It’s been a busy day, with phone calls for a call series I’ve been participating, an informal conversation with Coast Alaska reporters and scientists (which I seemed to have qualified as in this case), and finally a talk about hydropower generation and the models used to help anticipate an prepare for situations where hydro capacity doesn’t meet demand.
The meeting with reporters and scientists was interesting. The reporters were interested in improving communication with scientists as well as understanding some of the issues that scientists may be dealing with that are necessarily obvious to someone on the outside. For my part, I mostly listened, as I don’t really actively participate in the sort of science that draws much attention. I like to mess around with data, and I like to get out and informally observe things, but all the science-y ground between those isn’t really something I do much with. One thing I did mention that I like to keep in mind is that questions are interesting and potentially important, even if they don’t have answers.
The talk this evening was also interested – it was well attended with 80+ people in a crowded room at UAS. Dean Orbison gave an overview of how hydro power generation works, and the issues we face in this community. Currently with average inflow to the lake, generation capacity is sufficient to meet demand, but in years with below average inflow to the lake, that’s not the case. It was interesting to hear about some of the extreme weather events – noting that in one year there was concern that water levels were going to be low and then there was a significant rain where the lake level rose 13 feet in one day (I’m assuming there was a fair amount of snow melt with that one, also). Another time there was apparently 12,000 cubic feet per second spilling over the dam – that probably would have been interesting to see.
Later this evening I did add several back-dated photojournal posts. Links to them are in the sidebar.