12 dead, damage, injuries: power cuts

[Brian Ellis]

Yesterday, a massive explosion caused the deaths of 12 persons at a Naval Base. 90-odd transport containers, packed with munitions and other explosives blew up, causing widespread damage, over several km. The cause is not known yet but may have been due to a brush fire (cigarette end??? to speculate). Bad enough, but there is worse.

The containers were confiscated from a ship carrying them from Iran to Syria, apparently at the request of the USA, three years ago. They were left in full sunlight (temps up to 45°C peak) in brush land. Worse again,

The Naval Base was between three villages and a camping site, experiencing bad damage and injuries, even up to 3 km away from both the blast and falling debris. Even worse again.

The Naval Base was next door to Cyprus largest power station, with about 55% of the total generating capacity, just when water demand (via desalination) and air conditioning is very high. The power station is completely out of service and will remain so for many months, if it is not a complete write-off. We have had power cuts, although the EAC (monopoly electricity supplier) has done marvels to cope with a mere ~650 MW for the whole island. Desalination has been stopped, meaning that we living on fragile water reserves; the public has been asked to use electricity and particularly air conditioning minimally (fortunately it maxed today at a cool 36.5°C (97.7°F) here at my weather station, but it will possibly reach 40++°C later in the month: 43.8°C (110.8°F) last year) and rolling power cuts. The grid connections, switchgear and transformers were also destroyed.

We are now at the mercy that another generator or transformer will not break down (overload in hot weather).

This is catastrophic for the island's economy (industry, commerce, tourism, airports etc.) with reduced power. Essential services are being maintained, but do we have enough diesel fuel in stock to cope with the demand to keep emergency generators running in hospitals, hotels, commercial complexes, etc.?

Obviously, this has very severe political consequences, but I'm not entertaining these here.

See http://www.cyprus-mail.com/ for today's local paper with a dozen articles on the catastrophe.

[Jammrock]

Wow, that's really bad. I'm actually surprised there wasn't more damage considering 90 containers of munitions. Any options for a home generator?

[degrub]

Cyprus should request one of the US Navy's desalination water supply ships

[Evildead666]

Ho-Lee-Shit.

I'd get a car alternator hooked up to two or three 12V batteries on either a bicycle, wind turbine, or water wheel, whichever is possible.
Then hook that up to a 12V to 220V transformer. ( I have a 300W one, but that wouldn't be enough for AC, but maybe some other stuff, radios, Phone, TV, etc.).

Also, with the heat, you might be able to set up a desalination still, black bin-bags to heat up the seawater to vapour, then cool it down in a tube or something. Wet towel around the tubes would cool off from evaporation as well.
Over here they call it the "Systeme D" or in other words "Demerde-toi".
Basically, become MacGuyver.

Must have been some hell of a blast. Good to know you're OK.

[Brian Ellis]

OK, we are learning to cope with the results of this disaster.

Electricity: 2 hour cuts at a time in rolling blackouts, generally 1 x/day (may become 2 x/day if the temperature rises). We can live with this. 100% power to residential areas from 18:00 to 06:00. There is an obligation for those with stand-by generators to use them 24/7. Greece and Israel are sending "portable" generators which should give us another 200 MW capacity. With these on line, I think the country can cope reasonably well, provided we can keep the populace from abusing air-conditioning.

Water: strict temporal rationing (all houses have 200 l or more cold water tanks) 1-2 h/48 h, request to minimise use to essentials. We are used to this, so it is no surprise. When the emergency 200 MW of capacity comes on line, desalination will restart at night. Reservoirs have ample capacity to last until the "rainy season"; the problem may be if the rains don't come in October.

Politics: I don't want to dwell on this but there have been demonstrations and clashes with police, with appeals for the government to resign, including the Prez. There does appear to be a prima facie case of gross negligence involving the government in corpore.

[Tjalfe]

how come there is not widespread solar power to help supplement the generators?

[Brian Ellis]

how come there is not widespread solar power to help supplement the generators?

There is: about 95% of our hot water is solar-heated (except for the State Hospitals!!!!)

As for electricity, a) there is no way we could afford a year-round average of 1 GW of PV; b) even if we could, there is no way we can arrange for the sun to shine more than an average of 12 hours/day; c) we have only ~300 days of useful sun/year; d) we are a small island, we don't have enough available surface area to generate such electrical energy; e) we don't have a way of storing solar-generated electricity.

