We need transmission to solve global warming 15

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1. 

   ron dickerson Posted 7:02 pm
   20 Oct 2009

   Perhaps there are more appropriate structures in nature to compare electrical grids to. Some suggestions are viruses,mycelia mats, metastasizing cancers, tent caterpillar nests, parasites. I'm having a lot of difficulty with the fish, whale, bird, and plant comparisons. These suggested organisms like the grid, eventually stress the host until neither are viable. Maybe future generations will recognize the folly of such complexity, and create unwired and real energy independence.

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   1. 

      amazingdrx Posted 9:18 pm
      20 Oct 2009

      Yeah let's consider a natural model. Fractal rules that govern schools of fish, armies of ants, the growth of roots and leaves.
      
      A distributed generation and storage smart grid operating with distributed fractal computing can supply the needs of one home or a continent by continually adjusting demand to supply. The more diverse the supply, over a continental grid, the more reliable renewable energy will be.
      
      And we are not just talking about supplying power for homes. Factories, trains, and vehicles will take large industrial scale power. As gar points out a national super grid can supply that large scale power without storage. I think superconducting electromagnetic storage will be added to the super grid. This will make each region independent in case of widespread emergency, like hurricanes or volcanic eruption that blocks out solar energy.

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2. 

   ron dickerson Posted 11:42 pm
   20 Oct 2009

   It's likely that Gar is foreseeing the more probable path of our collective energy future, in a more realistic fashion than the the folks at The New Rules Institute. I make this observation not based on a judgement of the merits of either argument, but simply the inertia of how our society currently works. While we tend to mimic nature when it is in our perceived best interest, we do and will ignore nature to generate some money. This is a uniquely human behavior that would be very difficult to find a reference to in the natural world.
   
   I am admittedly biased about grid expansion. The transformative and market disruptive aspects of renewable energy inspire me more than the business as usual of centralized power and distribution. Conceptualizing that our future will include a sustainable and utopian energy future based on technological advances, with a mix of centralized and distributed elements, ignores the net results of this model that we face today.
   
   Armies of ants are a very applicable comparison...

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3. 

   setb Posted 7:26 am
   21 Oct 2009

   Gar,
   
   Your premise is a little flawed. 100% of our energy from renewable sources? Not what we need in the short-term. What we need is more clean energy now. So why stick a $200 billion dollar hurdle in the way? The updated grid is important, but isn't crucial to getting us to the first step. In fact, it's a little like building an Olympic-sized track to prep for your toddler's first steps...

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   1. 

      amazingdrx Posted 9:15 am
      21 Oct 2009

      A super grid will not be built over night. The 200 billion will be spent over a decade ot two. That puts the spending into a different perspective, 10 to 20 billion per year.
      
      Subsidies and tax breaks for fossil and nuclear power are over 100 billion per year. Shifting those funds is the key to building out renewable energy.
      
      No, 100% of our energy will not come from renewables tomorow. It will be a gradual transition. By engaging diverse renewable energy sources, from different areas that will become a smooth transition.
      
      Allowing a return on investment to individual investors and large industrial investors alike, with a continental electricty market place, is the way to get the kind of change we need quickly enough to head off the worst effects of climate change.
      
      Just as national highway systems and railroads let investors in local agriculture and industry market their products all over the country, this electrical super highway will bring on exponential commercial growth. This time in renewable energy devices and green jobs and manufacturing.

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4. 

   setb Posted 9:28 am
   21 Oct 2009

   "exponential commercial growth"--is not my goal.

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   1. 

      amazingdrx Posted 10:32 pm
      21 Oct 2009

      Yeah I guess I agree on a personal level, I'm not looking to become the next John D of renewable energy either. I would rather live a high quality, zero carbon foot print life, built on a small scale with friends.
      
      The trouble is that the rest of humanity, like 90%, don't share our dream. It will take a very large, exponentially expanding replacement of their coal powered, gas guzzling dreams with commercial renewable energy. That will take trillions of dollars.
      
      And it needs to start yesterday to save the biosphere as we know it.
      
      But our small scale efforts are not in vain, they lead by example. Setting a trend to follow.

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5. 

   Gar Lipow Posted 7:00 pm
   21 Oct 2009

   >"exponential commercial growth"--is not my goal.
   
   Whether it is commercial or not, don't you want renewable electricity to replace coal and natural gas? Sure, we need efficiency too - maybe to lower electricity use in absolute terms, or maybe to keep it level while we move transport and and much of industry, and possibly a fair amount of heating and cooling (via heat pumps) from fossil fuels to renewable electricity. But whatever amount of electricity we end up consuming, don't you want the overwhelming majority of the supply to be generated from sun and wind and other renewable source rather than coal and nuclear?

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   1. 

      setb Posted 8:20 am
      22 Oct 2009

      Gar,
      
      Yes I very much want to see growth in renewable energy. I also think there is a ton we could do with reduced energy use (turning off the lights at night) & efficiency.
      
