[HN Gopher] The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
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The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt
Author : sandwichukulele
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-06-07 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/sXWU3
| tedunangst wrote:
| > 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?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Solar anti correlates with wind. Then the typical:
|
| - Large grid to decouple weather patterns
|
| - Demand response
|
| - Storage
|
| People already get on hourly contracts and schedule car
| charging for when it is cheap. The next step is automating it
| and making it more streamlined.
|
| Some companies already support chargers which integrate with
| the pricing, they can even give you money back through demand
| response.
|
| https://support.tibber.com/en/articles/5597987-smart-chargin...
| recursive wrote:
| > How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's
| windy?
|
| Market prices and "smart" chargers
| solarpunk wrote:
| V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-
| to-grid
| dangrossman wrote:
| 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.
| pyrale wrote:
| This article is about power transit, not about fixing
| production peaks. V2G is not a solution here.
| pyrale wrote:
| You don't, but you can schedule work on nearby lines at this
| time for instance.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| 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 <sarcasm> 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.
| pyrale wrote:
| These '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 other lines in a
| strained network is interesting, but I wonder how much security
| analysis is run to make sure it's safe (or if it's just an
| automation system working within bounds the operator deemed
| safe).
| neltnerb wrote:
| 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!
| pyrale wrote:
| 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.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Yeah, although distributed power generation is an actual
| solution to reduce transmission loads, I agree that it's
| too soon. It is very complicated (but I think doable!), but
| even then probably takes too much space for populated
| areas.
|
| I like the idea of knowing if a transmission line is hot
| enough to start a fire, but that isn't a substitute for new
| transmission capacity from remote PV farms or just to be
| more resilient.
| ordu wrote:
| The article says they are buying the time. New lines are slow
| to build, so while they are being built, it is possible to
| squeeze more from the existing lines.
| pyrale wrote:
| I get it, I'm just baffled with the hint the article gives
| that the stuff needed now wasn't planned 10 years ago. I
| guess this is yet another "US infrastructure disaster"
| article, but with a positive outlook.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| this is talking about grant awards that are happening in
| the current year, so it's not like they were planned 10
| years ago.
|
| hindsight is 20/20 but some things like the growth of data
| centers was probably not predicted, particularly their
| location. As a general example, Ireland had to put a
| moratorium on new data centers until 2028.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/power-grab-
| hid...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They're not being built though. Not at nearly the rate
| needed.
|
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/transmission/the-us-
| is-...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not being built though. Not at nearly the rate needed_
|
| ...according to "consultancy Grid Strategies and
| commissioned by trade group Americans for a Clean Energy
| Grid (ACEG)." This is like the civil-engineering society
| perennially failing our civil-engineering spending.
| rgmerk wrote:
| Sure, I get there's only so much that get squeezed out of
| existing lines without any physical infrastructure changes.
|
| But reconductoring seems like it buys you _a lot_ of extra
| capacity over the existing physical right of way, and if you
| use advanced conductors you don't even have to replace the
| towers if they're in good condition. Yes, you have to replace a
| lot of equipment at substations, but my understanding is that
| while there is a shortage of some of this physical equipment,
| getting permits for new transmission lines is a far harder
| problem.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Another big thing is streamlining regional abilities to
| accelerate permitting for replacing old transmission line
| conductors.
|
| Modern conductors can transmit significantly more energy by
| better conductor design, so replacing ancient conductors is a
| relatively cheap way to increase transmission capacity while also
| reducing line sag which makes the transmission lines safer.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Summary: 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...
| jorblumesea wrote:
| 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...
| mnw21cam wrote:
| So basically, next time there's a heatwave and everyone cranks
| up their aircon, the system will still collapse.
| lkbm wrote:
| I was intrigued by one of the other ways--"high-performance
| wires"--which they don't explain at all. I found one article[0]
| (podcast, I guess, but with a transcript) that goes into it:
| old wires are aluminum supported by steel. By using aluminum
| supported with carbon fiber, you get less weight and less
| thermal expansion, allowing for more aluminum and without it
| sagging as much.
|
| High conductivity, less transmission loss. Potentially fewer
| towers (because you can space them out a little further),
| offsetting the cost of the wires. Neat!
|
| [0] https://www.volts.wtf/p/one-easy-way-to-boost-the-grid-
| upgra...
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| omg the name just sounds like "precision scheduled railroading"
| luuurker wrote:
| > Meanwhile in China
|
| Outside China, companies and governments usually have to be
| careful when making investments. They can't decide to start
| building transmission lines/housing/fast train lines/deploy 5G
| everywhere and spend huge amounts of money if the return is
| small/non existent... And so usually things are only built or
| improved when there's a demand for it.
|
| China can make a 5 year plan to build UHVDC everywhere and the
| grid operator won't go under no matter what. This has been
| working for them so far (even though it creates some serious
| problems) and certainly gives them an advantage, but you can't
| do that in most places.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _has been working for them so far_
|
| It works in the wake of a decimated economy. War. Natural
| disaster. Cultural revolution. There is so much slack in the
| system virtually anything will be put to productive use.
|
| In that state, you can build a road to nowhere _and people
| will put it to use_ , not because it's a well-placed road,
| but because it's the only road in the vicinity.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| EDIT: Where I live, there is mostly 69 kV and 138 kV, with only a
| few 345 kV lines. There aren't nearly enough 500 kV lines, and
| 765 kV aren't present in the region.
|
| EDIT2: Here's what a 765 kV line looks like:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5
|
| Map of US electric grid:
| https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d409...
|
| Real wiring is dominated by current, resistance of the conductor,
| and cooling.[0,1]
|
| The way out is to rebuild with much high voltages and live
| monitoring, optionally with superconducting segments like Nexans
| where advantageous.
|
| 0. Ikeda, Yoshiro and Katsuhiko Yoneta. _Temperature rise of a
| conductor due to the electric current._ (1931).
| http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682
|
| PDF:
| https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/3768...
|
| 1. Riba, J.-R.; Llaurado, J. _A Model to Calculate the Current-
| Temperature Relationship of Insulated and Jacketed Cables._
| Materials (2022) 15,6814. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814
|
| PDF: https://mdpi-
| res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-068...
| Efisio wrote:
| EFF
| BurningFrog wrote:
| These are bandaids. Fine in themselves, but not addressing the
| real problem.
|
| The US really need to legalize transmission line construction!
| klysm wrote:
| As long as it's not near my back yard - America
| foota wrote:
| Is building a long high voltage line not profitable? It seems
| like the potential for arbitrage should allow for sufficient
| profit, but maybe not?
|
| I know there's a lot of blockers, but if there's money to be made
| I would have thought more people would have worked around them.
| ntonozzi wrote:
| It turns out homeowners with veto rights are a lot more
| powerful than capital in the US.
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