[deleted]
The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
11–20 of 158 posts
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#12These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases. Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit. The bit about automaticaly shifting power to othe…
Is this not just the same question as for decades?
Which is cheaper, a peaker plant after the transmission line hitting peak capacity, or increased transmission line capacity for a small percentage of the time?
Now it's just battery storage instead of natural gas peaker plants. You can still smooth out the transmission line capacity with downstream storage.
Or have we already done that to the max with peaker plants and now transmission lines are running at their capacity 90% of the time? I haven't read the numbers in a while, it used to be really bad!
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#13> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
[deleted]
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#14Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines.
(Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.)
Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stor...
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#15These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases. Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit. The bit about automaticaly shifting power to othe…
Is this not just the same question as for decades? Which is cheaper, a peaker plant after the transmission line hitting peak capacity, or increased transmission line capacity for a small percentage of the time? Now it's just battery storage instead of natural gas peaker plants. You can still smooth out the transmission line capacity with downstream storage. Or have we already done that to the max with peaker plants a…
Here is the thing: planning a grid is always done with cost in mind, we do not build golden pylons for the sake of it.
But on the other hand, reasonable grid planning is done a decade ahead, more for some equipment. Money spent in a hurry is likely to be wasted in that business.
Storage to optimize grid (not production) cost is neither efficient nor resilient as far as I know.
Also having a peaker plant solves production peaks, not transmission limits. And nobody builds a second peaker at the other end of a line to save on grid costs. Redispatching is a thing, but it is a small optimization, not a solution to an underdeveloped grid.
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#16> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
Maybe it will some day. I have two electric cars in my garage sitting idle most of the day and night. I have no way to connect them to the grid in a bidirectional manner. There is nothing a local electrician can order and install for me that will allow it. If I had a Ford Lightning truck, they could get me a proprietary Ford Charge Station Pro (which doesn't use ISO 15118-2), that's about it.
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#17> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
The solution seems obvious in the use of wind turbines: when the wind blows there is power, the lines are cooled and the cars charged. No wind, no power, no need for cooling.
Am I missing something? A tag maybe?
On a more serious note on how to get people to change their electricity use there is a real solution in flexible (hourly) pricing. This is what we have where I live - Sweden - and it can be a way to lower electricity bills quite a bit [1] by moving power hogs like water heaters, tumble driers and car chargers to the lowest-priced times of day. If you have solar panels and a contract which enables you to sell excess power at market rates (like we do) you can decide to feed their output into the net when prices are at their peak - usually around noon and somewhere between 17.00 and 21.00 (when it is still quite light in much of Sweden given that we straddle the polar circle) - while using most of it for power hogs off-peak.
[1] on the assumption that flexible pricing is controlled by supply and demand, not by some policy-enforcing surcharge. Electricity prices need to be able to go lower as well as higher than 'normal', not just normal or higher.
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#18> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
This article is about power transit, not about fixing production peaks. V2G is not a solution here.
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#19Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines. (Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.) Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitac…
The US has numerous HVDC lines and the market is set to grow in the next 5 years. It could improve and be better of course. Renewables will probably force more adoption.
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-s...
Re: The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
#20These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases. Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit. The bit about automaticaly shifting power to othe…
[dead]