      My larger point is, that my feeling of the importance of this report is that we can be building new model for our energy production & distribution--one based on local energy. And it's something we can do right now.
      
      It's a case of priorities. Renewable energy does not necessarily require a updated grid--and we can't afford to wait for it to be built. It should be in the next step, not a hurdle to wait for.
      
      There's a larger question about how we build our new energy systems, its structure, who owns it & who profits. I tend to think a major reason we're in this problem is that we've entrusted a huge responsibility to selfish corporations that are willing to lie, cheat & steal to maintain their profits. And instead of using the opportunity inherent in the clean energy revolution to build a more equitable and civic system--we're cementing their power with free allowances, guaranteed monopolies and public investments that lessen competition & pad profits. Sorry for the rant (not aimed at you Gar).

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6. 

   amazingdrx Posted 12:26 am
   22 Oct 2009

   World GDP is around 60 trillion, so a trillion a year invested in the shift to renewable energy worldwide is not an unreasonable suggestion. Maybe a measly subsidy and tax shift of around 100 billion per year by governments worldwide could get private investment on that trillion dollar per year scale to go into renewable energy.
   
   It seems likely that careful planning of exactly how much to encourage which parts of a transition like this, say HVDC transmission, utility customer incentives for solar panels, or farm biogas/organic fertilizer, for instance, would encourage growth that would negate the present growth in the rate of GHG induced global climate change.
   
   The growth curves can start out with GHG climate change ahead and industrial commercial scale worldwide green manufacturing could catch up, cancelling GHG increase and even extracting GHG from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, with organic fertilizer.
   
   This sort of approach is kind of a form of geo-engineering, but it engineers soil back to a natural carbon sink living condition and engineers our energy machinery, a global scale disaster with millions of machines spewing GHG, to become neutral in terms of GHG.

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7. 

   John Farrell Posted 7:53 am
   22 Oct 2009

   As an author of Energy Self-Reliant States, I'd like to correct a few misconceptions:
   1. CHP is not "a lot" of the ILSR estimate of state potential. In most states, it could provide around 5% of demand.
   2. The new micro hydro estimates are neither large (less than 5% in most states) nor are they made without environmental considerations (see the report's appendix for the numerous environmental exclusions).
   3. ILSR is not particularly optimistic about biomass. In fact, we exclude it from our analysis. Even in the report's 1st edition, we saw biofuels contributing a maximum of 25% of vehicle fuel.
   
   Having satisfied my inner nitpick, I've also posted a response on Grist to Mr Libow's very important point - do we need a new nationwide high-voltage transmission network to get to 100% renewable?
   http://www.grist.org/article/renewables-are-inevitable-transmission-is-optional

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8. 

   Gar Lipow Posted 4:03 pm
   23 Oct 2009

   Very briefly - in the context of "self-reliance" you do rely on CHP and and hydro to put states over the 100% mark in marginal cases. And your appendixes don't fully cover the environmental cost of small hydro. I would think a key metric would environmental damage per kWh as compared to large dams. After all a 20 foot ditch silts up too, and if it that ditch is just supporting 1 KW turbine you might end up with a pretty large amount of damage per kWh. You seem to pay almost no attention to that.

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   1. 

      Gene Preston Posted 7:26 am
      28 Oct 2009

      Gar I agree with your identification for the need for new transmission for renewables. By profession I do transmission studies for wind and solar clients. My company name is TAC meaning Transmission Adequacy Consulting at web page http://www.egpreston.com. I currently am doing studies all across the US. I have log on access to both ERCOT (Texas) and the WECC (Western Electric Coordinating Council) system data and keep up with their goings on. I have done many studies for wind and solar and geothermal clients in the WECC system. The current WECC system is pretty well maxed out transmission wise. The lines that are built in the WECC system were justified based on high levels of loading from currently running power sources serving major load centers. The lines must meet the N-1 requirement, meaning that if any single line trips out of service there is not an overload and blackout of a major load, such as Los Angeles or San Diego would be major load centers, although a smaller city would also be a major load center. In my studies for wind solar and geothermal clients, they have a physical location of their facility and they have few options on how to interconnect their new source of power to the system. What I do is run a set of simulations to determine the ATC for an interconnection point. ATC = available transfer capability which is closely related to the FCITC, first contingency incremental transfer capability, which you can locate with Google on the internet to read more about. My ATC calculations tell the wannabe wind solar geothermal client how much power they can inject, i.e. the spare capacity of the transmission system at that point. Because the current transmission system was optimized, i.e. minimized to save cost, there is hardly ever any spare capacity or ATC. Its very common for my study to show that there is no capacity at the interconnection point. If you look at the total applicaitons in ERCOT for new wind power it might be as high as 50,000 MW of wannabe wind generators wanting to connect but not having sufficient transmission to interconnect. I would estimate there is more than 50,000 MW of wind and probably as much solar wannabe power producers in WECC who want to connect to the system at the current time. In the SW such as AZ and NM and NV there is literally no spare capacity at all on the big lines delivering power back to the LA area. There is no large transmission system at all in the vast wind area east of the Rockies. This was T Boone's problem, lots of wind and no power lines. He optimistically thought that he could get new lines built, especially from the TX panhandle down to the Ft Worth area. There was even a new giant substation north of Ft Worth, just waiting for his wind power to be connected to, but the line was not forthcoming. His line was not part of the ERCOT CREZ (see google for this) so he had to drop his plans or at least modify them, i.e. move his dates out into the future. Unfortunately T Boone now knows that its going to take years to get those lines built and hes an old guy, who may get those lines eventually but it might not be in his lifetime, certainly not within this current presidential administration. These lines take a very long time to construct.
      
