Author Archives: Lee Devlin

About Lee Devlin

I'm Lee Devlin from Greeley, Colorado.

January update

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I realize that many of my postings haven’t been of a personal nature, so for those of you who read this blog and may have gotten tired of reading articles about energy, here’s something more personal.

A lot of people have been asking to ask me how I like ‘retirement’. For those of you who do not know me personally, I took a voluntary enhanced early retirement from HP in June of last year. I was 47 at the time. One third of HP’s U.S. workforce was eligible for this program, some as young as age 43. Terri and I have been avoiding layoffs for the past 6 years. I’ve survived 3 near layoffs and Terri has survived 4 of them. Prior to that time, it was virtually a given that you could work for HP or Agilent until you reached retirement age, but with much of the high technology industry moving to Asia, that’s no longer the case. Many good people have been forced to find work elsewhere. Dodging layoffs while working harder than ever takes considerable joy out of one’s livelihood.

When HP offered an early retirement incentive program, I felt that it could very well be the last generous voluntary separation package ever offered. I thought it would be good to leave on a high note after 24 years of loyal service. In my last position at HP I had helped to initiate and introduce a new product category of network-attached storage products for the home that resulted in a new charter for my division. I am proud of the products and so I left with a sense of having done something worthwhile as my last contribution to the company. One of my fears about leaving HP was that I didn’t want to do it on bad terms like having my program abruptly cancelled followed by a hasty bum’s rush out the door. There were other divisions reducing staff at the Fort Collins site and some of my colleagues were looking for landing spots. I helped to provide one by leaving the company. I have no regrets about leaving.

My wife and I have no debt and have contributed to our voluntary individual retirement plans for our entire careers. That turned out to be a good thing because my voluntary plan was worth quite a bit more than my standard retirement plan. As many people are finding out, an employer’s defined-benefit pension many not require the employer to actually pay you anything from a legal standpoint. It is within an employer’s rights to amend or cancel virtually any retirement benefit for which there is no contractual obligation. Like most employees, I had no employment contract for my retirement benefits. So getting the equivalent lump sum value of a retirement plan (discounted, of course, to its net present value) can be attractive compared to the risk of getting nothing should an employer be financially unable to meet those obligations some 20 years in the future. I could also feel good about it because I was helping my employer reduce its long term financial obligations. I think that the best thing that has happened since I started working was to move toward making an individual employee’s retirement benefits portable. To make all of my retirement benefits portable, it was necessary to walk away from an established career without the option of being able to return. Leaving a job voluntarily without having another one lined up is viewed in the same realm as renouncing one’s citizenship. Many people think I was laid off. I know a lot of people in that category so even if it were true, I’d be in good company.

For the first part of my ‘retirement dress rehearsal’ as I call it, I did not immediately begin looking for a job. I was able to take a summer off for the first time since I was in grade school. I really enjoyed the time off. It felt revitalizing. However, I quickly began networking to see what opportunities were available for when I was ready to go back to work. The group I have found to be most beneficial in that regard is NoCoNet, which is set up to help Northern Colorado workers and employers to find each other. There are many other benefits to this group besides finding a job and the most significant is meeting lots of new people from around the area that I may have never met otherwise. Many of the new people are volunteers in NoCoNet and other organizations.

Currently, the most promising industries in Northern Colorado are those related to renewable energy. They are the only industries that seem to be attracting any significant investment and showing signs of growth. Everyone seems to realize that it’s just a matter of time before we run out of fossil fuels, the only argument is about how soon it will happen. I think it’s better to be prepared for it than to try to come up with a solution after we no longer have any affordable energy resources. Having access to low cost fossil fuel is a bit like living off an inheritance. When you’re living off an inheritance, it’s a good idea to acquire job skills before you need them so you won’t have to figure out how to do it after you’ve run out of money. So I think it’s wise to invest in alternative energy sources today before we absolutely need it.

