1931-1936)

Tibi Puiu March 23, 2017

Officials boldly ride in one of the penstock pipes of the soon-to-be-completed Hoover Dam (1935). Credit: BUREAU OF RECLAMATION

When it was finally finished in 1936, the 60-story Hoover Dam was the highest dam in the world. That distinction now belongs to Jinping-I Dam in China. Eighty years later, however, Hoover Dam is not only still operational generating 3.6 TWh annually and a tourist attraction where millions flock every year, it’s also a remarkable engineering effort that serves as an inspiration for great infrastructure works.

This huge dam was built in only five years, from 1931 to 1936, with 5,251 people employed at peak construction. Hoover Dam’s story began much earlier, though. A famous engineer at the time from the Bureau of Reclamation named Arthur Powell Davis first outlined the vision for a high dam erected in Boulder Canyon, Colorado back in 1902. His indications and initial engineering report were put to good use when detailed plans for Hoover Dam began in 1921.

An inspection party near the proposed site of the dam in the Black Canyon on the Colorado River (1928). Credit: EYSTONE/FPG/HULTON ARCHIVE.

Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States and the man the dam was named after, played a crucial role in turning Davis’ vision into reality. In 1921, at the time a secretary of commerce, Hoover became convinced that a dam is of the utmost importance in Boulder Canyon. Such infrastructure would provide much-needed flood control in the area protecting downstream farming communities that got battered each year when snow from the Rocky Mountains melted and spewed into the Colorado River.

A surveyor signals to colleagues during the construction of the dam (1932). Credit: CORBIS.

The damn would also provide enough water to irrigate farming in the desert and supply southern Californian communities like Los Angeles with potable water. That’s, of course, in addition to the electricity it would generate. In 2015, Hoover Dam, which has a 2,000 megawatts of capacity, served the annual electrical needs of nearly 8 million people in Arizona, southern California, and southern Nevada.

Dynamite is detonated in the canyon to make room for the new dam (1933). Credit: CORBIS.

Once Hoover became president in 1929, the Boulder Canyon dam became a national priority. In the same year, the president signed the Colorado River Compact into law, also known as the ‘Law of the River’. It defined the relationship between the upper basin states, where most of the river’s water supply originates, and the lower basin states, where most of the water demands were developing. Hoover would later claim this was “the most extensive action ever taken by a group of states under the provisions of the Constitution permitting compacts between states”.

To make sure the canyon walls were solid enough to support the arch design, so-called ‘high scalers’ were employed to hammer away anything loose. Falling rocks were a serious hazard so the workers dripped their hats in tar and left them out to dry. Essentially, these were some of the first hard hats. Credit: Corbis

Building Hoover Dam was a gargantuan task. Before construction of the dam itself could begin, the Colorado River had to be diverted. Four diversion tunnels were carved through canyon walls to divert river flow around the dam site. Then, the riverbed had to dredged of deep silt and sediments to expose the bedrock formation.

This bucket holds 18 tons of concrete (1934). Credit: CORBIS.


To stabilize Hoover Dam, its base required 230 gigantic blocks of concrete. Then, columns were linked together like a giant Lego set with alternating vertical and horizontal placements. By the time concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935, some 2,480,000 m3 of concrete were used, not counting the 850,000 m3 employed in the power plant and other works. Overall, enough concrete was poured to pave a two-lane highway between San Francisco and New York!  :o

From 1934. Credit: GENERAL PHOTOGRAPHIC AGENCY.

Construction works carried on day and night (1935). Credit: CORBIS.

All of that concrete would have taken 100 years to cool and cure properly  :o were it not for the intervention of the Hoover Dam engineers. Some 528 miles worth of one-inch steel pipes were embedded through the interconnecting concrete blocks through which ice cold water was circulated. The water was supplied by the construction site’s own ammonia refrigeration plant which at peak capacity could produce the equivalent of a giant 1,000-pound ice block every day.

Hoover Dam is an arch-gravity design which dissipates that pressure into the canyon walls equally on the Arizona and Nevada side. Water exerts as much as 45,000 pounds per square foot of pressure at the base of Hoover Dam but this immense crushing force is transferred to the canyon walls.


The architect of Hoover Dam was Gordon B. Kaufmann, known for his design of the Los Angeles Times Building. Kaufmann not only took structural design in consideration but also applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project.

  :D  Engineering students pose for a picture atop one of the 2 million-pound hydroelectric generators for the dam at the General Electric factory in Schenectady, New York (1935).

A widely circulated urban myth says many bodies are were buried inside the dam’s concrete. That’s certainly not true although way too many people died building Hoover Dam by today’s standards. Officially, there are 112 deaths associated with the construction of Hoover Dam, including three workers who committed suicide on site, and a visitor who died accidentally falling off the massively high structure.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt tours the dam (1935). Credit: CORBIS

The final block of concrete was poured and topped off at 726 feet above the canyon floor in 1935. On September 30, a crowd of 20,000 people watched President Franklin Roosevelt commemorate the magnificent structure’s completion. The dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985 and one of America’s Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders in 1994. It receives some 7 million visitors annually, while Lake Mead, the world’s largest reservoir, hosts another 10 million as a popular recreation area.

