The Grid
One thing most people don’t realize is that the most immediate impediment to commercially viable wind power has nothing to do with wind power technology. Rather, the problem is that the electrical grid doesn’t have enough capacity to transmit the power from where the wind is to where electricity gets used. And this isn’t a technological problem either. As Matthew Wald writes in The New York Times “unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology.”
There are various roadblocks here, but the main thing is that it would be expensive to build — $60 billion they say. At the same time, that’s six months worth of Iraq spending, and unlike Iraq spending it would actually be a productive investment with meaningful return to the American economy over and above the environmental benefits. You hear a lot of talk about “green jobs” and it sometimes seems disingenuous — either jobs schemes with a questionable green rationale, or green schemes yoked awkwardly into economic nationalism. But the jobs associated with upgrading the electrical grid would obviously have to be done in the United States and the green element is extremely real.
45 Responses to “The Grid”
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August 27th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
It’s an excellent point, and would be an easy one for either candidate to make. Hopefully people inside the Obama campaign read the NYT.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
There are “mine to mouth” power plants basically built on top of coal mines in places like Wyoming and Montana. Lines run from there to the West Coast to efficiently transfer the power rather than inefficiently transferring the coal. The same needs to be put in place for sources of wind and solar.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
You hear a lot of talk about “green jobs”
Green jobs? Did someone say something about green jobs? I haven’t heard anything about this.
I spent the 10pm hour of convention coverage flipping between NBC, CBS, ABC, and MSNBC. Surely if one of the speakers at the convention had mentioned a plan to add millions of green jobs through building energy infrastructure, the networks would have covered it, seeing as how they’re news organizations and all.
Why doesn’t Barack Obama have any plans? I feel like I don’t have any idea of what he’d do as president…
August 27th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Upgrading the grid to handle western wind is a big part of the Pickens plan.
Speaking of which, the latest Pickens plan ads have been pretty good. He deals with drilling and alternatives to CNG cars. Drilling he says fine, but that it isn’t an answer and it won’t make much difference. For cars he says the end goal is renewables but CNG is here now.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Uh, how bout a solar panel on top of every house? Of course once a house hold does that the electricity generated is essentially free and we can’t have that.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
One thing that’s rarely brought up in these discussions are the national security implications of a new, high-capacity power grid. There are generally two competing philosophies for solar power: massive solar farms/solar collectors all situated in high-sun areas (basically, the southwest), and less-efficient-but-more-local rooftop solar panels/films feeding into a more distributed network. The first is more efficient and less expensive, but makes the national power grid vulnerable in a way it hasn’t been before. Wind energy is more widely distributed, nuclear energy has substantial environmental requirements (but they can be fulfilled in many places)… these favor a decentralized transmission system.
I suppose it’s correct that most people don’t recognize this problem (similarly, most people don’t recognize that we’re at maximum refining capacity for oil), but that’s not for lack of trying. Al Gore dedicated a good part of his recent challenge speech to advocating for improved transmission as well as carbon-free generation.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
In the west, at least, expansion of the grid is frequently blocked by objections from environmentalists, because it means running those huge towers over vast rural distances, often through otherwise untouched or lightly touched areas. That has been a major issue in powerline cases where I live (Arizona).
August 27th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Matt, any massive infrastructure expansion would create new jobs. If the US decided that every highway in the country needed an extra lane, that too would create a lot more jobs.
Wind power would create even more jobs if the US gov’t mandated that all work be done by hand, not by machines, so as to require more human labor.
It would also be extremely expensive. It’s not really efficient to have the government spend huge amounts of money to create new jobs. The dead-weigh efficiency losses from all this will more than outweigh any economic benefits of creating new jobs.
Of course, you may take the position that the environmental benefits of wind power outweigh the economic costs of building them. But there are economic costs, let’s not spin the green jobs bs and pretend like it’s a net economic gain.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Infrastructure…just isn’t too sexy-sounding, is it?
But the lack of grid capacity is only part of our problem. The U.S. is like a house riddled with termites — okay on the surface but rotted within. Also in today’s Times business section was an article about foreign interests like Credit Suisse who have amassed an estimated $250 billion war chest to invest in a tidal wave of U.S. infrastructure projects. Why foreigners? Because our deficit-ridden local governments can’t repair our crumbling roads, bridges and even airports with taxpayer money. (Midway Airport in Chicago is slated to go private soon).
Infrastructure makes it into an occasional Obama stump speech, but with most morons fixated on offshore drilling and celebrity ads, no one is listening. Maybe they will when the Verazzano Bridge collapses.
Oh wait…a bridge DID collapse in Minnesota! What happened? Minnesota’s Dem-controlled legislature passed a transportation funding bill. Guess who vetoed it? Tim Pawlenty.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I think the larger issue is that people don’t want to live under powerlines – esp. powerlines carrying power to bigger, richer cities.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I’ve been talking and posting about this for years. I especially love it when doe-eyed transit opponents start babbling about charging plug in electric vehicles at night. Even at normal growth rates the current grid is woefully inadequate. Factor in all the juice to tote all the suburbanites off to the mall and back and things really get messy. The problem is, as noted here, is infrastructure is a hard sell in America. 30 years of hearing how the Market Spook will fix everything at night while we sleep the sleep of the Free Market Just has inured us to the very concept.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
But we need all that money and more to bail out needy investment bank(er)s. Right?
