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Why Does the U.S. Have Three Electrical Grids?
- ggm 6y agoAustralia is comparable in size, split by a giant middle desert (literally and figuratively) And has two grids. Balancing the east coast grid is sometimes hard. Its weak, badly in need of capital investment and somewhat mired in inter-state/federal madness. Personally, I think privatizing the utility function was insane. There are some cool things which emerged after the 1970s grounded capital investment: High Voltage DC is very cool. Avoids some of the issues of phase and load mis-alignment between regions, generation models. Arguments for a different kind of net exist. More local resiliency. More load shedding, more respect for home solar and batteries, as well as storage in the network.
- rbg246 6y agohttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plated-power-grid/8721566 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/australian-gold-plate... It seems to be both overinvested and underinvested? How can it be both? (Sorry looking for insight not trying to disprove what you say)
- ggm 6y agoGold plating is a bit of a misnomer. Capital investment made in transmission was assured a rate of return above CPI. It was a gold class, form of spending money to earn future revenue under regulation. They didn't invest in the parts which we need now, in the light of shifts in transmission models from Coal and Gas, to both inter-state dependencies on trunks, and the in-local-distribution network storage and generation. They chose to invest in the assets they had, which were not the ones we need to invest in, to cope with variable load in wind and solar, and distributed generation in the home. Demand management, variable load, need for Syncons and storage and need for more resiliency in the inter-state connections and the "rhombus of regret" are where money needs to go. the gold plating was not made there. And in any case, its rent-seeking behaviour: its not a good model. (this is highly subjective opinion btw. A good economist to read on this is John Quiggin, and a good alternative engergy advocate is Giles Parkinson, reneweconomy. They are also partisan, but knowledgeable.)
- rbg246 6y agoThanks, that was really interesting. Always hear one side of news, especially when it's a semi-complex subject and I will have a look at reneweconomy.
- siddboots 6y ago> And has two grids. Not just two. There's also the Darwin/Katherine system which serves about 150k customers. The NWIS and Alice Springs system both have 20k+ customers. Australia has some really interesting power systems.
- ggm 6y agoSorry I didn't capture that. I bet the NT gets better service outcomes than either WA or east coast, sooner (because more focussed)
- justatdotin 6y agothere's issues with decades of one provider also owning the infra. It got split up in recent years, but we've yet to see new providers connected. in the top end, fruitbats and cyclonic storms are common disruptions its got better in the suburbs since lotsa wires went underground, but just a few km down the highway and the grade of service drops.
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- ew6082 6y agoAmong US utilities, local public utilities seem to work best. Federal run facilities are deeply mired in bureaucracy and acquisition guidelines, while fully private power companies are prone to get bought out by large investor conglomerates and end up too driven by quarterly profit to invest in maintenance.
- nickff 6y agoThe most interesting national electricity grid has to be Japan's, with two completely different networks operating at different frequencies, and connected by HVDC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan
- fomine3 6y agoThat's still pain. When I (live in 50Hz area) buy cheap dehumidifier, I get lower performance due to lower frequency.
- MisterTea 6y agoAC motor speed is frequency dependent so your dehumidifier compressor and fan motors are running slower and producing less mechanical power.
- fomine3 6y agoI come up with a hypothesis: Japan's divided frequency situation made Japanese electric manufacturers to invent inverter for electrics (example: air conditioners, microwave, refrigerators). Inverter primary makes electrics controllable efficiently, also they can ship same product (same performance) for both 50/60Hz area in Japan.
- fireattack 6y agoAny "evidence" (or anything substantial) about your hypothesis? Like, did Japanese companies actually invent inverters, or are inverter air conditioners more common in Japan compared to other countries?
- fomine3 6y agoSorry for bad English, "develop" would be better word than "invent". AFAIK Daikin argues that Inverter Air conditioner is very popular in Japan compared to other developed countries. In Japan, mini-split type a/c is common and almost all producs are runned by inverter compressor (except very cheap one but almost no one buy it). Here's Daikin's argument (japanese). Green is % of inverter and Japan is 100%. https://www.daikin.co.jp/csr/information/lecture/act01.html https://www.daikin.co.jp/csr/information/lecture/act01.html https://www.daikin.co.jp/csr/information/lecture/images/act01_image02.gif https://www.daikin.co.jp/csr/information/lecture/images/act0... It seems that world's first inverter a/c is by Toshiba. https://toshiba-mirai-kagakukan.jp/en/learn/history/ichigoki/1981aircon/index.htm https://toshiba-mirai-kagakukan.jp/en/learn/history/ichigoki...
- Pfhreak 6y ago> Everything within those separate zones is synched up. So you’ve got your 60 hertz AC wave; 60 times a second the AC power flow is changing direction. And all of the generators, all of the power consumption within each zone is doing that synchronously. But the east is doing it on its own. The West is on a different phase. Same for Texas. Folks may not realize that power is transmitted in three phases in the US. AC power is essentially a sin wave, and we use 3 different 'phases', which are just shifted sin waves so that we basically always have at least one phase providing power at any time. Every generator hooked up to the grid must be synchronized to the same 60 hz phases. There are devices called 'phasors' that assist in ensuring generators are lined up with the grid. And now there are networked versions to help coordinate across large regions. But if two grids are on different phases, then there will be serious problems in connecting them together -- mostly that generators will be fighting against each other and potentially causing damage to things on the grid expecting clean 60hz power. It gets complicated pretty quickly.
