High-Temp Superconductors To Connect Power Grids

physburn writes "Somewhere in a triangle between Roswell (UFO) NM, Albuquerque (Left Turn) NM, and Amarillo (Do you know the way?) TX, a 22.5 square mile triangle of High Temperature Superconductor pipeline is to be built. Each leg of the triangle can carry 5GW of electricity. The purpose to load-balance and sell electricity between America's three power grids. Previously the Eastern Grid, Western Grid and Texan Grid have been separate, preventing cheap electricity being sold from one end of America to the other. The Tres Amiga Superstation, as it is to be called, will finally connect the three grids. The superstation is also designed to link renewable solar and wind power in the grids, and is to use HTS wire from American Superconductor. Some 23 years after its invention, today HTS comes of age. "

Comments

Five jiggawatts?!

[friedo]

That's enough to power slightly more than four time machines.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[swanzilla]

I believe the 2nd-gen machines run on mere garbage

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[amliebsch]

Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline; it always has.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[KUHurdler]

That's enough to power slightly more than four time machines.

Great Scott!!!

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Tetsujin]

Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline; it always has.

But what about the flight-mode conversion? Surely that doesn't run on gasoline...

Stupid 2015 junk... Stick it in a cave, neglected and unmaintained for seventy years, and oh, suddenly it breaks down... They just don't build the kind of reliable machinery any more that Delorean did in 1985...

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Mr. DOS]

Or one gaming machine running Crysis on Vista.

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[LoRdTAW]

Excellent. Now we can go into the future and kick Higgs Boson's ass for going back in time and sabotaging the LHC.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[biryokumaru]

0=1+e^i(Alt something);

You could just use degrees and say 0=1+e^180i;

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the mods are freaking morons today. While P and GP are without a doubt off-topic, they are hardly trolls.

This, however, is clearly flamebait.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[1s44c]

That's enough to power slightly more than four time machines.

Great Scott!

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[amliebsch]

Stick it in a cave, neglected and unmaintained for seventy years, and oh, suddenly it breaks down...

You forgot "strike it with lightning!"

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Tetsujin]

Stick it in a cave, neglected and unmaintained for seventy years, and oh, suddenly it breaks down...

You forgot "strike it with lightning!"

Damn, you're right...

I hang my head in shame.

On the bright side, we'll have hoverboards in about five years...

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[MichaelSmith]

Excellent. Now we can go into the future and kick Higgs Boson's ass for going back in time and sabotaging the LHC.

Probably just get you arrested as a terrorist.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Jimbob The Mighty]

Goodl luck getting it up to 88 miles per hour.

Re:Five jiggawatts?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Assemble an away team. Make it so. Oh wait, I forgot, I'm an Anonymous Coward. Nevermind.

I love slashdot.

[localman57]

This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!

Re:I love slashdot.

[craklyn]

But how much energy is 5 GW in houses supplied with electricity?

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy is measured in Joules, Watts is a measurement of Power. it is 5 GW of power, not electricity or energy.

Re:I love slashdot.

[localman57]

When I was an intern (1996) I worked in the power-forecasting department of a municipal power company. We used to estimate 4kW peak average per house, worst case. Obviously, every house occasionally pulls more, big houses pull more than small houses, etc, but at about 5pm on the hottest day of the summer, we could count on having a power usage of approximately 4kW * number of houses. So, roughly 1.25 million houses.

Not sure if it'd be more or less now. Houses and HVAC are more efficient, but people tend to use more power when they're active now.

Re:I love slashdot.

[jeffmeden]

Divided by Libraries of Congress per second?

Re:I love slashdot.

[argent]

That's enough to power THREE flux capacitors at once!

Re:I love slashdot.

[timeOday]

Naiive question, but what limits the capacity of superconductor? With no resistance, therefore no overheating, what stops it from being able to carry even more?

Re:I love slashdot.

[mog007]

Perhaps the components which are plugged in at either end of the superconductor?

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about in Volkswagon-furlongs per fortnight?

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!

And none of that non-sense revisionist crap making an established standard of "GW" into "GiW" either.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

A superconductor has a critical current, if you go above the critical current, the superconductivity breaks down (and you are screwed). The critical current density depends on: material, temperature, and the magnetic field (basically, the critical current decreases when the temperature or magnetic field increases).

  Since there is always a magnetic field present (the earth magnetic field), there is always a maximum current a superconductor can carry.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electromagnetic fields, like the ones created by the current, disable the superconductivity if they're sufficiently strong.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Hurricane78]

Yeah, but 4.13 flux-compensator-driven time travels would be easier to imagine.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Tetsujin]

That's enough to power THREE flux capacitors at once!

Four, even.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Tetsujin]

This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!

They got the electrical units right, but I think they messed up on the units of area. I mean, a triangle with 22.5 square miles in it? How are you gonna fill a triangle with squares? You need triangle miles...

Re:I love slashdot.

[Dewin]

I mean, a triangle with 22.5 square miles in it? How are you gonna fill a triangle with squares? You need triangle miles...

Well, clearly, you take some of the square miles and cut them in half from corner to corner.

That's where the .5 mile comes from.

Re:I love slashdot.

[arminw]

....Naiive question, but what limits the capacity of superconductor?....

The magnetic field it is in or generates. Anytime you have an electric current, you have associated with it a magnetic field. Add some value of magnetic field, the superconducting wire becomes an ordinary wire with resistance, which quickly burns out unless the power is shut off immediately.

At the CERN LHC they use lots of superconducting wire wound into coils to make powerful magnets that have no losses. Another thing that quenches, that is making non superconducting, is a higher temperature. In these magnets, the superconductor is kept at 4.2 K. Presumably, the superconducting wires remain superconducting at a higher temperature for these proposed power lines. Keeping everything superconducting, especially where conductors are joined, is still an art more than a science. It was a bad joint that cost the spectacular failure at the startup of the LHC.

To transmit 5 GW, will require both high voltages and high currents. To transmit 10,000 amperes at 500,000 V is a nontrivial engineering problem.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Quantumstate]

Superconductors break down in large enough magnetic fields. A larger current generates a stronger magnetic field. So too much current and it stops superconducting.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Quantumstate]

You are generally correct however you imply that there will be a voltage across the superconductor. This is not possible which can be trivially shown using V=IR. R is 0 so therefore the voltage will be 0. There will be a voltage drop in the connections etc. at each end but not over the actual superconductor.

Re:I love slashdot.

[mpdolan37]

does this mean that time travel is possible now? 5GW is definately more than 1.21GW

Re:I love slashdot.

[bth]

The superconductor's cable carrier limits its capacity so not as interrupt the TV signals of its neighbors.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

5GW or about 4.13 Mr. Fusions. But how many horsepower per rods is that? And how many Libraries of Congress per fortnight? Those would be the kind of useful /. stats we need to compare it to the airspeed of a laden swallow.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Unordained]

I = V/r, but r is zero, so I is NaN. If V is zero by your math, and I is indeterminate by mine, and P=VI, then the wattage is zero * NaN ? That's not the same as 5GW. Or P=VI=IIR=zero, which is also different from 5GW.

Re:I love slashdot.

[asaz989]

Except that R is not (quite) zero; the graphs of resistance against temperature, magnetic field, etc. shows a sharp drop to negligible values at critical temperature, magnetic field, etc., but negligible != 0.

Re:I love slashdot.

[anonymousbob22]

Ok: first of all, the voltage GP was probably talking about was the voltage measured from one wire to the other. I.E., one is a reference potential, the other is at reference + 500,000V (for example). Secondly, just because there are no losses does not mean that voltage & current pulses travel instantaneously along a line. They are limited by other characteristics even on a lossless line; you should probably read up on transmission line theory.

Re:I love slashdot.

[robbak]

Yes, P is zero. The power loss in a superconducting cable is zero. As is the V. The voltage drop across a superconducting cable is zero. So I=V/r becomes I=0/0, which is to say, I is undefined (NaN, I guess) by that equation. And P=VI becomes 0=0*I, which is also correct.

Of course, that cable can be carrying a large current at a high voltage above ground, and so be carrying a large amount of power.

Interesting: Is that why they are using a triangle? Will the current flow around the triangle? In typing this I realized that (silly thought!) earth return would be impossible, so they will need a return path for the current.Putting two expensive wires side by side would be a waste, and what about the strong electric field between the two?
And would a high current looping around that triangle store usable energy?
(Hmm. A superconducting inductor? Nice!)

Re:I love slashdot.

[bishop32x]

I believe they are using a triangle because a triangle is the most efficient way of connecting 3 points (i.e. the 3 grids).

Re:I love slashdot.

[francium de neobie]

You're looking at the NaN (or rather, an undefined answer - NaN is just a programming term) because your equation cannot predict the current in the superconductor based on the voltage difference and the resistance. For a superconductor in normal operation, both V and r are 0 but I can be any finite number between 0 and the superconductor's physical limit. So the undefined value essentially means your current model no longer applies, and that's correct. It would be incorrect if it gives you a singular numerical in this case.

Also, the P in P=VI or P=I^2R or P=V^2/R concerns only the power dissipated over a resistance - it has nothing to do the power that can be carried over that resistance. For a superconductor in normal mode of operation, V and R are 0 and I is a finite value and so the power dissipated as heat is 0.

It's important to know what the models actually mean in physics or engineering, don't just plug numbers in blindly.

Re:I love slashdot.

[jeffstar]

if you have three points on the triangle, A,B,C

A is importing power into the triangle, B is neither exporting nor importing, and C is exporting power. I can see that if there is only 1 wire per leg of the triangle then current will flow from A to C directly and return from C to A via B.

If B is also exporting power, some current would flow past C and out of the triangle at B, and then all current from B and C would return to A on the BA leg.

Is this what you mean?

the current into the triangle has to equal the current out of the triangle. I suppose they have to syncronise the duty cycles of the IGBTs/valves/? so that the power being fed in = the power extracted from the triangle

Re:I love slashdot.

[arminw]

...however you imply that there will be a voltage across the superconductor...
There is never a voltage drop in the superconductor, because that is the very definition of what constitutes a superconductor. However, superconductors suddenly lose their superconducting ability at some finite magnetic field which implies a finite current.

The Pacific Intertie is a non-superconducting high voltage DC transmission line which runs from the Columbia River to Sylmar in Southern California. It has two conductors, at +500,000 V to ground and another at -500,000 V ground. At maximum load it can carry 3.1GW of power. For those interested in more detail, you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie

Because superconductors can carry huge currents at no loss, it is possible to reduce the voltage of such a power line system in order to keep the insulation problems manageable. Even though a superconducting electrical line has no direct loss, it must be properly refrigerated and that uses power. For a few miles, the refrigeration power is moderate, but if they wanted to replace the Pacific Intertie within an underground superconducting line for that entire distance, I suspect the refrigeration power would be more than the electrical losses of the present system. It would likely also be an order of magnitude more expensive to build.

Re:I love slashdot.

[arminw]

...Except that R is not (quite) zero;...

There are still large gaps in truly understanding how superconductivity actually works. There are certain theories, that state that resistance cannot be exactly 0, but in actual measurements in the laboratory it is zero within the capability of the measurements we're able to make.

The way this has been tested is to build a superconducting magnet which is energized from an external power source to a given field. Then a superconducting short-circuit bridge is connected to the ends of the coil, and the external power source is removed. If this is done right, there will be no measurable decrease of the magnetic field over time, which means there cannot be any loss whatsoever in the coil. It is however technically difficult to make a truly super conducting joint.

Re:I love slashdot.

[VolciMaster]

A superconductor has a critical current, if you go above the critical current, the superconductivity breaks down (and you are screwed). The critical current density depends on: material, temperature, and the magnetic field (basically, the critical current decreases when the temperature or magnetic field increases).

Since there is always a magnetic field present (the earth magnetic field), there is always a maximum current a superconductor can carry.

which is why 5 gigawatts is useless - you need to know how many amps it can carry: not watts. If you've got watts, you're got volts, and that means heat. Heat is bad. If it's carrying 100KA, that *might* be 5GW at the entering or exiting end (since entry and exit are "traditional", ie resistive cable. But rating HTS (or LTS) in watts is pointless.

Re:I love slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Otherwise you could just encase it in some mu metal to exclude the earth's field.

Four words:

[Pollux]

Central Point of Failure.

Attention terrorists: we have a new target to aim for.

Re:Four words:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the OP just said it was to be built "somewhere" and didn't mention Clovis.

Oops.

Re:Four words:

[dunkelfalke]

Yeah. And the only reason the terrorists haven't done anything yet is the sheer amount of available targets - so many that they cannot decide which one to aim for first :rolleyes

Re:Four words:

[TubeSteak]

Central Point of Failure.

Attention terrorists: we have a new target to aim for.

The USA's infrastructure is full of bottlenecks and chokepoints.
Internet/phone/gas/power, airlines, stock markets, highways, warehouses, ports, payment processing, etc etc etc.

This article comes to mind:
"Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?" he said. "They're worried about national security. I'm worried about getting my degree." For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman's case, there's a new concern: publish and perish.

He eventually got his PHD and started a GIS company called FortiusOne.

Re:Four words:

[Deosyne]

Oh no, they've disabled our ability to sell electricity from one grid to another!

Re:Four words:

[belthize]

Meh, why is that getting flagged as insightful.

The current cynicism that any improvement in infrastructure is
a) only for the money
b) going to ruin the planet
c) a target for terrorists
d) too late

is getting really old.

The proposal allows for better distribution of power generation across the continent. Even if it was a target for terrorism so what. If you want to curl up in a little ball because the terrorists might get you knock yourself out.

BTW, knocking this section out doesn't take all 3 grids down.

Re:Four words:

[vlm]

Central Point of Failure.

Actually, if you read the article, sounds like they're wiring it "delta" as opposed to "wye" so any individual cut merely reroutes around the long way... And yes I am very well aware that "delta" and "wye" means something very specific w/ regards to three phase power, I was just using the names for topological reference.

Re:Four words:

[localman57]

Except not really, since all three grids are perfectly capable of running independently.

You must be new here. Under the current system a single point of failure during peak-usage conditions has been shown to occasionally cascade into a region-wide failure. This has happened on both the east coast / midwest / canada, and in the west. I wonder if this new interconnect will allow even more of this behavior.

Re:Four words:

[Chris Burke]

BTW, knocking this section out doesn't take all 3 grids down.

You mean it doesn't necessarily take all 3 grids down, if it's not designed to.

Well, I would design it to. And I would have a big switch where one setting was "America On" and the other would say "America Off". And it would be on the outside of the fence.

Which is probably why they never let me design anything. :(

Re:Four words:

[Giometrix]

Central Point of Failure.

Attention terrorists: we have a new target to aim for.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if this new thing failed wouldn't the system just degrade to what it currently is today?