That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been researching and posting about energy-related topics. In looking back through my blog, I see I’ve written over 18 entries related to energy topics. Even though I’ve never worked in the energy industry, save for one summer at an electric utility company, I would like to know as much about it as any industry insider. I realize that’s a daunting task, but energy terminology and concepts are familiar to me. Converting from kW to HP to BTUs is something I’ve been doing in my head for as long as I can recall simply because I find the subject of energy fascinating. And I enjoy reading and writing about it as well.

Back in November when Terri found for the second time in 6 months that her new job was moving to Singapore, I applied for a few positions that looked interesting. There’s a company involved in renewable energy that has called a few times but we haven’t set up an interview yet. The last time I talked with them, they thought they’d be interviewing candidates in February. Even though it’s a local position, I’d have to fly to the east coast for the interview. But I don’t know if anything will come of it. Terri managed to find a new position with just a few weeks to spare so it isn’t as important that I get a job as it was a few months ago.

In reality, I don’t really want to be retired in the sense that most people think of it. I wouldn’t be happy spending all my time golfing or lounging on a beach, although I know plenty of people who think they would. Like several of my other friends with whom I’ve talked with about it, happiness requires finding a way to be a productive and contributing member of society. That’s probably true for everyone but some people don’t realize it. I am involved in a few consulting activities I do on a volunteer basis that are related to technology ventures, mostly for friends. I also like to get out and talk with other people regularly so
I generally have a few meetings each week networking with various groups and individuals. And, of course, I participate in Yahoo Groups for products I helped to design. I realized recently that I’ve posted more than 350 entries to the HP Media Vault Yahoo group since retiring. I responded to at least as many email requests in private too, so HP is still getting some work out of me despite my departure.

I haven’t been flying the LongEZ or working on the Cozy as much as I thought I would. It is a surprise to me (and everyone else too) but then again, the weather has been too cold this winter for those activities. We just don’t seem to have the warm spring-like days we used to have at least once a week throughout the winter on Colorado’s Front Range anymore. With Colorado’s 350 days of sunshine per year, it was rare to see it snow on top of snow, except for up in the mountains. We’ve now had snow on our lawn for 2 months, which previously was quite rare, but it happened last year too. I’ve been wondering what’s happened to my global warming dividend.

So there you have it, an update and something a little more personal than my typical blog entry.

Electricity from Human Power

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Every once in a while I read stories about people generating electricity with treadmills and bicycles by connecting them to electric generators. I read an article recently about a health club in Hong Kong that was using the energy from the human-powered exercise equipment to offset its electric bill. Whenever I read something like this, the first thing I want to do is put it in its proper context. I want to know if it’s being done for symbolic reasons to make people feel good in a ‘green sense’, or if it really has any potential to make a significant contribution to our energy needs. Before I get to that, I’d first like to talk about some terminology related to power and energy.

In the U.S., you will often see the term horsepower (HP) used to describe the size of an internal combustion engine or electric motor. Horsepower is an incredibly sticky term. By that I mean that the term ‘horsepower’ helps to put a vague concept into something easier to comprehend. It was first coined by James Watt in the 1800’s in order to quantify the rate of work that could be done by steam engines. He needed a way to put the power of a machine in some context that would be easy to understand. Watt recognized that an average horse could pull a load of 180 lbs at a speed of 2 mph. Back in those days, horses were not only used for transportation but were often harnessed to large diameter rotating wheels to perform functions like lifting loads of coal or water out of a mine. In some cases the apparatus could be adapted for grinding grain at a mill. If you do the multiplication, pulling a 180 lb load at a speed of 2 mph is equivalent to 550 ft-lb/sec which is the value used to compute horsepower today.

In most other parts of the world, the metric SI unit kilowatt (kW) is now used to describe mechanical power. I find it a little ironic because James Watt coined the term horsepower to put mechanical power in a recognizable context. Now, in order to honor him, we completely removed the context from the term by naming a unit of mechanical power after James Watt instead! In reality, the term ‘watt’ can be use to describe both mechanical and electrical power. Thus it makes it quite convenient to use watts so that it’s not necessary to use any computation to convert from mechanical to electrical power. With HP we need to do a little arithmetic to go back and forth. One HP is the equivalent of 746 Watts or .746 kW. Or, if you prefer, 1 kW is equal to 1.34 HP.

