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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. "
'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.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Superconducting grid interconnects (and HVDC in general) make power grids more stable because they eliminate synchronization requirements.
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).
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.
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.
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.
For those who aren't sure where that triangle is, a map.
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.
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.
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.