NZ's Hydro Storage situation

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Michael
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Michael »

How much if any have spilt over into the southern lakes?The front seems to look south of the south island.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

Michael wrote:How much if any have spilt over into the southern lakes? The front seems to look south of the south island.
Tekapo is rising slowly at present.

Pukaki is almost balanced inflow to outflow at present.

Te Anau is filling at present.

Manapouri is also filling at present.

So for the moment that rain has definitely helped.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Wildland »

Sometimes visiting this forum is like popping in for a peek at the Bermuda Triangle. Now you see it ... now you don't.
A petulant claim of thread hijack can cause whole pages of discussion to suddenly disappear – with no explanation as to who removed them and why.

This thread is a classic example. In recent times it has included comments about nuclear power and snow conditions. It was only this morning that an objection was raised and whole pages had disappeared by day's end with no explanation.

No statement as to who trimmed them out. No explanation as to why. They just disappeared.
And, more importantly, what happened to the discussion material? Some of it has appeared under a thread labelled “2008 Ski Season” was the rest just trashed (including the complaints from Andrew Massie and tgsnoopy)?

I find it alarming that a forum on a topic as controversial as climate and weather can allow material to be excised on an anonymous whim like that. It would be dreadful if we exposed ourselves to claims of “La la la. Not listening – unless you're with us.”

It is not my intention to hijack this thread, but I thought it important to highlight my concerns over anonymous editing within a thread while the deleted material was still fresh in our minds. This thread has suddenly been reduced by about a third with no explanation. I wouldn't want this to become a regular thing.

Deleting offensive material is commonly done in forums, but usually explained or flagged. Deleting irrelevant discussion is less common (in open forums) but, when it happens, deserves an explanation from the moderator who took the action.

Read the dictionary definition of moderator – it is not the same job as censor. The act of suppression only falls within the gambit of a censor.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by TonyT »

Wildland wrote:Sometimes visiting this forum is like popping in for a peek at the Bermuda Triangle. Now you see it ... now you don't.
A petulant claim of thread hijack can cause whole pages of discussion to suddenly disappear – with no explanation as to who removed them and why.

This thread is a classic example. In recent times it has included comments about nuclear power and snow conditions. It was only this morning that an objection was raised and whole pages had disappeared by day's end with no explanation.

No statement as to who trimmed them out. No explanation as to why. They just disappeared.
And, more importantly, what happened to the discussion material? Some of it has appeared under a thread labelled “2008 Ski Season” was the rest just trashed (including the complaints from Andrew Massie and tgsnoopy)?

I find it alarming that a forum on a topic as controversial as climate and weather can allow material to be excised on an anonymous whim like that. It would be dreadful if we exposed ourselves to claims of “La la la. Not listening – unless you're with us.”

It is not my intention to hijack this thread, but I thought it important to highlight my concerns over anonymous editing within a thread while the deleted material was still fresh in our minds. This thread has suddenly been reduced by about a third with no explanation. I wouldn't want this to become a regular thing.

Deleting offensive material is commonly done in forums, but usually explained or flagged. Deleting irrelevant discussion is less common (in open forums) but, when it happens, deserves an explanation from the moderator who took the action.

Read the dictionary definition of moderator – it is not the same job as censor. The act of suppression only falls within the gambit of a censor.
Well bloody hell, damned if I do and damned if I dont eh? Yes, I took action to clean up the thread AFTER SOMEONE ELSE REQUESTED IT. Not on a whim, not as a censor, but because several people asked. And they asked nicely, not petulantly. I created a new thread with an appropriate title, moved ALL the posts which were related to it into that thread, and deleted the ones which were either complaining about the situation or requesting action. Those posts simply became redundant and irrelevant after I moved the posts which needed to go into the new thread. Is that really so difficult for you to understand? If what I have done is so morally offensive to you then I will happily tender my resignation as a moderator and you can have a go. Your call.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by TonyT »

oh, and PS - if any other moderator wants to move these last two posts out of this thread then feel free to do so. I wont be offended.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by southernthrash »

I appreciate Tony's consideration to start the 2008 ski season thread, cheers, I was about to do the same. I do think it'd be helpful if reasons for editing of threads were noted though, just a suggestion.