- aidenn0 6y agoThe solution is to connect them with HVDC, right? That might not be a great solution for making a single national-grid, but it would allow the 3 grids to mutually borrow from each other, right?
- samcheng 6y agoIt's a lot of current, so maybe you want superconducting HVDC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation
- msisk6 6y agoLast I heard the whole Tres Amigas SuperStation deal totally fell apart.
- msisk6 6y agoThat's exactly right, but the capacity is limited. ERCOT in Texas, for example, has 5 DC ties to the other grids: http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_condi...
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago> If you look at lists of the 100 greatest inventions of all time, electricity figures prominently. Once you get past some key enablers that can’t really be called inventions—fire, money, the wheel, calendars, the alphabet Well that's a doozy of a way to start. How is electricity an invention but those listed after are not?
- na85 6y agoFire is a natural phenomenon and I don't see how it can credibly be called an invention. That would be like calling water an invention. The others, though, are certainly inventions.
- iaw 6y agoI would argue that the ability to make controlled fires was an invention and perhaps the first chemistry humans intentionally performed, but I think it's just a point of semantics.
- SECProto 6y agoI see a lot more natural electricity (lightning, monthly) than I do natural fire (wildfires? Never)
- danielheath 6y agoAlmost as though methods to prevent wildfires are one of the earliest human inventions.
- hristov 6y agoUgh, another way the Trump administration is holding back the country. The frustrating thing is this time the scientists almost got away with it. If they just did not invite any political DOE officials to their presentation, they might have published the paper.
- inoffensivename 6y agoI dunno there's like 300 million people living here, it feels like we should have more than just three
- dpierce9 6y agoAt least part of the reason is regulatory. The national grid regulator (FERC) gets its foothold through the interstate commerce clause. Since Texas heavily restricts the interstate interconnections it is not regulated federally (or at least less regulated). Of course this doesn’t explain the East/west non-interconnection, I think historically the Rockies do most of that though (as the article mentions). The issue is only partially technical and largely administrative.
- imoverclocked 6y agoThe main point of this article has nothing to do with the technical details of power transportation and everything to do with politics and corruption of our academic/research institutions. It’s amazing how an anti-fact leader can have such corrupting influence on institutions that are building tomorrow’s leaders.
- CameronNemo 6y agoI've flagged the article for such a reason.
- pjc50 6y agoEveryone's apolitical until the lights go out.
- FrumpyDonut 6y agoYou'd be hard pressed to find too many facts in a study like this. These are largely conjecture with a list of assumptions and simplifications longer than the study itself. NREL is particularly famous for these. The reality is there are as many people who think the grid should be split into more pieces as there are people who think it should be unified. But it's a fair point regarding the political influence in these type things, though it's not just the current administration. In a couple of months we will all be changing the verbiage of our proposals from resiliency, security back to renewable integration to satisfy our funding overlords.
- pjc50 6y agoPratically Chinese in having a political officer embedded in the conference who reports violation of political correctness to senior political appointees who can then have it shut down.
- swatson741 6y agoThe article makes this seem like it's a US problem but, the interconnects lay in Canada and Mexico too. I'm guessing that unification is a low priority for them since it seems that the US stands to gain the most from it. "DC power lines transmit power more efficiently than AC lines do" This is not at all what is taught at school. Looking into this is interesting. 100 years ago people were debating about whether AC or DC is a better means of transmitting power and, it looks like answers still aren't clear now. I'm interested in knowing what an expert in this thinks.
- marcosdumay 6y agoHVDC is much better than anything else for long distance transmission. But the gain is because of the high voltage part, not the DC one. The one thing that pushes people into DC is that phase synchronization is a huge problem on high voltage. So, for indirect reasons, DC gets to be the winner right now.
- djsjbsjd 6y ago“But the gain is because of the high voltage part, not the DC one.“ What do you mean by that? My understanding is the HVDC lines are still lower V than an AC line (the Soviet even had 500lV lines), and therefore DCs advantages are no coupling to ground, no Z reflections and ability to connect to any grid.
- marcosdumay 6y agoA quick search will lead you somewhere like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current. > Most HVDC links use voltages between 100 kV and 800 kV. By contrast, high voltage AC lines are around 10kV to (very rarely) 100kV. AC presents some more problems to high voltage than just phase synchronization (so even two point lines are DC), but the gains come mostly from the HV part, and AC is avoided because it doesn't play well with HV, reverting the gains.
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- 8bitsrule 6y agoWorth mentioning here that China has massively invested in HVDC for over a decade (and still is [0] ... about a half-trillion/year lately). The longer that N.A. drags its heels on this, the longer it'll take to move to renewables. (Just another infrastructure need that might have been paid for by funds thrown into Forever War.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThkjp-bp8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThkjp-bp8M "China's MILLION VOLT Energy Superhighway" (12m)
- csense 6y ago> your article imagines, for example, the sun rising in the West This isn't a useful thought experiment. What was the author thinking?