Hoover dam after years of operation (1940). Credit: SCHENECTADY MUSEUM.

http://www.zmescience.com/science/building-hoover-dam-pictures-1931-1936/


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #16 on: April 01, 2017, 04:48:35 pm »
Amazing what the thermodynamic energy embedded in Fossil Fuels enabled Homo Sap to do on the civil engineering level.

Unfortunately of course, we are running out of that fuel with which to maintain said dams, and they will in due time be taken down by the forces of nature.

RE


True, but I have a different take on what happened AFTER the US went wild building Renewable Energy infrastructure on a massive scale during the 1930's for about two decades.
You know old man Rockefeller died around when Hoover Dam was being built. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that when he SAW    a picture of this Gigantic Electric Generator, it scared the living S H I T out of him.

  Engineering students pose for a picture atop one of the 2 million-pound hydroelectric generators for the dam at the General Electric factory in Schenectady, New York (1935).
http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/dam-hydropower/msg6793/#msg6793

SO, his friends in fossil fuel fascsistdom began ANOTHER attack on renewables (remember, at this time the fossil fuel fascists had DESTROYED the wind generator push 30 years early, the ethanol push 20 years early AND were busy destroying plant based  fuel refinery technology pioneered in the  1930's). Making hemp illegal was part of their skullduggery. And don't forget buying and trashing electric trolleys to replace them with buses. If their product is so God Damned "efficient", why do they ALWAYS go out of their way to destroy the competition?

AND, before all that, they had attacked geothermal (late 19th century) and KEPT a lid on it in the USA, despite we having MASSIVE resources and an invention called a power line that can send energy through wires one hell of a lot cheaper than using gasoline trucks to do it. And don't forget how they engineered a huge tax on booze as far back as 1870 in order to make kerosene artificially cheaper than alcohol for lamp fuel. And all that BULLSHIT about all the other products we "need" to get  from fossil fuels is just that!

RE, the fossil fuel industry CANNOT make money if the MAIN use of hydrocarbons is for plastics, paint, pharmaceuticals and other stuff that ISN'T BURNED. THAT is only about 5 to 10% of their market. They go BANKRUPT if we stop burning their fuels because refineries CANNOT AVOID producing a LOT of fuel and VOCs with the TINY percent amount of lubricants they get per barrel of crude. 

I will continue to disagree with you that the ISSUE of energy production and use is simply a matter of thermodynamics, with fossil fuels as the most "energy dense". It's not. The issue is CORPORATE CORRUPTION of scientific technology in gooberment, PERIOD.

As I have written here a couple of years ago, the dams were beating the daylights out of coal plant electrical power because they were, and are, CHEAPER and clean! Of course dams screw up wildlife in the long run, BUT this fossil fuel industry sponsored imbecilic idea that we have to concentrate on ONE source of POLLUTING energy from hydrocarbons is total bullshit. It's always been total bullshit, and it always will be total bullshit. 

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #17 on: April 01, 2017, 05:50:25 pm »
Absolutely, FF energy has been wasted and burned indiscriminately for the self-aggrandizement and enrichment of the Plutocracy.  Much to the detriment of the planetary environment.

However, tons of it was used to build Dams like Hoover and the 3 Gorges Dam in China, and 100s if not thousands of others over the course of the last century.  Mostly in the 1930s through 1960s when all the real good spots for this were dammed up.  That has had its own set of environmental consequences of course.

Advanced batteries and solar PV didn't even exist until maybe the 1970s, so that wasn't a practical or even possible choice at that time for a growing society with growing energy needs.  So the infrastructure got built out around the energy contained in FFs, and the population kept growing as a result.  Eventually here since FF energy is a finite resource, you reach an inflexion point.  We have hit it.

RE


I am aware of the energy technology available at any time during the 20th century. Yeah, of course they used, AND CURRENTLY USE, a lot of fossil fuels to make concrete. What was 'practical' at any time during that century was a product of corruption, not CFS. You really do believe that we needed fossil fuels to build all those dams when ethanol plant products couldn't? It was corruption that strangled ethanol and geothermal AND wind (and later on, solar from 1955 on for most of that century - even though the photoelectric effect was KNOWN since Einstein discovered it in the  early years of the 20th century!). We could build a nuke but we couldn't have built solar panels in 1940? Give me break! 

WE DID NOT NEED THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY. I know you think we did. We didn't. The fossil fuelers CHEATED US out of decent government and clean energy. Do you REALLY think battery technology and solar technology and wind technology and geothermal technology and chemurgy plant fuels have been SO SLOW to develop because of "competitive cost market forces"? That's the fossil Fuel Industry's pitch. I never bought it.

