The point is pipelines sometimes leak. I spent about two months investigating on a pipeline leak near Bird Creek, Alaska, along with I’d guess about 500 other contractors and I don’t know how many military personnel. I’m not sure how many acres of forest were bulldozed, but I can assure you mere trees did not stand in the way of the project. The remediation, which I was not involved with, went on for years.
You never heard of this? If not, I’m not surprised. I just Googled it and the results are so far down in the search rankings I didn’t see it. But I know it happened because I was there. Yet this was just one major pipeline leak. How many others haven’t we heard about?
We are getting solar panels and as far as we can tell, unless your home is set up to be totally off grid, without any connection to the grid whatsoever (in the USA) there is zero chance of finding a way to disconnect from your local grid during an outage. IIRC, the inverters are where that failsafe switch exists. (?)
The utilities’ main reason for preventing you from using electricity from your own solar panels during a grid failure, is that if you make an error while the grid is down and still accidentally allow electricity to energize the grid from your solar panels, then a utility worker could mistakenly think that they are repairing a dead power line, and would be electrocuted by your solar electricity.
You’re absolutely correct in your explanation of why a utility is concerned about “off grid” power generation.
We don’t have solar panels, but we have a portable generator which allows us to be “off grid” in the event of a power outage. This is accomplished with the installation of a “transfer switch” located within our main circuit panel where our power line comes into our home.
Actually - according to this linked article - I just learned that we do not have a transfer switch, we have an interlock device - slightly different, but accomplishes the same goal.
The transfer switch is one that ensures that the main breaker which connects us to the grid is in the OFF position in order to put the breaker switch for the generator in the ON position. So it is one (grid) or the other (generator) - never both.
As I said, Keystone pipeline has been around for a while. The new (proposed - in green) on the map is (was) for a shortcut through tribal lands and water shed areas. Yes, it was also larger, and therefore more likely to cause havoc if/when it failed.
A friend in Texas has lots of panels, a few batteries, and an automatic disconnect from the grid. And he’s already had enough short black-outs to verify it does indeed work. Says it is so quick they seldom notice when they go off-grid and power themselves completely.
You’re obviously kidding! This is utterly ridiculous. The amount of environmental damage done by oil exploration/etc just in Nigeria alone is more than all the environmental damage of all lithium mines worldwide, and likely more than all the lithium mining for the next 50 years.
I think you are not correct. When you get a Tesla Powerwall or any of the similar battery systems you can get it setup to automatically disconnect your home from the grid and run off of your battery and solar.
Yes, for the safety of utility workers, when the grid goes down your solar inverter has to disconnect from your breaker box because the solar panels could feed back into the grid.
Interesting… There are other salty sources many in the deserts of NV. where we used to go play on our dirt bikes, or watch as folks tried to set new land speed records or the bigger one at Salt Lake City… Not sure of their current conditions, due to the drought out here, but if there are Lithium salts, maybe newfound riches await some bright developers…
But corroded equipment and clogged pipes from the superhot brine are plaguing the extraction operation, according to the three sources with direct knowledge. “I think Berkshire has an unsolvable problem,” said one source, who described the facility struggling to get even the most basic processing equipment to work due to the extreme heat of the geothermal brines.
Oh wow… I would love to know more about an automatic disconnect from the grid.
Does your friend have a series inverter? Or does he have micro inverters, as we are getting… (one micro inverter behind each panel)?
If your friend can share any hardware advice, we have not yet installed our system, so if we have missed something important, we would appreciate any info that you and your friend may share!
iirc, automatic disconnects are required by the electrical code. Otherwise, your genny could light up a utility company worker who is trying to repair the lines.
I’ve seen how an oil field can be returned to nature, and a very good job has been made of it. I don’t think that Nigeria is a good example. Any mess left there is due to bribery, corruption and a lack of political will by the Nigerian government.
The Nottingham oil field now:
A very nice area that I have visited - it can be done.
The point that I’m making is that oil fields can be restored if people want them to be - I’ve given an example of this. I appreciate that in a lot of areas this is not done but it’s not because they can’t, just a case of they don’t want to:
Dukes Wood is an example of co-operation between the oil industry and the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust. It combines an area of ancient and secondary woodland with what was the site of the UK’s first oil field. Some of the ‘nodding donkey’ pumps have been restored and can be seen on the trail. On the nature trial you’ll find the bronze statue of The Oil Patch Warrior, commemorating the American ‘Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest’.
While I don’t have an example at hand I have seen open pit mines designed to be restored after the ore is extracted. In oil and in mining it’s a question of willingness to preserve nature.
The Sudbury nickel mines created a horrible moonscape and lots of acid rain as they burned the ore in the open to drive out the sulphur.
Decades later they have been recovering the landscape.