Back when I was in college, my roommate and his mechanical engineering classmates were trying to figure out a way to split a log using a .1 HP motor. I asked why he planned to use such a small motor and he said that it was a test of their skills as designers. A man can work at a rate of .1 HP and can split wood with an axe and so it stands to reason that a few smart MEs should be able to design a machine that was as efficient as a man. They wanted to store the energy in a flywheel, but couldn’t figure out a way to get it out of the flywheel to split the wood. I recalled my uncle telling me about a device he used that was like a conical screw to split logs that was attached to a wheel on a car. With the front wheels of the car chocked and one of the rear tires removed, the conical screw was attached to the hub with the wheel lugs. With the axle supported, the conical screw would spin and even at idle have no trouble screwing itself into a sizable log and splitting it. They looked around for the device and eventually found one and were able to adapt it to their large flywheel. A version of this log splitter is still sold today . With the conical screw in combination with their flywheel and tiny .1 HP motor they were able to split logs with great success. Upon looking at the arrangement, no one thought it was going to work, but it did and they were quite happy with the result.

Ever since that project, I have always recalled the number 1/10 of a HP or 75 watts in the context as what a healthy human could be expected to generate on a sustained basis. For periods shorter than an hour, a healthy human could generate about twice that amount or about 150W, and an elite athlete can generate nearly 300W (.4 HP) for as much as 8 hours. For very short bursts, a human can even exceed 1 HP.

This brings me back to the original question. If you had to generate your own electricity, assuming it was a full time job of 8 hours a day, how much of your own electricity could you generate? The answer is that if you worked 5 days a week, 8 hours a day at a rate of 75W, you’d be able to generate about 12 kWh of electricity per month. This is about 1.7% of what a typical U.S. household consumes. The value of this much electricity is around $1.20. That’s $.0075/hour. Yes, it means you would not quite generate a penny’s worth of electricity per hour of pedaling effort. But I’ll bet you’d be in great physical shape in no time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t include the food energy required to offset this new level of physical activity. The human body is about 20% efficient at converting food energy into mechanical energy so the 600 Wh you produce per day would need an additional 3000 Wh of food. This amounts to 10800 kJ or 2580 food calories. A typical basal metabolic rate for an average man is around 1900 calories per day, so if you were to add this level of activity to a sedentary lifestyle, you’d see some dramatic weight loss, assuming you didn’t more than double your food intake to compensate for the new hunger pangs you’d begin to feel.

So now when I read about human-powered generators, I recognize that you could use something like it in an emergency to power a light, or even a laptop computer, but it would not contribute in a positive sense to a sustainable energy program because you’d likely have to double your food intake which would cost much more than the 6 cents a day of electrical energy you could produce.

Colorado Hydroelectric Power part 3

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To wrap things up, I wanted to provide a short chronicle what is most likely the earliest instance of hydroelectric power in Northern Colorado.

Nearly 100 years ago the Fall River hydroelectric plant was built by F.O. Stanley just northwest of Estes Park, CO. Stanley is best known for developing the Stanley Steamer automobile. Stanley came to Estes Park in 1903 at age 54 when he was suffering from tuberculosis. His doctors thought that the dry mountain air would be beneficial for him. It must have worked because F.O. Stanley went on to recover from TB and fell in love with Estes Park and decided to move there permanently. He ended up living into his 90’s and left his mark on the town. Today you can see the luxurious Stanley Hotel perched up above the north side of the town. It’s become quite a tourist attraction in its own right. One of the hotel’s most notable distinctions is that it was the inspiration for Steven King’s famous book The Shining.

