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US Could Lower Carbon Emissions 78% With New National Transmission Network (smithsonianmag.com)
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."
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.
'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. . . .
With new nuclear power generating plants.
My income comes in great part from the oil and gas industry, but I'm all for energy alternatives and their development.
Folks just have to recognize, with little interest in nuclear development, that the comfortable grid is still generationally dependent upon the fossil fuels for stability. I will support the betterment of alternatives, but they can't carry us just yet.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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,
Set your wayback machine to 1938.
This small step would be nice though.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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!
There's a difference in thinking when you look up "national grid" on Wikipdedia.org:
USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is a national grid, or rather two of them, east side and west side. The split is roughly from Montana down to Texas. It's been like that for decades. Are they talking about upgrading it or what exactly do they mean? Power is sold back and forth all over the east and all over the west.
What's wrong with the old ones?
People who make these "Wow! Wouldn't it be neat if we ...." statements with no idea how the existing systems already work make me think they are trying to sell bridges to suckers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Such projects need to start someplace.
So by golly get started.
Any large producer or distribution company should see this %% of
improvement as a way to increase market and sidestep a lot of carbon
regulation. North-South routes seem to be a good place to start.
Any simulation can be constrained to a data subset and
optimizations rerun. Compare the results and overlay to
see which paths are shared solutions.
Any 5% solution that is part of a net +75% solution would
be a place to start.
For what it is worth this has been presented as an improvement
about once every 3 or 7 years as the presidential/ congressional
elections come due.
I want to dismiss this as foo but there are real gains to make
by improving distribution including the last mile.
Me I am installing LED lamps one or two at a time as needed.
They are getting better and less expensive...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Does anybody know how much it would cost to build this grid?
This describes some ot the cost savings: https://t.co/SXD9LGuIWF
...it'll cost nothing to build, nothing to maintain, there'll be no loss along the way, nothing will go wrong, and it'll last forever.
I think somewhere along the way, someone forgot that storing fuel is more efficient, not less. That's why every living plant and animal does it.
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
...you know, They might just be upmodding you in hopes that you'll grow complacent.
I don't suppose you're posting from a rural area, by any chance?
Those cfls last so long it will be a while before changing many more.
There's the Pacific Intertie.
Nukes don't vary output well. Thus storage is needed in a nukes only system. The point here is that transmission substitutes for batteries for renewables. It does not for nukes. Since nukes are inherently much more expensive and batteries add to the expense, this is about the worse possible choice.
local passenger rail loses money as setting fairs at an level needed to be in the black will make people not use it.
Glad you are cowering in a corner. Transmission has a low carbon cost.
A couple of nits:
Hydro-Quebec has HVDC feeds from its hydro dams near James Bay in Northern Quebec to Montreal and Northern New England. Has had for a long time. They work fine.
IIRC The US has roughly 20GW of pumped storage generation although I'm not sure that all of it is actually in use. Niagara-Mohawk operates two pumped storage facilities used to buffer off-peak power from the generators at Niagara Falls -- one at Lewiston near the falls and one at Gilboa-Blenheim SW of Albany. They also work fine I'm told, but they aren't cheap. Based on Gilboa-Blenheim, I'm guessing that 1GW of new pumped storage capacity might run between 500M and one billion dollars. And I'm not sure how many sites are available that have both adequate water and a convenient place to store it high above the generators/pumps. (The drop at G-B is about 1000 ft)
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
You are right that nuclear does not do small well. Naval reactors do well but need dangerously enriched fuel for civilian use. Small is extra expensive for nuclear. But nuclear does not do large very well either. The cooling requirements become too great. Nuclear it thermally inefficient because the fuel needs to be protected from itself. So a gigawatt is about as big as it gets.
There is a national grid, or rather two of them, east side and west side. The split is roughly from Montana down to Texas. It's been like that for decades. Are they talking about upgrading it or what exactly do they mean? Power is sold back and forth all over the east and all over the west.
There are 3 continental grids: East, West and Texas.
