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US Could Lower Carbon Emissions 78% With New National Transmission Network (smithsonianmag.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the cooling-things-down dept.

mdsolar writes with this story from Smithsonian magazine about how building a national transmission network could lead to a gigantic reduction in carbon emissions. From the story: "The United States could lower carbon emissions from electricity generation by as much as 78 percent without having to develop any new technologies or use costly batteries, a new study suggests. There's a catch, though. The country would have to build a new national transmission network so that states could share energy. 'Our idea was if we had a national 'interstate highway for electrons' we could move the power around as it was needed, and we could put the wind and solar plants in the very best places,' says study co-author Alexander MacDonald, who recently retired as director of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado."

19 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by peon_a-z,A-Z,0-9$_+! · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Among many ignored assumptions, did this post take into account the carbon emissions of building such a grid?

    Construction equipment doesn't run on lithium batteries.

    1. Re: Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by afidel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's no reason that construction equipment couldn't be electric powered, the world's largest self moving coal shovel is electric because no engine could directly power it and once you get to a certain size it makes no sense to generate onboard.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      This unsupported accusation brought to you by crippling insecurity.

    3. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by Your.Master · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's interesting in that this is a grid-based solution that helps *all* forms of electrical power, but plays into renewables' weaknesses especially well by amortizing the variability.

      Less to mdsolar's liking, it also plays into centralized power production, by letting a single centralized power production facility exist in an area of relatively low demand and export the excess more efficiently -- one of the strengths of renewables is that it scales down well enough that you can get away with local production more often, whereas other sources and especially nuclear is not great at scaling down but is exceptioanlly good at scaling up.

      But very much to mdsolar's liking, this means the interests of traditional production and renewables are actually aligned on the subject. Both sides of the coin benefit in different ways from improved transmission efficiencies.

    4. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      O come on! That's done today and would be no different in principle. Besides did you actually read the study & ask the authors on the model they used such that you know they didn't include 'cost of right of way'?

      Geez, mdsolar IS an ass but just because he submits something doesn't mean its not an interesting read.

      Seriously, the article simply basis the model on the use of HVDC widely...googling the use of HVDC you find out that in fact it is being built out so as its built out it will produce other benefits, some accrue to traditional generation and centralized production models & some may make Wind & Solar economically viable.

      Look, I'm a huge proponent of the use of nuclear, I figure the 'greenies' got us in to any current mess with global warming due to their combative position over the last 30 years having stunted its growth...that doesn't mean I'm automatically biased AGAINST Wind & Solar...on their face their not entirely stupid ways of generating energy & when they get reasonably cost effective & useful we should use them more.

    5. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Interconnected grids led to blackouts over huge parts of the US in the past and presumably leaves that possibility open in the future.

      I think making one huge US grid is just asking for a huge failure at some point.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    6. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nuclear scales fine. Conventional LWRs however are a different story; they worked fine in a submarine, but it was foolish to scale them so large. The inventors of the technology (Alvin Weinberg and Eugene Wigner) argued against it, and proposed the molten salt reactor as a safer alternative for civilian nuclear power. Unfortunately, politics won over safety, and the rest is history. Decay heat removal in an LWR is extremely difficult at a large scale, and accidents have and can still happen. (However, it is important to note that all accidents combined to date have resulted in very little loss of human life or damage to the environment; certainly far less than the alternatives, solar and wind included.)

      Molten salt reactors however, can be scaled up and down, and even load follow. They can be placed near the load using existing transmission infrastructure, and do not require an enormously expensive nation-wide renewable-friendly grid to be constructed. Ironically, small regional grids with reactors already provide a distributed and reliable energy system that the proposed super-grid of renewables is fundamentally incapable of.

      MSRs would be sized for flexibility and series manufacturing. (typically < 250MWe) They can be sited virtually anywhere, allowing rapid replacement of existing fossil plants with no other change in transmission infrastructure. In addition to producing safe power, they also solve the "waste" problem, and minimize mining and other environmental impacts.

