10 ms·

Building the Wind Turbines Was Easy – The Hard Part Was Plugging Them In

38 points by jkuria 7y ago

gdubs 7y ago
Fascinating section is regarding a 2016 study by the NOAA that found the US could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80%, by 2030, using existing technologies. “That scenario didn’t rely on some hoped-for storage breakthrough, just a network of transmissions lines”
- southern_cross 7y ago
  I don't think I've seen the particular study you reference, but if it's like most others that I have seen then it's probably mostly hogwash, based on bogus numbers and wishful thinking. BTW, the Oklahoma-to-Tennessee transmission line referenced in this article was supposed to terminate in my area, where it would connect to TVA's system. But TVA told them that they didn't need the electricity and didn't want it (see below), so nothing ever got built. Between this and the other difficulties referenced in the article, they finally gave up on the notion and sold out to someone else, and that someone else now finds itself on the wrong side of some bankruptcy issues. To wit, certain customers of theirs are having financial difficulties and are trying to get out from under their contracts, with at least one very large customer now using bankruptcy as a lever. As far as TVA itself goes, they currently have a good mix of hydro, nuclear, coal, natural gas (some of which has recently replaced coal), a little bit of wind (with no plans to add more AFAIK), and now some solar, which is a growing part of their base. (There's also been some noise lately about maybe finishing up a nuclear station that was halted halfway and mothballed decades ago, but I don't think that's going to happen.) The article mentions a politician who apparently is anti-wind and may have caused some difficulties here. But there is also another politician who is pro-solar and who may be influencing TVA's activities in that regard.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Assuming the "could, using existing technologies" include moderate political will, it's easy to adjust the taxes to make them want to buy wind. I don't think that's wishful thinking, it's just the difference between "could" and "will".
    - natermer 7y ago
      Sure. If you are willing to torpedo the economy you could accomplish a lot. At least until people start showing up with pitchforks and torches. And by 'torpedo the economy' I mean raise energy costs up to the point were all this energy pipe dreams becomes viable. Of course if people were interested in actually solving the problem then we would be building nuclear power plants left and right and wouldn't have to worry about insanely long transmission lines.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        Taking 3 cents per kWh from coal and giving it to wind would not torpedo the economy. Nuclear power plants are fine too.
      - adrianN 7y ago
        You know what else will torpedo the economy, with nothing we can do about it at all? Catastrophic climate change.
        southern_cross 7y ago
        > Catastrophic climate change. Which is probably just not going to happen, for the most part. The people pushing this stuff are generally just lying about it (lies of omission in many cases), and they should be ashamed of themselves. And we as a whole should be treating them quite harshly for it, rather than accommodating them. By way of example, lately they've been talking a lot about how melting permafrost will release lots of CO2 and methane (greenhouse gases), as biological activity kicks in which causes old organic matter to break down. But what they fail to mention (and this is an intentional omission on their part, in my opinion) is that pretty much as soon as that starts happening, other biological activity will kick in which mitigates those emissions, since a lot of things use that stuff for food. So while some extra CO2 and methane might very well be emitted, this will be far more limited in scope than they let on. It's just scare tactics, mostly.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  I would like to see that study.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    Here's an Ars Technica write up of a study like that, if it's not the one the original poster had in mind: > A new study released Monday looks into what would happen if that limitation were eliminated. It envisions a massive web of high-voltage, direct-current transmission lines, hooked up to 32 nodes spread across the US. This allows a massive spread of renewable power that could be dispatched anywhere in the nation. The result is a grid with dramatically lower carbon emissions and the bonus of lower costs to consumers. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... Of course it's one thing to engineer a carbon- and cost-minimal grid in theory, it's another thing to try to construct a market that could reach that optimum, or get it enacted politically. This HVDC network is something I think of every few months, not only for the idea itself, but for the futility of a really really good idea that has every bit of politics stacked against it.
