[HN Gopher] US Dept of Energy announces $1.5B in electric grid i...
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US Dept of Energy announces $1.5B in electric grid improvements
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-10-03 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.upi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.upi.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Dept of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-
| administration-...
|
| National Transmission Planning Study:
| https://www.energy.gov/gdo/national-transmission-planning-st...
|
| Transmission Facilitation Program:
| https://www.energy.gov/gdo/transmission-facilitation-program
|
| "The projects will enable nearly 1,000 miles of new electric
| transmission development and 7,100 megawatts of new capacity in
| Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.
|
| They include the Aroostook Renewable Project in Maine, the
| Cimarron Link in Oklahoma, Southern Spirit connecting the Texas
| grid for the first time to southeastern U.S. power markets and
| Southline in New Mexico.
|
| The Energy Department's National Transmission Planning study
| released Thursday was meant to be a long-term planning tool.
|
| It found that a substantial expansion of the transmission system
| throughout the entire contiguous United States would deliver the
| biggest grid benefits. That could also save the national electric
| system between $270 billion to $490 billion through 2050."
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Southern Spirit connecting the Texas grid for the first time
| to southeastern U.S. power markets
|
| How will this work?
| vel0city wrote:
| Wires.
|
| It is a High-voltage DC transmission line and the
| infrastructure to connect to it. It runs HVDC, so there's no
| grid synchronization needed. The grid will still be
| "isolated", as there are already DC ties.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Southern Spirit connecting the Texas grid for the first time
| to southeastern U.S. power markets
|
| That doesn't make sense about "first time". Southern Spirit is
| a new HVDC transmission line (which is awesome and what we
| need, more please!). There are already Eastern DC grid ties.
| This would be a good bit bigger (not sure existing ties are
| even GWs) but I don't understand _first_. Could someone shed
| more light on that for me?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| ERCOT (Texas grid) is famous for operating independently of
| neighboring grids to avoid federal regulation under FERC.
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/congress-texas-should-
| rethi...
| vel0city wrote:
| Failing to actually answer the question posed. And this
| wouldn't be an interconnection requiring that same kind of
| federal regulation so pretty irrelevant in the end too. And
| besides your point is already obvious from the above
| comments.
|
| But I guess we'll just state random Texas facts now. Did
| you know the state flower is the Bluebonnet?
| claytongulick wrote:
| This is exciting, but I can't find many details about resilience
| and hardening for CMEs.
|
| Carrington [1] class events keep me up at night.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
| jandrese wrote:
| The interconnect out of Texas is a big deal. Texas has some of
| the most ideal land for solar and wind development, but the
| isolation of their grid has always been a problem.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am hopeful that Texas becomes a big exporter of power to
| Mexico and perhaps even Florida using an undersea HVDC cable
| (as Texas can then power Florida with solar later into the
| evening). Texas solar and wind potential is simply incredible
| compared to local load demands.
|
| https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2...
|
| https://seia.org/state-solar-policy/texas-solar/
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ercot-solar-generation-texa...
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What is HVDC?
| juliansimioni wrote:
| High voltage direct current
| rcdemski wrote:
| High Voltage Direct Current
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
| tw04 wrote:
| I sure hope they're forced to winterize their infrastructure if
| they're providing power elsewhere. The last thing we need is
| the next cold spell causing rolling blackouts in other states.
| ERCOT seems unable to force any of the necessary upgrades.
| njarboe wrote:
| Climate, regulatory, culture in Texas has it adding more solar
| and wind to the grid faster than any other state.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Florida is slightly ahead in terms of solar growth[1].
|
| (The close followers suggest it can't be too much a matter of
| state-level regulatory environment: New York is at 23% growth
| to Texas's 25%.)
|
| [1]: https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/a-decade-
| of-u...
| supergeek wrote:
| Every time I head anti-electrification arguments around EVs, heat
| pumps, etc. it's usually a complaint about grid capacity. I
| always shake my head, because building more power lines is
| relatively easy on the scale of climate tech we need to kick all
| carbon emissions.
|
| Let's brainstorm how to decarbonize fertilizer, or concrete.
|
| That being said I am really glad to see more grid buildup!