Stanley recognized that the hotel would need electrical power so he took it upon himself to construct a hydroelectric plant utilizing the Fall River which exits Rocky Mountain National Park at the Fall River entrance. This river meets with the Big Thompson in Estes Park and then goes on to Estes Lake which is formed by the Olympus Dam. The Fall River plant is about 3 miles northwest of town very close to the Rocky Mountain National Park Fall River Visitor’s Center.

The Fall River hydroelectric plant was built in 1909, the same year as the hotel, and had a Hug Water Wheel powering a 200 kW GE generator. It was initially intended just to power the hotel in the summer months but residents of the town also wanted to have electricity so Stanley agreed to sell it to them. Within a short time, the generator was no longer large enough to supply a growing population. Stanley decided to use a coal-powered steam plant at the hotel to free up some of the Fall River plant’s capacity for the town’s residents. He also replaced the penstock that was fed by Cascade Lake with a larger diameter pipe. Cascade Lake is located about a mile upstream and is 400’ higher in elevation than the plant.

In 1921, a second unit was added, a 900 HP Worthington Francis turbine powering a 680 kW GE generator which only ran from May through September when the river flow was sufficient to supply the power.

The plant was augmented with diesel generators several times and ownership was passed from Stanley to the Public Service Company and eventually to the Town of Estes Park who owns the plant today. The Lawn Lake Flood of 1982 damaged the plant and penstock and today it no longer produces any electricity but is instead run as a museum. You can read much more about its history and how to find it here.

My wife loves to gift shop up in Estes Park and I usually accompany her and follow her around from store to store as she searches for just the perfect gifts. I don’t think you’ll find a higher density of gift shops anywhere in the world than you will in Estes Park. I enjoy the scenery while traveling there and back, but next time I think I’ll take my own little side excursion during the shopping activities and tour this hydroelectric facility.

Colorado Hydroelectric Power part 2

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After my last posting on Colorado Hydroelectric power, I got a comment related to the fact that there were several hydro plants on the Big Thompson River. I started to do some more research eventually culminating with a visit to canyon yesterday to do some firsthand investigation on the subject.

There are actually two hydro plants situated on the Big Thompson River. One is part of the Colorado Big Thompson (C-BT) project and is located down by the mouth of the canyon near the Dam Store. It’s called the Big Thompson Power Plant and was accounted for in my last posting. It is the smallest of all the C-BT generating plants (4.8 MW) and is only operated during the runoff season from May through September. There is a dam just upriver from it, but the water from that dam is not used to power it. Instead, it is powered by a penstock with 180’of head that comes from the Charles Hansen Feeder canal. The canal runs across Highway 34 via an inverted siphon. That’s the pipe you see when you enter the canyon.

This is the 4.8 MW Big Thompson hydro plant. The large overhead structure is a crane for servicing the generator.

The water in the Charles Hansen Feeder canal can be augmented with the Big Thompson River by a diversion dam located about a mile up the canyon. This small dam feeds water into the Dille tunnel which goes through a mile of solid rock to meet up with the Charles Hansen Feeder canal just south of the inverted siphon. You’ll notice that the pipe is quite a bit lower than the open canal sections that run on either side of it. I’ve included a Google Earth 3D perspective of this phenomenon. I never understood what that pipe did until I flew over it and then it was like a lightbulb going off in my head. I suppose an aqueduct that ran across the canyon at the canal elevation would have cost much more to construct than this inverted siphon. The Charles Hansen canal is used to fill Horsetooth Reservoir with C-BT water.

The Big Thompson power plant’s penstock is formed by a rectangular concrete chute that runs down from the canal on the south side of the highway 34 and is piped under the highway and over to the generating station. In addition, some of the canal water can be simply dumped into the Big Thompson River depending on how they want to move flow along the C-BT project.

This is the inverted siphon that crosses Highway 34. The canal is about 100′ higher than this pipe.

This is a Google Earth 3D view of the mouth of the Big Thompson canyon. You can see that the Charles Hansen canal is much higher in elevation than the pipe that crosses the highway. The power plant water inlet comes from the top of the canal on the left side of the canyon.