I maintain that the fossil fuelers, along with the nuke pukes, ACTIVELY SABOTAGED all the new technology so it wouldn't reach "prime time" until 30 or fifty YEARS after it was actually doable. But most people, you included, just do not want to go there.  :(

From an old article by me:

Outrageously Positive Renewable Energy Growth Prediction!
 
January 6, 2014

By A. G. Gelbert 
Air Traffic controller/Data Systems analyst

Because I am convinced that Renewable Energy Technologies will swamp fossil and nuclear power poisonous, biosphere damaging technology (presently being subsidized and coddled by governments in many parts of the world to the detriment of their citizens), I am publishing the following Energy Technology Use Projection Chart for the USA from 2014-2035. This chart reflects what I believe to be a worldwide trend to use clean energy in the face of climate change caused catastrophe. The climate will trump all the pro-dirty energy propaganda to such a degree that the mining and burning of coal will become illegal.

For the scoffers, I can only say that you had better pray to God that my chart is accurate. If it is not, and the power of the fossil and nuclear fuels profit-over-planet bullies limits renewable energy to a mere 20% niche (as the dirty energy defenders desire), mankind and most of the species in our biosphere will suffer irreparable damage.

It's time to stop playing accounting games and fudging Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) computations to make dirty energy look profitable. It never was.

It's time for mankind to grow up and accept our sacred duty as a self aware species to be the steward of all lifegiving forces on this planet. It's time to profit off of life and leave behind the ridiculous, delusional, destructive and suicidal social Darwinist concept that you can profit from death.


Growth of renewable energy technology is already nearly exponential. However, because the forces arrayed against it are determined to hold their market share by hook or by crook, increasing legislative headwinds are being encountered. This is due to the fact that subsidies for dirty energy are not being phased out even while subsidies for clean energy (a pittance in comparison to dirty energy coddling) are being challenged as "wasteful" in truly Orwellian fashion.


As I have documented at this link ( http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuel-propaganda-modus-operandi/msg542/#msg542 ) about Ocean Going Oil Tankers and several other posts describing, in detail, the Modus Operandi of fossil fuel corporations' profit-over-planet standard operational procedures is unsustainable.

The dirty energy corporations have never seriously addressed pollution issues. Instead they mendaciously claim through vigorous public relations propaganda efforts that they respect the environment and are merely providing energy to "improve" our standard of living.

They have a long history of destroying promising renewable energy technologies in their infancy.


In the 1920's it was Rockefeller that funded the efforts to obtain Prohibition. It had nothing to do with sin or people drinking. It had everything to do with destroying ethanol as a competitor to gasoline (with Prohibition, farmers could no longer make their own fuel for their tractors or grow the fuel to sell to automobile owners - Rockefeller, rather than our farmers, profited from the growth of the automobile because ethanol - a superior fuel - was illegal). By the time Prohibition ended, the myth that gasoline "outcompeted" ethanol was well entrenched in society.

Now the fossil fuelers claim ethanol from plants takes food off the table. That is another bold faced lie that has been exposed with crop land statistics worldwide. But that never stops these ethics free pro-fossil fuel propagandists from repeating the lies. They have to because their product (gasoline) is, not just poisonous, it's less efficient too! And yeah, they lie day and night about the efficiency of gasoline versus ethanol too. Ethanol was always a superior fuel. That's why the laws were rigged to get it out of the way for big oil to push their refinery waste product (gasoline) onto us. The dirty energy defenders continue the disinformation campaign about ethanol to this day.

http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/liesofbigoil

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/renewables/ethanol/msg26/#msg26

In the 1930s, the promise of chemurgy (now re-discovered in the 21st century along with the resurgence of ethanol as a superior internal combustion engine fuel) was crushed by a group of magnates from fossil fuels, paper products and pharmaceuticals who saw their profits threatened. Had chemurgy been utilized to make every product previously made from hydrocarbons (plastics, pharmaceuticals, paints, fuel, lubricants, etc.) to be made, instead, from plant based carbohydrates, the oil industry would have have lost their monopoly as a feedstock for these products. The plant based carbohydrate chemurgy also threatened the paper industry which had millions invested in forest harvesting rather than quick growing, environmentally friendly plants that could produce everything from paper to clothing to shoes without destroying forests.

Once again, Renewable energy was destroyed in its infancy. Farmers, once again, suffered while large fossil fuel and chemical industries (the most horrendous polluters on the planet) gained more wealth by gaming the laws, NOT by fair competition, as they claim.


http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/how-the-promise-of-chemurgy-was-dashed-by-big-oil/

The only really major advance in renewable energy was the massive dam building project of the 1930s and 1940s that produced a penetration of over 30% of our electrical grid powered by renewable energy. To this day, we have not gotten to that level. Yes, the grid is much larger but we had the technology to go fully renewable several decades ago. It was blocked because plutonium was needed for bombs. Nuclear power plants, outrageously expensive in comparison to dams, were sold to us as "too cheap to meter" when the truth was hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

So much so that the costs of mining, refining and manufacturing fuel rod assemblies (that last only 5 to 7 years before having to be secured at taxpayer cost for centuries!) were totally covered up in the miasma of "National Security" (along with Navajo miner cancer clusters).

