Drilling operation on the hillside to the south of the Lake Oroville flood control spillway, as holes are being drilled up to 30-feet deep for controlled blasting at the Butte County site. Photo taken April 24, 2017.
Posted on 02/12/2017 4:26:47 PM PST by janetjanet998
Edited on 02/12/2017 9:33:58 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Oroville Dam is the highest in the nation.
Drilling operation on the hillside to the south of the Lake Oroville flood control spillway, as holes are being drilled up to 30-feet deep for controlled blasting at the Butte County site. Photo taken April 24, 2017.
Drilling and grading operation on the hillside to the south of the Lake Oroville flood control spillway, as holes are being drilled up to 30-feet deep for controlled blasting at the Butte County site. Photo taken April 24, 2017.
“... What do you think of this guy ...”
-
I think he is on crack.
In a just a few posts, we have swiftly dissected that this DWR statement basis is not completely accurate (i.e. there is far more going on beyond the strictly "sheer cliff" PR "safety" reason).
From a construction perspective, we can understand the advantages & possibilities. But look at it from the public's simpler perspective: the situation translates into - "we were told one thing, then it's now something much more than we were told. Why?" -or- "we were told it was only for 'safety', and they were setting up seismographs to make sure that there wasn't going to be damage to our houses, now they are doing far more blasting, so why this is this potentially damaging blasting (that needs seismographs) going well beyond what they said?"
This type of PR messaging "bait & switch" could continue to erode what little is left in the public's trust.
Note: Scott Cahill's wife has been the president of a construction company that specialized in dam inspections and repairs. An interesting "knowledge base" in a married expertise on dams.
As far as the "shock" vibrations felt on Kelly ridge & the pets responding with anxiety... this could be from the blasting.
Regarding a "hum", it would be useful if more information was described or provided by the locals. I always find credible pieces of information from locals that may be overlooked by "experts".
For example, UELF (ultra extremely low frequency), and upper harmonics, in a mechanical manifestation, are able to conduct long distances and create acoustic (sound) standing waves.
The Hyatt power plant is deep in the rock below Kelly ridge. If for example, the new refurbished and more efficient turbine just installed has blade geometries that create a new form of a harmonic at a 3600 rpm operation, the harmonics could couple to the rock foundation in multiple ways. One is via a cavity chamber resonance in a number of the physical geometries of the tunnels, the cavern, the piping, etc.
As UELF waves & some of the upper harmonics may not be detectable nearby (wavelengths in hundreds of feet at the velocity of the medium it travels within), these harmonics may be convergent in areas that end up affecting people as "sounds".
A restaurant & dance disco called "Earthquake Ethel's in Beaverton Oregon" would use a PDP-11 computer to coordinate the internal sound amplifiers & speakers in the building to resonate the building at its primary resonant frequency - thus re-creating a magnitude 3 equivalent shaking inside. It was cool. They did this every so often during the hours. However, the neighborhood residents were all up in arms as the acoustic sound waves from this effect developed at a distance away and would strongly resonate in different places in the neighborhood (wavelength convergence). Eventually, the residents complained enough to the city council and the restaurant closed.
If there was truly a "hum" effect going on, I would investigate it in a different way rather than immediately jumping to a complex phased array system thousands of miles away. (yes, I am familiar with these particular phased array systems - it is part of my research).
The Letters are "O", "L", and "I". I haven't been able to find any history to these letters. I know that Olive orchard farms, renowned for their quality olive oil, are prevalent in Oroville. These mini letter lakes or ponds had to have been made by the early dredges (my best guess). These were left "as is" when the borrow equipment gathered the dam materials. So there likely is some sort of interesting history related to these letters. - OLI also could designate "Oroville". Just a curiosity.
You noting the clay borrow pit now used for an ATV recreational area reminded me of this unanswered puzzle.
I blame abb for getting me stuck on this curiosity as he posted on the original borrow area in the Feather River Gold Dredge Tailings. :-) . The sat pic images revealed these letters in these tailing fields.
Early Dredgers left huge letters "O" "L" "I" in borrow Area
Our “public servants” seldom are completely truthful to us taxpayers. I was at a local school board meeting last night (In another life, I do a local newsblog and cover local government), and they just gave the district superintendent a $10K/yr raise, while lamenting that tax collections are down $4 million this year, and saying that the district’s retirees are facing another haircut on their medical benefits.
The O L I are interesting and could be as simple as the guy that ran the dredge decided to leave his initials for posterity. If someone has the time it might be worth a call to the local historic society. They often know the back round of these types of local things.
http://www.buttecountyhistoricalsociety.org/
My local historical society has three guys that hang around and between them know or can find the answer to just about any local question.