  - gdubs 7y ago
    Haven’t read it yet, but this looks like it might be it: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 The WSJ article is an excerpt from a coming book, so I’d imagine the study will be listed in the footnotes.
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    PDF link: http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/nclimate2921.pdf http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/nclimate2921.pdf
- sjwright 7y ago
  If that was true, it would be implemented quickly if carbon emissions weren’t free. (I’m not a rabid greenie but it still boggles my mind that we let companies dump shit in the air for free.)
  - epistasis 7y ago
    Not just companies, but individuals on a massive scale. In California, 41% of carbon emissions are from transportation, the largest single source. (IMHO we need to also legalize car-free living in addition to just a carbon tax; it's not much use to tax emissions unless we allow mixed use density and transit, and most cities do not allow that to be built anywhere. )
    - benj111 7y ago
      In what way is car free living illegal?
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Illegal, no. Economically inefficient pain in the butt, yes.
      - sbierwagen 7y ago
        Many California municipalities mandate a certain number of parking spots per housing unit, and also restrict the height of buildings. These laws act to reduce housing density, so that owning a car is required.
        benj111 7y ago
        I'm aware of that, I don't think that makes owning a car a legal requirement though. Parts of San Francisco predate the car, so I assume density is high enough to support car free living.
        bobthepanda 7y ago
- crumpets 7y ago
  Well then the hoped for transmission lines must have been financially ridiculous to build or else it would have been done. If there is one thing you should have leaned about the energy market at this point, it’s that participants tend to favor money over idealism. If your mental model relies on them choosing fossil fuels over money, it’s wrong.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    Building new transmission lines are mostly a political problem, not a technical nor economic one. Nobody wants to allow anything to change near them anymore. The chances of new transmission are extremely slim no matter the economic or environmental benefits because of the process that has been enacted over the past decades.
gingabriska 7y ago
I also made a wind turbine (3d printed with ABS) on Prusa i3 MK3S
Animats 7y ago
China is way ahead in long distance power transmission.[1] Some of the ultra-high voltage DC technology comes from ABB, so it's available from non-China sources. This isn't technically that hard. It's a land acquisition problem where some little landowner on the route can block the project. Maybe forget trying to get to Texas and go east to Illinois, and feed Chicago and points east. [1] https://new.abb.com/news/detail/10464/abb-enables-worlds-first-hvdc-grid-in-china https://new.abb.com/news/detail/10464/abb-enables-worlds-fir...
- tialaramex 7y ago
  "No" isn't necessarily an answer. In the UK for example the law creates "Necessary Wayleaves" which basically say well, society decided we need electricity, and the power transmission company says it needs to put something here to achieve that, so tough, now your freehold has a Wayleave on it that you can't remove saying they can have access and put things on your land. You get paid compensation automatically, but you don't get to say "No". You can go to tribunal (like a court) but "Too bad, now nobody gets any electricity" isn't one of the options they have, so unless you're going to show that they had another better route open to them the tribunal will just rule against you.
  - ahartmetz 7y ago
    It is similar in Germany. Probably just a necessity if you have high population density and want to get anything done. But then there are in some cases whole municipalities or larger units of administration (usually driven by citizens) against new power lines, and they can prevent them... and that is a current problem.