Have a look at

and tell us whether you really think that a small island, a relatively poor (and currently cash-strapped) EU member, can afford it.

Before you come back and say what about wind, let me state that the average annual wind speed across the island is nearer 4 m/s than 5 m/s and that it needs ~15 m/s sustained wind to turn the blades of a wind turbine sufficiently to give its rated capacity. As I sit here, typing this, I can see 2 turbines of a small wind farm of ten 2 MW turbines out of my office window. Neither is turning. Here is my measured wind speed for today up to now (~17:40)



The red line is the gust speed, the blue line the average (the one that counts for turning turbines) and the green line is the minimum. Currently, the average is 1.0 m/s, with a max today of 3.1 m.s at 15:52. The max gust today was 5,4 m/s at 14:48. I can assure you that the wind farm I can partly see has not generated a single kWh of electricity today (or over the past week or more). In fact, it is a net consumer of electricity (orientation motor, aircraft and other warning lights, rotor brakes etc.)

You may wonder why we have wind farms. It was a political decision forced on us by Brussels as a sop to our excessive fossil fuel consumption. It is still early days and figures have not been published, other than capacity: we have currently ~94 MW of installed capacity and I suspect these have averaged very much less than 10% production of capacity and <9.4 MW practical capacity is going to get us a long way when we need 1200 MW when the temperature is 45°C+.

[Wulfman]

It's probably a mistake out of simplifying matters - but if you state that you have the highest power consumption whenever it is sunny & hot, wouldn't that mean that PV would actually be quite effective at helping out with those spikes? Not like the rest of Europe, where energy usage spikes once people get home in the evening...

Just a thought.
W

[Brian Ellis]

It's probably a mistake out of simplifying matters - but if you state that you have the highest power consumption whenever it is sunny & hot, wouldn't that mean that PV would actually be quite effective at helping out with those spikes? Not like the rest of Europe, where energy usage spikes once people get home in the evening...

Just a thought.
W

Yes and no. The cost factor is insurmountable but what you say seems logical. There is a big 'however': when it's 40°C, the panels reach easily 60°C, at which temperature the output power is less than half the rated capacity. This means that if the nominal rating is, say, 150 W/m² you would have to provide for 75 W/m². This means the kWh would cost typically $0.55-0.60 (2007 dollar). Who can afford that by the time you add on overheads, maintenance and a modicum of profit?

I have high hopes that heliostatic tower generation will become more viable, but we are talking of 2020. A 25 (?) MW prototype is working in Spain but there are still many problems to iron out before we can talk about viability.

[Brian Ellis]

Latest news: large quantities of vaporised iron, copper and lead in the air and precipitated to ground. Embargo on veggies, milk and meat from the region.

Fortunately no depleted (or otherwise) uranium or other radionuclides.

[Brian Ellis]

This shows the power station and part of the naval base, GoogleEarthed in 2008, before the explosives were deposited there. The red rectangle shows the place where they were deposited, about 200 m from the major tank farm storing a minimum of 3 months of oil for the power station. It was a miracle that this did not catch fire.



This shows the site today. Note all the debris throughout the grounds of the power station and the damage to the oil tanks. This is a HelSat photo at 0.5 m resolution.



What idiot would dream of depositing these explosives so close to a strategically important site as the power plant providing over half the island's electricity? It would have been an ideal terrorist target, especially with Iran and Syria involved in the equation. Note that terrorism is NOT suspected; Cyprus can do worse on its own by sheer stupidity

[Tjalfe]

Here in Ontario, they are pushing Solar as the second coming.. 235W panels can be gotten for about $2.30/Watt, or if you want to use Ontario Made panels, $2.55/watt, which then can be tied to the grid, making you money.
In your area, I would probably consider a small PV installation for your own house, as a backup, if nothing else.
as for the efficiency dropping when it is that hot, how about pumping some coolant around behind the panels, driven by a solar powered motor?

[Jammrock]

Holy $#!* on a stick! That's a big arse crater. Puts the boom in perspective.

[cjolley]

Holy $#!* on a stick! That's a big arse crater. Puts the boom in perspective.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[Dr Mordrid]

I'm visualizing a circular firing squad consisting of everyone within 50 yards of responsibility for this screwup.

NO-F'ing-COMMON-SENSE-WHATSOEVER !!