 ties would counteract instabilities and help utilities sell surplus power. One company, Tres Amigas, is planning an alternative: a massive hub that would integrate the grids with superconducting cables.)
THREE REGIONS BECOME ONE: The three grids that serve the U.S. and Canada are joined by only a few weak links. Weaving them together with more direct-current (DC) ties would counteract instabilities and help utilities sell surplus power. One company, Tres Amigas, is planning an alternative: a massive hub that would integrate the grids with superconducting cables.
Image: Platts, a division of Mcgraw-Hill (transmission lines); National Renewable Energy Laboratory (potential solar and wind energy regions)
In Brief
- An upgraded U.S. transmission system could make electricity cheaper, reduce blackouts, and bring remote wind and solar power to distant cities.
- Building this supergrid would likely involve four steps: more transmission lines, higher voltages, direct-current lines spanning the longest distances and short, direct-current ties linking the nation’s three isolated transmission regions.
- Federal authority to determine the routes of new lines might be needed to overcome resistance by state and local governments, as well as citizens and utility companies. Renewable energy mandates could spur privately funded lines.
The transmission grid that delivers electricity from power plants is a vital piece of America’s infrastructure. It is also good at hiding its flaws. People may notice the towers and wires marching across the landscape or the local substations that step down the voltage so electricity can be distributed to homes and businesses, but the transmission grid does not show congestion like highways do or flooding like burst water mains do. Nevertheless, the grid needs a major upgrade. If the U.S. is going to switch from dirty fossil fuels to cleaner, more renewable wind and solar power—or even nuclear—the transmission system must be vastly expanded to reach the remote deserts and high plains where the sun shines most and the wind blows hardest. Furthermore, if the country wants to protect itself against increasingly large blackouts, which cost tens of billions of dollars or more a year, it needs to modernize the grid as well.
So how do we build this supergrid? After years of debate, most engineers agree that a modern overlay should be added on top of the old, piecemeal, overtaxed system, creating a backbone that has greater capacity by using higher voltages and reaching more remote locations. The Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus package allocated $6.5 billion in credit for federal agencies to build power lines and $2 billion in loan guarantees for private companies, so money is available to get started. Constructing the supergrid will require several big technical steps, and one political.
This article was originally published with the title How to Build the Supergrid.
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20 Comments
Add CommentIn "How to Build the Supergrid" in the November 2010 issue of Scientific American, Matthew Wald succeeded with an interesting article reviewing problems and risks of building (and of not building) a more reliable and capable power transmission infrastructure in the United States, both practical and political.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I suspect he may have overlooked the potential security risks. For example, he mentioned Tres Amigas, a proposed very large single transfer station in New Mexico to link the three main power grids in the U.S., but did not mention the risks of having such a critical single point of failure for the entire national power grid. The suggestion of relying on a single power transfer station reminded me of the recent examples of disruptions caused by a single failure of a major international internet cable.
Perhaps the risks from natural disasters to something like Tres Amigas could be addressed as a matter of engineering. But as a single, critical infrastructure component, it would also be a highly inviting target for attack by a human adversary. One bomb could knock out power distribution that the country would have come to rely on heavily. Not even a bomb would be necessary: a single team of attackers could capture the staff operating the facility and thereby hold the whole country hostage, without directly taking a single human life.
Perhaps Mr. Wald could follow up with further comments on reasons to prefer a more distributed, and thereby more reliable and robust, infrastructure? Or on the effects of an equivalent billion-dollar investment in reducing power consumption, so that the present power transmission system is more adequate?
Sincerely,
Jean Renard Ward
Another enormous but hidden subsidy to Renewable Energy. Just as Smart Grid is a huge hidden subsidy to Renewable Energy, as a way of mitigating the terrible effects of an unreliable, fluctuating power supply. A policy that is based on the belief that a pound of cure is much better than one oz of prevention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur governments have bought into Big Oil/NG's plan to misdirect all Energy Effort towards "Greening" the Domestic (as in NOT IMPORTED) Electricity Supply, rather than replacing the DEADLY, imported AMERICAN JOB-KILLING, SOON-TO-BE-IN-SHORT-SUPPLY and Way-More-Expensive, Terrorist Funding Oil Imports. With Peak Oil rapidly approaching - Big Oil and its partners in Gov't are leading us headlong towards Energy Catastrophe. With Oil supplying 41% of USA Energy and 68% of that imported. With >70% of the World's Oil supply in Unstable Countries - mostly the Middle East.
