New Wilson City Video

[abaco.cares]

_Jzg3Xj5WTY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jzg3Xj5WTY

Abaco Cares would like you to view the latest in the string of videos produced by Clean Power Abaco on the Wilson City Power Plant controversy. We feel it is very important to get all of the information on this plant and it's potential environmental damage both in human costs and the environment. So far we have been unable to do so.

However, some may feel that this is a "Bahamian" issue and only Bahamians should comment. We take the other stand and believe that everyone should be able to comment on this issue if they are Bahamian or not. An issue that will effect everyone including our visitors and second homeowners is too important to ignore the research and knowledge that can be found on sites such as this. It would do no service to our important investors in the Bahamas, the foreign investors to stifle the objections to this plant and the way it is to be built by saying they have no voice. If Bahamas does say that, we will cause the investor to question their investment in a country that does not want their valued knowledge or opinion and just want their money.

Let us be a Country where we Value People and what they bring to our Beautiful Bahama Land.

Visit www.abacocares.org (http://www.abacocares.org/) for more information.

Thank you,
Abaco Cares

[SamFamAustin]

Seems a wee bit more fair and balanced than the last one, and at the risk of sounding like a "stick in the mud" would like to comment about smart grids in a nice way.

Smart grids have been done in very small areas of Europe such as Italy, Austin Texas, and Boulder Colorado, and is being considered by California as well. It is not a proven technology, and often results in higher costs to the consumer due to enhanced peak pricing. In Austin, about 150,000 "smart meters" were used so that the Austin Light and Power Company (one of the few municipally owned facilities) would not have to hire walking meter readers! Hundreds of 'em! It did not save the utility or the consumer any money, at least yet.

It is a nice vision of the future, and no problem with thinking of that at a worthy goal, although funding smart transmission lines, smart appliances, smart meters, and smart AC/DC grids is a huge problem ... because it is so expensive and the existing technology is so crude.

To me, and personal opinions abound these days, I think the Abacos needs two things:


Adequate base load generation
A hardened transmission and power distribution system

We can talk about nice things after these two objectives are met, well at least 80 percent, to include:


Alternative centralized clean power such as solar and wind, etc.
Alternative distributed power at the residential and commercial level
Smart grids that are controlled by over-wire Internets

These three latter items seem to go together because you have base load that must be configured to account for clean energy sources when they come online or diminish, with the sun, winds, currents, or whatever renewable power source. It seems to go hand in hand.

I am not attacking the entire gist of the video but just that small part about smart grids. The overall concept is not all that foreign to Abacos residents because they are masters at wiring "Southern engineered smart grids" for their homes, such as with gasoline generators, or managing complex cistern water supplies. But right now, perhaps that is not what we had in mind. Some dependable electricity would be a nice start.

-sammie

[papanasty]

Listen to the Video when there rep speaks.. He talks about the distribution of the power concerning transformers and transmission lines and how they are at least 50 years old!!! Every one knows that NONE of the outer Cays had any kind of power from Marsh Harbor 50 years ago!!! Talk about Peeps getting there facts right?? they need to get there FACTS right before they ramble on!!!! :confused::confused:

[oudi14]

Papa, you are correct. Power from MH came to Elbow Cay in 1975. I know, because I was there. Guana got theirs in 1979. Lubbers, sometime in the '90s. Man O' War and GTC had their own electrical grids, owned by private individuals, until BEC eventually took them over, in the 80s, I believe. Green Turtle certainly got completely rewired, not sure about MOW.

[papanasty]

I went out to the plants new location the other day and took some pics and it looks from my experiance in large scale construction they are doing a first class job!!

It will be a blessing when the plant is up and running and the load issues that we deal with every year will disappear.. I don't understand were these peeps come up with issues about transformers and transmission line problems as this is a very small percentage of our grid problems...