Back on topic, good to see a wee boost for the lakes, recent warm weather should go a wee way too helping the situation too.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Wildland »

TonyT I'm sorry if you took my post personally – I have always been a strong supporter of your work on this forum. You put a lot of effort in to keeping it going, and I was not aware that it was you who had deleted the material.

However, I think you missed the substance of my post.

There should have been an explanation of why discussion was curtailed and material was edited.

I suspect that other visitors to the forum find it confusing when material suddenly disappears with no explanation – after all, it is a FORUM. Editing and tweaking should always be explained – it is a simple courtesy to the members of the forum.

DON'T take my comments personally. Your efforts on this forum are too valuable to lose, and your judgement is respected. But, in my view, you should let us know when you have exercised that judgement. Otherwise it becomes confusing when material appears and then seems to disappear without explanation.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

If Tony or one of the other moderators had not taken the action he had I would have been dissapointed.

It had gone way off topic and they were debating an off topic subject in a thread about a quite serious topic. Sorry but I feel I was quite justified in making my request (as the author of the topic). Tony did it right by branching the off topic posts to a new topic. He did not delete any posts except ones that became irrelevant.

Anyone following the forum would have easily worked out what had been done and anyone new to the forum wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. Personally under those circumstances I don not feel a moderators message is necessary as it could be seen as offensive or directed at certain members depending upon your perspective or involvement in the events.

Oh, and I've been moderating forms for about 8 years and probably would have done exactly the same thing myself.

Frustrating thing for me, is this is once again dragging my topic off topic.

Thanks for your help anyway Tony.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by TonyT »

Wildland wrote:TonyT I'm sorry if you took my post personally – I have always been a strong supporter of your work on this forum. You put a lot of effort in to keeping it going, and I was not aware that it was you who had deleted the material.

However, I think you missed the substance of my post.
Apology accepted, and yes I did take it personally.

I'm not sure that I did miss your point, I just didnt agree with it! :?

If I delete posts for specific reasons then I will note that in the future, but if I am just tidying up a thread then I do feel that the requests for action can be safely removed once that action has been taken. As Tgsnoopy's response suggests, he was not unhappy with the situation.

I will leave it up the adminsitrator to decide whether to leave these posts here in this thread, delete them, or move them to another thread somewhere else.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Andrew Massie »

It was a good move, Tony. It just might be a good idea to put in a brief post giving reasoning. For the record, I have no problem with you being Moderator, and think you do a GREAT job.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Myself »

Forums are somewhat like private property, it helps if staff explain why they do things, but there's no obligation. I think it was fairly obvious what happened in this case. Just put two and two together.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Wildland »

rediguana wrote: ...
Nuclear is not a good option for us because you generally need two stations - one to replace the other's load when it is taken offline for regular maintenance (or you have to have enough alternative generation means to replace its load). And current nuclear reactors provide a very large base load, and would be difficult to integrate into out existing system. I don't believe the tectonic risk is that great - the Japanese after all have a pile of reactors, and their country is as active as ours.
...
Japan's nuclear industry has a poor record for disclosing accidents. I've heard the following incidents mentioned at the time in radio and news reports here, so I went looking for references and details.

Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant - Despite initial denials, Tokyo Electric Power Co had to admit that 400 barrels of low-level waste were knocked over by the magnitude 6.7 quake of 16 July 2007. Lids came off 40 of the barrels. About 315 gallons of slightly radioactive water apparently spilled from a tank and entered a pipe that flushed it into the Sea of Japan. The leaks were not announced until many hours after the event, and the power company protested that the leak was “one billionth of Japan's legal limit.”

