Video Recap: Idaho Power and Cloud Seeding Full Transcript

MEL: All right, good morning, everybody; my name is Mel Kunkel; I’m a senior atmospheric scientist for the Idaho Power Company here in Boise, and over the last day and a half, we’ve seen a lot of really great presentations on utilization; of everything from containers, Unix, Python, how you get started in that, to some of the bigger picture presentations that cover data management all the way up to how NSF looks at projects.

My portion today is to give you a little bit of an idea from an application point of view. How do we use some of the data from high-performance computing systems?

[Image of service areas in Idaho with kW amounts those areas consume: Hells Canyon – 392MW, Oxbow – 190 MW, Brownlee – 675 MW, Cascade – 12 MW, Swan Falls – 27 MW, C.J. Strike – 83 MW, Bliss – 75 MW, Lower Malad – 14 MW, Upper Malad – 8 MW, Lower Salmon – 13 MW, Upper Salmon – 35 MW, Thousand Springs – 7 MW, Clear Lake – 3 MW, Shoshone Fails – 15 MW, Twin Falls – 53 MW, Milner – 59 MW, American Falls – 92 MW]

So today, I will talk about Idaho Power, our cloud seeding program, and how, say, 610,000 customers but, in reality, around 200 or 2.5 million people that we service. This is because those individual customers may have anywhere from one person to 500 people that are attached to it, and as part of that, we run our operations with 17 different hydro dams as well as thermal units such as gas and coal plants. One of the unique things about us is that we were one of the first companies to come out and issue a clean energy mandate. Meaning that by 2035 we expect to be a hundred percent clean energy going away from coal and some of the other aspects of that.

[Donut chart of Idaho’s 2022 energy mix: Hydroelectric – 31.1%, Wind – 10.0%, Solar – 3.8%, (Geothermal, Biomass & Other) – 2.3%, Coal – 19.9%, Natural Gas – 12.6%, Market Purchases – 20.3%]

This shows last year’s mix of energy, and you’ll notice that we had a little over 30% hydroelectric. We’re meant to be a little over 50% hydroelectric in our energy mix, but everybody in this area knows the last couple of years have been kind of a drought. So we wound up going into the market and buying electricity to cover some of the missing hydroelectricity we typically have.

[Donut chart of national average energy mix: Hydroelectric – 6%, non-hydro renewables – 13%, Nuclear – 19%, Coal – 22%, Natural Gas – 38%, Other – 2%]

When you compare this to the national average, this is what it looks like. You can see hydroelectric is about 6% and when you look at ours, we stand at around 50%. You can see how reliant we are on water and on, in this case, very specifically, snow.

So today, you’ll do a quick overlook of what cloud seeding is, how it’s done, and why we do it. Then we’ll look at a research project called SNOWIE that was conducted here in Idaho. Then we’ll move into some of the modeling and stuff. Those sections will be on benefits and other topics I’ve moved to the far end, and if we have time, we’ll cover that.

Let’s get started; so what is cloud seeding? Basically, cloud seeding is, for a lack of better words, it’s weather modification to produce more precipitation of one form or another, and there are two types. These include cold clouds, which are dependent on the abundance of super-cool liquid water, and I’ll explain that in a minute. Then there’s a warm cloud type which is basically the collision of small droplets to form bigger droplets. Cloud seeding helps to assist those processes and is defined as a mechanism to either produce raindrops or produce more snowfall.

The term cloud seeding is used across a large area of things, but it’s been used specifically for fog… to reduce it at airports, different things like that, to accomplish this a team comes in, they use a ground-based item, and through either dry ice or a different formats, they’re able to reduce the amount of fog at the airport to allow for greater aviation use. Health suppression is widely used in the Midwest and up in Canada, and the whole purpose there is to get those big thunderstorms that come through to not be so devastating. At times they produce hail that is devastating by being anywhere from golf ball size to softball size, and it can have a billion dollars of damage out of one storm, mostly by taking out crops. Interestingly enough most of the health depression programs that are run, whether in the U.S. or in Canada, are funded by insurance companies… because they’ve determined that it’s much cheaper to spend a million dollars on a cloud scene than to pay one or two big damages out of a thunderstorm in a year. Without intervention, that could equal up, in some cases, over two billion dollars.