- crumpets 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
epistasis 7y ago
> “I will tell you as an engineer, with training in operations and planning, if you had asked me 10 years ago if we would have been able to reliably accommodate even half of that, I would have said no. Period. End of discussion,” he said. This has been the story of renewables since the beginning: highly trained people bringing up technical concerns that seem like impossibilities, and then that impossibility being proven to be possible. I almost never believe a hardened, experienced, smart energy person anymore when they say something isn't possible, because what they really mean is "nobody has done that before." Up until 2000, nobody having done something before probably meant it wasn't possible: thermal steam turbines have been optimized out the wazoo for decades upon decades. As we move away from thermal steam production of electricity, we will need to re-evaluate everything, something the energy sector hasn't done for a very long time.
- southern_cross 7y ago
  One of the things not mentioned here is that increasing use of wind and solar is forcing grid operators to make compromises in the traditional standards of how they run the grid. For example, IIRC the ability to maintain a rock-solid 60Hz power frequency has largely gone out the window. In the past this was considered critical for maintaining the stability of the grid and the various equipment that is plugged into it, but now maybe not so much. Also, as I understand it the various control systems which used to kick in just on occasion and take somewhat heroic measures in order to maintain grid stability are now having to do that constantly. This isn't the exception anymore but rather the rule, in other words, so it's probably not so much a matter of "The system is working well" as it is "We're making it work as best we can, at least for now". This is an important distinction because while in the past an outage or a hack or whatever would have probably had limited scope, today the same might end up bringing a much larger part of the grid down.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    One reason for the rock-solid requirement was that over time instead of just power the grid became a distributed time-base. After discouraging that kind of practice the grid operators found they had more freedom. Examples of such use: record players and various clocks running on grid power would use the frequency stability to drive synchronous motors.
ncmncm 7y ago
The market for wind turbines has a chance to explode if the wind turbine companies would invest in small-scale ammonia production technology. Farms everywhere (a) can use ammonia for both fertilizer and fuel, (b) have room for wind turbines, and (c) are mostly far from power networks. A Canadian inventor, Roger Gordon (http://www.greennh3.com/ http://www.greennh3.com/) has a refrigerator-size design that needs only electric power, water, and air, but can't raise capital. Intermittent ammonia production is a perfect fit for wind turbines. Who needs wires? Industrial ammonia production turns out to be the single biggest methane polluter. (https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-after-all/ https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-...) Methane is much worse than CO2. Driving them out of business would be a wonderful side benefit.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- eitland 7y ago
  I know too little chemistry to say if this is viable or not, economically speaking, but here are a couple of questions that I have: - ammonia/NH3 is highly corrosive IIRC, and also toxic. Do we have good ways to handle it in a safe manner? - while capitalism has its drawbacks one thing it usually manages is to get funding for anything that seems like a good investment. And while I can understand why Exxon or Shell might stay clear there are many more who doesn't have their own oil fields and should be happy to get on the next big thing? Don't misunderstand me: this sounds extremely cool and useful, but those two questions immediately crossed my mind.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    > Do we have good ways to handle it in a safe manner? We handle millions of tons of it every year, already. So, yes. Farmers buy it in barrels and mount them on their plows.
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      > Farmers buy it in barrels and mount them on their plows As you said above, ammonia is used to make fertiliser but AFAIK that happens in factories, but are you saying farmers actually use it directly? I really struggle to believe that. I'd be curious for more info, thanks.