Just a note - typically, at least in the past, hydroelectric generators are designed to run at a much lower RPM than what you find with typical gas and steam turbines. Typically, a steam turbine generator is designed to run at either 3600 RPM (2-pole) or 1800 RPM (4-pole), but the hydro-electric generators I've seen have a much greater number of poles, and thus operate at considerably lower RPM.
I read that Hyatt generators run at 200 RPM, but that is unconfirmed. TVA's Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage units operate at 300 RPM. A chart in the link below shows some typical hydro plant design RPM...
Speaking of “hum” and harmonics - true, but weird story - I bought a new UPS for my desktop computer a couple of years ago. The night after I first plugged it in, I started noticing a low-level low frequency (60 Hz) hum in the house. Not all the time, but the noise coincided with times when power demand was lighter. At times of higher demand, the noise doesn’t occur.
I have never been able to pin down a physical source of the hum; only that I first noticed it when I got the UPS. I think that there’s some connection between the noise and the UPS though. On the other hand, I have a 161,000 volt transmission line running across my property, about 250 feet away from the house. And a nuclear plant about 6 miles to my northeast. Now maybe the line is causing some standing waves, or maybe the voltage controlling circuits in the UPS are interacting with the household supply in some odd way.
It’s been an interesting phenomenon, but not bothersome enough to force me to do something about it. Just a curious oddity.
drone video from May 1st
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgkg5DpqnjE&index=1&list=PLeod6x87Tu6eVFnSyEtQeOVbxvSWywPlx
Reminds me of the harmonic booms coming from these low-riders with their volume and bass turned all the way up. You can feel the vibrations. Doors and windows rattling as they roll slowly down the street.
Bringing up the turbine was that it is one of the "new" variables to Hyatt (and possibly to a new variable the locals have not had before). The key to this new turbine - if for example it may be linked to "hum" - is the hydrostatics of the turbine blades (if the blades are of a slightly more efficient curvature & geometry to the other older turbines). Thus any slight difference in the system may create a differential pulsation in the water with respect to the other turbines. When you are dealing with megawatts of power, these tiny differences can have very interesting effects - if it hits a resonance (cavity resonance, etc).
(note: there are other complex harmonic effect factors such as inductive-capacative phase shift balance of source to transmission line load).
The human body has UELF resonances that make people physically ill. Almost a century ago, engineers at large industrial factories in France discovered the source to be infrasound pulsations developing in large cavity & pipe structures within the factory. The workers complained of feeling sick yet no-one was able to detect any particular sound (below human ear freq range). Engineer isolated the frequency to the torso frequency of the human body near 7.5 to 7.8h (note: 7.5hz is a perfect 8x subharmonic of 60hz). The military heard about this and then classified it to develop UELF infrasound weapons to incapacitate people. Since then, other infrasonic frequencies have been discovered for the head (cranial cavity & brain) and extremities. The most modern advanced (non public) tech is seizure inducing & near instantaneous incapacitating is classified but it is real - (photonic based) (no limit to weapon research).
So there is much that can affect people in symptoms from resonances. If the reports are accurate on something affecting the locals on Kelly ridge, it may be from a "new" variable - such as from what is operating below in the megawatt power levels. Just to make a point in answering a person's question in a post - I would eliminate this first of a potential "source" in contrast to the prior question on a person's youtube's conclusion it is from a phased array transmitter system.
Yes, you can always find these “boomers” as their side view mirrors vibrate erratically. What is ironic, is that the full propagating wavelength of the lower frequencies don’t fully develop except outside and away from the vehicles - where it disturbs everyone else.
In the industry, it’s typical for large commercial and industrial customers to be charged for reactive power. Loads are almost always inductive, and larger customers will install capacitor banks for correction.
As far as the voltage regulation on my UPS, it’s purely electronic so there’s no telling what kind of noise it might be putting back out towards the house.
There’s some good views of the area being prepped for blasting.
I should be a little clearer - my local power utility doesn’t seem to do a good job with dealing with light-loaded periods. Meaning that instead of maintaining 120/240 volts, it might be 123/246 or something on that order. My UPS will, at some point, clamp the output voltage down a bit, and I think that might be when it is perhaps introducing some noise back into the house AC system.
I really haven’t studied it enough. My curiosity is only outranked by my laziness and the need to get other things done. :)
It wouldn’t take much to eliminate the UPS as a source/cause for the issue. Could also be the new electronic metering and fiber optic equipment that the power board installed on the house right at the same time. At any rate, it sometimes sounds like a very low-volume version of being in a power substation (where I’ve spent some time). Anyway, 3 years ago, the issue did not exist.
Thanks, Janet.
It seems to be looking a lot cleaner at low flow levels than it did the last 2 times they tapered it down and closed the gates. Like it is almost suitable to run at a lower level, say 10,000 or so. The farmers downstream would be pleased if the large water flow excursions were avoided.
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