Re:Four words:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a bad project but I too have to wonder why not copper. Also texas having it's own power grid has kept it exempt from a lot of federal regulation in the past, if they are all linked it's interstate commerce again, I have to wonder if this could be more trouble than it's worth for texas.

Re:Four words:

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA's infrastructure is full of bottlenecks and chokepoints. Internet/phone/gas/power, airlines, stock markets, highways, warehouses, ports, payment processing, etc etc etc.

You missed Windows.

--

Teun

Re:Four words:

[Sandbags]

Meh, why is that getting flagged as insightful.

The current cynicism that any improvement in infrastructure is
a) only for the money
b) going to ruin the planet
c) a target for terrorists
d) too late

is getting really old.

The proposal allows for better distribution of power generation across the continent. Even if it was a target for terrorism so what. If you want to curl up in a little ball because the terrorists might get you knock yourself out.

BTW, knocking this section out doesn't take all 3 grids down.

Exactly.

Money issues? This will provide thousands of jobs, the ability for power systems in remote ares to be built to poewr distant cities, and increase the profitability of the power companies. It solves issues of where to put power generation systems and could reduce construction (and legal battle) costs by 2/3rds or more. For every dollar they'll save, you'll be lucky to see $0.50 come off your bill, meaning it;s a LOT more money for them. THEY WANT THIS and so do we, is that not proof?

Planetary issues? This allows us to deploy mass wind, water, and solar systems where we could not due to transmission distances and disconnected grid infrastructure. now we can access cheap clean energy and give it to anyone instead of building less efficint power plants where the power is needed. This will be the beginning of the elimination of coal and gas power across most of the land.

Terrorism? First it's a proof of concept, and only facilitates a transfer system between other currently completely self sufficient (soft of) systems. This is a beginning, not a complete system. Even a terorist strike on this new triangle (which is self redundant btw, requiring 2 seperate coordinated strikes at a minimum, against underground buried cables in what's likely to be a secure area) would not cause more than a few second brownout as the grid rebalanced. Besides, these cables, do you have ANY idea of their construction??? significant bombardment would have trouble causing radical damage to the cable itself, and you're not getting a bomb inside the secured areas where the interconnect will be.

Further, being a POC, these cables will be deployed everywhere from this central spoke, creating more nodes in the future, and is the begining of a replacement redundant grid system. When deployed there will be fewer points of failure than in today's grid, and few if any single points that could take out more than small towns.

Too late? Well, late, I'll agree, we should have started deployment 20 years ago when we had the technology. Oh, wait... We did, 22 years ago! Now it;s proven, and being deployed, and will take 30-40 years to completely roll out, at a cost of nearly 10 trillion. but, it;s not too late... Too late implies even if we built it, there would be no benefit as we'll have already collapsed. Yes it;s too late to deploy it in the most cost effective method, and we have a stressed grid, and may need to build a few temporary power plants not necessary if we put a few trillion behind this a while back, but in the end the extra research actually saved us a lot of money, and allowed better long term planning. This is a 50 year process to replace a grid, not a 3-4 year build out...

I do propose we back off the electric car bandwagon a bit and spend the money instead on some additional superlines like this, and some more wind farms, and some dotyenergy RFTS fuel manufacturing plants (www.dotyenergy.com) to halt our oil expansion and curb import demand, and give our grid time to grow to actually be able to power those cars, and battery technology time to mature so we'll want to both drive them and pay for them. People do blow the super grid technology out of proportion. Most of those people are fed by propoganda and FUD from employees of local power monopolies who will no longer be able to overcharge for power, but i could give a fuck about the greedy minority.

Re:Four words:

[Quantumstate]

Surely they have enabled it. Unless they packed it onto huge capacitor banks/batteries loaded into lorries and shipped it between the grids beforehand. Or there could have been existing wires in which case nothing has changed other than possible throughput.

Re:Four words:

[jeffstar]

the new interconnect should help prevent this behaviour as it will allow the transfer of power between regions where it was previously not possible.

Re:Four words:

[Sandbags]

yup, and they fixed that. and systems like this are part of the fix, not a complication requiring additional resources.

plus, explain how to take out a buried, 0.3 meter thick, hunk of earthquake re-enforced metal line? Short of digging a massive hole, planting a half ton or more of good high order explosive, probably a shaped charge, while not getting cooked by the 5GW charge, and without tripping buried sensors along the cable run (other wires buried a few feet shallower than the main lines, which help detect when some dumbass is digging in the wrong place or without a permit to prevent accidental damage to the lines), and the fact that its not one line but several (typically at least 3, a dozen or so meters apart each). It may be possible to take out 1 line, but not the minimum of at least 4 it would take to knock this out. The interchange systems would be well protected by security and likely monitoerd 24x7 by sattelite. Also, the land around this area is not exacly highly populated, and easy to patrol...

A few hack terrorists with a half assed plan are only going to get caught. Nothing better than good bait sometimes...

Re:Four words:

[robbak]

Copper is very expensive, and not getting any cheaper. The amount of copper needed to transmit 7000 amps, which is the figures others have bandied about above, is immense.
Suffice to say copper has not been used for transmission lines for some time. It's all aluminium-clad steel these days. Even then, the amount of cable needed is huge.

Re:Four words:

[ceoyoyo]

How does connecting three previously (more or less) independent power grids produce a single point of failure? If you blow up this thing you end up with... what exists now.

Re:Four words:

[budgenator]

In theory that would be expected but with a the Texas grid probably selling power to both the East and West grids if the interconnect goes down the Texas might over-volt and shut down while East and West might under-volt and either brownout or blackout.

Re:Four words:

[Heretic2]

On no, we'll cut your asses off first, trust me. Viva la Tejas!

Re:Four words:

[TheRaven64]

a) only for the money

Not sure why this one is lumped in with the rest. Improvements in infrastructure, generally, are done for the money. No one builds out bit infrastructure for fun. It's always done with the expectation of some payback. In this case, transferring power between grids cheaply lets you do more efficient load balancing, which means you can sell power for the same rate, but buy it (on average) for less and make more profit. The total power wasted will be lower, so we need to burn less fossil fuels and everyone wins. This even applies to government-funded infrastructure. It's done with the aim of increasing trade or production capability, which increases earnings and therefore tax revenue.

Re:Four words:

[smallfries]

I need a secret underground lair built. Do you think you could design it for me?

Re:Four words:

[smallfries]

The idea that any improvement in infrastructure is only for the money is not even a bad thing. I would want infrastructure improvements to save money for the simple reason that we use money as a proxy for resources, and if somebody is going to expend huge amounts of resources on upgrading something then I want it to be more efficient as a result. Of course I would treat safety as a given in any design (that is everything has to meet safety constraints to even be considered by cost effectiveness).

One disadvantage of seeing markets in everything is that you become aware of the holes. (Sssh don't tell the rabid libertarians on slashdot but markets are not perfect allocators of resources). So while you are correct in that knocking out this section doesn't *currently* take all three grids down I would expect that to remain the case. The idea of connecting the three grids is to increase the size of the market-place - in particular resources that are only available part-time can be sold to a wider market to ensure 100% usage during those times.

The problem is that redundancy will be reduced by normal market operations. It's not in my local interest to leave this power station here in Texas idling so that the grid has redundancy. If I'm not getting paid I'll shut it down. In the three smaller markets this wouldn't have happened because I wasn't competing with distant supplies. But once it has happened, if you shut down the interconnect then demand will exceed supply in my area where before it would not. Hence knocking out that section will take the three grids down once market conditions have adapted to expect it being there.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy, so now this can be the whole country if it is done right. I mean, wrong. Errr, you know what I mean.

Very nice, but...

[russotto]

It's a great thing, but the cynical part (85.6%) of me wonders if this means we'll now be able to have national blackouts rather than just regional ones.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Superconducting grid interconnects (and HVDC in general) make power grids more stable because they eliminate synchronization requirements.

Re:Very nice, but...

[SoupGuru]

I would really really hope someone else thought of that while they were designing the thing and put some basic protection in there.

Re:Very nice, but...

[stoolpigeon]

I doubt it. In fact, the people working on it probably submitted this story and are reading all the comments right now, taking notes as they go.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Chris Burke]

Has there ever been an instance of an entire regional grid going out? I mean it certainly made the news when a large portion of California had rolling blackouts, so I'm just assuming that if the entire Western Grid went out, I would have heard of it, and I haven't.

Re:Very nice, but...

[geekoid]

Less likely to ahve any black outs. In fact, the whole fake rolling blackout thing Enron did wouldn't be possible had this been set up becasue the state would ahve more avenues to get power.

Re:Very nice, but...

[thetartanavenger]

You're right. Cascading failures can (and probably will) occur in any system (see 4th November 2006 European Blackout among others), the real question is whether or not connecting the three systems will make the system more stable/manageable. Peaks occur in power usage at varying points throughout the day, mostly in the evening due to heating/lighting etc just before people go to bed. Thanks to the different timezones across the states, this will make these peaks will occur more spread out making power generation easier to predict and hence more stable and easier to manage.

If it were an AC connection it would allow for more distributed automatic load-frequency mechanism. Should one power station fail, there will be more power stations available across the board to ramp up their generation resulting in a faster recovery, and again a more stable grid. This is not the case here however, being DC, no standard distributed load frequency mechanism exists making it harder for the other grids to rescue the one with the failure. This does however reduce the risk of a cascading failure.

I may be naive in saying this next point, however it should hopefully make electricity cheaper by allowing it to be used from the cheapest source available across the country. Say it's a windy day at a wind farm, now the whole country will be able to benefit from the cheaper energy, and on a calm day the standard sources can be used instead.

Re:Very nice, but...

[smoker2]

And how do you get that non-Enron power to the Enron customers without going over their lines ? All this will achieve is to make it easier for a cartel to establish control.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Anubis IV]

Speaking for Texas, ya'll might have blackouts. We'll cut you off long before then.

In all seriousness though, I went to a meeting a few years back (shortly after moving to Texas, in fact) that included a representative from Reliant Energy (one of the big Texas power companies). The meeting was over Y2K and what sort of a threat it posed (read: even back then they knew it was all media hype), but one thing stuck out to me: the Reliant guy said that if things got bad for some reason and the rest of the country was blacking out, Texas wouldn't hesitate to cut the lines to the rest of the country since the Texas power grid is self-sufficient.

Re:Very nice, but...

[peragrin]

2003 northeast blackout. Normally power companies can start cutting out failing sections to prevent further damage. However attacking multiplesections at the same time prevents them from doing that well.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Mysticalfruit]

My hope is that it'll spur on those who want to build giant wind farms to start pouring concrete pads and placing orders since their will be market for their power.

Re:Very nice, but...

[FatdogHaiku]

Wow, a 5GW circuit breaker... I just got a vision of jumping into a bulldozer in order to flick the enormous reset switch.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Sandbags]

Well, they did take out about half of new england, including large portions of canada several years ago. However, that was not a grid issue, but a computer communication issue, and that's been fixed and made far more redundant. It was an accident of coincidence that allowed improperly timed alarms to cascade through a communication network that shut the grid down because it thought it was fighting off electric backpressure and trying top prevent a feedback that would have blown transformers and possibly generators, and then the other system that tried to account for the lack in sudden power availability also alarmed and could not cope, and went down.

That communication issue was identified (as well as a few other case scenarios they realized were also possible) and the systems were reprogrammed and upgraded.

The chance of such a mass grid failure is rediculously low now. the bigger the interconencted grid is, especially including HVDC superconducting long range lines, the less of a chance of faiure there is as localized issues can be readily handled by power stations hundreds of miles away. The big deal was the next power station down the line could not handle a wide area outage, and then itself went down. If we're not relying on the poewr station down the street, but can draw from across the nation, that's a non-issue.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell your therapist that this round of meds, while making you much more coherent overall, hasn't done a damn thing for your dyslexia.

Re:Very nice, but...

[russotto]

Wow, a 5GW circuit breaker... I just got a vision of jumping into a bulldozer in order to flick the enormous reset switch.

You have cascading reset switches. You flip a 440V 50A breaker, which fires a solenoid attached to the reset switch of the next size up, and so on. Unfortunately the copper required for the sixth-stage solenoids which hit the 5GW reset switches is about 70% of the budget for the project.

Re:Very nice, but...

[HornWumpus]

It's no-where near as simple as bigger implies more stable. The grid is a chaotic system etc.

Bigger and better interconnected implies more efficient.

Stability mostly comes down to spinning/ready reserves (terms who's definition vary by control area, I will use reserves and ignore the details).

Reserves should, at least, be greater then the largest single power source for any area. That power source is often an interconnect.

Most of the US grid runs in routine violation of FERC reserve requirements on hot summer days.

ACDCAC conversion eliminates synch issues and can let the operator use the interconnect power to tweak his power factor. They also don't have the reflected power problem when they trip. They can still be part of a cascade failure.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Heretic2]

Speaking for Texas, ya'll might have blackouts. We'll cut you off long before then.

Speaking of Texas, it's "y'all" OK, "Y'all." I can understand that like many, you've just moved to this state I was born in, but please get that one right if you intend to continuing living here. It's important =)

Re:Very nice, but...

[budgenator]

No bullshit I was just about to hit the submit button an a slashdot post when the power went out, I thought "shit I knew I should have bought that UPS" but what had happened was the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I was right on the western edge of it, driving 12 miles west everything had power; in short 55,000,000 people without electricity for 3 days, the sky was actually dark at night and I was disappointed when the power came back on.

Re:Very nice, but...

[budgenator]

If it were an AC connection it would allow for more distributed automatic load-frequency mechanism. Should one power station fail, there will be more power stations available across the board to ramp up their generation resulting in a faster recovery, and again a more stable grid. This is not the case here however, being DC, no standard distributed load frequency mechanism exists making it harder for the other grids to rescue the one with the failure. This does however reduce the risk of a cascading failure.

I may be naive in saying this next point, however it should hopefully make electricity cheaper by allowing it to be used from the cheapest source available across the country. Say it's a windy day at a wind farm, now the whole country will be able to benefit from the cheaper energy, and on a calm day the standard sources can be used instead.

The inverters will automatically synchronize with the existing grid frequency and phase, this is robust technology, it is even used in wind turbines to allow them to sync with the grid no matter how fast the turbine is spinning. Also I think your under-estimating the enormity of the system it will basically allow power to flow from the East coast of North America to the West coast. For example the Ems powerline crossing consists of 2 389KV circuits; in the Northeast Blackout of 2003 we lost 10 345KV lines, 2 240KV lines and about 20 138KV lines.

Re:Very nice, but...

[calidoscope]

Asynchronous connections can be made without having to convert to/from DC. GE has recently developed a rotary transformer that allows for slight frequency offsets. This allows for transfer of reactive power as well as real power. Efficiency should be better than a DC intertie as well.