13 June 2008 mag 6.9 quake 75 km SSW of Morioka, Honshu, Japan. At the Fukushima nuclear power plant water was splashed from two pools containing spent fuel, but the leak was contained within the plant.

A number of other accidents have occurred at Japan's nuclear power plants. In July 1999, a water leak at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant had to be left to run for 14 hours while the area surrounding the leak cooled sufficiently to allow workers to enter and stop the flow. On this occasion no radiation escaped into the atmosphere. The same plant suffered a water leak in December 1996. Probably the worst accident occurred at the Tokaimura power plant in 1997 and exposed 37 workers to radiation.

This is not an exhaustive list and I've left out references to accidents at fast-breeder reactors in Japan as they would not be required here.

[sources – Fox news and BBC news stories, various US newspapers, Chemtrail Central]

You don't have to live in a tectonically active land to worry about nuclear facilities. When I lived in the UK during the 80s, the Windscale (Sellafield) processing plants and power stations were often in the news for oopsies and pollution.

There was an interesting discussion on New Zealand's electricity situation on National Radio last Sunday morning. One of the power experts conjured up a vivid image when he mentioned that if Auckland was being supplied from a nuclear power plant and a major network outage occurred, the lights would almost pop out of their sockets with the power surge.

Nuclear power plants are good at meeting steady high demand but they are problematic when load varies dramatically such as during an earthquake-caused outage or the loss of a main feeder. Apparently, this is what caused the huge transformer fires Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant after the quake in July last year. So while the actual nuclear pollution was claimed to be small, the atmospheric pollution caused by the huge transformer fires at the nuclear power station could not be taken lightly.

What we regard as “heavy load” is small compared with, say, Japan. In the case of Auckland, the load might be big, but it is distributed over a large area and includes industrial and residential load. This is supplied via a standard distribution network. In Japan, the heavy industrial plants which comprise the heavy load are connected via dedicated feeds – much as Tiwai Point is – and these dedicated feeds are less incident-prone and maintained to higher standards. Hence the allusion to jumping light bulbs in Auckland if a nuclear power plant was supplying energy to a widely dispersed load.

We've already experienced similar events here in New Zealand. During Ruapehu's eruption in June 1996, we experienced damaging power surges here in Wellington. Ash build-up on the pylons and transmission lines in the central North Island caused arc-overs and tripped feeds north on two nights. The abrupt switching of load on and off caused power surges in the lower North Island, damaging electronic equipment.

The other catch for New Zealand, is that nuclear power plants really have to be operated in pairs (as rediguana noted) – one to take the load while the other is offline for maintenance. Would both be installed near our biggest load centre, Auckland, or one be located at a distance? Considering the kerfuffle over the proposed transmission upgrade through the Waikato, the latter seems unlikely.

To return to the hydro side of the discussion, I note that M-co have updated their graphs showing an improvement in national hydro storage from 49% on Friday to 56% today, and an upward trend in inflows. But this is not the full story. I've heard reports of a 4% drop in load over the weekend, so it will be interesting to work through the detailed figures to the end of last week. Hopefully they'll be available later today or tomorrow.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Inny Binny »

Well, I'm just waiting for nuclear fusion. ;)
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Andrew Massie »

Inny Binny wrote:Well, I'm just waiting for nuclear fusion. ;)
Don't hold your breath....! You'll be passed out in under 2 minutes! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

Inny Binny wrote:Well, I'm just waiting for nuclear fusion. ;)
A late doctor whom trained me at one stage in my career once said that he suspected nuclear fusion would result in so much energy so quickly that it would be practically impossible to contain and use :shock:

In any case, I doubt it will become practical in my lifetime and sure hope they don't have a ELE in the process of trying.