- dredmorbius 6y agoRewrite as: "Imagine that as the sun rises in the western U.S. ...".
- dehrmann 6y agoTexas. Why east and west are separate is probably more interesting.
- cm2187 6y agoThe argument for more unified grids would have had more leg before the 2003 outage, where a failure was propagated through the grid and resulted in a blackout for a large part of the US. With multiple separate grids, at least you reduce the impact of such event.
- mijkal 6y agoWikipedia has a nice map showing the coverage of various grids in N. America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...
- frank2 6y ago>Antibiotics . . . would be impossible without refrigeration Any idea what the author means by this?
- jleahy 6y agoI presumed he misspoke and meant vaccinations.
- notmadnomad 6y agoGranted the immense infrastructure investment, but why not ditch electrical and natural gas for hydrogen? Hydrogen is much safer, cleaner, and less lossy than either.
- pjc50 6y agoBulk hydrogen production from electricity is more expensive than natural gas. It's also more expensive than making hydrogen from natural gas, which is why lots of fossil fuel companies like "clean" hydrogen. (It can also be lossy, as the atoms are small enough to leak through metals, causing hydrogen embrittlement along the way)
- kenneth 6y agoThe source article was a far more digestible read of the same content: https://www.invw.org/2020/08/20/who-killed-the-supergrid/ https://www.invw.org/2020/08/20/who-killed-the-supergrid/
- huffmsa 6y ago> California had more rolling blackouts > Let's consolidate it with the other grids How about no? Centralization means single point of failure. If anything we need more, smaller, localized grids that are reactive to their localized needs.
- rob74 6y agoAlways interesting to learn such details about infrastructure "hidden in plain sight". One more I can add is the separate traction power network in Germany, Austria in Switzerland, which is necessary because the railways here use a frequency of 16,7 Hz. It is fed in part by dedicated power plants (or dedicated generators in shared power plants), in part by converters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_power_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_power_network https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstromnetz#/media/Datei:Bahnstromnetz.png https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstromnetz#/media/Datei:Bah...
- ssda2211 6y agoThere is a wonderful YouTube channel called practical engineering. You might like that. It's primarily about hidden in plain plain infrastructure and the engineering behind it.
- mcv 6y agoEurope's integrated power grids can very rarely cause weird problems. A couple of years ago, a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo left some power demand unfulfilled, which lead to the grid frequency slightly dropping, which caused grid-powered clocks to lose about 6 minutes: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/european-grid-dispute-resolved-lost-6-minutes-returned-to-oven-clocks/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/european-grid-di... Political tension between Serbia and Kosovo is not entirely unexpected of course, but it's weird if that starts affecting clocks half a continent away.
- thelastname 6y agoGerman transfers from wind farms at the north to factories in the south and Austria often caused problems in Polish and Czech networks. https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europe-power-couple-break-up/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-austria-energy-europ...
- kd5bjo 6y agoIIRC, one of the reasons Texas has a separate grid is to avoid Federal regulation: The source of the US’s power to regulate electricity is the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution, which doesn’t apply if nothing crosses state borders.
- hahajk 6y agoI also heard that having its own power grid makes it an appealing place to build data centers. Especially for the military who are worried about power-grid-hacking.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoToo much efficiency is dangerous: it makes the overall system more vulnerable because it removes redundancies, increasing systemic risk. Decision processes are not scale-invariant: politics, and therefore susceptibility to corruption, increases, transparency decreases. Not saying a unified grid is not worth it, but there are downsides that might not be immediately obvious.
- tonyarkles 6y agoI definitely picked up on the same thing, remembering the east coast blackout in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoYou don't know the contra positive though, would the spare capacity in the rest of the system have prevented it?
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoMy point is that the spare capacity would evaporate, as the higher-cost power plants would be shut down.
- EricE 6y agoYup - just in time manufacturing means we often rely on critical parts delivered from foreign countries. I wish I could remember the article I read over five years ago that was pointing out that many utilities do not have backup equipment at larger substations and often rely on replacement devices from overseas sources. Hopefully we have gotten a bit better and stockpile spares for critical infrastructure such as the electrical grid, especially when we have lost so much of our internal manufacturing capabilities.
- 5040 6y agoOf some relevance here: Transformers that are small are often on hand and easy to swap out. But some of the bigger ones have months long lead times. The facility we were at had transformers that had a 6 month lead time from Germany to replace them and they had to be sent via boat as they wouldn’t fit in planes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318278
- mwexler 6y agoAs I read this and started to see the politics rise up, I was reminded of a similar set of arguments and regs around electronic road toll collection. The US govt has mandated (the MAP-21 act of 2012) thst we move to a single standard so a sunpass from FL will work just like an EZpass from NY. Wired did a nice summary a few years ago on the lack of progress (https://www.wired.com/story/national-tolling-system/ https://www.wired.com/story/national-tolling-system/)