Then we have a couple of different other ones, but the key portion is basically snowpack enhancement, and that’s what Idaho Power does because, as I showed earlier, we have many hydro dams. That’s what the backbone of our generation Fleet is. If we can produce more snow in the mountains, it lasts longer throughout the year, we have more generation through hydropower, which is a very low carbon unit, and we have the side benefit that it maintains the base flows in our river systems throughout the year so that they don’t drop so low that we have warming conditions that kill fish and impact other species in the summer.

[Image of atmospheric precipitation monitor on the new slide]

All right, so supercooled liquid water is, basically, water that exists in the atmosphere that’s not frozen but can be well below 32 degrees. We all think freezing of water occurs at 32 degrees, and it can, but that’s typically not pure water; that’s water that has little dust particles and stuff in it, and those impurities make it freeze quicker. We’ve been able to monitor in Idaho and in many other places liquid water remaining in the atmosphere at minus 20 degrees, and you’re like, “Well, how does that work”? Well, it’s just a natural process if it’s really pure water or water vapor, it can continue to stay at that level until that minus 20 degrees. Unless something interacts with it, that interaction is typically salts, dust, or something along that line. This can occur naturally either through dust storms, interaction at the coast where you get salt up into the atmosphere, and what cloud seeding does is it adds extra particles.

[New slide: Cold Cloud Seeding Method]

It’s done in many different ways, but for us, we do cold cloud, which is considered glaciogenic. You can use several different methods to help promote that growth, and part of that is you can use silver iodide, which is what we use; you can use dry ice or liquid propane. Both dry ice and liquid propane are ways to flash-freeze the moisture in the air. Silver iodide in the form of vapor attracts moisture to start forming snowflakes.

[New Slide: Diagram showing a microscopic dust particle in the shape of a circle and forming around that circle in the next step of development is a hexagon. After the shape grows, which can occur at different rates, branches come off the hexagon at its corners, forming lines that connect to other hexagons. This structure is now referred to as a snow crystal.]

So if we look at a picture of how snow crystals typically form, you have that condensation nuclei, whether that’s dust, salt, RK silver iodide, or water, that starts to attract to it… as it moves through the air, the vapor pressure around that brings more moisture to it. It begins to grow and, at certain points, develops little crystal type of shapes, and then they continue to grow through time. This can either lead to the snow flack falling or continuing down through the atmosphere colliding with others which will cause it to break up, and each one of those individual little crystals will continue to form more snowflakes. At some point, they get to where they’re large enough to fall out of that atmosphere.

[Next slide: Image of Remote Cloud Seeding Generator top to bottom – burn head, temperature probe, ignition coil, valve box, tower, satellite communication, solar panel, computer box, nitrogen, solution tanks, work platform, batteries, and propane tanks in the background]

So we do two types of mechanisms for cloud seeding. We do ground-based mechanisms with a generator type of system like the one that we have here. Basically, it has propane, and has a burner up in the top portion if you look in the top area there, you see a little orangish dot that’s basically just a propane flame. We have a pressurized system with nitrogen that pushes the silver iodide up to the top of that flame, and then it goes through an atomizer, and then it burns as vapor in that flame. So what we have here is we have a couple of things; we locate these generators typically up in the higher elevations on Hillside. This allows wind flow to come up those Hills, and that helps to produce an uplift to carry the silver iodide up, and then we get a thermal lift out of the flame itself. Those typically are running between 500 and 700 degrees Celsius. So quite hot, so we can get a lot of lift up there.

[Next slide: Image of modified aircraft that has a lit flair on the left wing]

The other side is to do an Airborne, which allows a lot of flexibility to move the aircraft where we need it to get to the best place to cloud seed. This aircraft has been modified in two different locations. On the wing tips, there are canisters that hold flares that burn. We have a picture of one that shows a burning flare, and this is just an illustration. When they’re actually burning the silver iodide, it’s colorless, you don’t see anything but they used some road flare type of stuff. So you could actually see it, allowing you to get a feel of how that worked, and then on the bottom, there are more canisters that can eject little flares going straight down. We do not operate these aircraft; we contract with a company that runs them. They work worldwide. So they’re experts in cloud seeding. Atmospheric scientists such as myself help determine where they fly; we interact with the aircraft, provide them fly to safety type of information, and ensure that they’re seeding in the most efficient area and way.