Sure is good to see that rain help out our hydro storage.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Andrew Massie »

tgsnoopy wrote:
Inny Binny wrote:Well, I'm just waiting for nuclear fusion. ;)
A late doctor whom trained me at one stage in my career once said that he suspected nuclear fusion would result in so much energy so quickly that it would be practically impossible to contain and use :shock:

In any case, I doubt it will become practical in my lifetime and sure hope they don't have a ELE in the process of trying.

Sure is good to see that rain help out our hydro storage.
What was his PhD in?
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by tgsnoopy »

Andrew Massie wrote:
tgsnoopy wrote:A late doctor whom trained me at one stage in my career once said that he suspected nuclear fusion would result in so much energy so quickly that it would be practically impossible to contain and use :shock:

In any case, I doubt it will become practical in my lifetime and sure hope they don't have a ELE in the process of trying.

Sure is good to see that rain help out our hydro storage.
What was his PhD in?
Nuclear Physics if I recall correctly. He had worked on Nuclear Power Stations, but he was tutoring in Electrical Theory. He'd come out from the UK and worked on the Ohaaki Power station (wait for it) before working at Manawatu Polytechnic.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Andrew Massie »

tgsnoopy wrote:
Andrew Massie wrote: What was his PhD in?
Nuclear Physics if I recall correctly. He had worked on Nuclear Power Stations, but he was tutoring in Electrical Theory. He'd come out from the UK and worked on the Ohaaki Power station (wait for it) before working at Manawatu Polytechnic.
Cool! Well, if he did that, he must have been a boon to society, a legend in his time, what a fantastic occupation! I'd quite like to be an Electrical Tutor at a Polytech! ;)
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Wildland »

Daily hydro data for the first fortnight of June has now been made available.
It shows that a combination of savings and inflows to the southern lakes has bought us another two weeks, with lake levels on the 14th close to where they were at the beginning of the month.

In a nutshell, the stats show:
- storage was 1534 GWh, 54% of average for the time of year on June 1st.

- storage was 1473 GWh, 53% of average for the time of year on June 14th.

- a 6% reduction in daily average load compared with June last year. This will be mostly from commercial and industrial cut-backs. The public savings campaign was launched on the 14th, so it can be hoped that savings will be even greater when the next lot of stats become available.

A more detailed report can be found on my website.

The relatively “mild” weather has helped, of course, although I hesitate to use such a term here lest it trigger comparison with “nice weather.” 8-[

From memory June last year was also mild for most of us at the beginning, with a cold snap grabbing the country at the end of the month. With that in mind, the 6% reduction in demand could be eroded by a similar polar blast that drives demand up again. The “Cold End to June” thread indicates that the cycle is repeating.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by sthguy »

Despite the recent beat up over Lake Hawea's level, would it be fair to say, given the rainfalls likely in the ranges this week, that the crisis is at least on hold ? and possibly fading away.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by Andrew Massie »

We'll see.... They haven't updated the lake level graph today yet...
Friday's one.. Image
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by melja »

Inflows are only at average and the lakes are not filling just not going down and on a side note when things got bad the govt seemed to move the bar on the chart below so as not to look so bad :-k
actual-29Jun08.pdf
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by NZstorm »

Despite the recent beat up over Lake Hawea's level, would it be fair to say, given the rainfalls likely in the ranges this week, that the crisis is at least on hold ? and possibly fading away.
Considering an upswing in rainfall in the Alps is soon due, there's very little chance of power cuts in NZ.
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by TokWW »

If I remember checking the previous one, it was the NI lakes that were getting the water and creating the rise in the graph, the SI reserves stayed level on a short flat bit...
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Re: NZ's Hydro Storage situation

Unread post by NZ Thunderstorm Soc »

NZstorm wrote:
Considering an upswing in rainfall in the Alps is soon due, there's very little chance of power cuts in NZ.

Bugger #-o ](*,)
So the generator will now need to put back in the box and the candles put back in the emergency box at the back of the cupboard in the spare room. :(


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