Let’s keep our priorities straight, people.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Matt is only half right… there is a problem too in that not only is additional transmission capacity required, but it is also necessary to account for the variability of wind. Simply put, sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. Conventional generation (or storage) is needed for these periods, with associated capital costs.
This can, in part, be mitigated by interconncection between different transmission systems, which is useful insofar as different regions wind generation is uncorrelated, but this also creates additional capital costs.
While setting an appropiate price for carbon will go someway towards solving these problems, it will not do all the heavy lifting .Transmission lines are a generally subject to regulated rates of return and therefore ultimately part of the broader public policy decision process. Moreover designing energy markets which ensure generators can expect recover the costs of building capacity which will lie idle for long periods of time is extremely difficult, and can lead to a high degree of volatility in prices.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
scythia
hillary (at least) mentioned “green collar jobs” in her speech last night. just because it wasn’t what the networks want to focus on, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
War — not electricity — is the force that gives life meaning.
“Disgusting!!”
August 27th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
While it’s true that you could revamp the grid with no new technology, it might be better to wait. If you want a genuine national power grid, you’re going to want a significant HVDC capacity. If you’re going to have that, you want to wait for silicon carbide power BJTs to become a mature technology. The reduction of losses in transmission should be enormous.
Then again, the political and bureaucratic delays might be more than long enough so maybe we should start now.
August 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Why doesn’t Barack Obama have any plans? I feel like I don’t have any idea of what he’d do as president…
Are you serious? I really can’t tell with anyone anymore. The world is an Onion. Poe’s law. Etc.
Anyway, in case you are, you could try, you know, here. Or were you waiting for Barack to drop by your house for dinner so he could tell you about it personally?
August 27th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
roboticghost,
I especially love it when doe-eyed transit opponents start babbling about charging plug in electric vehicles at night. Even at normal growth rates the current grid is woefully inadequate.
I especially love it when wild-eyed transit proponents start babbling nonsense about electric vehicles.
A U.S. Department of Energy study found that, even today, without any expansion of capacity at all, the unused capacity of the national electrical infrastructure is suffcient to recharge 70% of the entire national fleet of cars and light trucks if they were plug-in hybrids.
And of course, we’re not going to suddenly change over the entire national vehicle fleet to plug-in hybrids or other kinds of rechargeable electrical vehicle, anyway. The transition will happen gradually, over a period of many years, giving us plenty of time to upgrade the electrical grid as needed. And it is doubtful that grid-supplied electricity will be the only source of power for electric vehicles, anyway.
August 27th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I have been loosely tracking this subject for over fifteen years. Every time a utility wants to build a new power line there is opposition from:
1) Nimby’ers (you’re destroying my view!)
2) Environmentalists (you’re disturbing the habitat!)
3) Social Justice acitivists (you’re going to cause cancer in poor people!)
So color me skeptical that even if the money were to fall from sky, the usual suspects (most of which are nominally your political allies) wouldn’t still be trying to thwart them.
Example from a cursory google search.
August 27th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
And Mixner, the problem is that the unused capacity is in places like the ohio valley/Great lakes and applachia. Places where either the population is lower than it once was or are not (as) suitable for ‘alt’ energy generation.
Capacity is a problem if you are trying to generate enough power in western plains and/or deserts to support everything from Dallas to LA.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
A U.S. Department of Energy study found that, even today, without any expansion of capacity at all, the unused capacity of the national electrical infrastructure is suffcient to recharge 70% of the entire national fleet of cars and light trucks if they were plug-in hybrids.
Mixner’s wrong about mass transit (and just about everything else), but he may have a point here. Plug-in cars are going to be charged overnight, when people are sleeping and their appliances are generally off. Thus, I would suspect that it is possible to use at least a fair amount of currently-unused capacity for it.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Matt, does this mean you support the new transmission line proposed by Dominion Power/Allegheny Power and TrailCo?
I’m on the side of the Piedmont Environmental Council in thinking the land grab and new line may not be necessary if conversation measures are taken.
More info: http://www.pecva.org/anx/index.cfm/1,247,0,0,html/Transmission-Line-Resources
August 27th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Mixner’s wrong about mass transit (and just about everything else),
No, Dilan Esper is wrong about mass transit (and just about everything else).
And Mixner, the problem is that the unused capacity is in places like the ohio valley/Great lakes and applachia.
No, the unused capacity is distributed across most of the country. The Dept of Energy study found that “in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for all of today’s vehicles if they ran on batteries.” It is only in the West, and specifically the Pacific Northwest, that excess capacity is significantly below what would be needed to power all vehicles if they ran on batteries. And even there, there is still enough unused capacity to recharge millions of electric vehicles even today. As I said, it’s not like the entire U.S. light vehicle fleet is going to be replaced with electric vehicles within a few years, anyway.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Power issues seem to have fallen by the wayside since the big northeastern US blackouts. Whatever happens the more localized the power is in the grid the more reliable it will be. Our electronics are to blame as well as our transit habits. If we all switched to electric vehicles straight away there would be power problems. We must seek all options and abandon those that are worse for the environment and our people as a whole.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
No, Dilan Esper is wrong about mass transit (and just about everything else).