| Especially as more renewables hit the grid. While locally
| intermittent, on the scale of the entire country they're fairly
| reliable and predictable.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Indeed, it is an annoying argument that boils down to
|
| "What will we do!? Current supply doesn't meet future demand!"
|
| >That being said I am really glad to see more grid buildup!
| Especially as more renewables hit the grid. While locally
| intermittent, on the scale of the entire country they're fairly
| reliable and predictable.
|
| Here's what's coming that makes people uncomfortable and they
| don't expect or understand:
|
| Oversupply.
|
| Seasonally, during good weather, during certain times of day,
| there's just going to be more electricity produced by
| solar/wind than anybody needs. You don't need to store it or
| use every bit of it, the grid is going to say no and because
| they're just solar panels, they are perfectly fine. Solar
| electricity is so cheap that it just doesn't matter. What
| customers will end up paying for is capacity instead of usage.
| Maybe there will be instantaneous pricing that will drop to
| zero-ish intermittently and consumers and industry will find
| ways of profiting from that.
|
| But a whole lot of "problems" people complain about with solar
| are very much reduced if you just have "too many" solar panels.
| And they're cheap so who cares?
|
| Like what would California do with way too much solar power?
| Boil water in the cheapest possible infrastructure for
| desalination, an enormous still. Very energy inefficient, but
| who cares if you just have the amps to spare?
|
| There are a lot of industrial processes where energy efficiency
| is a problem and so simple processes are replaced by more
| efficient complex ones... but if you have free energy building
| out that simple infrastructure to only run when energy is cheap
| suddenly makes a lot more sense.
| jujube3 wrote:
| The "annoying" thing that the naysayers are pointing out is
| that we are not building enough power generation to support
| universally switching to electric vehicles. Unfortunately
| this "annoyance" happens to be true.
|
| Also, California struggles to get new desalination plants
| through environmental approval. And most industrial processes
| need continuous power, not just power whenever the weather
| looks good.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Speaking to people in the industry I get a vibe that
| there's permits and regulations that are severely
| bottlenecking new green energy deployments https://finance-
| commerce.com/2024/03/report-inefficient-perm...
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Isn't something like Bitcoin mining a good candidate for an
| oversupply of energy?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did you forget /s at the end of that?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Not particularly, the mining hardware depreciates fast,
| essentially being quite expensive to leave idle waiting for
| low energy prices, and the whole thing is kind of a gamble.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Let's brainstorm how to decarbonize fertilize
|
| Haber-Bosch process with green hydrogen...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > because building more power lines is relatively easy on the
| scale of climate tech we need to kick all carbon emissions.
|
| Then why have the rates changed so much recently? More
| importantly if EVs are going to be the thing then home solar
| should be the way it get the majority of it's power. Why even
| build the lines? Isn't that just a subsidy?
|
| > Let's brainstorm how to decarbonize fertilizer, or concrete.
|
| I don't think you can. I think you should worry more about how
| concrete and fertilizer get _distributed_. This is essentially
| the same dynamic as the home solar problem above.
|
| > on the scale of the entire country they're fairly reliable
| and predictable.
|
| That's due to the way the grid itself is structure not how any
| one power source performs. No source of power is particularly
| reliable and unexpected maintenance intervals always occur.
| Point here being, if you try to switch a grid that's based on a
| mix of sources, over to a grid that isn't, you're probably
| going to end up with a surprising result or two during that
| misguided process.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Even if you have rooftop solar, you still need a grid capable
| of supplying 100% the power because there are cloudy days and
| long sequences of cloudy days
| akira2501 wrote:
| Yes but EVs have batteries and people don't drive them to
| depletion every single day. I should have been more clear,
| I didn't mean the whole house, I meant the just the EVs
| specifically, for now. It would completely alleviate their
| impact on the grid as a consumer power source.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > home solar should be the way it get the majority of it's
| power
|
| This would be a bad idea as it costs 3x more than utility
| scale PV.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I wonder what the impact of the connection to Texas is going to
| be.
|
| Are generators inside and outside of Texas already synchronized?
| vel0city wrote:
| The project mentioned here is a HVDC transmission system. It
| does not require synchronization. There are already other DC
| grid ties.
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(page generated 2024-10-03 23:00 UTC)