There is no need for the Supergrid or the Smartgrid, simply get with the building of factory produced, small Modular Nuclear Reactors. Will supply Process Heat, Building Heat & Electricity anywhere, including on Ships, in the Arctic, under-the-sea and in Developing Nations, where most GHG emissions and Energy Consumption growth will occur. Inherently safe and proliferation resistant. Factory production will eliminate the bottleneck of Big NPP licensing & construction. FAR CHEAPER, VASTLY MORE RELIABLE and FAR FASTER way to GREEN the Electricity supply than NUTTY RENEWABLE ENERGY plus Smart/Super Grid. The ULTIMATE in DISTRIBUTED ENERGY. Big Oil/NG's NIGHTMARE!
And similarly, if the Moronic, Numbskull Idiots in Gov't actually spent some money on FAST TRACK SMALL FUSION projects, like Dense Plasma Focus Fusion & IEC Fusion, they could be similarly producing Clean, Green Energy in a decade or so. The owned-by-Oil politicians would rather throw away $7B a year on Wacky Corn Ethanol, which takes as much fossil fuel inputs as its energy output, rapes the soil, and uses huge amounts of precious fresh water resources. Global Warming / Peak Oil catastrophe is an ISSUE that is entirely about POLITICAL CORRUPTION. Technology can easily solve the problem if logically deployed.
John Droz has an excellent slideshow showing how Smart Grid / Super Grid is just a ploy to support Wind Energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.slideshare.net/JohnDroz/energy-presentationkey-presentation
Matthew
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour four steps does not include the 5th most critical step - how do you operate a super grid? You can't. A supergrid will result in blackouts - but don't worry - even if it's built, it won't be operated.
What we need is renewable energy located near load centers and develop demand response in energy markets to reduce peak consumption. Electricity is produced on demand. When you transport large amounts of energy, you must be prepared to provide reserves (backup supply of power) in case the power transported is lost. If not, the result is a blackout. The system is operated by limiting the amount of power across the transmission lines to a safe level that will not cause an outage if the transported power is lost. Operators call this operating to the next largest “contingency”.
The following is a real case, but I'll refrain from identifing the utility. They built a 1,000 kV transmission line from remote nuclear generators to a large city load center. The line was designed to transport over 5,000 MW, but because of contingency concerns, the line is operated at 500 kV and wheels only 1,500 to 2,000 MW max. Yes - the line is way over built.
Let's use power more efficiently - and locate renewable power near the load.
Good comments - A super grid may have a negative impact on power system reliabilty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are so many unnecessary requirements being tacked on to this typical gargantuan boondoggle that its unlikely that much could actually be accomplished.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe greatest fundamental benefit could be the much more efficient transmission of power. Currently much of the power generated is lost through extremely inefficient long distance transmission facilities. We're producing power where is most economically generated and transmitting it to the locations of greatest demand, but losing much of it into the transmission environment. What a waste of fuel consumption, underutilized power and unnecessary co2 production!
Yay! RepubliCONs are back! So any efforts to improve our energy policies will be stuck in gridlock. Thanks to the Dum-O-Crats abuse of power, the GOP gets to come back and make any progress impossible. When it comes to saving our economy, or even our planet in general, politics has proved to be ineffective. The GOP will have you believe that everyone else in the world is wrong about global warming. However, that still doesn't explain why they don't support reducing our foreign oil dependency. (The reason for this is actually quite clear. Money. Their money from oil that is.) I know I know... I am getting off topic. But only slightly. Point is, for everyone saying a smart grid is a ploy... Did you all get a chance to see Bigfoot get into his flying saucer? Yeah, me neither. The only ploy here is that there are a quantity of politicians that DO NOT have our best interests in mind. I'm sure this will be countered by some right wing nut job. But before that, let me just say that I am neither left or right. I just want the world to be a better place. Not just my own job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a Tea Party person today, but way back in 1978 I became an anti-Bonneville Power Administration activist and community organizer. This came about because I had no sooner built my dream home in a pristine western Montana countryside when I got a notice from the BPA that they planned to build a 110 ft tall transmission tower 10 yards from my patio sliding door, part of a brand new ultra high voltage line being built from Colstrip, Montana to Seattle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter about six months of begging for a map of the proposed power line, one showed up and I spread it out on my kitchen table. It immediately became apparent that the 21 mile segment of the line that concerned my house was about 3 miles longer than it needed to be.