Oh yeah? Well Dilan’s rubber and Mixner’s glue! …Seriously, are you 8 years old?
Although I’ve seen you get some simple micro-econ things right on occasion, it’s hard to deny that you are in fact wrong about a lot of stuff. Of course you never admit error, you just play dumb or start side arguments, but it’s pretty obvious that nobody here has been fooled. (Remember this, or this, just to pick a couple?)
August 27th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
No, Dilan Esper is wrong about mass transit (and just about everything else).
Mixner, I was tweaking you, but I do think you have a point here, at least to the extent that people are going to plug in their cars overnight. Isn’t that when the energy grid tends to be less taxed and there is more unused capacity.
Where you go wrong, fundamentally, is in assuming that the choice of most (though certainly nowhere near all) middle class Americans to live suburban, auto-dependent lives is an unchanging fact that we can’t or shouldn’t use public policy to alter rather than one of many possible ways of middle class living that a policymaker might determine isn’t compatible with long-term energy policy goals.
But to the extent that electrics or plug-in hybrids become available, as long as they are being mostly charged at home (rather than at work during peak energy consumption), I do see your point on this issue.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Re: Where you go wrong, fundamentally, is in assuming that the choice of most (though certainly nowhere near all) middle class Americans to live suburban, auto-dependent lives is an unchanging fact that we can’t or shouldn’t use public policy to alter
Dilan,
I live in a fairly dense city– Baltimore, just down the street from Camden Yards. I bike to work usually. In the past, in Florida, I often used a commuter rail line. But I am still dependent on a car. That’s not going to change no matter where people live. Cars are necessary to transport cargo, passengers and pets. They are needed to travel to destinations and at times when public transit is impractical or non-existent. They are necessary in inclement weather, and when haste is necessary. American have always had some form of individual transportation vehicle– before cars it was some sort of wheeled vehicle hitched to a horse. We will continue to have these sorts of vehicles in the future though we will certainly need to make some major technological changes to them. Th quixoticism of the environmental left on this issue is ridiculous and quite self-defeating. Yes, we should improve mass transit, and pedestrian and cycling facilities, and also give people incentives (carrots not sticks) to live closer to where they work. That’s where I differ from Mixner. But cars aren’t going away. Our biggest effort must be to transform them into something that does not require a non-renewable resource or jack up the planetary thermostat.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Th quixoticism of the environmental left on this issue is ridiculous and quite self-defeating. Yes, we should improve mass transit, and pedestrian and cycling facilities, and also give people incentives (carrots not sticks) to live closer to where they work. That’s where I differ from Mixner. But cars aren’t going away.
Did I say that cars will go away? Heck, they have cars in Europe (and I wouldn’t even call for a European-style shift in our resources and incentives).
The problem with the Mixners of the world is that they think that the suburban lifestyle is simply the natural and unchageable order of things, when tons of people in advanced societies throughout the world don’t live in it. Of course we will still have cars, we will still have suburbs, and we will still have highways. The question is whether we should commit our resources to make other ways of living easier while still maintaining the car-and-suburb option for those who are willing to pay for it.
August 31st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
FYI, Jamie @ #8 offers the typical right-wing response to public spending in general and infrastructure spending in particular, and it is painfully wrong, as demonstrated many times in this country’s past. Building out a smart electrical grid would not only create jobs for the people building it (though it would create many such jobs), it would enable all sorts of innovation and business opportunities that wouldn’t exist without it. Much like virtually every other infrastructure investment the country has ever made. It’s a public freakin’ good. And every time you get this naive laissez faire dogma in response.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Frankly, and not seeming to be too simplistic, it would not be that hard to define an incemental solution which follows a client-server model in the computer industry; various raw “fuels” feed local grids who use locally, sale excess (or buy what they lack until they come up to speed.
It can be started very incrementally, go the places most willing/able to invest, then step by step build it in patchworks all over the USA per reasonable interface specs. Connect locally, then to counties, then to states – it would take 10 years, but then would both distribute power MUCH MORE EFFICIENTLY, get all fuel sources into a common denominator (electricty), and even be useful in creating common bonds in localities, and some restoration to local community loyal.
Sorry it if sounds naieve, but I have been involved in similar projects, allbeit so large (when it all gets working together – but certainly the pieces are manageable and can get later “plugged” in to each other.
Wind, garbage, cow manure, solar, bio-diesel, oil from pond scum… it all could be created locally, and as the energy “farms” grow, they sell their excess until the rest catch up.
Sorry, but it is EASY to define, not that hard to do. But it just takes some one with some clout. Personally, I would love to spend the next ten years of my life (of say 15-20) doing it. Sorry to be so brash, but I know I could make it happen.
Dennis Harrison
dharrison6@hvc.rr.com
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