25 ms·

The booming business of knitting together the world’s electricity grids

213 points by BayAreaEscapee 5y ago

ruuda 5y ago
Semi-related, at https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map you can get a realtime view of electricity production, consumption, and import/export.
sk2020 5y ago
If there are disputes about consumption and production across national boundaries, who resolves that? Different parts of the world don’t even have similar objectives within the energy market. I also think an unaccountable international power utility that can control if I survive the winter or not is a terrible idea.
- simonh 5y ago
  To the former question, contracts like the ones outlined in the article. On the latter, that's not being suggested.
neonate 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20211017140938/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/10/16/the-booming-business-of-knitting-together-the-worlds-electricity-grids http://web.archive.org/web/20211017140938/https://www.econom... https://archive.is/SAn6I https://archive.is/SAn6I
mactavish88 5y ago
How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater interconnectivity?
- mhandley 5y ago
  I wonder how much of an issue this is for long distance undersea power cables? If you temporarily disconnect both ends during a solar storm, does the fact that they're under a great depth of electrically conductive salt water serve to protect the cables themselves?
- mistrial9 5y ago
  start with the basics ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid
- 5faulker 5y ago
  Some of these technologies are still in their nascent form IMHO.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater interconnectivity? Does the risk of damage go up, practically speaking, when comparing a country-wide guide to a continent-wide one? As in, is there any equipment that would survive the former but not the latter? Or mitigation techniques that work in the case of the former but not the latter?
  - retrac 5y ago
    It depends in part, on the length of conductors. In the 1989 magnetic storm, long-distance lines in Quebec were blown, while shorter length runs weren't as badly affected. Multiple short spans not all lined up the same way but carrying the same amount of power, is far less vulnerable than one 1000 km long wire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Same as we always do: planned disconnection and blackouts to manage demand.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  Backup natural gas plants? Just throwing it out there, don't know if that would actually be sensible.
  - heurisko 5y ago
    I believe gas plants are already used to stabilise grids, as they have the benefit of being able to come online quickly. They do depend on subsidies, however, as the idea is they would be mostly offline.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  HVDC lines are immune to solar storms. The problem for the grid is DC currents induced in AC lines, causing failure of transformers. But on DC lines, it just perturbs the voltage slightly.
lb1lf 5y ago
Norway mostly generate electricity from renewable sources, some 99% of our annual production (~120TWh, if memory serves) is hydro-electric. We've seen prices becoming more volatile in later years as our domestic market has become more interconnected with that of continental Europe. Normally, I'd be all in favour of being part of a larger, working market; however with European countries phasing out coal (makes sense) and nuclear (makes less sense), supply is being cut while demand soars; hardly a recipe for stable prices. It would be nice to serve base power needs by nuclear power, then use hydro (which can be regulated up and down much faster than thermal power plants) to handle the peaks.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  There's a bit of a backlash again shutting down right now. Fingers crossed Germany doesn't get what it wants for the EU for a change, and that pans out. (Editted to make clear I meant EU wide, not within Germany)
  - patall 5y ago
    The last nuclear power plant in Germany will get shutdown in less than 15 months. With that in mind, there have been no investments into them for years. You won't be able to keep them running by simple maintenance. That ship has sailed for years. What do you expect to happen?
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      A big issue is that Germany, in trying to classify gas but not nuclear as "green", is trying to get every other country to do the same. The insanity must at least be stopped at Germany's boarders.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    A couple years of worse prices from phasing coal out more quickly seem like nothing compared to the long term effects of climate change. If we're taking about nuclear: I don't see any chance of Germany halting its phase-out of current nuclear plants. New plants meanwhile don't seem sensible economically