Every user connected to such a 'smart grid' will have a second-generation 'smart meter installed'. This would continuously monitor your power use and be able to, under control of the grid, turn your major appliances on and off according to the fluctuating generating capacity coming into the grid from windfields and solar farms. You might have to run your A/C longer in the mornings, when it's windy in Texas, and have it turn itself off when the sun has set in Arizona. That is what putting renewables on the grid will mean to us all.
First-generation smart meters, which only monitor the changing loads and don't have the control function, are already being installed in my state. Despite the association with renewables, the hippie mom lobby has come out against them on grounds they "emit radiation." By this they mean that each smart meter transmits its daily load readings using the cellular data system. It's the same as having someone standing at the outside corner of your garage, making a phone call several times a day.
Good luck getting these braindeadniks to approve having Smart Grid turn their appliances on and off at its discretion.
And we need to actually build all those wind and solar plants. And we need the feeders from the wind and solar plants to the new transmission grid. And we need to ignore the fact that the US isn't the British Empire and the sun does in fact set on the entire country. But hey, if we solved all those problems, we could reduce carbon emissions a lot.
But local passenger rail is a benefit to everyone as it helps take cars off the road. As such it is a good target for government subsidy. It helps unclog traffic and reduce pollution. I remember taking the train in Germany many times when I was stationed there. Convenient, fast and on time it made getting around in an area where traffic and parking were hell much nicer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
You are of course correct about Texas; I didn't include it because it isn't a national grid, unless you consider Texas a country (as some, I'm sure, still do).
Texas disconnected from the main grids long ago in an attempt to avoid Federal regulation.
There are things that are net wins for society that can't be built effectively by the private sector on a user-pays basis. Roads and sewers are classic examples. National power grids are probably another.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm not certain that's a fair comparison, seeing as how OPEC started a price war with the shale oil fracking companies (http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/15/fracking-boom-bust-opec/).
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
"Are you willing to give up 25% of the electricity generated to power line losses"
Are you sure about that number? I made a serious attempt a few years ago to find a reasonable number for transmission losses.and the best I could come up with was in the 5-8% range. While some "transmission" losses are a function of distance, a lot of them are at the source and destination. As a practical matter, almost all electricity is used someplace other than where it is generated, so I concluded that the distance related losses probably aren't all that high.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
What are you proposing, running power lines to the North Pole to draw power from Santa's minions by means of a treadmill? There are no two points within the continental US that are far enough apart to see losses like that on HVDC. And the average trip is much much shorter.
You missed the point. The idea is to move electricity that has been generated with 0 carbon emission, wind and solar, to places where it is needed. Even if 25% of the electricity is wasted in transmission there would be no increase in carbon emissions.
The second point is that they propose HVDC lines would would lose much less electricity.
One of the problems with the "solution" is that HVDC does not step up/down voltage or convert into AC efficiently. Another is the cost of building an HVDC grid and grafting it into the existing AC grid. It will not be cheap.
> '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,'
You don't have that? In 2016? WTF?
This is a great project to be done... in the Fifties. :-/
What's the difference between a "price war" and "competition"? Are you suggesting companies shouldn't be allowed to set prices for their products as they see fit?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Fares. A level.
Literacy. It's everybody's friend....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This is what I have been saying for years. Although I have usually stipulated they should be using superconducting highways; I see that's not necessary to get the ball rolling on a national infrastructure. I think it should be a government run operation with subcontractors building it out. It should be government run because I feel it's a matter of national security. Should a natural disaster strike the government should have a locked in system for rerouting massive amounts of power around damaged areas. But one of the problems with the current grid is that when power is generated from renewable resources it's in areas away from where the majority of the consumers are.
Christ, "setting fairs"? "At an level"? Go back to grade school.
There is a new HVDC breaker that avoids that issue. http://news.nationalgeographic...
