The weather forecast made me second-guess my decision a bit - but it turned out to be an excellent day all around.
We'd been considering a visit to the Blenheim-Gilboa power project for some time. It made the news a little over a year ago when there were fears that the dam would not be able to cope with the flood waters from Tropical Storm Irene but, as it turned out, although the dam held, the water that was falling from the sky was enough to cause terrible flooding in the Schoharie valley without any help from the reservoir water.
In any case, we were there under happier circumstances today to walk in the early autumn countryside and find out about this forty-something year-old power storage facility.
Our visit started with a walk from the power-project's visitor center parking lot to the edge of nearby Mine Kill State Park and back. The leaves are really starting to turn and fall - quite a surprise after our hike in the verdant Berkshires a few days ago.
The rain held off (although it was threatening). We saw some signs of fall, and a few remnants of summer as we walked.
After our return, we looked around the excellent visitors center where we saw how much effort is required to make the electricity required for some simple appliances using a stationary bicycle (Exile #3 just briefly managed to make enough to light a 60 W bulb.
We also found out a lot about the power project from the displays and a short film that the attendant put on just for us in a theater on the lower level. The plant consists of two reservoirs - one formed by damming the Schoharie Creek and the other, completely man-made, on the top of a nearby hill. At low-demand times, cheap electricity is used to pump water 1000 feet up pipes in the hillside to the upper reservoir. When demand is high, or there is a problem with another power station on the grid, the process can be reversed in a matter of a couple of minutes to allow the five billion gallons of water back down, turning the generators to make over a million kilowatts of electricity to meet the short-term demand.
A couple of minutes, eh? They can do it within 16 seconds back in Exile#2's homeland!
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Very impressive. We saw a picture of one of the room-sized ball valves that is required to achieve the 90-120 seconds. I assume that one uses something similar but is able to turn it on faster?
DeleteYou could say that that's what the 15 years between 1969 and 1984 did for such technology or you could give credit to Welsh/British/European ingenuity - depending on your point of view!