Re:Very nice, but...

[TheRaven64]

I went on a tour of a power station years ago shortly after they'd had a fuse blow. They showed us one of the spare fuses; it was a lump of copper and must have weighed around 100Kg. It had blown just like any house fuse; most of it had vaporised.

Re:Very nice, but...

[Anubis IV]

You're absolutely correct. It is "y'all." I apologize for that mistake on my part. And I didn't "just" move here, but, at the same time, compared to someone that was born here decades ago, I haven't been here that long.

Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Dripdry]

I can only hope this could begin to revitalize that area of the country. While I'm not a native, I drove through there a while back and it was terribly, terribly depressing. Run-down houses and empty shops in lots of towns, not a pretty sight.

Any native New Mexicans who can give us the low-down?

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still pretty much like that. Please spread the word: no reason to go to New Mexico, might as well stay where you are. It's depressing here. Really. Nothing to see. Move along.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Temkin]

I drive thru Clovis every now and then, and always stop for fuel. It's a convenient shortcut from central Texas to I-40, which I find preferable to I-10 when doing a TX to SF Bay RV run. Clovis is in pretty dire circumstances, and it's likely to get worse when the Air Force base closes. I doubt this will do much for their job market.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[DesertJazz]

I'm not exactly sure where they're putting that in, but it sounds like you're discussing a lot of the reservation areas. That is still unlikely to improve. Since, in most of the tribes, you're not allowed to buy the property (just rent it for a dollar/100years) people aren't willing to build and repair on buildings that they don't even technically own. It would be almost like throwing away money at that point for them. It sounds like a pretty rural part of the state where they're putting this though, may not even be reservation land involved here.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[belthize]

Native and current resident. New Mexico is no different than the rest of the states. The rural areas are seeing a steady migration out, the urban areas are seeing a steady migration in.

Some areas like Farmington (North west) or Artesia, Roswell, Carlsbad (east side) are highly susceptible to boom/bust natural gas/oil cycles. Areas like Albuquerque are chugging right along and were hit about the national average by the recent recession. Most of the state is agricultural and is slowly sliding into oblivion like the rest of the nation's non corporate-run agriculture though not merely so hard hit as the wheat belt region.

The current governor is a bit of a twit at times but he's done a decent job getting some higher tech interest in NM. The combination of alternative energy as both a producer of energy and producer of materials, light rail interconnect for Rio Grande corridor and of course the space port may end up putting NM in an promising position.

The state isn't overly rich in resources/industry and agriculture is not a money making proposition for any state/country. The state's future is either in energy or tech or it's doomed to a tail end of the pack future much like most other low pop poor states.

In short I think you've overstated the destitute nature of the state compared to most other comparable states. On the other hand I agree that this newest venture is yet another energy/tech venture within the state which is needed or your observation regarding the state may be prophetically accurate.

Then again all the above it's pretty much true for the nation as a whole.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Lived there for 7 years in the 90s. Discovered that "New Mexico" was spanish for "eternal poverty." Discovered that my well paid job in San Francisco brought minimum wage in NM. Still, the place is pretty. Good place to visit and commune with nature. At the moment though, the economy is a notch above third world and so was the wealth distribution (i.e. a few rich white folks, a lot of poor white and mexican folks). Santa Fe has this, particularly.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[othermatt]

I tried to dig up the article as to not quote specs out of my ass... but, as of yet, I can't find it... I found someone else referencing something fairly similar to what I read.

Blah blah blah... Anyway, what I remembered reading was that if we covered roughly 10% of Nevada's land area (the other post I found claimed it was 10% of Nevada's Federal land, so even less) with Solar Thermal collectors, we could roughly meet the current contiguous US energy demand. Now, I remember not being able to find out whether they took transmission losses (among other things) into that figure, so that's why I said roughly.

So, since the interconnect is happening in Sun Central, I could envision good things happening in that area in the way of business and industry since it's also the logical place to build sizable Solar Thermal plants.

Here's to hoping we plan to move towards the future.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Anonymous Coward]

New Mexico native here. The local media has been fairly quite about this project, so I assume that means the effect on the job market will be fairly insignificant.

It's worth mentioning that, while there are numerous small towns in dire straights, most of the larger towns and cities in New Mexico are thriving, growing communities.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Admiral_Grinder]

I haven't lived there in some time (10 years), but the area is still going strong. The part you stop at is probably along the highway that runs through there. That area has been on the decline for some time as new development has shifted to the north end of town. The towns population is 30,000 which if the base does close, wouldn't spell the end of the town. At that size, most of the economy is generated in the town itself and not from the base.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Bwooce]

The state isn't overly rich in resources/industry and agriculture is not a money making proposition for any state/country.

Agriculture never makes any money? WTF. Entire *countries* are founded on doing agriculture well, just because it is inefficient/weirdly subsidised/over-regulated in the US this doesn't make it true for the world in general.

People eat food.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[belthize]

Countries and states that are largely agricultural are not at the highest end of the economic spectrum.

  The point was large parts of New Mexico are agricultural and are doing poorly just like large parts of other states (or nations) that are purely agricultural.

  I probably could have phrased that better but in the original context of the GP and my post I think it's pretty clear my point wasn't "Agriculture never makes any money". The point was you're not going to see what appears to be a vibrant flourishing economy if it's based almost purely on agriculture.

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Ironchew]

I've lived in the Albuquerque area my whole life, and most buildings aren't empty or run down. I'd imagine that run-down sections of the state are more visible due to the fact that you can see for miles around driving down the highway. There's also quite an extreme difference between some of the affluence in the urban areas and the poverty in the reservations (New Mexico has a lot of reservations). The environment out here is delicate and the economic cycle is expected; aquifers dry up, ore is harder to get to, local farming is as hard as it has ever been up against corporate farming. Other than that, I don't know how others perceive us.

We're a part of the United States and most of us do speak English! [/humor]

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Dripdry]

We came down through the mountains from Denver, over through Espanola to Santa Fe, then on south to I-40 and through northern Texas. Of course there are nice urban areas we missed, true. We did see some awfully nice houses in the mountains (near Carson National Forest I think).

Re:Let's hope it brings new life to New Mexico

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up about 3 miles from where this is planned and it is quite nice country. Lots of ranchers, and now dairies. You shouldn't worry about BGH anymore, these cows will get their mutations the natural way!!

Hoping for a lower bill

[madwheel]

Maybe one day my electric bill will go down and I can leave all of my computers running... By then SRP will have raised the rates anyway.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[vertinox]

Maybe one day my electric bill will go down and I can leave all of my computers running... By then SRP will have raised the rates anyway.

See. This is why I still prefer a solar revolution than a nuclear one.

There is nothing wrong with nuclear and I'll be happy the day they get a viable fusion reactor up and running, but you still have to pay someone for that power and generally utility companies always raise rates rather than lower them because they are public companies.

The only way to offset that is to make your own power and the government isn't going to let me build my own breeder reactor anytime soon so I'm more likely to either lower my rates or get off the grid with solar.

And then I don't worry about the grid going out either.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[Volante3192]

I'm more of a nuclear revolution person.

Solar is great as a suppliment, but you need to still provide a steady, reliable base load to the public as a whole. Some buildings stay in operation 24 hours a day, and I don't just mean businesses: hospitals, police stations for example.

People need power at night (sorry solar) on calm days (sorry wind) away from flowing water (sorry hydro-) and hot spots (sorry geothermal).

If cost allows one day, sure, I'll likely pick up some solar panels but on a nationwide scale, nuclear is a bigger priority.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[Abcd1234]

People need power at night (sorry solar) on calm days (sorry wind) away from flowing water (sorry hydro-) and hot spots (sorry geothermal).

If cost allows one day, sure, I'll likely pick up some solar panels but on a nationwide scale, nuclear is a bigger priority.

Well, the alternative is a smarter grid, where power from windy places, hot places, and sunny places can be transmitted to where it's needed, while high-efficiency storage technology (eg, gravitational kinetic storage, compressed air, flywheels, etc) can be used to even things out for baseload requirements.

That's not to say nuclear doesn't have a role to play. But let's not pretend it's the one and only answer to baseload.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why we need a superconducting transmission system. So we can take wind and heat and water power from places that need it to the places that are open 24 hours a day with some very small losses. If we had a grid big enough, like world wide, we could even have solar from someplace at all times of the day. Nuclear just won't do until the waste issue gets solved, or until people want to stop killing each other with weapons. Fission is really out of the question right now because of the wast, and breeders are not politically feasible right now.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[vertinox]

Solar is great as a suppliment, but you need to still provide a steady, reliable base load to the public as a whole. Some buildings stay in operation 24 hours a day, and I don't just mean businesses: hospitals, police stations for example.

To be fair, using solar power on home rooftops most likely won't take people off the grid any time soon but it will mitigate the power grid strain they do provide so that the large facilities like hospitals and factories (who can't reasonably use solar power for the needs) won't suffer during the summer noon brownouts caused by AC grid strain.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[Nadaka]

I am very much pro nuclear myself.

However, I think you underestimate solar. A solar thermal plant with a heat reservoir of molten salt or high density oil can heat a boiler to spin a generator at night, and potentially for a few days of horrible weather. The big flaw of even solar thermal is that it is fragile. A direct hit by a tornado, hurricane, hail storm or lightning storm could severely damage a solar plant that would leave a nuclear plant practically unscathed.

A good balance of solar and nuclear feeder-breeder reactors would be the best solution in my opinion. It may also be a good idea to tap the yellow stone supervolcano hot spot, though I don't think we could actually do much to keep it from popping its top and killing half of North America.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[LoRdTAW]

People keep forgetting about big industrial plants that need megawatts of power in order to run 24/7. The whole world isn't on a 9-5 schedule.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[SBrach]

The waste issue has been solved. Nuclear reprocessing IS the answer to the waste problem. The fact that political opposition stands in the way does not change the fact that a valid solution exists.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[0100010001010011]

So store the energy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage

They use it currently to store up energy at night and smooth out the demand during the day.

I have a crawlspace at my house that would be perfect for a 15' flywheel. Spin it up during the day and drain off of it at night.

Toss in a good insulated tank and I can have hot water all night, even use that hot water to heat my house. If geothermal works good at 55F, then it'd be awesome at 90F. Few hundred gallon tank buried and cycle the water up to my roof and back down all day.

Re:Hoping for a lower bill

[TheRaven64]

It's also worth noting that the waste from any of the Generation IV designs only lasts a few decades. That's not including reprocessing or secondary uses. For example, some of the water-regulated designs have tritium as a 'waste' product. Tritium has a half-life of a little under a decade, so you can store it in a barrel underground for 5 years and have something barely radioactive at the end. You would be monumentally stupid to do that though, because tritium has a huge number of uses (from glowing things to betavoltaics) and has a ridiculously high price.

Where?

[Eevee]

Amarillo (Do you know the way?)

Don't you mean San Jose?

Re:Where?

[woozlewuzzle]

Yeah - they kind of stretched it. Neil Sedaka's song has:

Is this the way to Amarillo?
Every night I’ve been hugging my pillow
dreaming dreams of Amarillo
and sweet Marie who waits for me.
Show me the way to Amarillo
I’ve been weepin’ like a willow
crying over Amarillo
and sweet Marie who waits for me.

Re:Where?

[megamerican]

The submitter obviously didn't know the way to San Jose and instead of admitting he was wrong changed the song.

Re:Where?

[ptbarnett]

Don't you mean San Jose?

I think the submitter meant "Is this the way?"

"(Is this the way to) Amarillo" was recorded by Tony Christie and turned into a big hit in the UK.

This YouTube video just added to the popularity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5y1cNpbYo

Re:Where?

[rossdee]

I remember that song was sung by Tony Christie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Christie

Re:Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you're looking for lyrics from the popular country western song "Amarillo by morning" by George Strait.

Re:Where?

[pavon]

Actually, the article has a link to a map showing the actual location of the site NE of Clovis.

Re:Where?

[weffew...]

Isn't the real question, "what does the US Military want to do with 5GW of power at Holloman afb?" :o)

Conspiracy theories to the ready...

Tres Amiga

[The Yuckinator]

Lucky Day: Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.
Ned Nederlander: Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.
Dusty Bottoms: Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find...
Lucky Day, Ned Nederlander, Dusty Bottoms: The Three Amigos!

Re:Tres Amiga

[fmobus]

My spanish may be failing me, but "tres amiga" is just wrong. Should've been "tres amigas"

Re:Tres Amiga

[jeffmeden]

What they meant was it is going to be designed to keep three Amiga 1000's powered up. You know, for the good of mankind.

Re:Tres Amiga

[Chris Burke]

My spanish may be failing me, but "tres amiga" is just wrong. Should've been "tres amigas"

No you're right. I mean, it's the same as in English. "The Three Friend"? It's a typo in the summary; in TFA you can see it's spelled correctly.

But it's Amigas, so it's feminine. Lucky Day still works (if you want your daughter to be a stripper). Ned could be Nadine. And Dusty? I guess that could be a woman's name?

Re:Tres Amiga

[DudeTheMath]

As in Dusty Springfield, perhaps?

I know amiga !

[Atreide]

Sure Amiga still rocks !

Who will build an Atari ST grid ?

Re:I know amiga !

[Tetsujin]

Sure Amiga still rocks !

Who will build an Atari ST grid ?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those... (It's only tres Amigas, but it's a start...)

Re:I know amiga !

[Anonymous Coward]

And, will the Atari ST grid have a built-in MIDI interface!?

Re:I know amiga !

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does.

If there wasn't a description up there, I would have swore they ripped off that name from the local access cable channel. When the information scrollers or local programming isn't on, there's usually a Workbench 1.3 screen on Lake County Community Channel 17. (And this is still true even after all these years and going through at least two other cable networks before becoming Comcastic.) I'm pretty sure they have more than one Amiga to keep what uptime that they do have. Three seems very likely. Considering that it has some cheesy qualities remniscent of some ol' UHF channels I'm sure the "Superstation" moniker applies as well.

Of course whenever the ST grid comes up, they'll have to follow Atarian tradition of the late '80s and early '90s and do an acronym or other catchy name that starts with ST. Probably something like STars or STorm or whatever...

Re:I know amiga !

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a hypercube of Atari TTs work better?

Uh.. Roswell?

[JayPee]

Seriously, Roswell?

More likely this is going to be the supragrid where the huge alien craft will come to suck our energy away. (Think "V" The mini-series)

Re:Uh.. Roswell?

[khallow]

I don't mind as long as they pay. And alien overlords pay well, right?

Re:Uh.. Roswell?

[geekoid]

depends, what's your life worth?

Re:Uh.. Roswell?

