We have met the Borg and he is us. This time humanity is the asteroid.
A ice storm of biblical proportions is gathering to pound the southeastern US as an atmospheric river drowns drought-stricken California; the Black Hills and sage steppe could see red flag warnings in February.
Dams in the upper Missouri River basin took a pounding in 2011 and the US Army Corps of Engineers is still being battered for choices it made that year. The Sierra Club is suing the corps for documents relating to conflict of interest in a recently released State Department document that seems to favor the construction of the biosphere killing Keystone XL pipeline.
The corps is soliciting sources for Oahe Switchyard Upgrade Phase I after finding deficiencies.
The current switchyard configuration does not offer the redundancy necessary to meet modern system demands. Loss of the Oahe 115kV bus results in a loss of the Oahe autotransformer and Oahe Generating Unit No.1, including the voltage support to the 115kV Pierre Load pocket. The Pierre Load pocket is then left served by a single power line out of the Irv Simmons switchyard.
An undervoltage load shedding scheme must then be implemented to keep this connection from being tripped off line. There is much corrosion on the post insulator supports, and the post insulators are the old cap-and-pin type no longer manufactured. The cap-and-pin design ultimately experiences failure where the insulator sections separate due to expansion of the cement in the joints between the
porcelain surfaces.
The existing disconnect switch operating platforms are supported off the ground by insulators, which is a very uncommon design and could defeat the purpose of grounding. The Project also reports that these platforms are too small to serve their purpose in a practical manner - in fact it is not possible to remain standing on a platform while moving the manual switch operator through its full range of motion.Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) sits on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.
Contact him today and urge him to ask President Obama to screw any retrofitting to these dinosaurs that are the mainstem dams, decertify them, tear the motherfuckers down and rewild the West before we wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth.
Love this cartoon, although I don't know the artist. Lets hope it never comes to this! pic.twitter.com/yz6GpNSiFg
— Sea Wild Earth (@themoceanvibe) February 12, 2014
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