In answer to your question: I'm not suggesting that at all. Returning to your original comment, I'm still not understanding what connection you're trying to make between shale oil fracking and passenger rail, unless you're simply trying to point out that any venture can lose money.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Second reply to your comment because I'm apparently a moron today. Re-reading the last three posts, my OPEC comment was irrelevant to what I should have asked to begin with. Please elaborate on the connection between shale oil fracking and local passenger rail, aside from them both being (currently) unprofitable ventures. I can't understand what point you were trying to make.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
In the medium to long term, price wars can be good for the dominant firms in the industry. Typically, the smaller, more marginal, firms cannot compete and must close. The remaining firms absorb the market share of those that have closed.
Price wars, if they go on long enough, can lead to or reinforce oligopolies. Larger firms can sometimes afford to lose money for a while to drive out competition, which is arguably what OPEC is doing to fracking.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Oddly as far as security is concerned we need numerous, isolated, power grids. With a nationwide grid, an attack at one point could wipe out the power supply for the entire nation. Yet we can also exterminate ourselves by allowing pollution. There is no easy answer.
Have you looked at the national debt? Have you looked at the state of social services in the US? Have you seen our crumbling infrastructure? How in the hell can we justify retrofitting our electric grid like that? Why don't we just start generating electricity without carbon emissions by using modern nuclear power? Today. Let me guess, gotta "save the planet;" let's stifle that debate point with a little Armageddon.
This is why some folks think "climate change" isn't real. Because there's no reality in the discussion of policy solutions, only a long series of variations on a machine gun volley to the foot, to loosen a noose of our own making.
This just seems myopic to me. This would just prolong carbon emissions, which just add up. We need to get off of carbon emitting technologies, not make them transmit more efficiently. That should be the priority, if only because we're going to run out of fossils.
It will not address getting off of fossil technologies. It actually might backfire and prolong the use of carbon emitting tech, just making the endgame a little longer. Not even terribly much longer in the time scale of climate change, now that I think about it. "Boil that frog" slower, that's the solution. That is what will come of it, given the way the debate is currently being framed.
For $$X that we don't have in the next 20 years the way the economy is going. To help compensate for immature technologies like solar. Oops. Context also matters. Well, at least we know how to do wind at this point.
It seems to me that theorists should stop suggesting these "great ideas" to the public. It makes them sound judgmentally unreliable. At this point in the issue, that makes some people not trust them as to whether "climate change" even exists. We should whisper about ideas like this, as something that might occur in the distant future, when perhaps the world economy isn't on the brink.
Sounds like a "free market" to me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seriously, there is NO WAY that this would cut 78% of our CO2. However it makes good sense from not only economics, but also for the ability to provide emergency power.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, that sounds like an *unregulated* market, which isn't quite the same as a free market, although sadly a lot of people - including those who are ostensibly pro-free market - conflate the two.
In any case, I'm not arguing that monopolies or oligopolies are good - in most cases, they aren't.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Can we export Texas as it's own country? It's not secession if we are pointing them at the door, is it?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
We've also had roughly 850 miles of DC transmission lines running from the Columbia River to a bit north of Los Angeles since the 1960s. Works great, and is even reversible so that energy can be moved where it's needed on a seasonal basis. Moves 3400MW of juice from the hydro projects in the Northwest to roughly 2 to 3 million households in LA when flowing south.
What's new and scary about high-voltage DC transmission lines again?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Tres Amigas SuperStation
It would be a cool, large-scale application of superconductivity, but they're having some difficulties. Root for them if you like.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
You make a lot of statements but don't back them up. How might it extend use of fossil fuels?
The main problem with solar and wind power is that they are both dependent on the weather. Too little or too much wind and wind turbines don't work. Storms and winter at higher latitudes decrease solar output. The idea is to be able to move electricity much further than practical today and even out those variations.
If people think that HVDC lines has anything to to with whether or not climate change exists then they have the problem.