[Nadaka]

about 80 kilo's of soylent green?

Re:Uh.. Roswell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes there it is! It's coming across the golden gate!
This is a live picture from San Francisco!

Re:Uh.. Roswell?

[Sprouticus]

thats just silly. Any aliens that come have plenty of energy reservres. How else did they get here. Now WATEr....thats a different story. If you remember, the rsouse being stolen in 'V' was water.

shapes

[orgelspieler]

Let me get this straight: it will be a square, triangle, pipeline? Are you sure it's not a series of tubes?

Re:shapes

[Interoperable]

Wikipedia has a good article on the basic design.

Re:shapes

[physburn]

Its a triangle of fat cables in piupes fill of Liquid Nitrogen.

Here's the Tres Amigas design, via the AMSC site.

---

Super Conductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

$1 per acre per year --- nice deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Public trust land managed in the public interest.

Oh ya.

blackouts

[Spazmania]

'Cause it's not enough to black out just the northeast during a cascade failure; we have to black out all of conus at the same time.

You're not safe just because your state is an energy exporter. Just like a sudden spike in demand, a sudden huge drop in demand forces generating plants into emergency-safe mode, shutting them down. You're safe only if your part of the grid neither imports nor exports more than a small percentage of the total power in play.

Re:blackouts

[kevinNCSU]

Does that honestly seem to you like such a huge and difficult problem that couldn't possibly be safeguarded against or solved that we should forgo the ability to provide cheaper electricity across the country? I feel like there's probably been an Engineer or two that's looked at the whole changing demands on a power grid problem during the last half century or so.

Re:blackouts

[vlm]

You're safe only if your part of the grid neither imports nor exports more than a small percentage of the total power in play.

Luckily the interchange is only 5 GW... which only requires maybe one percent of the eastern and western plants to generate. TX on the other hand is probably screwed, that is probably like 5/6 their generating capacity (Don't really know, but how many plants can little ole TX have, anyway?)

Re:blackouts

[Alex Pennace]

According to http://mospublic.ercot.com/ercot/jsp/frequency_control.jsp Texas is currently (as of when I checked the page) using 35.3 GW. Of which, 34.9 GW is generated in-grid.

Re:blackouts

[Beezlebub33]

The problem is only partially an engineering problem. It's also a huge political and financial problem. To have a stable grid, you need to pay for the infrastructure and you need to build powerlines. These are difficult because the politicians do not want to spend the money on the infrastructure for the grid, and people don't want to have the powerlines go near their houses.

Re:blackouts

[vlm]

Texas is currently (as of when I checked the page) using 35.3 GW.

Hmm OK. My BS meter is kind of tingling... its possible, but for 25 million TX citizens, plus or minus some illegals, that's like 1500 watts average on a cool weekday midday... Ya'll have a lot of aluminum refineries down there on the ranch?

Re:blackouts

[QuantumRiff]

If only there was a way of preventing surges from doing this. Perhaps a "box" with some things that might "break" if the power load becomes too great. That would protect both ends of the circuit, and prevent frying the line. Heck, that might be handy to install in my own house, right where the power mains come in....

Re:blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't really know, but how many plants can little ole TX have, anyway?

A lot more than you might think. Wikipedia fails me for the numbers, but Texas is fairly self-sufficient when it comes to energy production. They're also tied into the Mexican power grid.

Re:blackouts

[Spazmania]

Does that honestly seem to you like such a huge and difficult problem

Yes, as a matter of fact, it does.

During a sudden large drop in demand you have fractions of a second before the turbines spike the hell out of the voltage frying unprotected electronics and maybe a few seconds before the turbines start to tear themselves apart. That's how much time the grid controller has to receive messages from and analyze the system state across the entire grid and decide which turbines across the entire grid to slam the emergency brakes on so that the remaining ones are properly loaded.

It isn't possible, not with any kind of safety margin. As a result, the grid isn't built that way. Instead, each generating plant has a local safety system on the turbines. If the demand changes faster than the speed regulator can compensate they go into emergency safe mode and shut down entirely, after which it takes days to run through the startup checklist and come back online. The grid controller can affect this only indirectly - by stabilizing the demand hitting each generating plant before the safety systems trip.

Which means that any time a sufficiently large capacity set of transmission lines fails, that failure cascades through the system dropping plant after plant.

This isn't just speculation, by the way. Go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003 . When the cascade failure finally gets underway, it moves really fast. 150 seconds for the whole blackout in 2003. There's no time to fix it. Either your local portion of the grid transmits or receives so little power from the rest that it can instantly disconnect and absorb the change in demand or else it collapses along with the rest.

Re:blackouts

[kevinNCSU]

I'd counter by saying it's more an economic problem. A Blackout means no one is drawing power, which means no one is paying for power, and a plant having to SCRAM or shut down due to a sudden drop or increase in demand means they aren't producing power. This can cost the power company in question Millions per day, so I would think that as a company they would have an extremely strong financial incentive to safeguard against blackouts.

Of course this assumes the engineers can adequately convince their management of the need to invest in said infrastructure to avoid financial loss due to blackouts and from talking to some of the engineers responsible before that big cascading blackout in the NE a few years back that is exactly what they were complaining about having trouble doing.

I guess in lieu of that though it does fall back to the government to force the investment to occur.

Re:blackouts

[kevinNCSU]

So you would suggest this problem is so large and dangerous that each small region of the country should produce energy for themselves only and no energy trading should occur or do you only wish to address the first half of my sentence? Yes, there's risk, yes, it's a difficult problem. But the question at hand is whether it's so risky and dangerous that we should avoid it and forgo the benefits.

Personally I see one bad cascade failure amongst years of presumably lower energy prices and more efficient use of energy resources.

Re:blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Might be a couple oil refineries around here...

Re:blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no time to fix it.

Not necessarily 100% accurate.

Philadelphia and the surrounding mid-Atlantic areas were also completely unaffected because PJM disconnected them from the grid.

I may have missed it, but I don't see any comments on the opening of the interconnection between NYISO and ISO-NE, either. All of these entities are part of the bigger Eastern Interconnection with ties between them.

That blackout was a combination of failures. One point I will grant you is the longer it takes you to recognize, the harder it is to stop. But it's not impossible. Look at the map of the outage: the Eastern Interconnection is significantly larger than the affected area.

Re:blackouts

[jeffstar]

37,000 MW for 25 million citizens? that seems reasonable to me.

Ontario has peak loads of 26,000 MW for 13.5 million citizens.

Re:blackouts

[hitchhacker]

Hmm OK. My BS meter is kind of tingling... its possible, but for 25 million TX citizens, plus or minus some illegals, that's like 1500 watts average on a cool weekday midday... Ya'll have a lot of aluminum refineries down there on the ranch?

Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid: "The state uses more electricity than any other, 44 percent more than runner-up California. Much of this is used by industrial customers such as petrochemical plants and oil refineries."

-metric

Re:blackouts

[jeffstar]

welcome to the real world, where building the perfect system costs more than it is worth and there are physical limitations to what is possible!

What % change would you expect the system to be able to handle? Generators are physical spinning machines with inertia, and the mechanical source turning them can also have inertia. You can't stop them on a dime, that power has to go somewhere.

Take one of the 17 generators at the hoover dam. 2GW total capacity there, maybe 111 MW per machine.
Power = head x flow x 9.81
111 MW = 221m x flow x 9.81
you have 51,000 litres per second of water moving through the turbine.

That water is going through the turbine at 85mph and can't be stopped instantly if there is a sudden huge drop in demand.

When the electrical load on a generator drops suddenly and the mechanical power in doesn't change, the machine accelerates. If it accelerates indefinitely it flies to pieces, so yeah, they shut them down if they accelerate past a certain speed.

I know electricity seems like an on/off perfect thing where you can plug in whatever you want where ever you want and it just works, but that is only because what you are plugging in is insignificantly small compared to what is powering it.

Re:blackouts

[Tesla Tank]

That's simply not true. The grid operates with accordance to guidelines set by the North American Electricity Reliability Commission (NERC), one of the policy is something called "N-1 Criterion". Which means any one single transmission line or generation unit can go down without affecting the grid. And NERC also requires that the operator balance the grid to satisfy N-1 criterion after one contingency happens. So it's not like once one unit trips, another unit trip would destroy the grid. Yes, balancing the grid after a contingency takes time, but the likely hood of 2 events happen so closely is low. Plus, the N-1 Criterion requires the grid to remain stable for the single WORST scenario, which many contingencies aren't.

The cause of the August 2003 blackout also was caused by improper procedure by FirstEnergy, along with lack of situational awareness on the grid. The joint task force report on the blackout concluded the blackout could have and should have been prevented by proper operating procedure. You can find the link to it at the bottom of that wiki page you linked to, or here: https://reports.energy.gov/

Yes, electricity travels fast, but that doesn't mean the grid is not operated to handle failures. BTW, this is my current research area, so I know at least a little bit of what I'm talking about. Not to make the logical fallacy of appealing to authority or anything.

Re:blackouts

[Spazmania]

likely hood of 2 events happen so closely is low.

Twice in, what was it, 40 years or so?

Here's a tip for your research: all things break. Even the good, resilient designs occasionally suffer multiple failures... Sometimes because of incompetence, sometimes because of human error or defective equipment and sometimes because of just plain bad luck.

If you're charged with risk management, the responsible question is: what happens next?

Three mile island offers a lesson. What happened next at three mile island was that the protections functioned as designed and the failure was -contained.-

What happened next in 2003 was that 55 million people spent a couple days without electricity while the systems in place to isolate such problems "protected" about 200,000.

What happens next in a fully interconnected North American grid is that quarter of a billion people lose power.

What's the risk management answer then? The risk management answer is: from any given local grid, don't routinely import or export more electricity than your local grid is capable of surviving should that import or export suddenly cease. That way a failure in your neighbor's grid (or his neighbor's grid, etc.) does not cascade in to yours. And if you want to sell more electricity than that to your neighbor, plug your generating plant in to his grid, bypassing yours, so that when his grid collapses and scrams your plant, it doesn't take your grid down with it.

Re:blackouts

[plague911]

Indeed. However there are loads of new tech to help start mitigating this fact. Ie energy storage technologies. If you stick enough batteries on the system for frequency regulation this may give you enough buffer time to take care of these issues. I am unaware of the current situation but i image there relativly little in terms of power regulation done. However with an increase in both solar and wind usage these power regulators will become more in demand and may act do mitigate this problem naturally.

Re:blackouts

[Spazmania]

Philadelphia and the surrounding mid-Atlantic areas were also completely unaffected because PJM disconnected them from the grid.

Coal town USA was unaffected because PJM was generating about the same amount of electricity as it was consuming so they were *able* to disconnect from the grid. Same thing happened with Dominion power in Virginia, they dropped their northern connections which is why the cascade didn't spread further south.

Thing is, you can't just disconnect if the differential is too great. If too much power is flowing in or out of your system, disconnecting takes you down hard.

Here, this guy explains it better than I can: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1402989&cid=29736735

Re:blackouts

[dbIII]

maybe a few seconds before the turbines start to tear themselves apart

I used to do component failure analysis in power stations and I really do not have a clue where you get that gem from, especially since the turbines are still going to be connected to very big heavy generators that are not going to be able to change speed quickly one way or another.
Please elaborate to prove that it isn't just manipulative alarmist utter bullshit that you are excreting.

Re:blackouts

[Tesla Tank]

What happens next in a fully interconnected North American grid is that quarter of a billion people lose power.

No, that's not true. Read all of my posts and not just focus on one small part of it. The August 2003 blackout could have been prevented through 2 ways. First way is following the NERC reliability policies, which FirstEnergy did not do. The second way is implementing situational awareness on the grid that would have prevented the blackout. This is currently being worked on after the recommendation from the joint task force report. The worst case that would have happened would be the area controlled by FirstEnergy goes without power, but it won't drag down the rest of the grid.

The risk management answer is: from any given local grid, don't routinely import or export more electricity than your local grid is capable of surviving should that import or export suddenly cease.

They already do that. That's the N-1 criterion I mentioned earlier.

Re:blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do energy-trading the old-fashioned way: charge batteries with the excess and ship them by truck to where it is needed. :)

(In all seriousness, there was a ~11 hour localized blackout which we managed to work through, by swapping batteries in one of the redundant UPSes with those of the one in the office in the next town (which did have power).

Re:blackouts

[Spazmania]

following the NERC reliability policies [...] situational awareness

Affectionately known in reliability circles as a "pipe dream." Here's reality: policies and procedures are imperfectly followed, there's always a "fog of war" and first and foremost: all things break. Building reliable systems is in large part about anticipating what happens after a failure and arranging the cascade so that A) small failures can't quickly turn in to gigantic ones and B) somebody else's failure doesn't compel my failure.

don't routinely import or export more electricity than your local grid is capable of surviving should that import or export suddenly cease.
That's the N-1 criterion I mentioned earlier.

No, it isn't. N+1 is an entirely different facet of reliable systems design. N+1 says that however much electricity you're exporting you have at least one more line to transport it than you need so that any single line can fail without causing a systemic failure.

When your neighbor unexpectedly drops not one but all connections, a scenario which is far from impossible as we saw in 2003, you're way past N+1. Your instantaneous generation is now substantially higher than your power consumption and your generating plants all head for the red line. In that instant and in the next several, one of two things is true: either the imbalance is small enough that the systems which ordinarily adjust for the changing demand throughout the day can shed generating capacity before the turbines redline, or else they can't. If they can't, your section of the grid is dropping too.

You're also fundamentally misunderstanding the character of N+1 systems. You don't practice N+1 just at the bottom level. You have to practice N+1 at every level for it to be effective. Not just N+1 transmission lines... N+1 transmission companies so that any one of the power companies can suffer a catastrophic operations failure without taking the whole system down with it.

This crap about how it was all FirstEnergy's fault really pisses me off. Yeah, they were a bunch of incompetent boobs. But a proper system design doesn't collapse from the failure of just one of its pieces, not even if it's a big piece.

If we were talking about computers, 2003 was the equivalent of having a raid array and then acting all shocked when two drives fail and you don't have any backups. My goodness, how could they have failed to replace the first bad drive in time? Did they not hear the beeping? Phht. You want real reliability, you also have N+1 servers running the application, N+1 data centers housing the servers and daily backups beyond that just in case.

Re:blackouts

[TheTurtlesMoves]

I think you are getting confused with the early 1900, or your infrastructure is worse than China.

Really what the hell are you talking about? Turbines spike? Emergency systems include massive dump resisters at the station I was at. Response time of the *automated* systems was under a second, while the many tons of generator damped out anything quicker than that and these still the steam vent valves (you can throttle the turbines faster than the boiler). A full shutdown startup cycle was 6 hours tops and we had five units, so we would not have to do the full cycle on all of them (one or two are at idle depending on maintainance schedules). And that was a slow full steam plant. Gas turbines can do it under an hour I believe (the bottoming cycle takes longer IIRC).

