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?!

[LoRdTAW]

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

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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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

[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?

I know amiga !

[Atreide]

Sure Amiga still rocks !

Who will build an Atari ST grid ?

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)

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.

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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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).

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.

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

[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: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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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: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.

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?

[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: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: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. :)

Where?

[pgn674]

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

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: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: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?

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

[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: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.