ximeng 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJunxkln578 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJunxkln578 more on the UK to Morocco solar / wind farm plan. 3,800km times four HVDC cables for redundancy. Global capacity around 4,000km of cable per year. So to make this project happen, need to open a new cable manufacturing facility. This video also suggests that this sort of renewable project will have an average cost of 48 GBP/MWh versus 92.50 GBP/MWh for new nuclear.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  But why would you lay it to UK when you could do US, hence supply sun energy at night? My estimates was about 40% loss tho.
  - Jedd 5y ago
    > But why would you lay it to UK when you could do US, hence supply sun energy at night? My estimates was about 40% loss tho. This is a most wonderfully HN-ish of comments. Someone mentions a mammoth infrastructure project, that's doubtless involved many hundreds of person-years of effort to realise, and with the scale and money involved everything from the business case through to the final engineering proposals would have been reviewed, vetted, considered, analysed, checked, and audited dozens of times over. The reactive response is - why didn't they do something totally different? FWIW, absent any research, my responses to that question included scale (it's huge, but still a much shorter distance), they could skirt the coast, so they wouldn't have to contend with a famously deep trench in the middle of the Atlantic, they'd probably been at this for some years and the USA leadership <sic> has been famously against renewables for 4 of the last 5 years. With a few minutes research, I now know xlinks is a British start-up - so they'd probably not be interested to just be a deal broker for renewables between Morocco and the USA. A straight-line (routing around Iberia) path according to google from Morroco to Cornwall is ~ 2350km - so if they're citing a 3800km path it looks like they're staying close to the coast (as I expected). Morroco to the USA is ~6,000km (as the sardine swims) so even a direct route path would be twice the everything. I can't find definitive answers about power cables over ocean trenches, but it looks like the (predominantly comms) cables that go that way are tiny - several cm diameter at most - and relatively lightweight. I'd guess they're a tested tech in those environments, have lots of existing redundancy, and are (relatively) inexpensive to re-run if they break. In contrast, these 4 x power transmission cables are 150kg / metre, and no one has any long-distance experience with them. They'll be extremely expensive and time-consuming to repair or replace, and a failure of one of them will cause protracted, huge disruptions.
malchow 5y ago
High-level grid interconnection isn't so useful if one (or more) of the lower-level grids being interconnected is so badly maintained that it frequently has to be deenergized. The future probably looks like microgrids, with MID/neutral-forming transformers [1] which generate their own 60 Hz pilot signal and allow multiple producers, batteries, and consumers to coexist on a common protocol even in the absence of the utility grid. [1] https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-QIG-EN-US-Rev02-05-26-2021.pdf https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-Q...
- zbrozek 5y ago
  The electrical engineer in me wants to see bigger and better grids that allow us to better utilize more renewable (and intermittent) sources. Show me that transcontinental or intercontinental or transoceanic HVDC backbone that lets electricity slosh around all over the planet. Just in the US I fantasize about an HVDC line that runs the length of I-40 alongside an aqueduct covered in solar panels to knit together the eastern, western, and Texan grids while also bringing the southeast's excess fresh water to the southwest. The pragmatist in me (and the witness to the difficulty of getting anything built, and the greater difficulty of getting anything maintained) thinks grid investment is both unlikely to happen and even more unlikely to work well. In particular, transmission is low-value, high-risk, and expensive. It's low-value because distributed generation and storage are getting cheap. It's high-risk because high-power-density things are dangerous (check out all the Western fires started by electric utilities' transmission lines and switchcraft). It's expensive partially for good material and access reasons, but also for bad political reasons (NIMBYism and the fragmentation of responsibility for large land areas) and simply real estate rights cost. It's like trying to build California's high-speed rail but with less value-add, so it's going to be a horrible uphill slog of questionable merit. So yes, I agree with you. More microgrids with more distributed generation and storage are inevitable. And I think that they're probably going to destabilize and likely kill the large-scale electric utility as we know it in ~50 years. I often wonder why more power companies haven't already become telcos to utilize their poles to distribute internet access.
  - bob1029 5y ago
hikerclimber1 5y ago
Everything is subjective. Especially laws.
aaron695 5y ago
All logic is you don't need knitting you need east west backbones. Maximised longitude, smooth the curve of human activity, not wind and solar (which also approximately matches non-coincidentally)