38 points by jkuria 7y ago

Fascinating section is regarding a 2016 study by the NOAA that found the US could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80%, by 2030, using existing technologies. “That scenario didn’t rely on some hoped-for storage breakthrough, just a network of transmissions lines”

southern_cross 7y ago
I don't think I've seen the particular study you reference, but if it's like most others that I have seen then it's probably mostly hogwash, based on bogus numbers and wishful thinking. BTW, the Oklahoma-to-Tennessee transmission line referenced in this article was supposed to terminate in my area, where it would connect to TVA's system. But TVA told them that they didn't need the electricity and didn't want it (see below), so nothing ever got built. Between this and the other difficulties referenced in the article, they finally gave up on the notion and sold out to someone else, and that someone else now finds itself on the wrong side of some bankruptcy issues. To wit, certain customers of theirs are having financial difficulties and are trying to get out from under their contracts, with at least one very large customer now using bankruptcy as a lever. As far as TVA itself goes, they currently have a good mix of hydro, nuclear, coal, natural gas (some of which has recently replaced coal), a little bit of wind (with no plans to add more AFAIK), and now some solar, which is a growing part of their base. (There's also been some noise lately about maybe finishing up a nuclear station that was halted halfway and mothballed decades ago, but I don't think that's going to happen.) The article mentions a politician who apparently is anti-wind and may have caused some difficulties here. But there is also another politician who is pro-solar and who may be influencing TVA's activities in that regard.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Assuming the "could, using existing technologies" include moderate political will, it's easy to adjust the taxes to make them want to buy wind. I don't think that's wishful thinking, it's just the difference between "could" and "will".
  - natermer 7y ago
    Sure. If you are willing to torpedo the economy you could accomplish a lot. At least until people start showing up with pitchforks and torches. And by 'torpedo the economy' I mean raise energy costs up to the point were all this energy pipe dreams becomes viable. Of course if people were interested in actually solving the problem then we would be building nuclear power plants left and right and wouldn't have to worry about insanely long transmission lines.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      Taking 3 cents per kWh from coal and giving it to wind would not torpedo the economy. Nuclear power plants are fine too.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      You know what else will torpedo the economy, with nothing we can do about it at all? Catastrophic climate change.
      - southern_cross 7y ago
        > Catastrophic climate change. Which is probably just not going to happen, for the most part. The people pushing this stuff are generally just lying about it (lies of omission in many cases), and they should be ashamed of themselves. And we as a whole should be treating them quite harshly for it, rather than accommodating them. By way of example, lately they've been talking a lot about how melting permafrost will release lots of CO2 and methane (greenhouse gases), as biological activity kicks in which causes old organic matter to break down. But what they fail to mention (and this is an intentional omission on their part, in my opinion) is that pretty much as soon as that starts happening, other biological activity will kick in which mitigates those emissions, since a lot of things use that stuff for food. So while some extra CO2 and methane might very well be emitted, this will be far more limited in scope than they let on. It's just scare tactics, mostly.
maxxxxx 7y ago
I would like to see that study.
- epistasis 7y ago
  Here's an Ars Technica write up of a study like that, if it's not the one the original poster had in mind: > A new study released Monday looks into what would happen if that limitation were eliminated. It envisions a massive web of high-voltage, direct-current transmission lines, hooked up to 32 nodes spread across the US. This allows a massive spread of renewable power that could be dispatched anywhere in the nation. The result is a grid with dramatically lower carbon emissions and the bonus of lower costs to consumers. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-electrical-system-boosts-renewables-lowers-costs/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/making-a-single-us-e... Of course it's one thing to engineer a carbon- and cost-minimal grid in theory, it's another thing to try to construct a market that could reach that optimum, or get it enacted politically. This HVDC network is something I think of every few months, not only for the idea itself, but for the futility of a really really good idea that has every bit of politics stacked against it.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Haven’t read it yet, but this looks like it might be it: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 The WSJ article is an excerpt from a coming book, so I’d imagine the study will be listed in the footnotes.
- southern_cross 7y ago
  PDF link: http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/nclimate2921.pdf http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/nclimate2921.pdf
sjwright 7y ago
If that was true, it would be implemented quickly if carbon emissions weren’t free. (I’m not a rabid greenie but it still boggles my mind that we let companies dump shit in the air for free.)
- epistasis 7y ago
  Not just companies, but individuals on a massive scale. In California, 41% of carbon emissions are from transportation, the largest single source. (IMHO we need to also legalize car-free living in addition to just a carbon tax; it's not much use to tax emissions unless we allow mixed use density and transit, and most cities do not allow that to be built anywhere. )
  - benj111 7y ago
    In what way is car free living illegal?
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Illegal, no. Economically inefficient pain in the butt, yes.
    - sbierwagen 7y ago
      Many California municipalities mandate a certain number of parking spots per housing unit, and also restrict the height of buildings. These laws act to reduce housing density, so that owning a car is required.
      - benj111 7y ago
        I'm aware of that, I don't think that makes owning a car a legal requirement though. Parts of San Francisco predate the car, so I assume density is high enough to support car free living.
        bobthepanda 7y ago
crumpets 7y ago
Well then the hoped for transmission lines must have been financially ridiculous to build or else it would have been done. If there is one thing you should have leaned about the energy market at this point, it’s that participants tend to favor money over idealism. If your mental model relies on them choosing fossil fuels over money, it’s wrong.
- epistasis 7y ago
  Building new transmission lines are mostly a political problem, not a technical nor economic one. Nobody wants to allow anything to change near them anymore. The chances of new transmission are extremely slim no matter the economic or environmental benefits because of the process that has been enacted over the past decades.

gingabriska 7y ago

I also made a wind turbine (3d printed with ABS) on Prusa i3 MK3S

Animats 7y ago

China is way ahead in long distance power transmission.[1] Some of the ultra-high voltage DC technology comes from ABB, so it's available from non-China sources. This isn't technically that hard. It's a land acquisition problem where some little landowner on the route can block the project. Maybe forget trying to get to Texas and go east to Illinois, and feed Chicago and points east. [1] https://new.abb.com/news/detail/10464/abb-enables-worlds-first-hvdc-grid-in-china https://new.abb.com/news/detail/10464/abb-enables-worlds-fir...