[Next slide, 5-step process: 1 Cloud – air flows over the mountain, forming a clod that may contain supercooled liquid water, 2 Release – Silver iodide particles are released by an aircraft or ground-based generator, 3 Dispersion – Silver iodide particles reach the targeted cloud (airplane in image dropping silver iodide), 4 Ice – The silver iodide forms ice crystals, 5 Snow – The ice crystals grow at the expense of supercooled water and become large enough to fall and create snow, and lastly extra information – Ground-based seeding has additional criteria that impact dispersion (wind direction, atmospheric stability)]

So, how does cloud seeding work? Basically, clouds form around mountains in different areas as the wind comes up and over. In effect, the air is lifted, condenses, and as it goes up it cools; forming a cloud. This cloud then moves across the mountaintops, and what you typically get is at a certain point, saturated enough clouds that lead it to rain or snow. The silver iodide helps to start this process a started a bit early, so we cloud seed with an aircraft or one of the generators. When doing so it puts the silver iodide into the atmosphere, it starts to build those snowflakes just a little bit earlier than it would and then allows them to fall out sooner or continue on down through the atmosphere. During this process, they merge together and then the ice forms and the snow starts to develop or starts to drop out. The silver iodide works starting around minus five degrees Celsius. This process becomes very efficient between -6 and -8. Efficiency remains until about -15 and even continues to 20, but the efficiency level drops off after -15. The two key portions of that are the temperature for the silver iodide to nucleate and the availability of that super cool liquid water.

[Next slide, animation: An animation of two generators, on a mountain top, producing silver iodine, below two clouds, and a plane flying overhead deploying silver iodine. This leads to the clouds expanding and then starting to snow. The mountain then gets covered in snow, and forms rivers when heated to liquid form.]

Now this is an animation that I hope it works, but basically, this would be a picture of a region, like around Boise in the fall. All right, we either have a generator that starts to emanate silver iodized or an aircraft that comes across. Silver iodide enhances the development of snowflakes. It falls into the area, develops a pack on the mountains, then as time goes on in the summer, it starts to melt, and goes into the reservoirs. As we get in the summer the snow’s melted out, we start to need irrigation, it starts to fill into the farmland, and then we start the whole process again.

[Went to next slide – a US state map showing which states cloud seed: cold season(Idaho, Wyoming, California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado), warm season(North Dakota, Texas, Alberta (Canada)), and fog suppression(Oregon)]

So it’s pretty basic but an interesting fact. Throughout Idaho or throughout the western United States cloud seeding is done in a number of ways. In this picture, the blue indicates where we do cold cloud seating for snowpack, and the green is either rain enhancement or, the hail suppression type of cell. Not only is it done in the Western United States in Canada, but it’s also done in 35 other countries throughout the world. That includes everyone from very large programs in Australia, and Chile to, India, and China. It’s fairly widespread and growing in detail.

[Went to next slide: Idaho Power’s Cloud Seeding History]

Now I’m not going to go through this whole slide because you guys really don’t care, but basically, Idaho Power started investigating Cloud City in 1993 based on a shareholder because we were in a very severe drought, he was at one of the meetings, and he said look, “California has been doing public seating since the 50s, why are we not doing it”? We spent 10 years developing a program, and it kicked off in the Payette River Basin in 2003 and has continued to grow across the Southern Idaho area to the point that now where it’s a collaborative program where it includes the state of Idaho and it includes nearly every Irrigation District and water district in Southern Idaho as well as many of the conservation districts. So it spread and is doing quite well. Due to this outcome, we continue operations at this time.

[Went to next slide: SNOWIE meaning Seeded & Natural Orographic Wintertime clouds: the Idaho Experiement]

Snowie, now, this is the fun portion. Snowie was an NSF-funded project that was done in the Payette River Basin here in 2017 and designed for January through March. The goal was to look at the processes that occur in wintertime snow development and what occurs when you do cloud seeding. It was a fairly large effort, there were 4 PIs, 11 co-scientists, and then there were approximately 55 grad students at the masters and Ph.D. levels. We’ve now had 25 Ph.D. students that graduated with their dissertations based upon Snowie. A lot of collaborative effort between a number of universities. Boise State participated in that. We had Sean Benner and his crew on the ground collecting snow samples and analyzing those in his Laboratory.