01100011 5y ago
Does anyone know the relative efficiency of, say, pumped hydro or lithium battery storage vs, say, a 1000km transmission line? I'm curious how local storage stacks up against something like sending solar power half way around the globe.
- patall 5y ago
  The one from Norway to the Netherlands has supposedly 95.8% efficiency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed
- g105b 5y ago
  I don't think it's about the efficiency, it's about managing waste. Currently, a lot of hydro generation is wasted at nighttime because there is less demand, so it's burnt off. Even if inefficient, it would be better to shift this energy to somewhere where it isn't night time
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The loss from 1000 Km of transmission is probably comparable to the loss from good case lithium ion (making transmission better much of the time). Pumped hydro is worse than both. Pumped hydro is usually built when it will directly reduce overall grid costs. For example, the Ludington Pumped Storage plant in Michigan was built by utilities to make their generation more cost efficient overall, the energy efficiency of the storage system only needs to be good enough to accomplish that goal.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Modern pumped hydro gets about 80% round-trip efficiency, perhaps 75% for older plants get 75%. Interestingly, grid scale batteries seem to get something close to that, 80-85 percent - I would have expected more. Transmission losses for 1000km are something like 2%-3%. So halfway around the globe isn't efficient, but 1000km might as well be considered "local" and transferring across the whole EU would be more efficient than local storage.
  - legulere 5y ago
syoc 5y ago
This article frames power grid integration across the European continent as a solution to unpredictable power production from wind power for each country. This makes less sense when you factor in that the wind is highly correlated in nearby countries. The ones that are the easiest to import power from. Long distance power export is also lossy. Regulating power is hard to find now and will be even harder in the future as more production goes towards wind and solar.
- VyperCard 5y ago
  It’s entirely predictable. See energymeteo.com
dctoedt 5y ago
I wonder how these grid interconnections would be at least partly secured against attack, by a nation-state and/or by terrorists — it seems like increased vulnerability should be a concern.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 5y ago
  What's particularly different about these compared to the thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline infrastructure?
  - dctoedt 5y ago
    > What's particularly different about these compared to the thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline infrastructure? Don't know; it just seems as though the greater the interdependency between geographically-separated modules in a system, the greater the chances that damage to one module can take down remote modules and perhaps even the entire system. Example: Oceangoing vessels are generally designed with watertight compartments, so that damage and flooding in one compartment won't necessarily doom the whole ship — as happened to the Titanic, which sank in part because its transverse internal bulkheads didn't extend high enough to prevent seawater spillover from the iceberg-damaged sections to undamaged sections as the ship started to sink by the bow.[0] Example: The Great Texas Blackout in February 2021 resulted in part from electrical power being knocked offline for some natural-gas compression facilities, which resulted in still-other electrical-generation facilities, powered by natural gas, failing for lack of fuel. [1] [0] http://writing.engr.psu.edu/uer/bassett.html#:~:text=The%20rapid%20sinking%20of%20the%20Titanic%20was%20worsened%20by%20the,spill%20over%20into%20adjacent%20compartments http://writing.engr.psu.edu/uer/bassett.html#:~:text=The%20r.... [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2021_Texas_power_crisis#/Causes https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2021_Texas_power_crisis#/Causes
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      Texas also had the problem that the grid was isolated. Energy consumption spiked in neighboring states as well, with some problems, but nothing as severe as Texas. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackmeyer/2021/02/19/oklahoma-power-grid-escaping-crisis-hitting-texas/331388007/ https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackm... I suppose there can be a difference between interconnection and interdependence. Unnecessary interdependence creates the possibility of failure cascades, but interconnections can provide resilience without necessarily increasing the likelihood of problems.
gamegoblin 5y ago
The most interesting thing here to me is the paragraph that alludes to a potential future where Norway becomes the battery of Northern Europe. Norway has a ton of natural places for pumped hydro installations. In most of the world, installing dams involves displacing thousands or even millions of people and doing vast environmental damage. But due to Norway’s unique geography, this is typically not the case there. Norway has an absurd number of natural, deep, steep-walled valleys and fjords.
