Part 2: The Transmission and Distribution System
Part 2 from the article, “GE And Google Announce ’21st Century’ Electricity System”
In short, our Transmission and Distribution system is Balkanized to no end. Think about America before the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 (Eisenhower). America was a patchwork of state and rural roads, with few interconnected highways. The current Electrical Transmission and Distribution systems are in a similar state. Check out the 2008 FEMA maps located on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:UnitedStatesPowerGrid.jpg
The issues here are many and very complex, and I could probably write a book or two on the full topic but I won’t. Suffice it to say that a good chunk (can’t find anyone with a published number; please let me know if you know of one) of the inefficiencies come from a lack of an integrated and interconnected network. I heard a gentleman from a California Utility talking about new power generation available in Arizona that his company would like to access, but it required new Transmission lines to be built. California’s PUC approved the lines, but Arizona’s did not. Why? Because they worried that by opening up the supply of electricity to California, the competition for demand would drive up prices in Arizona. So, where is the Federal Government in all this? Let’s just say that the topic can’t be heard above the noise about oil independence, carbon caps, and clean energy. What we need is the government to focus on interconnection points across key inter-state corridors relative to new and existing Generation plants. The reality today is that we have major congestion points in the grid, which exacerbate the challenges of trying to efficiently automate the supply and demand curves (flatten out the peaks and valleys). We can optimize within a RTO or within a Utility market, but we won’t really get the economies of scale until the whole country is networked together.
Hi Chris.
Great post. The US Department of Energy has a good discussion of the various concepts for a future grid system.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/new_grid_concepts.html
They provide that there “are a variety of approaches to improving the operation of the electricity grid, some of which involve replacing it entirely in specific locales. All of these approaches are motivated by power reliability and/or quality concerns, and all incorporate DE.
* Minigrids
* Power Parks
* DC Microgrids
* Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems
* Electrical Load as a Reliability Resource.”
-US Dept of Energy
Curious as to your thoughts to these various approaches and their pros and cons
Thanks
This is kind of like putting the cart before the horse. Electric automobiles are far from being marketable to the masses.
It costs more than a combustion engine vehicle and battery technology is nowhere near where it needs to be. An all-electric vehicle can get about 40 miles on a charge with an 8 hour wait for recharge. That’s why they market them with a little combustion engine n the side. Few are going to pay extra for less. Al Gore doesn’t drive around in an electric vehicle. He’s still chauffered around in a stretch limo. He probably had one out in the parking lot of this function with the engine idling to keep the limo cool.
Hank,
Thanks, yes there are many micro-initiatives happening as you might imagine. What I’m hoping for, and I feel is lacking is the top down vision set forth by someone in a leadership position. I do believe in thins like Kennedy’s “We will put a man on the moon in 10 years”. He didn’t say how. He just set for the vision, and the top down framework for NASA and private aerospace to work within to get it done. So, whether it’s a national grid to improve energy efficiency and brink prices down, or it’s to support an initiative to make PHEV’s 20% of new vehicle sales, or both, the vision is needed.
Derek,
Seems like you don’t believe in PHEV or Electric, which is fine. If you take that out of the picture, the Utilities are still (today) running at 46% utilization rates, which is very very poor. If you take out all environmental benefit, and look at it from a pure capitalistic, shareholder view, the impact to bottom line profits by improving utilization is compelling all by itself. We are talking about Billions in bottom line contribution potential from better management of supply and demand for electricity.
With the advances in sensor technology and our understanding of demand and response levels for energy, connecting all these independent distribution systems to a central grid and then utilizing market efficiency strategies to get the most bang for our buck seems like a no-brainer to me.
The second discussion on how to better utilize the freed up energy resources from this optimization of our distribution systems is certainly more complex.
All-Electric vehicles may not be the answer forward in all but a small subset of the current gasoline based vehicles we have on the road today, but certainly some combination of electric, hybrid, hydrogen fuel-cell, and natural gas alternative-fuel-vehicles must be on the road map especially when it comes to the fleet vehicle sector. But again, that’s a different discussion than just having a strategic vision for energy independence.
Considering the balance of the world’s annual energy consumption from oil vs. electricity, the oil (i.e. gasoline) delivers 3 times more energy. Forget about the electrical cars…
Considering the generation of electricity, the average efficiency of energy conversion is about 30%. In addition, more than 10% of the generated electricity is lost in the T&D system. Forget about the centralized utilities…
Cheers, VB