I would have to say that the majority of our problems with power through out the Cays are related to people cutting the cables that are in the water that go to the outer Cays and corrosion problems related to the extreeme conditions that we live in..

I will continue to support the new plant and encourage BEC to persue alternative power that can be integrated in to the new power grid system. If and when they decide to allow private citizens or companys to build and integrate alternative power sources in to the system i will probably be one of the first ones to pursue wind technoligy in to my residence..

As far as relying on Green technoligy to supply our needs for power is simply unrealistic at this time but once a reliable source of power distribution is established in Abaco then and only then can we start to integrate green technoligy in to the new grid..

There are so many alternatives that are available today but they are all secondary to reliable fossil fuel generated sources of power.. All this green technoligy works good on paper but does not always work out in the field and to think we can supply our needs on green is a pipe dream...

Living here in Hopetown we very seldom have a problem with distribution here on the Cay.. The problems that do come up here on the Cay are problems that accure mostly because of mother nature and you have to consider that when expressing or griping about power outages..This is some thing that is completely out of BEC control..

Last week when it stormed here on the Cay we lost power going towards town and it was because we believe a small tornado ripped through the Cay and caused some wires to come together causing a fuse to blow but again this is because of mother nature..

These type of problems happen all over the world and can not be blamed on your prospective power supplier... Just this week in the US thousands of people were with out power because of a snow storm and to know fault of the power supplier..The old saying **** happens and there will always be problems with in the system of distribution that will happen but when the new plant is completed and up in operation the problems of power outages will not be because of over loading the plant because we will always have more than enough power to supply Abaco's needs :):)

[kairosmatt]

Surely we have generation problems, but there are tons of transmission problems as well. In Hope Town we have had at least two pole fires not related to weather. Man-O-War has had two and Guana several. There have been reports of the same in Sandy Point.
Often times I call BEC to tell them the power is out and they don't even believe me! They don't know! Cause something else is down! Yes, s**** happens but poor maintenance happens more.

Also, a friend of ours asked a head guy from Duke Energy about Bunker C/HFO (without mentioning Wilson City) and he said it is the worst stuff they deal with. Worse than coal. Talking more, the Duke couldn't believe that they are allowed to build new HFO plants anywhere, even outside the US and Europe. He was appalled to learn that the only emission control will be stack height.

Several other oil people have confirmed this, including people from PG&E.

kairosmatt

[papanasty]

The fact that a couple of poles have caught fire in the past is no big deal as far as power outages...This type of stuff happens all the time all over the place were there are power poles..Nothing out of the ordinary!!! The fact remains that no matter what type of power system is put in there are going to be periodic failures of some sort..

I live here in Hopetown all the time and power outages are very rare due to some thing being wrong on the Cay.. Any thing mechanical is going to break at some point and we have had very few failures because of the equipment on the Cay... I work with BEC all the time when some thing does go wrong and the BEC crew work as quickly as possible to bring the power back on when there is a problem...

The latest problems in the last 6 months have been directly related to the plant not being big enough to handle the load!!! Not because of a transformer or a line being down ETC.

It seems that no matter what is done to correct the power availability problems peeps just have to find some thing to complain about...Were was all these concerned peeps when they announced 2 years ago that they were going to build a new power plant and they did mention what they were going to build and NO ONE said a word about the new plant until it was actually being built..nothing like a day late and a dollar short...

I commend BEC for buillding the new plant to ensure that all of Abaco will have a reliable and dependable source of power for years to come... The sooner that this plant is completed the better...I would like nothing better than to be able to almost retire my generator and not ever have to run it...

And i do not believe it will harm the enviornment as peeps portray it and what it will do...The Video is so missleading it is rediculas especially the part were they drop the supposedly bunker c oil in the water...Bunker C is very heavey oil and would not disperce like that it would stay in its clump and float on top of the water.. They must be using ink to do that little skit because it is not Bunker C oil :confused::confused:

[SamFamAustin]

I realize that electricity in the Abaco is a sometimes thing, Pappa, but you have to admit there have been some colossal failures lately.