    7. Re:Mdsolar strikes again with unrealistic FUD by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The very fact that you use phrases like "alternative" and "traditional" to describe energy sources destroys any credibility your argument may have had. Energy sources are a matter of engineering - tradition has no place in the discussion except as something to avoid like the plague. Engineering is an excercise in progress - literally the thing that "tradition" exists to impede.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. Keep dreaming. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    'Our idea was if we had a national 'interstate highway for electrons' ...

    We can barely get Congress to fund maintaining our interstate highway for cars and trucks.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Keep dreaming. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Or trains. (Forgot about them.)

      Trains lose money, so they require a lot of government subsidies. This grid will (supposedly) save money, so it should require no subsidies. There is no reason for the government to "fund" it. If private investors are not willing to pay for it, then that is a sure sign that it is not going to generate an acceptable ROI, and shouldn't be built.

    2. Re:Keep dreaming. by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I mean, you're right most of the time, but we need some government programs to take care of those entrenched in society's last mile.

      Somebody has to do the expected to do poorly, return on investment-wise public works, 'cause we just need roads, bridges, and stuff.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    3. Re:Keep dreaming. by rmdingler · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The important thing is, Libertarian infrastructure creates and maintains itself, in the universe's first-encountered positive entropy loop.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    4. Re:Keep dreaming. by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If private investors are not willing to pay for it, then that is a sure sign that it is not going to generate an acceptable ROI, and shouldn't be built."

      Two ideas on why an investment wouldn't be done despite being beneficial for the involved parties:
      1) Local optimum
      2) Tragedy of the commons

    5. Re:Keep dreaming. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Or trains. (Forgot about them.)

      Trains lose money, so they require a lot of government subsidies. This grid will (supposedly) save money, so it should require no subsidies. There is no reason for the government to "fund" it. If private investors are not willing to pay for it, then that is a sure sign that it is not going to generate an acceptable ROI, and shouldn't be built.

      Yeah I guess that space program we've had for the past 50 or years was totally a waste. We could all have just waited till Elon Musk inevitably finished building his Mars spaceport, funded entirely by non-commie,free-market tourist revenue.

  3. U.S. could lower carbon emissions 100% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With new nuclear power generating plants.

  4. What could possibly go wrong? by Etcetera · · Score: 4, Insightful

    JFC, there's an entire segment of the tech industry that doesn't seem to live in the real world.

    Having more things hooked up together doesn't make things more reliable, it makes them more vulnerable to both common mode failures and cascading system collapses.

    5 years ago the entire county of San Diego was knocked off-line for the better part of a day because a power worker in Arizona flipped the wrong switch. The entire NE US was out a decade ago because of a single software bug, and I seem to recall another recent blackout caused by squirrels.

    The fragility of our nation's power grid and the lack of cross-connects are two separate issues, but there's NO WAY that the second should even be remotely considered until the inter-reliability of the systems that ARE connected is fixed. And then maybe about 10 years after someone claims it's fixed we *perhaps* consider taking the next step.

    --
    Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
  5. NO! by p51d007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Once there is a government run "national" grid, then those states that, according to the government, waste, use too much, do not do what the government says in reducing this or that, will be CUT OFF, or cut down on the amount of electricity they use. Every time the FEDERAL government gets its hands on something, they can DICTATE how it is used, consumed or anything else. The 10th amendment is about powers not constitutionally granted the federal government, be left to the states. Do not DOUBT me on this!

  6. Re:Not without storage by mdsolar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OK, so new nuclear costs $0.14/kwh assuming 90% capacity factor. Now you want to switch to 60% capacity factor. That raises the cost to $0.19/kwh? Maybe the batteries would be cheaper.

  7. Re:Not without storage by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The load following of french plants is actually not as easy as you make it look. It is an complex orchestrated plan which plant is regulated down over night and followed by which next.
    The point is not ordinary load following, the problem is a plant is regulated down, it either hast to be regulated up pretty soon again, less the something like 20 mins, or you can not power it up again for the next aprox. 6h as to many neutron capturing decay products (mainly Boron) are accumulating.
    So your reaction times only work if a plant is constantly changing load up and down. And compared to an modern coal plant: that is incredible slow.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.