Re:blackouts

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. In every Slashdot discussion about power grid someone says that the turbines can suddenly fly apart, and it gets summarily debunked each time.

Re:blackouts

[Spazmania]

Then why didn't it work in 2003?

Shocking times we live in

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there is a difference in the potential of this technology and other high throughput power transferring systems. I think being able to distribute power has the capacity to put us on the road to using more electricity as opposed to oil based fuel. That's all we've needed: a kick in the joules to get us on a better path.

Shocking times indeed. I just need to remember to stay grounded; You can never know exactly when and where technological progress will come from.

Re:Shocking times we live in

[biryokumaru]

5 or 6 really decent electrical puns and you get a -1 Troll. Nice.

Re:Shocking times we live in

[Anonymous Coward]

has anyone looked at the viability of using plasma or mercury vapor conduits for carrying large amounts of current?

Re:Shocking times we live in

[Anonymous Coward]

It's politically incorrect to call them fat white women, BBW, Big Beautifully Women, is more acceptable but ambiguous as to race. WBBW might work, for White Big Beautifully Women except then it would logically follow that Black Big Beautifully Women would be BBBW but that actually refers to Big Beautifully Bitchy Women, Even if we used BBWW, for white women it would still more work for black women but Black women never get any respect so they are usually bitchy anyways and all of the BBC going for the BBWW so they never get any doesn't help either.

I'm a...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can conduct 3 symphony orchestras at once.

I'm a super conductor.

Re:I'm a...

[Anonymous Coward]

Resistance is futile!

A lot of power

[siliconwafer]

Each leg of the triangle can carry 5GW of electricity.

5GW is a lot of power; to put that into perspective, the entire state of New York uses about 30GW at peak load on a hot summer day; the great power of Niagara Falls gives us about 5GW (Canadian + US generators).

Re:A lot of power

[Rich0]

Yup - just think about what would happen if any part of this conduit warmed up - talk about a MASSIVE heat dump!

Or, for that matter think about what would happen if somebody took the cable and twisted it into a coil - now you suddenly have a HUGE electromagnet.

Re:A lot of power

[vlm]

Yup - just think about what would happen if any part of this conduit warmed up - talk about a MASSIVE heat dump!

Thats what FCL's are for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_current_limiter

Re:A lot of power

[Mousit]

It really depends on where you look, to be honest, and surprisingly the state of New York isn't necessarily all that huge as you might think. It's not even ranked second or third in energy usage.

To add to your perspective, the state of Texas produces and consumes--by a wide margin for both--far more electrity than any other state or territory in the United States. Full summer peaks can reach average state-wide usages of around 97GW.

That's especially impressive to me considering the Texas grid is almost isolated, so it can't easily call in outside power from other states like New York can.

Re:A lot of power

[Chris Mattern]

Or to put it another way, it's enough to power your time machine *four times*!

Re:A lot of power

[Rich0]

Would this even do anything in a quench? Suppose that power line is carrying 1 GA (giga-amps) during normal use. The FCL would prevent damage to the line if for some reason it shorted and tried to pull 2 GA.

However, if there were a quench along the line, the current would actually drop, not rise (resistance increases dramatically). An FCL seems to protect against a short, but during normal operation a transmission line IS a short. The issue isn't that the overall line is carrying too much current. The problem is that the point that overheated and quenched is carrying WAY too much current by several orders of magnitude, but the overall line is below design capacity.

During a quench the current would generate heat at an incredible rate.

Maybe if you had some lightning-fast detector that could spot a voltage rise on either side of the line and cut the circuit completely that might work. I'm guessing that voltage would rise since the line now has resistance.

Disclaimer - I'm not an expert on superconduting transmission lines, nor am I an electrical engineer. I do have a half-decent grasp of Ohm's law, however, and have seen the results of superconducting magnet quenches.

Re:A lot of power

[vlm]

However, if there were a quench along the line, the current would actually drop, not rise (resistance increases dramatically). An FCL seems to protect against a short, but during normal operation a transmission line IS a short. The issue isn't that the overall line is carrying too much current. The problem is that the point that overheated and quenched is carrying WAY too much current by several orders of magnitude, but the overall line is below design capacity.

The dramatic increase in resistance means a sudden dramatic voltage drop across the cable. The "TX side" says I'm gonna give you power at exactly 1 megavolt. The "rx side" goes into alert and tells the TX side to shut down if it gets less than 0.999 megavolts. "undervoltage alert condition". It's an interesting control theory problem, you want the feedback fast to prevent damage, and smart enough to understand how capacitance and inductance affect the voltage on the far side. Only a couple miles long means they can shut off the current about as fast as a transistor can switch (pretty fast). How to deal with a transmission line that's 2000 miles long would be interesting.

Its actually pretty simple for superconductor lines because "no resistance" means "no voltage drop" under normal conditions, more or less.

I wonder if you can quench a tiny sliver so small that an electrical arc forms across the quenched region due to the voltage drop across the high resistance... That could hurt...

Re:A lot of power

[ap7]

To put that into perspective, the entire state of Maharashtra in India (population approx 150 million), uses somewhere arond 15 gigawatts of power on a hot summer day. This includes the city of Mumbai, known as the financial capital of India.

Ofcourse, the power plants in the state are rarely able to supply above 11 gigawatts, so load shedding is conducted, some areas switched off for several hours daily to prevent taking the entire grid down.

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - you actually get worked up over that? Amazing.

Modify the phase variance

[insecuritiez]

The three power grids are out of phase with each other. Are they doing a AC->DC->AC conversion? It was my understanding that the biggest technical hurdle to connecting the grids was the difficult problem of shifting the phase of one grid to another.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[ckthorp]

Yes, RTFA.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[Anonymous Coward]

The three power grids are out of phase with each other. Are they doing a AC->DC->AC conversion? It was my understanding that the biggest technical hurdle to connecting the grids was the difficult problem of shifting the phase of one grid to another.

Sure, they just have to redirect the power flow through the plasma conduits, and make sure that the phase discriminator is in focus before it hits the main deflector.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[physburn]

Yes, Its AC->DC->AC. SuperConducting Cable always run DC. If you run alternating current through a superconductor, you'll get resistance (actually impendence) again.

---

SuperConductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

Re:Modify the phase variance

[Telecommando]

Yes, the lines are DC with converters at each node that connects to the indivuidual grids.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[Thelasko]

The three power grids are out of phase with each other. Are they doing a AC->DC->AC conversion?

Correct. From TFA:

multiple power transmission lines from each of the Interconnections will feed power into and out of the Tres Amigas SuperStation through multiple AC/DC converters, each connected by DC superconductor cables.

The superconducting material is required because they are using an AC->DC->AC conversion. It's very difficult to transmit that much power using direct current without a superconductor.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[evanbd]

The three power grids are out of phase with each other. Are they doing a AC->DC->AC conversion? It was my understanding that the biggest technical hurdle to connecting the grids was the difficult problem of shifting the phase of one grid to another.

Yes, they are. The superconducting cables are running high-voltage DC.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[gregg]

So Edison and Kelvin were ahead of their time promoting DC over AC. By about 130 years...

Re:Modify the phase variance

[rossdee]

And of course reconfigure it to emit a tachyon pulse.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[imgod2u]

You'll actually get reactance (imaginary part of impedance, specifically inductance in this case), not resistance. But you don't actually lose energy through reactance like you do resistance (no power is converted to heat) unless there's another magnetic field to interfere. So yes, you could put AC through a superconductor. There's just little reason to when you have very little resistance and DC is usually easier to deal with.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[imgod2u]

They lack a main deflector dish though.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[vlm]

You'll actually get reactance (imaginary part of impedance, specifically inductance in this case), not resistance. But you don't actually lose energy through reactance like you do resistance (no power is converted to heat) unless there's another magnetic field to interfere. So yes, you could put AC through a superconductor. There's just little reason to when you have very little resistance and DC is usually easier to deal with.

No, AC is easier to deal with because transformers are simpler than what amount to really big semiconductor VFDs.

The real gain, is you spend megabucks on insulation for the highest voltage the line will experience. On AC, thats the peak voltage of the sinewave. But the DC equivalent of an AC current is the RMS, and it's only about 71% of the peak (well, exactly its 1/2**.5) So that means you can push about 30% higher voltage thru a DC cable before it arcs over, and because P=E**2/R you get the square of 30% more power...

There are also some other issues, but in general, you can push about twice as many watts thru a cable at DC than thru it at AC.

Since the cost of the cable is huge compared to the cost of the station gear, it makes sense to double your capacity by using DC.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[DerekLyons]

Since the cost of the cable is huge compared to the cost of the station gear, it makes sense to double your capacity by using DC.

Assuming you can economically perform the AC->DC->AC conversion on 5GW without excessive capital investment, without excessive operating costs, and without excessive losses.
 
An armchair engineer looks at the equations and says "Dude! DC!". Real engineers are as much accountants as they are academics and look at the dollar costs too.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[pwfffff]

OT @ sig:
T-Pain : I'm N Luv (Wit A Stripper) :: Beethoven : Beethoven's symphonies

Or do you think he played ALL those instruments at once?

Re:Modify the phase variance

[Tesla Tank]

What insulation are you talking about? HVAC transmission aren't insulated at all. The advantage of AC over DC is that you don't need high efficiency high voltage power converters, which are very expensive compare to transformers. This is changing with advances in power electronics, but it's still more expensive than regular transformers.

HVDC is actually cheaper than HVAC on a per mile basis, but the power converters you need at the terminal brings up the cost. So for really long transmission, it starts to be more cost effective to use HVDC. One example is the HVDC on the west coast of US.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[insecuritiez]

My fault. I searched the article for "phase" and decided it didn't have the information. Instead of phase, the article said:

...This, in effect, synchronizes power flows.

Sad that the media thinks the average American doesn't know what the term phase means. Even sadder is that they are probably right.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[brxndxn]

Then it would only make sense to reverse the polarity and launch a probe.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[Anonymous Coward]

Great explanation. Threads like this are why /. lives on.

Re:Modify the phase variance

[moosesocks]

Don't forget that AC signals produce a magnetic field!

This is a huge problem for some newer particle accelerator designs, which produce their accelerating gradient using a standing RF wave inside a hollow low-temperature (niobium) superconductor. Depending upon the superconductor's surface topography (along with a few other factors), various hot-spots might be produced that raise the temperature high enough that the accelerator begins to behave like a normal conductor (which, as we in the business say, is "really bad")

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[kevinNCSU]

I can see how that can be confusing seeing as how language is completely static and the majority of the world refers to both South and North America together when using the words "America" and "American".

Those damn United Statesmans, thinking they can refer to their own country however they please.

Uh... Do you know the way...

[Gilmoure]

...to Santa Fe?

Amarillo doesn't even rhyme!

What about (Yellow Rose)? That would make sense.

Re:Uh... Do you know the way...

[Gilmoure]

D'oh! A quick Google and I find that that song was San José. Weird. In my head, it's always been Santa Fé. Man, the 70's were a long time ago.

Re:Uh... Do you know the way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, i thought it was a "Rent" reference, in which case Santa Fe is correct..

you know.. tumble weeds.. prairie dogss...

Re:Uh... Do you know the way...

[jo_ham]

So you never heard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_This_the_Way_to_Amarillo either then?

Re:Uh... Do you know the way...

[Gilmoure]

Whoa!

Nope, and I've lived all around Amarillo (Wichita Falls, Ft. Worth, Abq). Weird!

Who knew that today, out of all days, Slashdot would teach me something?

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

United States of Mexico, actually.

Superconductor

[Steve Baker]

Now we can build Gatling Lasers on our units, and we're one step closer to Fusion Power!

Re:Superconductor

[dltaylor]

If you're still playing it (too), what platform (Loki here)?

Re:Superconductor

[Steve Baker]

Same. Loki Linux version. I'd really love to see a sequel to that game, although I'm not sure how it could be improved much. I suppose improved AI and graphics would be nice. They'd probably just dumb it down and simplify it though.

This is when...

[thered2001]

...we find out we aren't all exactly running 60 HZ after all.

What is the motivation for power companies?

[ssbssb]

Won't increasing efficiency lower energy prices? Am I right in thinking that there really isn't any incentive for power companies to do this?

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[Volante3192]

They charge the same and rake in more profit.

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[KillerBob]

Won't increasing efficiency lower energy prices? Am I right in thinking that there really isn't any incentive for power companies to do this?

You're not right. From TFS/TFA, there's currently no link between the three different power grids. The incentive for the corporations to back this is the potential for them to save money (by buying power from other grids during peak times, rather than building more power plants to make up for the shortfall), and the potential to make money (by selling power to other grids during off-peak hours).

As an example, TX can sell power to the north during the winter to help cover the increased cost of heating, and they can buy power in the summer to help cover the cost of air conditioning. Also, the East can sell to the West when it's 1am on the East Coast (most people in bed, off-peak hours), but still 10pm in California. Likewise, California can sell to the east when it's 5am there (people are still asleep), but 8am in the east.

All in all, it should make a *huge* difference for their bottom lines, while also helping the environment by reducing the amount of power that we have to generate. :)

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The incentive is that they get a larger market to sell to. Currently, the best they can do is meet demand of their own region. Now, if they have extra capacity and another part of the grid lacks supply, they can make extra money.

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[localman57]

It depends. Enron managed to game the system by taking certain power plants off line for "maintenace" at inopportune times, causing the various grids they were payed to connect to have to trade more energy across their lines. This was made infamous in the "Grandma eating dogfood" recording between a couple of Enron energy traders.

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[friedo]

There are individual bilateral HVDC links between each pair of grids. But this will be the first time all three will be tied together in a single system.

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Likewise, California can sell to the east when it's 5am there (people are still asleep), but 8am in the east.

Not going to work here in the Northeast.. I'm sure I remember when I was at Niagra Falls, they explained that during Off-Peak hours, Niagra Falls uses their extra power to pump water into a reservoir that they then need to drain to meet the demand during on-peak hours.. So they are already running at pretty close to 100% output 24/7..

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[Tesla Tank]

Correct, in addition to having a much higher capacity to transfer power with the new system.

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[phantomcircuit]

Hydroelectric energy storage systems are between 70-85% efficient. If this superconducting power line is more efficient than that it would be cheaper to transfer power than to attempt to buffer it locally. As an added bonus if they can transfer at a higher efficiency than it can be stored at there will be energy saved overall.

1 http://www.electricitystorage.org/site/technologies/pumped_hydro/

Re:What is the motivation for power companies?