Those of you that claim it really was justified for national security in the cold war, I challenge you to explain WHY, if it was ONLY about National Security, these nuclear power plant radioactive white elephants that we-the-people were bamboozled into paying for, did not REMAIN IN PUBLIC HANDS? Oh no, they became FOR PROFIT cash cows for utility investors while we-the-people, STILL TO THIS DAY, are holding the bag for nuclear accidents. Take your "National Security" baloney somewhere else.

Now that we don't need all that plutonium, the truth is finally coming out. We need nuclear power plants like a dog needs ticks!

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/what-a-nuclear-power-plant-really-is/msg160/#msg160

NOTE: All the radionuclides needed in medicine for imaging can be manufactured in cyclotrons safely. No nuclear reactors are needed for nuclear medicine! The radionuclides made in cyclotrons have extremely short half lives making them safe for the environment AND superior for imaging than longer lived radionuclide's made in nuclear power plants pushed on to nuclear "medicine" as an added nuclear power plant cash cow (otherwise, they are just hazardous waste).


As our electrical grid grew with more fossil fuel coal poisoning our children along with the added radiation and CO2 gradually building up, dirty energy celebrated its hegemony over the energy spigot.

 It has now become common knowledge how much we-the-people have been coerced into spending to keep the fossil fuel industry's profits happy.

This quote fro the peer reviewed book by Dilworth pretty much sums up what "cheap" fossil fuels have cost the American people, and by extension, caused grievous harm to the entire planet's people and biosphere.

Quote
Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ONE YEAR  at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.

So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables

We finally developed the solar panel when we had no other choice (energy in space). Tell me, do you honestly think the solar panel could not have been developed in the 1930s and 1940s INSTEAD of the atomic bomb and for maybe a tenth of the cost? Of course it could have! The photoelectric physics was understood. All they needed was money. Big oil and nuclear bomb and power advocates made certain they did not get it.

And that brings us to the 1980s when the same forces that acted successfully against renewable energy in the 1920s and 1930s came together to organize a massive attack on renewable energy, in any form, again.

They succeeded. Now they continue to claim that solar, wind ,tide, ocean current, modernized hydro, etc cannot compete with "cheap" fossil fuels. It was a lie in 1980 and an even more monstrous lie now. In order to perpetrate this Orwellian fantasy, many millions were, and are being, paid to politicians and propaganda outlets from the news media to astroturf pretend representatives of common people to conscience free advertising agencies that will say anything for a buck.


Quote
Reagan is a key reason we have only about one-sixth of the soaring global market for windpower — an industry we once dominated: “President Reagan cut the renewable energy R&D budget 85% after he took office and eliminated the wind investment tax credit in 1986. This was pretty much the death of most of the US wind industry” (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks at foreign wind company“).
 
Reagan gutted Carter’s entire multi-billion dollar clean energy and energy efficiency effort. He opposed and then rolled back fuel economy standards. Reagan turned all such commonsense strategies into “liberal” policies that must be opposed by any true conservative, a position embraced all too consistently by conservative leaders from Gingrich to Bush/Cheney and now to John McCain.

 
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/07/08/202854/who-got-us-in-this-energy-mess-start-with-ronald-reagan/

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/40-years-back-40-years-forward/msg478/#msg478

Friends of Renewable Energy:


Those of you fellow Homo sapiens that live in the reality based community and understand objectively and dispassionately that what is at stake is the very existence of mankind and much of the biosphere, need to also understand that the forces that kept renewable energy from competing on a level energy playing field are trying to do it again. Don't let them. Challenge every single myth, assumption and egregious happy talk lie about fossil fuels and nuclear power from the very beginning of their use. They were NEVER competitive with Renewable Energy, PERIOD.
People, poison is poison. Repeat that to these people that don't see the connection between a car running in a closed garage and what they are doing to the planet.

If those people do see the connection and don't care, do your part to put them behind bars. I am not kidding. People that are complicit in causing the death of humans are considered accessories to murder.

The victims of this premeditated crime are not limited to humans but extend to the entire biosphere. The fact that it's not personal, just "business", exposes the mens rea psychopathic thinking of these willful planet trashers .

Stop them or we have no future.