- timeon 5y ago
  I do not think that this is popular idea in Norway.
  - eru 5y ago
    Why not? Helping the rest of Europe go green should go well with the Norwegian public? Especially after making their money from oil.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > Why not? Because central government has a history of riding roughshod over the wishes of the local people. Not everyone is keen to see the place they call home or a place they enjoy holidaying in drowned under hundreds of metres of water. Pretty much all the easily (both physically and politically) developed hydropower in Norway has already been at least partially developed. Nonetheless there is a lot of potential for new and improved hydro stations and the work is ongoing. Here are some figures about further expansion: https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/vannkraft/potensiell-ny-vannkraftproduksjon/ https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/vannkraft/potensiell-...
- barney54 5y ago
  Norway already is the battery for Denmark and some of Germany. This is exactly how Denmark gets over 50% of their electricity from renewables—they always have Norway to send electricity to when wind generation is high and the reverse when generation is low.
TeeMassive 5y ago
And let's not forget political hurdles. In my Canadian province of Québec we are trying to sell our hydroelectricity for some time now and one of the major hurdles were disinformation campaigns by energy companies and their lobbying of politicians (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hydro-quebec-ceo-says-company-will-fight-back-against-bullying-by/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hydro-quebe...). Fortunately things are starting to turn around: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-new-york-1.6182195 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-new-yor...
pfdietz 5y ago
Here's a paper on a study of a 100% renewable grid for North America. The interesting conclusion is that increased transmission is not needed or even particularly valuable. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/658 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/658
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  It should be noted that most of North America is already connected to one very large grid or another.
  - entropicgravity 5y ago
    Excepting Texas apparently.
mcbishop 5y ago
An increasingly-viable alternative to global transmission interconnectivity is distributed energy resources (behind the meter, on utility-customer sites). The latter offers better resiliency and lower transmission / distribution losses. A well-insulated building and its hot-water tank are both (thermal) energy storage systems, that are more durable (and more affordable) than electrochemical batteries. A building can be pre-cooled or pre-heated when on-site solar is plentiful, to the end of the occupant's comfort range. This means a smaller on-site battery bank is needed to achieve year-around grid independence (for a conditioned / comfortable building). It seems that we're just getting started with on-site flexible-load control, and building energy automation generally. The higher electric rates in some markets make it financially viable for end users today.
- lrobinovitch 5y ago
  I work in the field of distributed energy resources and it’s incredibly cool. We’re remote first and hiring. https://www.voltus.co https://www.voltus.co
  - caminante 5y ago
    It'd be interesting if you can scale and reach profitability. It seems like a reboot of EnerNoc and has much of the same team. EnerNoc was burning ~50 million/y on 400 million revenues before it was purchased at a discount by Enel. [0] [0]https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enel-to-buy-enernoc-for-250-million https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enel-to-buy-ene...
    - lrobinovitch 5y ago
      Yep, much of the same team, with a different strategy (more tech-focused and participation in more energy market programs). Regulation of DERs largely killed EnerNoc, now Enel X, and the like. Voltus' CEO helped repeal the order[1], ensuring DERs make parity with conventional generators. > if you can scale and reach profitability I don't know what I can actually reveal, but scaling is our focus right now. [1] https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Order-745.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Order-745.p...
newyankee 5y ago
In theory if the world was one contiguous landmass with uniform population distribution you would always pull solar energy from few longitudes away to fulfil your peak demand of 6 - 10 pm from domestic perspective. At large enough scales even today, I believe there are enough markets where such long distance transmission adds a layer of redundancy that possibly energy storage cannot. Free market or International intervention, either routes point to only more interconnectedness of global grids than less.