[dbIII]

It's simpler than that and has benefits on a daily basis. The big problem in electricity distribution is the peaks. With different time zones on a grid you can handle the peaks from places where there is far less load. It also gets your eggs out of one basket, so low rainfall and other factors become less of a problem and it makes location dependant generation sources (eg. tidal) or time dependant sources (eg. solar thermal) a lot more viable. There are apparently many headaches from large AC grids that make large north-south grids a losing prospect, but with east-west grids you don't need enormous amounts of generating capacity sitting idle most of the time just to cover the peaks.

Back to the Future

[Jedi Holocron]

Isn't think just one giant Flux Capacitor?

Where are the hoverboards?

Re:Back to the Future

[geekoid]

You might be interested in this article:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-hoverboard-lie-how-back-to-the-future-ruined-childhood/

Why 22 sq miles?

[QuantumRiff]

The article mentions a triangle of 8.5Miles per side, but not being used to dealing with large amounts of power.. (pretty much anything over 120V is over my head).. why do the superconducting pipes have to be that long?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to have the connections closer? or at that level of power, could there really be arc's 5 miles long? (or are there other issues related to crazy sine wave stuff?)

And really, I hope someday they decide to build one somewhere else too, like Colorado, or even further north. Then at least there are multiple points of failure.. (and if anyone gave a crap about texas, they would be invited into one of the other grids already, but obviously they think they are special...)

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your implication- it seems like the interesting technology is in the conversion to DC, there is no explanation of why they need ANY length of superconducting material.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[shawnce]

What really is needed is LONGER super conducting DC corridors across this country not shorter ones. Use these DC long haul corridors to interconnect various existing AC grids allowing a high level of power distribution/load sharing with lower power transmission losses.

Anyway ignore the 22 sq miles tag line... This is just three DC trunks going between three AC/DC conversion substations that are connected to each of three existing AC grids.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[shawnce]

The are transferring a LOT of power over these links using direct current. The only way to do that without a high-level of line loss, huge heat issues and/or insanely high-voltages is by using super conducting material.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Guspaz]

A better question is, wouldn't it be cheaper to just use normal wires?

HydroQuebec's 735kV lines can carry 2GW each at a distance of up to 1000KM (power consumed in Montreal is produced ~1000KM north).

Would building three 735kV lines really cost more than building a superconductive conduit? I really doubt it...

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[imgod2u]

It wouldn't have the low-drop-out properties of a superconductor. Even a ~10% drop translates to about 500kW of burned energy that not only is lost, but also has to be cooled off (and my knowledge of that part of the area tells me that's not an easy task in and of itself).

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[reverseengineer]

I think the point of building the big superconducting wire triangle is that they couldn't feasibly place the three AC/DC and DC/AC converter setups physically any closer. Looking at the proposed site, there is a pretty limited corridor where setting up a three-grid link would be possible. If they wanted to accomplish this from a single facility (say, where the center of the proposed triangle sits), they would have to extend existing high voltage AC lines to that point, which would have increased resistive losses. Plus, they would still be building power lines- towers, cables, maintenance. American Superconductor, who in addition to being a supplier of materials, is also an equity partner in this project, wants to demonstrate that they can make high voltage superconducting DC lines cost-competitive with high voltage AC transmission lines.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Dr. Spork]

Agreed. The reason why we don't have it already is that we've tended to build power stations fairly close to where the power is consumed. This is not so hard with plants that burn fossil fuels and nuclear. All that is about to change, because not many people want to live in the desert where we have the best wind and solar conditions. Once we really start with that stuff on a massive scale, that power will probably end up being used a thousand miles from where it is generated. Europe is looking at building a DC power corridor from the Sahara desert... Which is good. This is exactly the sort of stuff we need to think about if we're serious about upgrading the primary method by which we generate electricity.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Guspaz]

HydroQuebec's 735kV grid has over 11 thousand kilometres of lines, and suffers 4.5 to 8 percent loss depending on environmental and operating conditions.

The power loss over 8.5 miles should be inconsequential...

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[radtea]

Would building three 735kV lines really cost more than building a superconductive conduit?

No, conventional high voltage lines would be much cheaper, and the loads they are talking about are moderate at best, especially over such short distances. The need for AC/DC/AC conversion to do phase matching does make HTS connections plausible, but the proposal still smells: These guys are getting a sweetheart land deal and the fingerprints of government infrastructure contracts are all over it. Under those circumstances you (for a certain value of "you", which does not include taxpayers, power producers or power consumers) want it to be as expensive as possible, because that's how you suck the maximum amount out of the public trough.

I'd love to be non-cynical about this, but the odds of the engineering use of superconductors in this case being economically justified look pretty small.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas has it's own grid so it doesn't need to be invited into one of the others, it doesn't want to have to depend on any other state. Part of this is simply a Texan attitude on independence and self-sufficiency, but the reasons stretch back to World War II. I googled this article that pretty well sums it up. http://www.slate.com/id/2087133/

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[WindBourne]

New Mexico will be able to get some of the cheapest energy possible. More important, this link will lead to the creation of many more x-country lines going across the nation. Once that occurs, it will make AE very viable. Right now, we in the west pay about .03 to .07/KW, while the east pays .15-.20/kw.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[jeffstar]

and hydroquebec's 735kV lines also get affected by solar storms leading to grid instability and are the reason no other grids are connected to it except by DC. Hydroquebec had done a lot of interesting things though, they have named all their assets (lines, switches, etc) random strings so there is no confusion as to exactly which you are referring to. people can't memorize circuits and line numbers by pattern and then accidentally refer to the wrong one.

However, it wasn’t until the HydroQuebec Power Grid blackout in Quebec, Canada, in March of 1989 that the world truly realized the extent to which solar storms can impact the economy. The solar storm induced a nine-hour blackout which affected 6 million customers and ultimately cost this power company more than $10 million — putting the cost of this disaster in the same category as hurricanes and earthquakes (and this does not include the estimated cost to its customers, which was in the tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars) (Windows to the Universe Team, 2000). Additionally, Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey suffered serious damage to two of its transformers. It cost PSE&G eight million to replace the transformers and the cost of replacement energy during the time the transformers were taken out of service was approximately $16.8 million, so the net cost for PSE&G was over $24 million. Together, this single space weather storm cost Hydro Quebec and PSE&G more than $30 million. Comprehensive real-time protective space weather prediction services could have significantly reduced damages and costs. Hydro-Quebec’s solution to the blackout was to install devices that block solar storms created geomagnetically-induced currents from traveling through its transmission lines. Unfortunately, this solution is extremely complex and expensive ($1.2 billion) (Quinn, 2000).

It was soon realized that the key to protecting vulnerable high tech systems is the ability to forecast solar storms and to take appropriate measures to avoid (or at least minimize) potential damage before they strike the Earth.

Thanks to data from new sensors and improved forecast models, NOAA’s SEC forecasters were able to alert electric power customers 40 minutes before a solar storm hit the Earth on May 2, 1998. In response, electric power utilities were able to successfully divert power and increase safety margins on certain parts of the grid to avoid stress on the power system.

Researchers have found that local electricity prices in the northeast increase in response to the regionalized effects of solar storms. Specifically, in research supported by the National Science Foundation, Forbes and St. Cyr (2004) note that space weather disrupts the system that transmits the power from where it is generated to where it is distributed to customers. In examining the determinants of the real-time electricity price in the market over the period June 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2001, they concluded that solar storms (over this period) increased the wholesale price of electricity by approximately 3.7 percent or approximately $500 million over the 19 month sample period.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[imgod2u]

HydroQuebec's transmission system is AC. The equivalent power loss over 11k km with a DC current would be insane.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Tesla Tank]

One thing I can think of is that the AC transmission lines for the 3 different interconnect aren't all at the same location. There probably isn't a location where all 3 systems meet, and you need to have access to HVAC lines in order to transfer power to and from each system. So logical location would be somewhere that is closest to all 3 systems.

While you're correct that it's cheaper to have shorter superconducting DC lines, they don't seem to be that expensive. Their website indicates it's on par with HVAC lines: http://www.amsc.com/products/applications/utilities/superconductorpipeline.html

A big part of the cost of having DC line is the high efficiency and high voltage power converters to transfer from AC-DC-AC, which you need regardless where the location is.

And no, you can't get arc that's 5 miles long, that would be quite a sight though. :)

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[aXis100]

That's just plain wrong.

For an equivalent RMS voltage, the power losses using DC are actually lower than AC - basically due to lower capacative effects. This effect gets greater at high voltages, so high voltage DC is very efficient.

One of the main reasons for DC in this circumstance is for phase matching - it compeltely isolates the AC phases at each end.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[ceoyoyo]

No, you can use a LOT of non-super conducting material and AC. That's how it's done now. But since they're in a special situation where they can do a straight, non-branching run from point A to point B, superconductors with all their required support apparently turns out to be cheaper than non-super conductors.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[ceoyoyo]

Don't use DC.

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Guspaz]

and hydroquebec's 735kV lines also get affected by solar storms leading to grid instability and are the reason no other grids are connected to it except by DC.

No, Quebec's power grid is a separate interconnect. THAT is why it is (and must be) connected via DC. The same is true of *ALL* connections between the major interconnects.

(a story about a 20-year old incident)

You're referring to a singular problem TWENTY YEARS AGO, a problem that has not re-occurred since. I'll note that during the big blackout of the northeast a few years back, Quebec was unaffected.

Besides, that 9-hour outage pales in comparison to the multiple-week outage suffered during the 1998 ice storm. HydroQuebec was forced to essentially rebuild the vast majority of the electrical grid from scratch.

Natural disasters are always a concern. You do your best to prepare for them, but every once in a while, you get caught by surprise. It's just the way things are.

Are you seriously trying to argue that obscene quantities of money should be spent on short-distance superconductive power lines just because of solar storms?

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[jeffstar]

No, Quebec's power grid is a separate interconnect. THAT is why it is (and must be) connected via DC. The same is true of *ALL* connections between the major interconnects.

Don't some interties use phase shifting transformers?

The quebec system is not in phase/sync with the rest of eastern north america. But why? Is it because of political, geographic or technical reasons?

I was under the impression that other systems were scared of the potential instability and thus the quebec system isn't very strongly tied to the easter north america one.

I thought those 735 kV lines were a rarity but google tells me American Electric Power has 2,100 miles of 765kV line.

I was under the impression that it was the length of the 735kV lines that caused them to be affected by solar storms, not the voltage.

The tres amigos transmission lines are going to be rather short, so I am not arguing that they should not use AC transmission to avoid the influence of solar storms.

Another poster pointed out that since the three systems are out of sync, DC is a good choice. Perhaps it is cheaper to build 2 miles of 1 superconducting DC conductor than 5-7 non superconducting conductors?

Re:Why 22 sq miles?

[Guspaz]

The quebec system is not in phase/sync with the rest of eastern north america. But why? Is it because of political, geographic or technical reasons?

I was under the impression that other systems were scared of the potential instability and thus the quebec system isn't very strongly tied to the easter north america one.

It's not tied in because we have our own interconnect. Why does Texas have their own? Why does Alaska/BC have their own? Why does the eastern and western US/Canada have separate ones too?

HydroQuebec adds ties to neighbours where the market demands it; where they need to import/export power. For example, HydroQuebec provides the majority of Vermont's electricity.

I'm not sure the exact reason as to why it evolved this way, but I suspect it's simply because of the insular nature of Quebec. This is due in part to the linguistic and cultural differences, but also because Hydro-Quebec began before what we call the "Quiet Revolution" (a period of immense reform and secularization in the 60s).

Personally, I'm happy that we're on our own grid. The US power grid has so many problems that it's nice to be insulated from them. While you cite reliability concerns, on the grid-level, it's proven more reliable than the US grid. Apart from the 1989 solar issue, the only major outage was the ice storm. Considering as that physically destroyed over 3000KM of power lines in the middle of the winter, it's not the kind of thing that any above-ground power grid could survive.

And considering that the ice storm was perhaps the largest/worst natural disaster in our history that caused millions of Quebeckers to put their lives on hold for over a week (some people had no power for 33 days, 90% lost power for 7+) and even abandon their homes (as my family was forced to, admittedly due to the lack of power), it kind of transcends traditional power outages.

And this couldn't be done with copper because

[Colin Smith]

...

Just wondering why superconductors suddenly make this feasable. 20 square miles just doesn't resolve to a very big number when looking at the length of the wire.

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[tg123]

...

Just wondering why superconductors suddenly make this feasable. 20 square miles just doesn't resolve to a very big number when looking at the length of the wire.

"The HTS cable system installed in LIPA’s power grid contains hair-thin, ribbon-shaped HTS wires that conduct 150 times the electricity of similar sized copper wires. This power density advantage enables transmission-voltage HTS cables to utilize far less wire and yet conduct up to five times more power – in a smaller right of way – than traditional copper-based cables."

quoted from this article

http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=12710

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[localman57]

You need superconducters because of the amount of current that will be transported. The loss across the wire increases with the square of the current ( p = (v)i or p = (i/r)i ). That's not a big problem when you're running a vacuum cleaner (although the wire will ususally get warm). It's a huge problem when you're talking about moving thousands of amps. The longer the wire, the more losses there are. In fact, it's common for the main conductors coming out of power plants to be made of pure sodium metal submerged in oil, due to the fact that sodium has a very, very high conductance at normal temperatures.

That's why electric companies sink so much money into transformers. You step up the electricity to high voltage / low current for transmission, then back to low voltage / high current for consumption.

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[localman57]

Whoops! The second equation should be p=(ir) i ... p= (i / r) i would imply that you get better results by using crappy wire. :-)

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[makers78]

Minor correction, your power equation is incorrect:
Voltage: V = I * R
Power: P = I * V
    -- or --
P = I * I * R = I^2 * R

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[goodmanj]

Overall good points, but the anecdote about using sodium for power plant bus bars is ridiculous.

Aluminum has twice the conductivity of sodium. A bus bar made of aluminum the weight of a city bus (14 tonnes) takes about 434 gigajoules of energy to smelt: that's about half an hour's worth of power from a 500-MW power plant.

I don't actually know how heavy these bus bars are, I used the weight of a city bus for pun value, the point is the energy cost of the materials is negligible compared to the power output.

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[bertok]

In fact, it's common for the main conductors coming out of power plants to be made of pure sodium metal submerged in oil, due to the fact that sodium has a very, very high conductance at normal temperatures.

I can't imagine how that could possibly be true. Sodium is a poor conductor, several times worse than copper. The only three conductors in common industrial use are copper, aluminium where weight matters, or silver where the best possible conductivity is required.

You must have confused the liquid sodium cooling used in some nuclear reactors with the electrical generation going on at those plants. The sodium itself is only used to transport heat.