Make the above chart a reality and we have a chance to make amends for our insane wasteful ways and open the path to a sustainable future.

 http://thehalloffame.wikidot.com/agelbert


"Whether one views the modern world as insane or not may even be a criterion of one’s own sanity."  Masanobu Fukuoka

Article chart at link:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/ugc/articles/2014/01/outrageously-positive-renewable-energy-growth-prediction.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #18 on: May 13, 2017, 01:35:43 pm »


Expansion of Switzerland's 480-MW FMHL Pumped Storage Plant Complete
Switzerland's 480-MW FMHL pumped storage plant

LAUSANNE, Switzerland

05/12/2017

By Michael Harris  Associate Editor

More than 200 guests were on hand today as Swiss utility Alpiq inaugurated the expanded 480-MW Forces Montrices Hongrin-Leman pumped storage hydroelectric plant.

The addition of two new 120 MW turbines makes it the second-largest pumped storage plant in Switzerland, Alpiq said — not only contributing to the country's power security, but also its contributions to the European Commission's Energy Strategy 2050 gas emissions goals. 60 MW of the plant's capacity will act as a reserve, helping balance Switzerland's growing wind and solar sectors.

"Switzerland is fortunate to have a powerful hydroelectric infrastructure that enables it to take up the challenge of efficiently integrating intermittent energies into its energy system," said Benoit Revaz, director of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.

The cost of the US$328.7 million plant was split amongst three partners, with Romande Energie, Alpiq, Groupe E and the city of Lausanne assuming 41.14 percent, 32.29 percent, 13.14 percent and 6.43 percent shares, respectively.

Feasibility studies for the FMHL expansion were conducted a decade ago. The pair of new turbines increases its output capacity from 240 MW and are house in a 100-meter long, 25-meter wide and 56-meter tall cavern with remote operation provided by Alpiq's Centre d'Exploitation et de Gestion de la Production in Lausanne.
 
Quote
Switzerland's 1,000-MW Linthal pumped storage project, inaugurated in January 2016, has the honor of being the country's largest.

Linthal pumped storage tunnel



Switzerland's 1,000-MW Linthal pumped storage project

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2017/05/expansion-of-switzerland-s-480-mw-fmhl-pumped-storage-plant-complete.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #19 on: April 22, 2018, 08:04:42 pm »


Damen Dredging Equipment launches new DOP Dredger Series

April 19, 2018 by Mike McDonald


Damen Dredging Equipment has launched a new DOP Dredger Series following the success of the DOP submersible dredge pump, which has proved its versatility across the globe.

Damen has built more than 20 DOP dredgers on a one-off basis and at least 380 DOP pumps. The DOP submersible dredge pump has been such a great success over the last 25 years because of its simple concept, which is based on a well-proven dredge pump, directly driven by a hydraulic or electric motor, assembled in a rigid housing with the ability to attach all kinds of specialised suction devices, such as mining heads or cutter units. Moreover, the DOP can easily be connected to excavators, cranes, etc.

Olivier Marcus, Damen Product Director Dredging, explains: “In the past we have had many requests for ‘ad hoc’ dredgers using a DOP pump. So we have listened to our clients and learnt from that. They told us mobility and a deep, dredging depth were vital. The knowledge and experience we have gained over the years has now led to the development of a new standard series of DOP Dredgers focusing on maximum sand production at significant depths and practical transport and assembly due to the limited unit weights.”

Dams, mining and sand winning

In recent years there has been more demand for specialised dredgers from hydroelectric dam/water reservoir operators, sand mining companies, and dredging companies carrying out sand winning for reclamation projects, he adds. “There are probably tens of thousands of hydropower dams and water reservoirs in the world built in the last decades. As the flow of the river is dramatically reduced, the sediment it carries settles by the dam. The DOP dredger is ideal to tackle dam maintenance work.”

DOP dredgers are also very good for deep sand winning. “Mining companies are going deeper and deeper for minerals. And separately, there is a lot more land reclamation taking place. The DOP dredger, with the submerged DOP pump, can go much deeper to win sand when compared to a Cutter Suction Dredger.”


Depths to 100 m

The new Damen DOP Dredger Series makes use of the standard DOP 150, 200, 250 and 350, which have a mixture capacity ranging from 600m3/h to 2,400 m3/h. Due to the use of a submerged dredge pump, the DOP Dredger is simply able to reach depths other dredgers cannot, with an ability to dredge to 100 m.  Damen is also introducing an all-electric version of the DOP Dredger, which is particularly appealing for maintenance dredging at hydroelectric dams.

Remote locations

Often projects are taking place in very remote areas, Mr Marcus adds, in the case of hydroelectric dams, high up in the mountains where road access is not easy. Here, the DOP Dredger is ideal because it is easily dismountable and transportable because even its largest components are never bigger than a standard container size. It also has a limited weight, so can be assembled with a small crane.

Quick delivery times

The Damen DOP Dredger Series can be delivered at very short notice. The DOP pumps, power packs and pontoons are standard and therefore in stock. “We can have a fully built up dredger ready for the customer within a few weeks or if customers prefer, it can be built on-site or at a location of their choice.”