I sat down with a straight edge and rerouted the line down the other side of the Deer Lodge valley, lopping three miles off the length of the high voltage line corridor.
I sent in my proposal and drawings and in another six months a show-down meeting was scheduled between little old me and six engineers and technocrats of the BPA in which I fully expected them to spend their time telling me what a dunce I was.
Instead, the minute the meeting opened the head guy put up the two routes on a map (theirs and mine) and announced that my route would be the one built. We shook hands and I left, still in shock, after one of the guys took me aside and explained that the only reason that the original route was plotted to land in my backyard was because otherwise the BPA would have to to cross some sections of state and national forest and they didn't want to go through all that environmental review and permitting process with the other gov. agencies!
The upshot is that a neophyte engineer saved the taxpayers however many millions that too-long line would have been in initial construction and lifetime maintenance, plus untold millions were saved in that the electrical resistance losses over the excess length were avoided. Resistance losses are like a tax that you keep on paying, forever, and a major factor of why, in a logical world, every city would have an underground nuclear plant smack dab in the city center and the distribution lines would run out from there.
But the real point is that you shouldn't assume that the efficiency of a powerline proposal from a major federal agency is all that it is claimed to be. Today I annoy my wife whenever we drive down I-90 through Deer Lodge by pointing out that those tall, tall towers marching through the foothills on the east side were put there by me.
A huge supergrid is unnecessary and excessive. Much better to have local systems and to push energy efficiency and energy collection, like solar and wind, as far down the food chain as possible. Right to the individual user if possible. Onsite energy generation and management, if you will, in many cases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe whole government subsidy structure needs to be stopped and re-done. Everything from Farm subsidies to "green" subsidies needs to be opened to competition and new economic realities. (Will not happen, but would be nice to dream about.)
The supergrid will never happen because the government does not have the money now to do it and the politics are very sour for a big government or big business solution for all right now. There is huge business opportunity, however, for decentralized energy as above. Particularly in rapidly developing places like India and Latin America where large infrastructure does not exist and may never exist if they go "the cell phone" route vs. the "wireline" as happened with telecom in those places.
MM @shooteyeout
I agree with your proposal. I agree with any proposal that includes renewable energies. I am not convinced a smart grid wouldn't work though either. But at least we can agree an this aspect of the discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhile I agree that we need local renewables a lot of these comments are disturbing. why fund nucluar when there are better, cheaper, and less dangerous alternatives. if your against the government using tax payer money you should be againt three highly subsidized nuclear industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe not so renewable industry is the most subsidized per kilowatt hour industry in world history, yet it because it must be backed up 100% with low efficiency gas production it produces no net energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear power no current subsidies in fact the DOE owes the industry $30B for waste storage it has provided.
A coal to nuclear conversion, paid for by ending oil imports at a 40% rate of rate of return and saving over 30K lives annually, would eliminate the need for grid improvements as every city with a coal plant would have a nuke - no long range transmission needed.
It is possible to build a new grid system. No wires, power piped underground through a tunnel. It would use the technology of the Flying Saucer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt could also be used to power aircraft from the ground.
The High voltage pulses, directed by a narrow beam reflector, would be picked up and changed into AC.
ennui, you must be the spirit of Nicola Tesla!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo me the most important part of a super grid is that the power is distributed(read many sources to pull from).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all(or a large fraction) of cars were electric and a good number were tied into the grid at any given time...It seems like the energy could be pulled from them to provide most if not all of the required power for a significant interruption...
It would be better if each house had its own battery supply...not likely with current battery prices including inverters....
The focus on beefing up the power grid strikes me as foolish in a world where renegade forces look for single points of failure they can attack to produce devastating results with only a small investment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMight not the same resources be better devoted to developing decentralized power production? Solar panels on every roof and a wind turbine in every neighborhood would go a long way toward making the American electrical infrastructure resilient to many kinds of attacks.
Industrial electrical consumers will continue to need a larger supply than can necessarily be generated locally, but if the residential load on the grid was alleviated, upgrades could be pursued at a more-rational pace, with more attention to redundancy, and some attention to decentralizing the supply (including any excess output from residentially-based production).