Re:And this couldn't be done with copper because

[Anonymous Coward]

You need superconducters because of the amount of current that will be transported. The loss across the wire increases with the square of the current ( p = (v)i or p = (i/r)i ). That's not a big problem when you're running a vacuum cleaner (although the wire will ususally get warm). It's a huge problem when you're talking about moving thousands of amps. The longer the wire, the more losses there are. In fact, it's common for the main conductors coming out of power plants to be made of pure sodium metal submerged in oil, due to the fact that sodium has a very, very high conductance at normal temperatures.

No.

The reason sodium may be used (although I've never heard of this before) is because it is the cheapest metal on earth.

At an electrical conductivity of 57% that of Aluminum, yet only 36% as dense, cost per kilogram is about 29% that of aluminum.

End result Sodium costs per unit only 30% that of aluminum.

If it were practical the power companies would be stringing sodium filled copper pipes instead of aluminum.

Amarillo by propagation speed

[turtleshadow]

Amarillo by propagation speed, I buzz at San Antone
Everything that Ive got is just what I turn on.
When that Renewable Energy is high in that Texas sky
Ill be pumping it to county fair.
Amarillo by propagation speed, amarillo Ill be there.

Took my amps in Houston, broke my conductivity in Santa Fe
Lost my Giga watts from resistance somewhere along the way
Well Ill be sell'n for peak when they pull that gate,
And Im hoping that regulator aint blind.

Amarillo by propagation speed, amarillos on my mind.

Amarillo by propagation speed, I buzz at San Antone.
Everything that Ive got is just what I turn on.
I cost a dime, but what I got is mine.
I aint rich, but lord Im reasonably priced.

Amarillo by propagation speed, amarillo Ill be there.
Amarillo by propagation speed, amarillo Ill be there.

"Forward Looking Comment"

[adamruck]

Found this on the bottom of the article

Any statements in this release about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company, including our expectations regarding the future financial performance of the company and other statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will" and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include: we have a history of operating losses, and we may incur losses in the future; a significant portion of our revenues are derived from a single customer, and a reduction in business with this customer could adversely affect our operating results; adverse changes in domestic and global economic conditions could adversely affect our operating results; changes in exchange rates could adversely affect our results from operations; our common stock may experience extreme market price and volume fluctuations, which may prevent our stockholders from selling our common stock at a profit and could lead to costly litigation against us that could divert our management’s attention; if we fail to implement our business strategy, our financial performance and our growth could be materially and adversely affected; we may not realize all of the sales expected from our backlog of orders and contracts; many of our revenue opportunities are dependent upon subcontractors and other business collaborators, and a reduction in orders stemming from these companies could adversely affect our operating results; our products face intense competition, which could limit our ability to acquire or retain customers; our success is dependent upon attracting and retaining qualified personnel and our inability to do so could significantly damage our business and prospects; and our international operations are subject to risks that we do not face in the U.S., which could have an adverse effect on our operating results. Reference is made to these and other factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of the company's most recent quarterly or annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the company's views as of the date of this release. While the company anticipates that subsequent events and developments may cause the company's views to change, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any date subsequent to the date this press release is issued.

Makes me wonder...

Re:"Forward Looking Comment"

[rdunnell]

That sort of disclosure is on almost every statement that is issued by companies that are regulated by the SEC or some other regulatory body. Go look at any company's annual report, quarterly SEC filings, etc. Even press releases might have that sort of language on it. You basically have to try to spell out everything that could possibly go wrong so that stupid investors who don't understand that every business carries potential risks don't sue you later.

Re:"Forward Looking Comment"

[tepples]

It's standard U.S. legal boilerplate. Financial filings that talk about the future are required to carry similar language.

Where?

[pgn674]

For those who aren't sure where that triangle is, a map.

wake up and smell the capitolism

[Brigadier]

Everything is done for money don't think for a second it is otherwise. The only time safety plays a part is after people die. Pick any major failure. Even then the fix is for marketing purposes.

This Grid exists to allow the sale of more power. BTW knocking out this section wont' take down the grid (or so you hope, see north easter black out) but it will destabilize supply, and cause a nice ripple effect in one of the US critical resources.

I'm sure behind this whole thing are a few lobbyist and policy makers carving up who can sell electricity where.

Re:wake up and smell the capitolism

[Anonymous Coward]

The only time safety plays a part is after people die. Pick any major failure. Even then the fix is for marketing purposes.

This is overly cynical BS. Companies find themselves deciding where on the safety continuum they want to operate and too often find themselves having made the wrong decision, but that's not the same thing as what you are saying.

Your statement indicates a belief that untill someone dies, no company is going to care about the safety of their products or services. It completely ignores the fact that businesses are run by people, and most people have a conscience. Yes, corporate culture can make it easier for someone to ignore their conscience by promoting a "Not my problem" mentality. However, to somehow imply that all people check their conscience and human decency at the punch-clock in the morning is more than a little disingenuous.

You may have just been trying to out cynical the morons on slashdot that think being cynical is cool, heck maybe you are one of those idiots, but that doesn't make you right. It just means that you are now "Cool" on a message board populated mostly by guys eating Cheetos in their mom's basement and dreaming someone (preferably a woman) will touch their joystick. Not exactly illustrious company.

Re:wake up and smell the capitolism

[Brigadier]

your being an 'a' hole and I understand your posting anonymously. It is a documented fact that companies will spend as much capitol on safety as needed. Key word being needed. If you look on many noted failure systems, you will see examples of this. If companies had a conscience as you infer there wouldn't be a need for so many regulatory agencies as there are.

examples

Three Mile Island: Poorly trained personnel, lack of proper sensor and back up systems. Fix Invest in simulators better technology.

New York Black Out: Tree's which require trimming weren't and lack off redundancy.

New Orleans: Failed Levees which were documented for cutting corners to preserve cost. In addition lack of upkeep on said levees.

Countless numbers of cases of known hazardous materials being used in consumer goods.

Re:wake up and smell the capitolism

[twiddlingbits]

Bad example..New Orleans levee failures were a PUBLIC (Government) side failure (Corp of Engineers underbudgeting and local levee board stealing money) whereas your rant has to do with PRIVATE industry where expense of safety has to be less or equal to fines/lost time/lost revenue from any accident.

Re:wake up and smell the capitolism

[halltk1983]

Because New Orleans was definitely run by a company cutting corners...

isnt this going backwards?

[SolarStorm]

Isnt this going backwards with so much research being done to distributed renwable energy systems? We are creating a central point of failure or an alien magnetic launch pad. Think about wrapping those super conductors in a coil? I would rather see these dollars spent creating more solar/wind/wave/tide/thermal/etc farms in a distributed system where the brown outs are occuring. By creating these types of farms, the overall cost of creating more decreases as more companies are willing to research and manufacture the components because now there is a market. As a research project on super conducting it is probably a good project. And I admit my 5 min of research qualifies me only as highly informed, not an expert.

Re:isnt this going backwards?

[localman57]

I think the point is that an interconnect allows us to better use the capacity that already exists (including existing wind and other renewables). That way you don't have to build new generating stations, and green generation stations we build in the future are more likely to be 100% utilized, since they can supply a larger region. The fact that we have time zones means that different parts of the country peak at different absolute times. And you have to build generation capacity to deal with the peaks, not the average.

Re:isnt this going backwards?

[ColdWetDog]

One of the big problems with 'renewable energy' is that production tends to be sporadic. The wind doesn't always blow. The sun doesn't always shine. The way around that is to interconnect large numbers of different power sources together to minimize the fluctuations and to allow loads to increase or decrease. The way you do that is with interconnects between individual grids.

This is just a big interconnect. We need more interconnects and a 'smarter grid' if small to medium source generation projects are going to do anything to materially reduce fossil fuel burning for power.

Re:isnt this going backwards?

[natehoy]

To add to the previous postings...

Power can also rarely be generated where it is used. Solar/wind/tidal sources can only be used where you have strong sunlight, reliable winds, or access to the ocean. And land useful for renewable sources is at a severe premium in a lot of areas. Microgeneration is great, don't get me wrong, but it's not going to be an optimal solution in a lot of cases. Putting a solar panel on the roof of my house in Maine isn't terribly useful. First, I live at a fairly high latitude, and second, I live in a pine forest and maybe get 6 hours of sunlight per day (maximum, in the height of summer) on my roof. That solar cell could arguably generate twice or three times the amount of power in an open field somewhere significantly south of me, so there's little point in wasting solar panels by putting one on my roof.

Energy, and especially renewable energy, will by its nature have to cover some distance, and with the distance comes loss (through resistance). Superconductors change some of that, by offering a way to move electricity significant distances with lower losses.

So in addition to the sporadic generation of almost all renewable sources (even tidal forces have slack periods several times a day) you also have the geographic diversity of generation technologies forcing us to think about moving power around more efficiently. Renewables need the freedom to be used at 100% of their capacity when they are available, but to have some sort of backup plan when they are not. The larger the combined grid, the more we can play the averages and ensure that someone is using all the renewables we can generate and not wasting their capacity.

Re:isnt this going backwards?

[SleazyRidr]

A while ago there was an article on here about how across the US there was more than enough power for the whole country, and the fact that the wind is always blowing somewhere. This could be the first step to completely renewable power in the US.

Limiting factors

[tigre]

My guess would be inductance would be one limiting factor but probably more limiting would be the abilities of the various grids to pump power in or out across the AC/DC and DC/AC converters.

Regulation, not technology drives this

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not make clear the regulatory status of this interconnect other than to say application has been made to the FERC (the US federal regulator of transmission). Historically, the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has scrupulously avoided interconnection with other electric grids specifically to avoid becoming subject to regulation by the FERC (interconnection outside of Texas ==> interstate commerce in electricity ==> federal regulation). Tres Amiga LLC appears to be trying to finesse this by making the inter-tie DC only and thus avoiding the AC synchronization of ERCOT with the rest of the world. The technology to interconnect ERCOT has existed for 50+ years; it is primarily the Texans who don't want the federales messin' with their 'lecticity that have prevented the ERCOT interconnection.

It's bullshit

[SlappyBastard]

Anything you find as a "forward-looking" press release on Yahoo finance is pretty dependable to be bullshit. In fact, there's probably a penny stock being run up right now using this press release as the bogus basis for such a run.

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Itninja]

Well if you are going to go all anal on this, at least freak out using correct information.

There is Canada. There is the United States of America. There is the United Mexican States.

Tom Jones' Amarillo maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is this the way to Amarillo?
Ev'ry night I've been huggin' my pillow
Dreamin' dreams of Amarillo
And sweet Marie who waits for me"

Bigger, better, faster, more...

[flyingfsck]

A continent-wide black-out will bring huge economies of scale...

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[mcgrew]

The Americas: North America, Central America, South America.
NorthAmerica: Canada, the US, and Mexico.
Mexico: the United States of Mexico
America: the United States of America.

Is it that hard to understand?

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Locke2005]

Gee, all this time I thought it was Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Although I have seen them refer to themselves (inaccurately) as Estados Unidos de Sud America.

Our Roswell neighbors

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course someone thought this through! The superconducting pipe leads directly to a hangar at Roswell. Meet your new electrical overlords.

Re:Our Roswell neighbors

[fast turtle]

Nahhh - they're either attempting to wake Godzilla, Rhodan or Godzuki unless the Japanese Ministry of Defense was correct and the Gundums aren't in Japan.

Re:Our Roswell neighbors

[TheRaven64]

The Japanese Ministry of Defence has never commented on this subject. The Ministry of Agriculture stated that it was not in charge of Gundam.

Technical questions

[DrVomact]

...The current cynicism that any improvement in infrastructure is a) only for the money b) going to ruin the planet c) a target for terrorists d) too late

is getting really old.

The proposal allows for better distribution of power generation across the continent. Even if it was a target for terrorism so what. ...

How about this criticism: poorly described technology from a dubious source.

First of all, I don't think this interconnect is intended to prevent one of the three major grids going down...if that were to happen, you'd want to disconnect the other two pronto so they don't go down with it. This is being sold as a way to efficiently move cheap electricity to places that need it and are willing to buy it. The article refers to it as a "renewable energy market hub". That's fine, in principle (and who dares oppose anything with the word "renewable" in it?).

But how does it work? There's generalities about how electrical transmissions and interconnects between the major power grids work, but nothing really about the superconducting cable, and why it's better than regular cable. That's not too surprising, if you consider that this is "financial news" aimed at getting people to buy stock in this exciting new venture. What's more disturbing is that when you follow the link to the company that's supposed to be doing this wonderful thing—American Superconductor—you don't get any better answers to these questions.

You do realize that we're not talking about room temperature superconductors here, right? "High temperature superconductors" is a relative term. Unless they have indeed invented something totally new and kept it totally secret, what we're talking about is a pipeline carrying liquid nitrogen with some superconducting tape wrapped around it. (See, for example, this more informative article from another company selling the same thing. (PDF!)

One major issue right off the bat is how much of the efficiency gained by using the superconductor is consumed by the coolant system. The article doesn't say exactly how long these superconducting conduits will be, and it seems you still need AC/DC/AC conversion, so what's the real gain over using regular cables, especially if we're only talking a mile or so?

It's also not clear just who is paying for this project. Is it the State of Oklahoma? The US Government (in "stimulation" mode)? Is it a private venture? Is it really a done and financed deal? This is a most unsatisfactory article, and I think some cynicism is warranted.

Disclaimer: The fact that I am a Texan and intend to give up my megawatts only if you pry them from my cold, dead fingers has not in the least influenced my position on this matter.

Re:Technical questions

[jeffstar]

I think american super conductor did the superconductor grid in new york city. it has definitely been done before and is a proven technology.

P(three phase)=root(3)*I*V(phase to phase) cos theta

for a 500 kV AC transmission line, with power factor .8
5x10^9=root(3) I (500x10^3) 0.8

I = 7216 Amps per phase.

I don't think they make cables big enough to carry 7000 amps.

Say you can get 1000 amps on a cable. you are going to need 7 500 kv circuits.
with 2 circuits per tower you are going to need 3.5 500kV transmission lines and all the shit on either end to handle 7 different circuits.

so 1 DC superconducting circuit might in fact be cheaper, especially over such a short distance.

Re:Technical questions

[arminw]

...One major issue right off the bat is how much of the efficiency gained by using the superconductor...

Power equals volts times amps and to transmit 5 GW requires lots of both. If you go up in voltage, then you have insulation challenges. Large currents produce tremendous I^2R heat losses. To build a conventional transmission line capable of transmitting that kind of power over even a few miles is nearly impossible technologically.

If this superconductor can carry a large current, cooling it with liquid nitrogen is well within current technology. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and readily available. On the other hand, if it has to be cooled with liquid helium, such as the magnets in the LHC, that even is still doable, but at considerably higher expense.

