The Ameren River

The Ameren River is located in central and southern Illinois.

It's one of the largest rivers in the country.

It's also one of the most complex.

In it, there are whales.

To learn about the whales, one must understand the river.

It all started with darkness and fog. . .

and a lot of rain . . . .

If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break 

If it keeps on raining, the levee's going to break

If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break 

If it keeps on raining, the levee's going to break        

But, it wasn't actually rain.

It was electricity.

A lot that was real.

And a lot that was theoretical.

It was Thanksgiving 2022 when the Ameren’s streams were shown to the world for the first time.

Every inch of the Ameren was revealed on what was called a Hosting Capacity Map.

Many thought the hosting capacity wasn't helpful, but, it actually wasn’t about the hosting, or, the capacity— it was about the map. And all that grey fog and darkness that once hid the river being removed.

The Ameren was finally fully shown within the uninhabitable Co-op Sea that engulfs it.

The Ameren starts around Newark in northern Illinois and immediately runs southwest to the Peoria trench where its demand is deepest. From there it separates into its tributaries of thousands of streams and dozens of smaller sub-rivers and brooks that run to and through Carthage, Macomb, Quincy, Jacksonville, Springfield, St. Louis then down onto Carbondale, Herrin, Thebes, and Metropolis. From there it wraps up and back north to Eldorado, Omaha, Robinson, Effingham, Champaign and finally ends in Chebanse.

When the map was first shown it also revealed a very peculiar, and, yet, obvious trait: over 75% of the Ameren is just the interconnected Illinois state highway map.

Those maps had been around for decades.

But, that didn’t matter anymore—

Whispers began to get louder of more and more whales being spotted in the river.

Early records showed the majority of them were first seen around Peoria, Jacksonville, and St. Louis.

Those were the deepest and most expansive areas of electrical usage within the Ameren, but, now the whales were being seen everywhere.

Some big, some small.

What was once thought to be numbered in the hundreds was now approaching the thousands.

Now the river started to be discussed more like some of its peers; The Eversource, The National Grid, The CMP.

Local Ameren tribes who had only ever whispered to themselves their belief that this was the biggest, now saw that the world knew too. Many out of staters began to interrupt what was once a natural harmony between the locals and their whales; the landscape of finding them was beginning to change forever.

The world was in search of the Ameren whale.

To find one, like everything else worth finding, there are rules. .

One must understand the nature of the Ameren streams.

There are tens of thousands of them throughout the system. Their purpose is to feed the downstream users.

They come in three different phases: a sub-river, a stream, or a brook. And sometimes they come in a single phase: a creek.

The largest and most amount of whales live on the deeper sub-rivers.

Two, maybe three, then live on a stream.

Only one small one lives on a brook.

And then none live in a creek, but, you can turn a creek into a brook, or greater.

The total depth of each of these is about five to fifteen times the maximum demand from the users. On average only 10% of a stream's depth is filled; there are two ways to interpret that: one is that more users may move onto these feeders in the future and the other is. . . something may live there.

The Ameren stream system may seem rudimentary and linear but, actually, the organization of these streams is multi-dimensional, dynamic and therefore highly complex.

And, yet, the different streams aren't even the most important part of the system: it's what feeds the feeders that one must know to find a whale.

That instrument is called a lock.

A lock is built to step down higher voltage electricity for downstream users.

The users determine that demand by what they turn on, or off, then absorb the electricity that the locks have allowed to flow through all via the local stream, brook, or creek.

The lock is a transformer.

And that lock has a queue.

Each lock is its own queue and each lock isn't its own queue as it may be a subset of another’s.

Each lock has its own size.

And each lock has another size, from another lock, either downstream, upstream or both from it.

They all govern each other and they all may not govern each other.

The relationship between the two forms a current.

There are currents at all different depths.

And they change.

Governing each queue and understanding each's current is a function of (i) what user load exists in the form of its minimum daytime limit, (ii) what generation exists, either theoretical or existing, (iii) the size of the affected locks or locks, and (iv) the relationship between the three, at many depths, actual, and theoretical.

They are all together stacked on top of one another and changing constantly.

One of these makes up a queue and all of these make up the master queue.

The master queue is thousands of other queues all existing at different depths, amongst different locks, and dependent on what’s proposed, what’s existing, and what's needed; each position is like an electronic splash.

They are alive.

They are changing.

They are unpredictable.

They are dangerous.

And then, finally there is the powerhouse.

For over five decades the Ameren River was solely filled by only a few large powerhouses located throughout the state. These facilities have acted as gigantic electrical reservoirs that keep the Ameren filled.

The powerhouses transmit the electricity via the deadliest parts of the Ameren to fill all the needs of every sub-stream at every second of every day of every year.

At the end of each electron's journey from the powerhouse is the user, in between are the locks, and between the locks and the users live the queues.

And, lastly, within the queues you will find the whales.

It is a harmony.

It is the Ameren river.

For decades nearly all the electricity was created upstream of the lock far from the user, and therefore, no whales had ever been found.

That was until the power generation began to be proposed near the users and before the locks by the tribes.

Whales exist between the user and the lock, all at different depths, within the master queue.

Yet— I must stop as this is where I must tell you the truth.

We are not here to catch or hurt the whales.

We are here to free them.

They are in captivity.

I didn’t want to tell you at the beginning because the story may still end sadly, as most tribes are still powerless to the owner of the Ameren River.

The Ameren is not governed by Mother Nature.

It is governed by the utility.

And they are the apex predator to the whale.

And though I want to tell you more, I cannot.

As they may be reading.

All I will say is there is a movement to flood the Ameren.

There is a movement to break the levee.

There is a movement to break the master queue.

We wish to send our electricity all the way back to the powerhouse. We wish to destroy it.

That is the only way to do this.

That is the only way to free the whales.

The battle has crossed its tipping point.

And I am here to tell you we have won.

But the war is far from over.

The utility has contacted its independent system operator.

And MISO has started to study. . . .

Save the Ameren whale.