tialaramex 7y ago
"No" isn't necessarily an answer. In the UK for example the law creates "Necessary Wayleaves" which basically say well, society decided we need electricity, and the power transmission company says it needs to put something here to achieve that, so tough, now your freehold has a Wayleave on it that you can't remove saying they can have access and put things on your land. You get paid compensation automatically, but you don't get to say "No". You can go to tribunal (like a court) but "Too bad, now nobody gets any electricity" isn't one of the options they have, so unless you're going to show that they had another better route open to them the tribunal will just rule against you.
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  It is similar in Germany. Probably just a necessity if you have high population density and want to get anything done. But then there are in some cases whole municipalities or larger units of administration (usually driven by citizens) against new power lines, and they can prevent them... and that is a current problem.
crumpets 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

epistasis 7y ago

> “I will tell you as an engineer, with training in operations and planning, if you had asked me 10 years ago if we would have been able to reliably accommodate even half of that, I would have said no. Period. End of discussion,” he said. This has been the story of renewables since the beginning: highly trained people bringing up technical concerns that seem like impossibilities, and then that impossibility being proven to be possible. I almost never believe a hardened, experienced, smart energy person anymore when they say something isn't possible, because what they really mean is "nobody has done that before." Up until 2000, nobody having done something before probably meant it wasn't possible: thermal steam turbines have been optimized out the wazoo for decades upon decades. As we move away from thermal steam production of electricity, we will need to re-evaluate everything, something the energy sector hasn't done for a very long time.

southern_cross 7y ago
One of the things not mentioned here is that increasing use of wind and solar is forcing grid operators to make compromises in the traditional standards of how they run the grid. For example, IIRC the ability to maintain a rock-solid 60Hz power frequency has largely gone out the window. In the past this was considered critical for maintaining the stability of the grid and the various equipment that is plugged into it, but now maybe not so much. Also, as I understand it the various control systems which used to kick in just on occasion and take somewhat heroic measures in order to maintain grid stability are now having to do that constantly. This isn't the exception anymore but rather the rule, in other words, so it's probably not so much a matter of "The system is working well" as it is "We're making it work as best we can, at least for now". This is an important distinction because while in the past an outage or a hack or whatever would have probably had limited scope, today the same might end up bringing a much larger part of the grid down.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  One reason for the rock-solid requirement was that over time instead of just power the grid became a distributed time-base. After discouraging that kind of practice the grid operators found they had more freedom. Examples of such use: record players and various clocks running on grid power would use the frequency stability to drive synchronous motors.

ncmncm 7y ago

The market for wind turbines has a chance to explode if the wind turbine companies would invest in small-scale ammonia production technology. Farms everywhere (a) can use ammonia for both fertilizer and fuel, (b) have room for wind turbines, and (c) are mostly far from power networks. A Canadian inventor, Roger Gordon (http://www.greennh3.com/ http://www.greennh3.com/) has a refrigerator-size design that needs only electric power, water, and air, but can't raise capital. Intermittent ammonia production is a perfect fit for wind turbines. Who needs wires? Industrial ammonia production turns out to be the single biggest methane polluter. (https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-after-all/ https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-...) Methane is much worse than CO2. Driving them out of business would be a wonderful side benefit.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
eitland 7y ago
I know too little chemistry to say if this is viable or not, economically speaking, but here are a couple of questions that I have: - ammonia/NH3 is highly corrosive IIRC, and also toxic. Do we have good ways to handle it in a safe manner? - while capitalism has its drawbacks one thing it usually manages is to get funding for anything that seems like a good investment. And while I can understand why Exxon or Shell might stay clear there are many more who doesn't have their own oil fields and should be happy to get on the next big thing? Don't misunderstand me: this sounds extremely cool and useful, but those two questions immediately crossed my mind.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  > Do we have good ways to handle it in a safe manner? We handle millions of tons of it every year, already. So, yes. Farmers buy it in barrels and mount them on their plows.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    > Farmers buy it in barrels and mount them on their plows As you said above, ammonia is used to make fertiliser but AFAIK that happens in factories, but are you saying farmers actually use it directly? I really struggle to believe that. I'd be curious for more info, thanks.