It is also possible to change the suction head depending on the project, giving a lot of flexibility, he points out. For example for compact material, a cutter can be installed, or a water injection head to boost production in free flowing sand.

Mr Marcus concludes: “The DOP Dredger client benefits from Damen’s standardised products, which offer a well proven design and provide guaranteed performance, and on top of that the dredgers can be delivered promptly to the customer, no matter how remote they are.”

For more information please look at www.damen.com.


http://gcaptain.com/damen-dredging-equipment-launches-new-dop-dredger-series/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #20 on: June 08, 2018, 07:55:58 pm »


First Grid-Scale Energy Summit Will Highlight Storage 💫 "Beyond Batteries"

June 5, 2018

By Gregory B. Poindexter [Associate Editor/Hydro Group] , Jennifer Runyon [Chief Editor]

Gregory B. Poindexter, MA, serves an associate editor for PennWell Hydro Group, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Poindexter has been a full-time journalist since 2005. Prior to joining PennWell, Poindexter owned and operated a communications company that produces organizational imagery. He holds a master's degree in mass communications from Oklahoma State University.

Solar power could be paired with other renewable technologies like hydropower to provide energy storage         
In the 2019 FY Budget, the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) included a $90M request to fund a new initiative it calls “Beyond Batteries.” The initiative is part of the DOE Grid Modernization Initiative, and focuses on new approaches to energy storage, which could include hybrid technologies such as pairing hydropower with solar or wind energy in order to provide a stable, dispatchable energy supply. 

“Advances in these areas will allow for loads to be combined with generation from all sources to optimize use of existing assets to provide grid services, and increase grid reliability,” according to the report. The video below explains the initiative in detail.

The Grid-Scale Energy Storage Summit, set to take place on June 25 and 26 in Charlotte, North Carolina, will bring together energy professionals to discuss how wind, solar and hydropower can work together to provide storage.

Video at article link:

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2018/06/first-gridscale-energy-summit-will-highlight-storage-beyond-batteries.html


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #21 on: June 16, 2018, 11:31:32 pm »



I don't have a facebook account. They cut me off with the log in screen. I have avoided face book like the plague, just like I have avoided getting a cell phone. I'm an old fuddy duddy with a land line.

I'll take your word that it is a nice facility. I must confess to you, however, that anything Halliburton does smells like greenwashing to me. Former Bush VP Cheney🦖 used to be their CEO and he was the one that got the Frackers to be exempt from the Clean Water act provisions, to the detriment of the biosphere in the USA. Maybe Halliburton is trying to improve their image. I don't trust those profit over planet fossil fuelers.
Well we are in Haliburton Ontario hence the name and the one"l" and no relation to the evil one's company. Here is a youtube link:


OH! :-[  I STAND CORRECTED! WELL DONE!  🌟 🌟 🌟 

Green Mountain Power gets a lot of their juice from Canadian Hydro. Vermont is grateful to you Canadians for selling us clean hydro power.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #22 on: July 10, 2018, 02:44:34 pm »
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Monstrous Loch Ness Pumped Hydro Storage Plan Revealed

July 10th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

Scotland is pursuing an aggressive offshore wind program that includes groundbreaking technologies like floating wind farms. In fact, sometimes it has too much renewable energy available. Intelligent Land Investments says it has the solution — an enormous  2.4 gigawatt-hour pumped hydroelectric storage installation on the shores of Loch Ness. Once completed, it could deliver up to 400 megawatts of power for six hours — a feat that Wired UK says could double Scotland’s wind capacity and power 400,000 homes.

Loch Ness pumped hydro storage plan

This pumped hydro proposal will take advantage of the fact that an electric motor can also be a generator ⚡. EV fans will be familiar with the concept because of regenerative braking. When we push on the throttle of an electric car, the motor moves the car forward. When we take our foot off the pedal, the motor becomes a generator, putting electricity back into the battery. A properly engineered electric motor is happy to work in either direction.

The key to this pumped hydro facility will be its electric turbines. Flowing water will spin them one way to make electricity, but they can also reverse direction to pump water back uphill from a lower reservoir. That’s exactly what Intelligent Land Investments plans to do on the shores of Loch Ness.

The big advantage of pumped hydro storage is the energy ⚡ dispatchability, which means it is available to dispatch when needed to power the electrical grid. A gas-fired generating plant needs time — a half hour or more — to come online. Pumped hydro can’t react nearly as fast as a storage battery, however, and in certain conditions, the cost of battery storage today can equal the cost of building a pumped hydro system.

The other factor storage batteries have going for them is they can be installed fairly quickly with very little time needed for site preparation and permitting.   
The Loch Ness project will take years to complete, assuming it obtains all the necessary approvals. All storage installations can affect fragile ecosystems but the sheer size of any pumped hydro installation means it will impact a large area. For those Scots who worry the project will disturb the beauty of the hills around Loch Ness, the company assures them it can landscape the upper reservoir to look like the surrounding lochs.