Semi-related, at https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map you can get a realtime view of electricity production, consumption, and import/export.

sk2020 5y ago

If there are disputes about consumption and production across national boundaries, who resolves that? Different parts of the world don’t even have similar objectives within the energy market. I also think an unaccountable international power utility that can control if I survive the winter or not is a terrible idea.

simonh 5y ago
To the former question, contracts like the ones outlined in the article. On the latter, that's not being suggested.

neonate 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20211017140938/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/10/16/the-booming-business-of-knitting-together-the-worlds-electricity-grids http://web.archive.org/web/20211017140938/https://www.econom... https://archive.is/SAn6I https://archive.is/SAn6I

mactavish88 5y ago

How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater interconnectivity?

mhandley 5y ago
I wonder how much of an issue this is for long distance undersea power cables? If you temporarily disconnect both ends during a solar storm, does the fact that they're under a great depth of electrically conductive salt water serve to protect the cables themselves?
mistrial9 5y ago
start with the basics ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid
5faulker 5y ago
Some of these technologies are still in their nascent form IMHO.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> How does one protect against catastrophic cascading power failures in the event of solar flares, given this greater interconnectivity? Does the risk of damage go up, practically speaking, when comparing a country-wide guide to a continent-wide one? As in, is there any equipment that would survive the former but not the latter? Or mitigation techniques that work in the case of the former but not the latter?
- retrac 5y ago
  It depends in part, on the length of conductors. In the 1989 magnetic storm, long-distance lines in Quebec were blown, while shorter length runs weren't as badly affected. Multiple short spans not all lined up the same way but carrying the same amount of power, is far less vulnerable than one 1000 km long wire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm
Ericson2314 5y ago
Same as we always do: planned disconnection and blackouts to manage demand.
fighterpilot 5y ago
Backup natural gas plants? Just throwing it out there, don't know if that would actually be sensible.
- heurisko 5y ago
  I believe gas plants are already used to stabilise grids, as they have the benefit of being able to come online quickly. They do depend on subsidies, however, as the idea is they would be mostly offline.
pfdietz 5y ago
HVDC lines are immune to solar storms. The problem for the grid is DC currents induced in AC lines, causing failure of transformers. But on DC lines, it just perturbs the voltage slightly.

lb1lf 5y ago

Norway mostly generate electricity from renewable sources, some 99% of our annual production (~120TWh, if memory serves) is hydro-electric. We've seen prices becoming more volatile in later years as our domestic market has become more interconnected with that of continental Europe. Normally, I'd be all in favour of being part of a larger, working market; however with European countries phasing out coal (makes sense) and nuclear (makes less sense), supply is being cut while demand soars; hardly a recipe for stable prices. It would be nice to serve base power needs by nuclear power, then use hydro (which can be regulated up and down much faster than thermal power plants) to handle the peaks.

Ericson2314 5y ago
There's a bit of a backlash again shutting down right now. Fingers crossed Germany doesn't get what it wants for the EU for a change, and that pans out. (Editted to make clear I meant EU wide, not within Germany)
- patall 5y ago
  The last nuclear power plant in Germany will get shutdown in less than 15 months. With that in mind, there have been no investments into them for years. You won't be able to keep them running by simple maintenance. That ship has sailed for years. What do you expect to happen?
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    A big issue is that Germany, in trying to classify gas but not nuclear as "green", is trying to get every other country to do the same. The insanity must at least be stopped at Germany's boarders.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  A couple years of worse prices from phasing coal out more quickly seem like nothing compared to the long term effects of climate change. If we're taking about nuclear: I don't see any chance of Germany halting its phase-out of current nuclear plants. New plants meanwhile don't seem sensible economically