I spoke yesterday with a very nice woman from the Bureau of Reclamation by the name of Kara Lamb who posts frequently to a forum sponsored by Mountainbuzz. This forum is monitored by white water kayakers with rapt attention to check flow rates on the Big Thompson River. That way they know when it’s time to ditch work and do some kayaking. Flow rates are changed periodically to send water to where it’s needed and so the volumetric flow can vary unpredictably and thus is important for kayakers to check the forum to see when the water levels are suitable for kayaking. Kara is very knowledgeable about the C-BT project and in the course of one of her postings, she mentioned another power plant on the river owned by the city of Loveland. The power plant she referred to is the Idlewilde Hydro Plant located in Viestenz-Smith Park. This power plant is fed via a penstock from the Idlewilde Reservoir which is located about 2 miles upriver from the plant. The plant is very easy to overlook because it’s not very big and there is not much equipment around it to suggest it’s a power plant. It could easily be mistaken for a maintenance building.

I found in searching around that there was a trail that ran up the canyon on the opposite side from the park called the Foothills Nature Trail that was said to have a few exposed sections of the penstock, which is otherwise buried for the 2 mile distance it runs to the Idlewilde reservoir. I hiked this trail yesterday and took a picture of the metal pipe. It is 3’ in diameter and was originally made of wood back when it was first constructed in 1920’s.

A small exposed section of the Idlewilde Dam-Power Plant penstock. It runs 2 miles, mostly underground from the reservoir to the power plant and can carry 74 cfs of water.

I couldn’t find any information regarding the amount of water flow through the penstock or generating capacity of the Idlewilde plant on the Internet so I went to the park and found some posters that explained a little more about its tumultous history and other interesting facts. The generators inside the building were rated at 900KW which is enough to supply electricity to about 900 homes. Back in the days when the only use for electricity was lighting, this hydro plant could supply a substantial portion of Loveland’s electricity needs.

At 900KW, the Idlewilde hydroelectric plant much smaller than any of the hydro plants that are part of the CB-T project. But since it is not a technically a part of the C-BT project, there is no information about it on the C-BT web pages. The entire facility was completely wiped out in the Big Thompson flood of 1976 and the remnants of the 3 original generators are on display in the park. In the 1980s, the plant was rebuilt and the generators were replaced
with 2 turbines with the same generating capacity. The generating station subsequently returns all the water it receives from the penstock to the river just downstream from the hydro plant.

I also found on the Bureau of Reclamation website that my estimate of 50% for the capacity factor may be too high for several of the C-BT power plants, particularly the Big Thompson Power Plant since it only operates from May-Sept each year. Thus, its capacity factor is only around 20% of its 4.8MW nameplate value. I think that when the river flow is low like it is now in January (~20 cfs), only a portion of the rated power could be generated by the Idlewilde plant. In other words, a 74 cfs diversion flow from the Idlewilde Dam could not be sustained in the winter months and thus it would have to run at reduced capacity. But I was able to hear the generators running, so it appears to be generating at least some electricity year-round.

In talking with Kara, she mentioned that there have been various proposals to add hydro capacity over the years, such as at the outlet of the Olympus Dam in Estes Park, as well as the outlets of Carter Lake and Horsetooth Reservoir. However, these never seem to move forward due to their economics. They just wouldn’t generate enough power to cover their construction and operating expenses.

The more I research the C-BT project, the more impressed I am with the engineering and foresight that went into it. In addition to augmenting the water supply on the Front Range with more capacity that the Big Thompson and Poudre Rivers combined, the designers did an excellent job at extracting all of the available hydro power from the water with minimal environmental impact. It’s hard to fathom that much of the project was implemented more than 60 years ago.

My conclusion is still the same as my original assessment, that is, since now I know that 2 miles of the interior of the Big Thompson canyon essentially has its hydro power harvested to produce less than 1MW of power, the total capacity of the 20 mile stretch of canyon would account for no more than 12 MW of generating capacity which is certainly not enough to justify the environmental impact or economics of pursuing it.