The biggest impediment to a serious focus on decentralizing power production is political: the Big Energy companies that dominate our current energy market would find it difficult to continue their profitability in a well-decentralized energy economy.
In the 1950's General Motors effectively torpedoed light rail services in most cities by convincing governments that buses would be more efficient and less expensive (neither claim was true). Parallel efforts convinced our national leaders to move subsidies from rail service to highways and airports. Of course, rail service is thermodynamically more efficient than buses trucks and airplanes, but that was never given consideration. Now our infrastructure is needlessly inefficient, aggravating our dependency on foreign fuel suppliers.
How will the current debate be shaped by corporate interests to protect their profits, without regard to the societal, economic, and environmental costs resulting?
Most comments are very short sighted. What people don't realize is the coal industry was and still is subsidized, the nuclear power industry was and is subsidized, as are the mining industry, the power companies and on and on. And quite frankly to some extent this is necessary, otherwise nothing will get done. I don't buy all the hype that the private sector should and will do the work. They won't, it is simply too expensive, for any one company to handle the projects such as the grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we do not continue to build on our infrastructure, we will not only be handicapped by having a work force that is too expensive versus Asia, we will also have a power system which does not delivery energy at a price that is affordable, nor have roads, bridges, water or any other critical requirement for our businesses. I hate it when I read articles about China building very sophisticated power distribution systems. I hate it when I read that China has the number one ranked super computer in the world now. I hate it when I read about the new city near Abu Dabi that is going completely green, all while we simply P&M about everything. We are slowly drifting along, not doing what we need to stay competitive. We ARE going to lose the game of global economics and very soon because of all our short sighted thinking.
For all current grids world wide, exist solution. Very effective, cutting losses by half on all internal resistors of generators and all wires and cables, with used DEVICE TO DECREASE LOSSES ON ELECTRIC GRID.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease visit web site> http://www.energytoys.ag.rs and look short video presentation on the bottom of page.
Saved energy is like new power plants connected on grid.
Also, used of DEVICES... protected system from overload and decay.
Also, possible remote control power dissipation on loads (where power may be decreased for 10, 20... or more percent) if need in time pick demand.
In same of states, losses on grid is more than 20%! Used of DEVICES will be save 10% of fuel or extending capacity of transmission network for 10%.
Now may be one of our last opportunities to build the world’s first 100% sustainable power production and distribution infrastructure that looks at much more than simply the grid!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are on the brink of a mandatory paradigm shift in everything that we do, provoked by the imminent disappearance of petroleum and the requirement that we slow and reverse global climate change! The implications are that we must convert from petroleum to 100% sustainable and renewable energy sources, starting with our cities, which will rapidly die without the food sourced by the 95% petroleum inputs that our current system requires! Why not consider linear cities to complement our current cities that are all the result of circumferential/circular growth/sprawl, to provide a far greater perimeter than circles, which have the minimum that is mathematically possible.
These differences are compounded when you stack the circles/floors of buildings on top of each other to create vertical cities, which are poor when all their inhabitants must walk into fields to grow their own crops because there is no more petroleum to produce the food and bring it to where people can eat it! The discussion of “vertical farming” is a continuation of this erroneous and potentially catastrophic development!
Linear Cities can be built at right angles to prevailing wind directions, where everyone can walk into open fields, both to grow their own food, and to supply those who are still stuck in existing cities, and towers! They can both power, and be supplied by high-speed rail, along with medium and low-speed lines, which are the only form of transportation outside of ships and electric vehicles that can be driven by wind.
Everyone lives within a 10 minute walk of their own field, chickens and fruit trees, and all can very rapidly reach existing cities using the high-speed rail link, which uses only about 1/3 of the energy/passenger mile that cars and aircraft use.
The wind turbines along the top edge of the north to south linear city capture the energy of the wind that has been accelerated as it passes over its 3 – 5 stories. Our current expressways can be used to deliver building materials to the cities just alongside them, and we can start by installing conventional wind turbines first 1), followed by both high-speed rail and a “high temperature” superconducting induction track/grid in the roadway to drive electric vehicles.
This new grid will require both structural integrity and cooling that the foundations of the linear cities can provide! Build it now!
This article is a good demonstration what results from having journalists instead of scientists writing about scientific or technological subjects. The statements about the differences between direct and alternating current are sheer nonsense ("alternating current always takes the path of least resistance"). I would have liked to be given a clear and correct explanation why the difference matters.
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