Darrell Ross

It’s been a feverish two weeks of work for me but it’s paid off. The model is complete. There are some minor adjustments to make so that the results look pretty and paper-ready but the main course is done. I have included a couple of images of the current scenario running. Keep in mind that this scenario is:

1. Wind Farm on Bear River Ridge with maximum 70MW output
2. A 25MW solar power plant in Southern Humboldt near Redway
3. A 25MW solar power plant in Northern Humboldt near Blue Lake
4. A 50MW wave farm off the coast.
5. 32.5MW Humboldt Redwood Company plant at 75% capacity
6. 18MW Fairhaven plant at 75% capacity
7. 13.8MW Ultrapower plant at 75% capacity

It should be noted ahead of time that this scenario does not meet the power needs of Humboldt County. There are some times of night when the wind dies down and the sea is calm during which the biomass just does not meet the peak demand. See for yourself.

Supply is the white in front and demand the blue in back. Hour 1 is equivalent to 1:00AM.

More data to come as I continue work on my presentation and write-up.

An idea for converting an old bicycle frame to a spinning wheel.

Was just pondering spinning wheels since my housemate’s boyfriend built her an electric one that works pretty good. However, it IS electric which means it is still post-industrial revolution and requires a 110V 60Hz power hookup.

What if you cut a bicycle frame (see photo) such that the sprocket, gears, rear wheel, and seat were all still intact. You could attach a treadle to where the crank-shafts once were and make sure the rear hub couldn’t rotate freely. You could run the gear changers (if it’s a multi-speec bike) up near the seat post allowing the spinner to change speeds. With the wheel no longer on free-rotate, the break would be unecessary.

The flyer, bobbin, and other-parts-I-don’t-know-the-names-of could be attached to the seat post and the quick-release used to quickly adjust distance from the wheel or to remove that section for necessary repairs, loading, etc (again I don’t know enough about spinning wheels to judge what is necessary there).

One thing the boyfriend mentioned was the difficulty of keeping costs down… I’m sure you can find part of a bike to use for around $20 and it comes with so much built in. If anyone ever implements (or has already implemented) a design like this, please let me know.

Distance gradient where white is nearest and dark blue furthest for each grid point to its nearest power source.

Another photo of my program runnining. I converted my power source definitions so that I can turn them on and off at my leisure. The above distance plot is similar to my previous post (here). The difference is what sources exist. In this one, the sources are (top to bottom left to right) -

1. Fairhaven Power Plant
2. North East Transmission line from the Central Valley (through Willow Creek)
3. Humboldt Bay Power Plant (just under Fairhaven – kind of looks like one big plant)
4. Humboldt Redwood Company (formerly PALCO)
5. South East Transmission line from the Central Valley (through Bridgeville)
6. Southern Transmission line up the 101

I neglected to put in some of the small players in the power supply. Basically any power plant less than 1MW I have left out. While 1MW is still substantial (sometimes as much as 5% of demand), the modeling of the current situation is only to demonstrate the functionality of the model. The goal of the design is to predict outcomes with newer configurations.

EDIT: Implementing a separate distance calculation for transmission lines was simple enough. Now you can see the lines in image below.

Current Humboldt County Power supply sources.