A former gold mine in Australia has been repurposed as a pumped hydro storage facility. Switzerland boasts one of the world’s largest hydro storage installations, one that features a mammoth 1,450 MW of stored power. And China is leading the way with new variable speed generator technology that could make pumped hydro more efficient. Whether or not the proposed storage facility near Loch Ness ever gets built, pumped hydro storage is likely to remain one of the tools that will move the renewable energy revolution forward.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/10/monstrous-loch-ness-pumped-hydro-storage-plan-revealed/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #23 on: July 12, 2018, 10:03:14 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: This dam, plus a 12 mile tunnel, at the second deepest level underground ever dug for for a tunnel, will bring water 💧, more needed than electricity, to the dry Western part of Peru, where 70% of the people live, from wet Eastern part which suffers from excess rain and flooding.

The plan is to make the desert like area of dry Western Peru into highly productive farmland 🌾 🌿 🍀 like California, after irrigation water canals sourced from Hoover Dam enabled the dry Califonia valleys to bloom with food crops. Good for Peru! 


Extreme Engineering Deepest Tunnel - Megastructures (Documentary)

Mega Construction Projects Build

Published on Aug 09, 2018

One of the deepest tunnels ever attempted will break through the Andes to bring water to drought-ridden farms in western Peru. Join host Danny Forster as he visits remote Olmos to learn how this project will dramatically impact this country's future.

« Last Edit: December 11, 2019, 11:52:35 am by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Dam Hydropower
« Reply #24 on: December 11, 2019, 11:47:06 am »
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December 11th, 2019 by Winter Wilson

SNIPPET:

When most people think of pumped storage, they think of putting a dam on a river and pumping water from below the dam to the top. In fact, as Mike explains, putting a dam on a river has huge environmental impacts, including changes in upstream and downstream ecosystems and carbon dioxide emissions from decomposing vegetation. Instead of blocking a river, closed-loop pumped-storage hydropower significantly reduces environmental impacts and dissipates much of the controversy surrounding hydropower and dams. Furthermore, Mike believes that for closed-loop pumped-storage hydropower, there is a hundred times more resource potential than our storage needs globally.

Image courtesy Department of Energy

Read more: 

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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Pumped Hydro Social License, Pt 1: Wind Energy Experience Says Don’t Expect You Have Full Approval

December 29th, 2019 by Michael Barnard

As part of my ongoing engagement in pumped hydro storage, I recently introduced the developer of a US pumped hydro storage project, Tracy Livingston, to a leading clean economy and social license firm CEO I collaborate with occasionally, Mike Casey of Tigercomm. Casey and his firm had performed an interesting study on clean energy companies and social media patterns that CleanTechnica published on at the beginning of 2019. They had a deep and rich conversation on the subject, one worth recounting the highlights of.

This is part one of a two-parter on the subject of social license and pumped hydro. It covers the scale, a perspective from the wind industry, and a basic problem of public lack of knowledge. The second article covers water rights, dam safety, and likely disinformation campaigns.

What is social license?

“The Social License has been defined as existing when a project has the ongoing approval within the local community and other stakeholders, ongoing approval or broad social acceptance and, most frequently, as ongoing acceptance”

That ongoing approval isn’t automatic and it’s more immediately relevant than you might think. A 2015 US DOE report to Congress on pumped hydro had the following to say:

“In the United States, there are currently 40 pumped storage plants in operation with a combined capacity of 22 gigawatts (GW), accounting for 95 percent of all energy storage capacity in the power grid. At present, there are about 50 proposed projects that could add more than 40 GW of new storage capacity.”


Image courtesy ferc.gov

My assessment of future grid storage is that lithium-ion batteries will dominate short term storage for grid balancing, and it will overlap with flow batteries which will provide next day storage, and that will overlap with pumped hydro storage which will provide 1-21 day storage. Of course, the roughly 20 TWh of rolling batteries by 2050 we’ll call cars and trucks will be available for demand management and vehicle-to-grid storage as well, so they’ll be in the mix too.

The recent Australian study plus the number of projects already working through permitting with FERC in the United States make it clear that pumped storage hydro locations will be developed, and where they are developed they will often have to fight for local approval.

A comparison to wind energy

From a social license perspective, it’s worth casting our eyes back to the continuing fight over social license for wind energy. I had pro bono roles in that effort around the world. I maintained the BarnardOnWind disinformation debunking site, which was referenced globally by local, national, and international groups fighting for clean energy deployment. I was Senior Fellow – Wind Energy with the Washington-based Energy and Policy Institute for a year. CanWEA named me one of the Friends of Wind one year. One of the first things Zach Shahan, President and Editor of CleanTechnica, asked me to publish on the site was Calling Anti-Renewables Campaigners NIMBYs Is Often Inaccurate And Always Unproductive, a review of the overlapping motivations of mostly anti-wind energy advocates.