[Next slide: two Doppler on Wheels Radar systems with an image showing range – 20 km range rings from PI, first 20km DOW pack, and second 20km ring is DOW Snow.]

All right, so how this works out, it’s a little bit difficult to see, but if you look on the right-hand side, there’s a picture of the Payette River Basin, there are concentric purple circles and a couple of dots, and those are Doppleron Wheels Radar systems. So if you’ve ever watched The Weather Channel and they’re out chasing tornadoes, and they’ve got this big radar set up. These are the exact same ones. They came in and set up in October before it really started to get… snowing in the area. The project was designed to go through the end of March, and the researchers that came in confidently told us that we would complete the research project by April 15th, they would move these to a project that was starting April 30th in the Midwest, and we told them that wouldn’t happen… and they were very confident and told us they would have no problem, and I think this is a key thing for future researchers anybody that’s developing projects. It’s beneficial to look to take the time to listen to your local people. They may not be researchers, but they live it.

[Next slide: an image of a snowed-in Doppler on Wheels Radar system.]

So every time they went up there this is what they saw, and they spent literally 10 between 5 and 10 hours a day digging these out

[Next slide: an image of a partially snowed-in Doppler on Wheels Radar system and a person shoveling snow off the system.]

so that we could run these machines every time we wanted to do a project. What you don’t see though but right over its head in the very back there’s a little black straight line. That’s their porta potty, so you know they were up there for 24 hours doing some digging to get there and they had to continue to do it through the time. They moved these things out on June 12th… two months after they expected to.

[Next slide: an image of a map showcasing two connected redlines and a couple of locations. These include – 4AW, NASA1 Radiometer/SLW Sonders(yellow pin), PJ disdrometer (yellow pin), DOW Packm DOW Snow, SB disdrometer (yellow pin), PCASP NCAR MRR (yellow pin), NCAR Radiometer (yellow pin), CU MRR (yellow pin), Crouch, WMI Radiometer (yellow pin), NASA2 Radio meter (yellow pin), 4AE, and Lowman]

To give you an idea of how the project went, we utilized an aircraft for seeding; we had a research aircraft out of the University of Wyoming, the research aircraft had profiling radars that shot both up and down and lidar, which gave us both very precise location and elevation, but it also has the capability of being able to measure some atmospheric conditions associated with moisture along with the radar. If we look at the picture on the right-hand side of this, you’ll see that line right through there, and generally, what we would expect is, in this case, with all of these types of instruments shown by the yellow pins. Everything from weather instruments to profiling instruments, it was one of the most highly instrumented river basins in the world for about three months… and the aircraft would fly parallel with the wind flow, so in this case that’s being shown up here, they would fly up and down on that red line to be able to capture what’s happening in the atmosphere to get a very detailed 3D type of picture that includes everything from precipitation moisture, temperature humidities, and movement which is really very important.

[NCAR airborne seeding simulator – graph of longitude points showing Agl Number Path (m-2) through color. White is at 1, and red is labeled as 1E10. The shape the colors make is a circular object with a red “M.” The colors then go from white to red, leading into the “M” shape.]

Now, we fly the aircraft perpendicular to the wind, so if the winds coming from the West, we fly a north-south track, and the goal is that wind is going to take that silver iodide the seeding material, and carry it and distribute it over the area that we’re interested in seeding. In this case, the pay at River Basin and hypothetically from a model, when you simulate, it is kind of what we were hoping to see. The concentrations of silver iodide would leave the aircraft as it was going up and down that line, and that line would move down and start to spread out and disperse as it was taken up by the available moisture.

[Went to next slide: circle of green, blue, and purple specks and a yellow line labeled track 2B at the middle bottom of the circle.]

Now this event you can kind of see there’s a little yellow line right there that comes up from the bottom goes and then goes towards the kind of Northwest comes back down it loops around and starts back, and then there’s a red dot. So at this time frame, that’s where the aircraft is at. The research aircraft had already been flying for about 30 minutes; they went up and down and up and down to get a baseline. What are the conditions like right now before we do anything?