      Let's talk about the current Scientific American article by Jacobson on page 58 titled "A path to sustainable energy by 2030". Whats missing from that article is the transmission needed by 2030. Because the wind and solar and water and geothermal projects are not in the locations of the existing power plants, new lines will be needed. Looking at the graph on page 63, and carefully measuring scales on the graph, I estimate that there is 40,000 MW of wind and 40,000 MW of centralized solar on that graph. The reason I omitted rooftop solar is because Jacobson has its contribution to be rather small. I agree with him. For example, multiplying out the numbers on page 61 you will get 5.1 TW of rooftop solar and 26.7 TW of large scale solar of 300 MW size in farms, much like wind farms. This seems reasonable since centralized solar is nearly twice as efficient as rooftop solar. Since the rooftop solar is small I will omit it from these comments. That leaves us needing 80,000 MW of new wind solar and geothermal generation just to serve California. I usually estimate a distance of about 500 miles from wind and solar resources to major load centers. This is true in both ERCOT and California. A 500 kV transmission line is rated at about 2000 MW max power. But you don't want to operate it at that power level because the losses are too high and there is no reserve capacity in the line to handle the first contingency problem. Therefore I will estimate we will load the new 500 kV lines to about 1500 MW on average. So we have 80,000 MW with each carrying 1500 MW so that we need roughly 50 new 500 kV lines of 500 miles each, for a total length of 25,000 miles. But there is a huge problem with the SA article model. It assumes there is little solar power storage and it also assumed the wind be blowing at night. We know for sure that the solar power is not available at night so we are nearly totally dependent on wind. I know you are going to assume that geothermal will fill in, however the one geothermal project I worked on for determining the ATC for had a good ATC, however the project failed. The project was cancelled because the geothermal energy failed to produce power as expected. Also, the recent earthquake problem created by geothermal projects in other areas of the world make geothermal energy seem less likely today than just a few years ago. So we are nearly totally dependent on wind energy for the nighttime. If we plan for those few occurrences when there is no wind in the WECC system, we must interconnect WECC with the rest of the US so CA can draw power from other wind generators that do have wind (hopefully) outside the WECC area, such as the Texas coast and east of the rocky mountains where massive wind farms can be constructed. However we will need 80,000 MW of lines that I estimate will average 2000 miles in length. If we used 500 kV lines, we would need about 50 of these lines bridging from WECC to the US eastern grid and ERCOT and the total length would be about 100,000 miles. By 2030 we would need 125,000 miles of new 500 kV lines just to serve California with 100% renewables. Considering that we have the period from 2010 to 2030, that means we would have to construct over 6000 miles of new 500 kV lines every year from now until 2030 for the renewables plan as outlined in the current SA article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030 . I do not believe this is achievable at all. Therefore the concept envisioned in the SA article is not a workable plan because the transmission problems have not been addressed. The SA article plan is not even a desirable plan. The environmental impact and cost would be horrendous.

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9. 

   Gar Lipow Posted 1:42 pm
   28 Oct 2009

   Of course the real flaw is to assume no solar storage. If we use CSP thermal solar than storage costs are $35 per kWh equivalent with really tiny losses becuase generally you use stored power within 24 hours. Then we add a few hours of flow battteries for wind. The we use whatever level of hydro and geothermal is practical. (Too complex to go into in comments.) And then the key is we don't aim for 100% renewable but 98% renewable with natural gas filling the last 2%. That means don't have to meet extreme exception cases with renewables. For two and three day periods with low sun and wind nationwide we use natural gas. That last two % gets eliminated when we gat a big storage breakthrough - hydrogen or really cheap utility scale batteries or adiabiatic compressed air or something on that line.

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10. 

    Gar Lipow Posted 3:21 pm
    28 Oct 2009

    Ah. The reason they don't assume CSP storage is they assume massive hydrogen storage. This is another bleeding edge tech that currently can't be done for a reasonable price. But if they really had hydrogen storage cheap then the rest of the premises make sense, since the main cost of hydrogen (over and above electricity) is generation of electricity from hydrogen, and electrolysis to produce hydrogen. If you can do it feasibly at all, then additional hours of storage are a small marginal cost.

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