Wind energy saw conflict from a variety of sources. Obviously, there were the NIMBYs, the worst of whom were people who liked their rural fantasyland retirement and vacation homes surrounded by unchanging artificial nature. There were the medical scare fantasists, who sincerely — or venally — fought wind energy due to the myth that it harmed people’s health, something debunked in meta-analyses and studies and court cases. There were the people who sincerely or venally fought wind energy due to the mistaken belief that it would make their houses worth less, something debunked in multiple studies covering millions of transactions in several countries.

There were the faux environmentalists, people so wrapped up in preserving a local piece of land and its usually not endangered wildlife that they fought tooth and nail against a form of energy which would prevent climate change harm to land and species. They perverted the mantra of thinking globally and acting locally, instead paying lip service to global issues while attacking local solutions. Birding organizations publish lovely statements in support of climate change and wind energy, then their local chapters prevented it from being built.

Then there were the more insidious forces against wind energy, that weird amalgam of fossil fuel interests and Libertarianism that’s so toxic and prevalent in the US, but which exists elsewhere as well. Climate change-denying right wing economists dipped their toes into energy policy. Libertarians attacked the subsidies flowing to wind energy while ignoring the ongoing subsidies to fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro electrical generation. Right wing think tanks and ‘thought leaders’ published screeds attacking wind energy.

Of course, wind energy has overcome the 🦕😈🦖 negative PR at a global level. While coal and nuclear have been leaving grids around the world, 2018 saw wind energy reach 600 GW ✨ of global capacity with a likely additional 60 GW 🌞 commissioned in 2019. Its costs continue to plummet. 👍 Grids with strong wind energy components such as Texas, Germany, and Denmark have seen increased reliability, not decreased reliability.

At a local level, the fight continues. Ontario elected a regressive government in 2018. One of the government’s first actions was to cancel 758 renewable energy contracts without recourse through legislation, something that’s costing major court fees. They cancelled a wind farm in Prince Edward County, a global hotbed of wind energy opposition, when the farm already had 5 of 9 turbines erected. They cancelled another one recently on the spurious grounds that the wind farm would harm bats, when it had passed the rigorous Ontario environmental review process which had ensured that harm would be limited and mitigated. The regressive government overrode its own experts and process for naked political posturing. That government is deeply unpopular in Ontario and Canada, so there’s hope that its worst offenses, which continue to mount, will be reversed starting in the next election cycle.

Pumped hydro storage will see many of these same attacks, and in some cases already is, but it also has unique challenges in this space.

Closed loop pumped hydro public ignorance 😟

Let’s start with the obvious. Pumped hydro storage is being proposed in a world where dams have been demonized and are being torn down, especially in the United States. That country built 84,000 dams, 8,100 of which are considered major. They created new lakes for recreation and have helped irrigate the agriculture of the country. But they also blocked spawning runs for ocean fish, dried up silt into downstream rivers, radically changed the upstream and downstream ecosystems, and are typically dead water that must be fertilized and stocked constantly in order to provide an illusion of life. They block the silt which replenishes farmers fields and in some cases have become bio-accumulators of mercury. Many of them are basically abandoned, aging concrete structures impeding river passage but no longer used or usable for electrical generation.

There’s a big movement in the US to tear down dams. The outdoor empire Patagonia funds a global opposition to new dams and a program to remove existing ones. The documentary on its efforts, DamNation, is inspiring at one level, but problematic at another.

Into this context, closed loop pumped hydro storage walks with a much more innocuous and benign solution which is both regulated and attacked as if it were a proposal for a major dam on a fertile river. As a reminder, the model puts reservoirs on land with no streams or rivers, damming a dry gully in the hills or creating a turkey’s nest circular dam on flatter land, then filling them with water. The reservoirs are tiny compared to river hydro dams, smaller than Central Park in New York. The water that is put into the pumped hydro stays in it, cycling between upper and lower reservoirs, and is lost only due to evaporation. The water itself is the tiniest fraction of the fresh water consumed daily in the United States.

They are trivial to place in areas which avoid nature reserves and endangered species. The Australian global pumped hydro study found 100x the potential resource as required by global needs, and 250x in the US, and that study restricted the sites to places that weren’t in nature reserves of any sort and were close to transmission.

But as I’ve published on the subject and talked to global experts, I’m continually confronted with people in CleanTechnica comments, on Twitter, and on other social media who ignore their tiny footprints and assert that they are horrific environmentally, that they are as damned as river dams.

This ignorance has to be overcome carefully, early and regularly.

This is part one of a two-parter on the subject of social license and pumped hydro. It covers the scale, a perspective from the wind industry, and a basic problem of public lack of knowledge. The second article covers water rights, dam safety, and likely disinformation campaigns.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/29/pumped-hydro-social-license-part-1-wind-energy-experience-says-dont-expect-you-have-full-approval/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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