Spent nuclear fuel is not a proliferation risk because a power plant makes the wrong isotopes of plutonium for bombs. To make a bomb, you need pure plutonium239 [Pu239]. Isotopes: One chemical element can come in several isotopes. The element [atomic] number describes the number of protons in the nucleus. Different isotopes of an element have different numbers of neutrons. You are made of atoms. Every atom has a nucleus. Each nucleus contains the number of protons required for that element plus some number of neutrons. The number of neutrons for one element varies. For example, oxygen has 8 protons and either 8 or 9 or 10 neutrons. We say that 8O16, 8O17 and 8O18 are 3 different isotopes of oxygen. You breathe all 3 isotopes of oxygen. Some isotopes of some elements are radioactive, while other isotopes of the same elements are stable. You inevitably eat both radioactive and stable isotopes of the elements that you must eat to live. To make Pu239, you have to shut down the reactor and do a fuel cycle after one month or less of operation. Since removing and replacing fuel takes a month, a short-cycled reactor operates half the time. A power plant that has a one month on, one month off fuel cycle would stick out a lot more than the proverbial sore thumb. A reactor used to make electricity runs for 18 months to 2 years between refuelings. In that time, Pu239 absorbs extra neutrons, becoming Pu240, Pu241, Pu242, 95americium243, 96curium247, 97berkelium247, 98californium251, 99einsteinium25, 100fermium257 and so on. The higher [more protons] elements are made by beta decays, where a neutron becomes a proton, an electron and a neutrino. 7% Pu240 is enough to spoil a bomb and you get a lot more than 7% Pu240 from a reactor that has been running for 18 months. Separating Pu239 from those higher actinides is a technology that has not been developed. Nobody would try to do that separation because the easy way to make Pu239 is with a short cycle reactor. Governments that have plutonium bombs, have government owned government operated [GOGO] reactors that do nothing but make Pu239.
That plan uses natural gas to make up for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. You get 99% reduction in CO2 by going 100% nuclear. Nuclear power is the only way to stop making CO2 that actually works. To stop Global Warming, we must replace all large fossil fueled power plants with nuclear. Renewable Energy mandates cause more CO2 to be produced, not less, and renewable energy doubles or quadruples your electric bill. The reasons are as follows: Since solar “works” 15% of the time and wind “works” 20% of the time, we need either energy storage technology we don’t have or ambient temperature superconductors and we don’t have them either. Wind and solar are so intermittent that electric companies are forced to build new generator capacity that can load-follow very fast, and that means natural gas fired gas turbines. The gas turbines have to be kept spinning at full speed all the time to ramp up quickly enough. The result is that wind and solar not only double your electric bill, wind and solar also cause MORE CO2 to be produced. We do not have battery or energy storage technology that could smooth out wind and solar at a price that would be possible to do. The energy storage would "cost" in the neighborhood of a QUADRILLION dollars for the US. That is an imaginary price because we could not get the materials to do it if we had that much money. The only real way to reduce CO2 production from electricity generation is to replace all fossil fueled power plants with the newest available generation of nuclear. Nuclear can load-follow fast enough as long as wind and solar power are not connected to the grid. Generation 4 nuclear can ramp fast enough to make up for the intermittency of wind and solar, but there is no reason to waste time and money on wind and solar.
Proliferation as in you dont want your redneck cousin with any non trivial amount of PU, a decent quantity of Americium etc etc.
No sir I dont like it.
The US cannot even effectively build and use rail for both long and short distance. That would not only save tons of energy, it would also increase productivity. It would also not be that difficult to do as we once used to have a very dense and well connected rail network of which many lines were converted into bike trails and rarely overbuilt because the long and narrow stretches of land are not suitable for much. Instead, mind boggling amounts are wasted on an unsustainable Interstate system that would require even more funding to overcome the problems of crumbling infrastructure. In any case, string the power lines along the Interstate highways as much as possible. Those stretches are already damaged by sealed surfaces and pollution of various kinds.
So, does this mean businesses located in the country, or does it mean the country's government, or some awful hybrid, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? (And we know how that turned out.)
If electricity production and distribution were not a centrally-planned operation (http:duckduckgo.com/q=gosplan), there would be incentives for electric power companies to create such transmission facilities, or for entrepreneurs to create them.
Instead, we have state regulators controlling prices and approving investment decisions, with the intent of requiring them to be profitable but not too profitable.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.