At least 2 or 3 mainline two-phase transmission lines have failed since I started keeping track on this forum, one line to Guana I believe failing twice. Recently a switchboard to a distribution transformer station caught fire and burned in a huge bonfire. While pole fires can be expected during humid, foggy conditions, they seem to happen more frequently than anywhere I have heard - you folks rarely get fog as I recall. You have to admit, sometimes between the cable boys and the residential power lines, it appears as though a drunk did the engineering. No offense, but there are ways to "harden" the electrical distribution system in the Abacos.

I think it was you Pappa who said that tings should be getting better, with some new transmission cables between the cays and the big island. I don't think they'll trench them underwater, as should be done in some areas, but that's a start. And power management will definitely improve when stable generation comes online, since then you won't be blowing up substations because of brown-out and "spike" conditions.

As to the common residential user lines, you probably do have a point that the Abaco runs average, maybe a wee bit on the high side but as best as possible. Florida Light & Power blows up about 13,000 residential transformers every year, a cost of millions of dollars - mostly due to lightning strikes but also animals and salt.

By the way we have to spray our transformers with freshwater because the salt not only corrodes the gear, but salt is an excellent conductor of electricity and can blow out the best circuits, or at least catch a few poles on fire. If it doesn't rain more than a fine foggy mist, bad tings can happen.

On a lighter note, I don't know if animals cause many transformer failures in the Abacos. Squirrels are the number one reason for transformers blowing up in parts of Texas - grounding out a hot lead is 12,000 volts to the ground. You're lucky to find its tail because it's pretty well vaporized. Monk parakeets are a growing concern. The darn parakeets love the warmth of the wires and transformer and make huge nests around them for their colony and babies, which result in some rather spectacular fireworks to say the least!

And don't bury your electric lines because the fire ants LOVE those ground-level transformers. :D
sammie

[ginclear]

It seems that no matter what is done to correct the power availability problems peeps just have to find some thing to complain about...Were was all these concerned peeps when they announced 2 years ago that they were going to build a new power plant and they did mention what they were going to build and NO ONE said a word about the new plant until it was actually being built..nothing like a day late and a dollar short...

Mr. Papa,

I have been reading this and the other threads and your assumption that no one had requested meetings is incorrect. In fact meetings were requested by many people through Friends of the Environment for over a year now. There was one meeting we were told would happen but it was cancelled at the last minute. Then finally they had the BEC meeting in September when a lot of people were gone and also the construction had already been started. But still it was a huge meeting attended by almost a 1000 people.

So we did ask and we were ignored. And those are the facts.

[morebahamianTHANu]

Transmission line problems on the contrary can add up to a very LARGE percentage of our grid problems... I hope we can all agree that the cheapest energy is that which we do not use. BEC is not incetivised financially to conserve energy, only to generate it. Consumers of Abaco and BEC would BOTH save money on importing of expensive dirty fuel with a smarter grid in place. Surely this infrastructure could be updated with a small portion of a $105 million investment... no?

Someone had said: If and when they decide to allow private citizens or companys to build and integrate alternative power sources in to the system i will probably be one of the first ones to pursue wind technoligy in to my residence..

As far as relying on Green technoligy to supply our needs for power is simply unrealistic at this time but once a reliable source of power distribution is established in Abaco then and only then can we start to integrate green technoligy in to the new grid..
Green Tech already works for many on Abaco and many across the nation and globe. IF AND WHEN we decide to fight for the right to build and integrate alternative power sources it will drive the market for these tings and make them more cost affective and "realistic". It will not just happen one day.

Renewable are viable now as a partial solution that will reduce the Bahamas‘ dependensy on fossil fuels. Yet we do not even try. The process is not helped when environmental officials say renewable are not viable with no data to back it up. Abaconians must see this and speak up.