"Stay away from people that act like a victim of a problem they created themselves." - Unknown
Been a while since I've done a post - feeling a bit guilty about that, but it's water under the bridge. I'll get some cool tech stuff up, and haven't forgotten that I'd promised a post on fusion power!
But for now, I'm just going to throw up a few images of the Geothermal power plant that I worked at in the 80's and 90s. The plant generated 270 MW at the peak, and has now fallen to half of that, at 135 MW. The same thing happened to the Geysers geothermal field in Northern California as more and more wells were punched in, depleting the reservoir. There is a far more detailed explanation of the geothermal job here.
Anyway, on to the photos, courtesy of Coso Geothermal. When I was there, it was absolutely forbidden to bring a camera to work - and pocket cell phones with high quality cameras did not yet exist. So I have no pictures of this workplace of my own.
Below: An Aerial picture of Navy 1, units 1-3. Unit 1 looks a bit different because it's a Mitsubishi, while the other two are Fuji units. The white and pink splotchy canyon at the center is called the Devil's Kitchen, and it usually had steam rolling out of it when I was there. The ponds contain water with high concentrations of minerals, so the colors look weird.
Below: Two operators in the consolidated control room at Navy II. Each site used to have its own control room, but in the mid 90's Navy II became the site with the main control room, with two CROs to handle 100+ wells and nine generating units.
Close-up of the Unit 4 hard-panel that was originally came with these units. Pretty primitive! Mechanical protective relays and folding paper chart recorders :) I hope some of this stuff is just legacy equipment!
Below: The admin building at Navy 1. The multi-colored soil of the Devil's Kitchen is behind the vehicles.
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