The problem with renewable energy, is that it is intermittent and usually available in places where there are not too many customers. This means that the energy has to be transported to its users. Electricity is hard to store and transmit, it has to be generated as consumed.

Re:Technical questions

[Captain Segfault]

Note that superconductors are, in a way, inherently easier to cool, because they don't generate resistive heat. All you need to do is cool them enough to take away the heat they gain from the environment, which you can mitigate with insulation.

Re:Technical questions

[twiddlingbits]

Long distance High Voltage Power lines that are "grid ties" are DC not AC so the power losses are at the regional substations where it it converted back to AC for local distribution. The power lost in HV AC circuits can be quite high for a number of reasons, voltage drop is a problem at > 60 miles, the frequency has to be kept to tight tolerances plus phases have to be kept in sync and load has to be considered so anything long distance and high voltage is DC.

Re:Technical questions

[jeffstar]

there are losses on DC lines as well. P=i^2R regardless if it is AC or DC, but with DC you normally have less I because your V is higher.

stations have losses if they are stepping up/down AC voltage and if they are inverting/rectifying between AC and DC. I bet the losses are less in an pure AC facility than a DC/AC

so anything long distance and high voltage is DC.
that is plain wrong, there are 735 kV AC transmission lines and AC transmission lines span the country.

Re:Technical questions

[robbak]

AC circuits have radiative losses as well, and AC circuits have a lower voltage limit.
The only reason why we still have high voltage AC transmission is that the technology to efficiently rectify and invert several thousand amps at half a million volts is still a new and expensive science.

The reason why we are using superconducting DC here is that they already have to convert to DC to move power between the grids, because the phases are all different, and will drift relative to each other. So they may as well transfer between the grids in DC, and while they are at it, eliminate transmission losses entirely with superconductors.

Re:Technical questions

[jeffstar]

now here's a question, when converting voltages for DC transmission lines, do they step it up with a standard AC transformer before rectification or does the voltage get boosted on the DC side after the rectifier, or as part of the rectifier?

pretty much still need AC to make massive changes in voltage right?

Re:Technical questions

[robbak]

One would think they would step up the 60Hz AC, then rectify, but I don't know. It depends on how good high-voltage switchmode circuitry is, but you would think that the radiative losses of 500kV at 5 or 10 kHz would be too much.
A transformer to carry that much current must be big, so the switchmode gains (largely based around the physically smaller transformer) wouldn't be there.
At least, that's me thinking. Ask someone with a physics degree if you need to know.

1.21 giggawatts

[uslinux.net]

Now we can go back in time four times!

Re:1.21 giggawatts

[localman57]

Now we can go back in time four times!

Great! Go back and post this as the first post, and you might avoid getting modded "redundant".

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans like you with your bitches get DAMN old. Next you will be telling Australians that they are no Australia or Oceania, but are Penal Colony # 5.

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

America: the United States of Mexicans.

There, I fixed that for you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Your First Premis Is WRONG

[kevinNCSU]

Apparently not as hard to understand as sarcasm =P

Bitching about gibibytes...

[Tetsujin]

This is why I come to slashdot! A technical article with the right units! 5 GW of electricity. Not 100,000 volts of electricity, not 50,000 Amps of electricity, but 5 GW. Now, that's useful!

And none of that nonsense revisionist crap making an established standard of "GW" into "GiW" either.

I don't believe hard drive or floppy drive capacities have ever measured a megabyte as 2^20 bytes. That peculiarity has always been limited to RAM and to the measurements the software on the computer itself perform...

Having grown up with a kilobyte being 1024 bytes (and later on becoming more familiar with larger units like megabytes and finally a gigabyte before I learned you could have more than one of 'em...) I can relate to your resistance to that change. And the unit names they chose (kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes, etc.) are fairly silly-sounding... But... "kilo"-anything else is 1000 of it. "mega"-anything else is 1000000 of it. "giga"-anything else is 1000000000 of it. These are unit prefixes which predate the era of home computers - so really, I think this disambiguation is proper, and was long overdue.

Re:Bitching about gibibytes...

[Coren22]

Actually, floppy drives are measured in 1024 byte size. That 1.44 MB floppy is approximately 2 Million Bytes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Disk_formats

Re:Bitching about gibibytes...

[DarthStrydre]

Floppies are "half base-2 and half base-10", that is if you believe that 3.5" HD floppies were capable of 1.44M(i)B, and 5.25" floppies 1.2M(i)B.

3.5":
At 80 tracks, 2 heads, and 18 sectors there are 2880 sectors of 512 Bytes apiece, for 1440 kibiBytes, (not kiloBytes). Divide this by 1000, and you get 1.44 kilokibiBytes.

In other words, in strict base 2 you get.
2880*512/1024/1024=1.40625MiB.
in base 10:
2880*512/1,000/1000=1,474,56MB
in base "kilokibi":
2880*512/1024/1000=1.44kikB

5.25":
At 80 tracks, 2 heads, and 15 sectors there are 2400 sectors of 512 Bytes apiece, for 1200 kibiBytes, (not kiloBytes). Divide this by 1000, and you get 1.2 kilokibiBytes.

In other words, in strict base 2 you get.
2400*512/1024/1024=1.171,875MiB.
in base 10:
2400*512/1,000/1000=1.228,8MB
in base "kilokibi":
2400*512/1024/1000=1.2kikB

So what's the superconducting material?

[Dr. Spork]

I actually tried to RTFA and the best clue I found about what this "high temperature superconductor" is was a picture with them showing a liquid nitrogen cooling system. If these superconductors are operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures, I would assume that they have to be of the Type 2 ceramics, almost certainly some sort of copper oxides. However, inside of the nitrogen-cooled envelope was something with many more unlabeled layers, one of which could have been a liquid helium system. (Whenever you use liquid helium, it's wise to surround it with a vacuum and then to surround that with a pipe cooled by liquid nitrogen, so that the helium doesn't absorb much radiated heat from the pipe.)

Does someone have more concrete information on what material they will use?

Re:So what's the superconducting material?

[VoxCombo]

I'm curious about this too. I've heard copper oxides are too brittle to use in power lines, although I haven't worked with them personally. Copper oxides are the only materials I know of which superconduct at temperatures greater than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. Progress has been made with Iron-based superconductors, but their superconducting temperature maxes out somewhere around 50K, which is below the boiling point of nitrogen (77K). So it must be a cuprate, but I'd be interested to know what they are doing to make the material industrially viable

Dur-head...

[Tetsujin]

Central Point of Failure.

Attention terrorists: we have a new target to aim for.

Meh. I think they'd get more mileage out of attacking a target people really care about.

I mean, the reason the attacks in 2001 were effective was because human lives were involved - and the whole thing played out such that we got to watch events unfold on TV. Taking out a piece of infrastructure wouldn't get the same reaction. Even if people eventually died from not having power, the reaction would be more like "why the hell haven't we fixed this already? What's wrong with our leaders?" rather than the kind of trauma we got from the towers collapsing.

If we were involved in a full-scale war, then infrastructure targets would be worthwhile for our enemies to hit, because each target destroyed would damage our ability to wage war... and because a full-scale assault would be able to take out enough of them to cause some real damage. But losing a chunk of the power grid would not be hugely disruptive, and it would be repaired.

Sodium was used because it's CHEAP and LIGHT...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

, not because of spectacular electrical properties. The obvious problem with moisture reactivity, as well as the less obvious problem of making secure electrical connections to such a soft material greatly limited its use, however.

Re:Sodium was used because it's CHEAP and LIGHT...

[localman57]

Based on this : http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=Electrical_Conductors it would appear that neither of us are right (or the article is wrong). It states that Copper is both a better conductor in general, and a better conductor per unit of weight, than Sodium. Given the need for the special environmental needs of sodium, I can't see sodium being cheaper when construction/environment/maintenance costs are factored in.

Why, then do they use it? (For the record, my internship director, the one who told me the conductivity story, apparently also doesn't know.)

Re:Sodium was used because it's CHEAP and LIGHT...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

I can't see sodium being cheaper when construction/environment/maintenance costs are factored in.

Exactly. And that's what killed it.

As far as I can tell, sodium cables were one of those brainfarts cooked up by a bunch of beancounters and engineers who never actually worked hands-on with anything in their lives. I don't think the stuff is being used in new installations anymore, because the one advantage (cheaper material cost) was outweighed in the long term by the many downsides.

Renewable renewable renewable

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

"blah blah blah renewable power blah blah renewable energy blah blah blah blah blah renewable energy blah blah blah renewable energy blah blah blah blah blah renewable energy blah blah blah"

What, are they going to filter out electricity generated by coal-fired and LNG plants? <supercilious>"Oh, we won't carry that energy..."</supercilious>

Helpful Tip...

[localman57]

If you've had an article open for a while, do a refresh before you post your comment. That way you'll be able to see any comments posted since you opened the window, and avoid "redundant" moderation.

This is particularly important for articles further down the page.

how many ZPM can it handle?

[Joe The Dragon]

how many ZPM can it handle?

The west is geared HEAVILY for AE

[WindBourne]

We have loads more sun, less clouds, and great geo-thermal potential. The West to the midwest has loads of wind.

I don't care for the name much.

[Jane Q. Public]

Tres Amigas? This is the U.S., not Mexico. Let's give it an English name, please.

I mean, come on. I have nothing against Spanish in particular, but it's a U.S. facility, let's give it a U.S. name. Otherwise, why not call the new trade center in New York "El Stupido"?

Re:I don't care for the name much.

[ChefInnocent]

I'll feed the troll. I'm not sure where to start though. First, they are in New Mexico which although is not Mexico 1) was part of Mexico a long time ago, 2) borders Mexico and has many Spanish speaking people (almost 30%) inhabiting the state, and 3) named New Mexico. Second, the US does not have an official language. Maybe it should, and I vote for Ute since that is a language of the peoples who inhabited the land I live on before being invaded. Do you think that people in Puerto Rico should speak English also? They are part of the US. Maybe we should just rename all the states to ensure they have a "U.S. name". I'm looking at a map, and I don't know where most these names came from, but clearly we need to start with "Hot Furnace", "Snowed", "Mountain", and "Colored" to accommodate the Anti-Spanish league. Third, the U.S. is composed of many peoples of many languages, and although English is the assumed language for the majority of its residents, it is not the only language. This of course, is much to the chagrin of the Aryan Nation and other like minded organizations. I'm sure I can go on, and even find valid reasons to support the name beyond resisting your racism (I know you said you had nothing in Particular against Spanish, but I assume that means you resent all non-English speaking peoples).

Re:I don't care for the name much.

[Jane Q. Public]

But see, you can vote for Ute, I can vote for Navaho, someone else can vote for Nez Perce. Who cares?

You are trying to make me out to be some kind of racist or something, and that is neither the case or my point. Our population speaks MANY languages. Maybe even more than any other single nation (the Russian Federation does not count because it is not one nation, same with EU), but I don't know that for sure.

But this is not a New Mexico project, and it is not being named for some New Mexico landmark. Nor Texan. It is a United States project. And, my point was that it is fitting that a United States project be named in the PREDOMINANT language of our nation, which is English. Without any prejudice implied toward any other (which in fact I stated).

You are welcome to disagree with me, but your ad-hominem attack is completely off the wall. You assume far too much.

God, The Name

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how good an idea this might be naming the critter "Three Amigos" even if disguised with a bit of Spanish may doom it to the level of success suffered by the Steve Martin movie "The Three Amigos". Perhaps a rethink of the name of the project would be wise.

That's awesome...

[hesaigo999ca]

Finally, when 3 big corporations like this converge and get together to better control the problematics of that industry, only one good thing can happen, make more money..by raising the prices in agreement.

Texas' power grid

[Anonymous Coward]

(and if anyone gave a crap about texas, they would be invited into one of the other grids already, but obviously they think they are special...)

We *are* special. We've always rejected offers in the past to "join" with the other power grids. Our grid is the best, and most robust of the three. No major blackouts, rolling or otherwise, ever in our history with the exception of localized damage due to weather-related incidents. We've always had the generating capacity to satisfy all our demand in the past with plenty of reserve capacity, and now with all the wind turbine farms being built all over the state, we have such a large surplus capacity that we have to sell it to someone.

You came off in your snide remark as if Texas somehow needed to get electricity from the other grids, but the reality is completely opposite... that it's the other grids that'll be sucking off our grid whatever we desire to sell to them from our surplus capacity. This new hub is merely the "???" right before the "Profit".

All these smart folks..

[Sunrun]

..and not one "Menáge á Trois" joke? Odd, especially considering the project name: TresAmigas (loosely translated: three girlfriends). Yay, karma-burn...

Dawn of a new age

[mollog]

Seems like this is the dawn of a new age in power transmission. The implications are many and they are huge. A lot of energy is lost in transmission, and a lot of energy was not exploited because distance prohibited cost-effective transmission.

It will take time and experience to work out the details of this technology, but its arrival is pretty important. The impact will feel evolutionary because it will necessarily be implemented in a gradual manner as the technology matures, but the consequences will be revolutionary.

And this is one of the things that the United States can only do locally. Not much of this will be imported. And new sources of energy will be developed to meet the potential markets opened up by superconductor transmission. Mexico, for example, can develop solar generation all along the border to meet American market needs.

Doomed by grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading the synopsis, I thought this project was sure to be doomed. "Tres amiga" which translates to "Three friend" is grammatically incorrect. But when I clicked through to the article on Yahoo!, that article correctly specified the project's name as "Tres amigas."

We already ship vastly more than 5GW

[Colin Smith]

Far further than the 5-10 miles this connector is talking about using copper, or aluminium.
Most of the energy losses are at the power station not in the wires.

Mod parent up.

[Hanzie]

How does connecting three previously (more or less) independent power grids produce a single point of failure? If you blow up this thing you end up with... what exists now.

mod parent +1 insightful

I think the parent is the first insightful post of this thread.

Flawed reasoning about square miles

[Tetsujin]

I mean, a triangle with 22.5 square miles in it? How are you gonna fill a triangle with squares? You need triangle miles...

Well, clearly, you take some of the square miles and cut them in half from corner to corner.

That's where the .5 mile comes from.

How are you going to use 22 square miles and one triangle mile to make a triangle? The whole concept is silly. If you had, say, 21 square miles, and eight triangle miles made by cutting square miles in half diagonally, then you could make a right triangle...

But I'm guessing this isn't even a right triangle we're talking about...

Cool battery

[Hells Ranger]

What's nice with a system like that is if they make truly connect each section together you get a inductance that carry 15 GW(3*5GW per section). That's useful for load balancing but you can also store that energy in the system.

Since it's a superconductor you get one freaking huge battery. It's not a lot to run en entire state but it should give a few moment in case of power failure.