ximeng 5y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJunxkln578 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJunxkln578 more on the UK to Morocco solar / wind farm plan. 3,800km times four HVDC cables for redundancy. Global capacity around 4,000km of cable per year. So to make this project happen, need to open a new cable manufacturing facility. This video also suggests that this sort of renewable project will have an average cost of 48 GBP/MWh versus 92.50 GBP/MWh for new nuclear.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
But why would you lay it to UK when you could do US, hence supply sun energy at night? My estimates was about 40% loss tho.
- Jedd 5y ago
  > But why would you lay it to UK when you could do US, hence supply sun energy at night? My estimates was about 40% loss tho. This is a most wonderfully HN-ish of comments. Someone mentions a mammoth infrastructure project, that's doubtless involved many hundreds of person-years of effort to realise, and with the scale and money involved everything from the business case through to the final engineering proposals would have been reviewed, vetted, considered, analysed, checked, and audited dozens of times over. The reactive response is - why didn't they do something totally different? FWIW, absent any research, my responses to that question included scale (it's huge, but still a much shorter distance), they could skirt the coast, so they wouldn't have to contend with a famously deep trench in the middle of the Atlantic, they'd probably been at this for some years and the USA leadership <sic> has been famously against renewables for 4 of the last 5 years. With a few minutes research, I now know xlinks is a British start-up - so they'd probably not be interested to just be a deal broker for renewables between Morocco and the USA. A straight-line (routing around Iberia) path according to google from Morroco to Cornwall is ~ 2350km - so if they're citing a 3800km path it looks like they're staying close to the coast (as I expected). Morroco to the USA is ~6,000km (as the sardine swims) so even a direct route path would be twice the everything. I can't find definitive answers about power cables over ocean trenches, but it looks like the (predominantly comms) cables that go that way are tiny - several cm diameter at most - and relatively lightweight. I'd guess they're a tested tech in those environments, have lots of existing redundancy, and are (relatively) inexpensive to re-run if they break. In contrast, these 4 x power transmission cables are 150kg / metre, and no one has any long-distance experience with them. They'll be extremely expensive and time-consuming to repair or replace, and a failure of one of them will cause protracted, huge disruptions.

malchow 5y ago

High-level grid interconnection isn't so useful if one (or more) of the lower-level grids being interconnected is so badly maintained that it frequently has to be deenergized. The future probably looks like microgrids, with MID/neutral-forming transformers [1] which generate their own 60 Hz pilot signal and allow multiple producers, batteries, and consumers to coexist on a common protocol even in the absence of the utility grid. [1] https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-QIG-EN-US-Rev02-05-26-2021.pdf https://enphase.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/Enpower-R1-Q...

zbrozek 5y ago
The electrical engineer in me wants to see bigger and better grids that allow us to better utilize more renewable (and intermittent) sources. Show me that transcontinental or intercontinental or transoceanic HVDC backbone that lets electricity slosh around all over the planet. Just in the US I fantasize about an HVDC line that runs the length of I-40 alongside an aqueduct covered in solar panels to knit together the eastern, western, and Texan grids while also bringing the southeast's excess fresh water to the southwest. The pragmatist in me (and the witness to the difficulty of getting anything built, and the greater difficulty of getting anything maintained) thinks grid investment is both unlikely to happen and even more unlikely to work well. In particular, transmission is low-value, high-risk, and expensive. It's low-value because distributed generation and storage are getting cheap. It's high-risk because high-power-density things are dangerous (check out all the Western fires started by electric utilities' transmission lines and switchcraft). It's expensive partially for good material and access reasons, but also for bad political reasons (NIMBYism and the fragmentation of responsibility for large land areas) and simply real estate rights cost. It's like trying to build California's high-speed rail but with less value-add, so it's going to be a horrible uphill slog of questionable merit. So yes, I agree with you. More microgrids with more distributed generation and storage are inevitable. And I think that they're probably going to destabilize and likely kill the large-scale electric utility as we know it in ~50 years. I often wonder why more power companies haven't already become telcos to utilize their poles to distribute internet access.
- bob1029 5y ago

hikerclimber1 5y ago

Everything is subjective. Especially laws.

aaron695 5y ago

All logic is you don't need knitting you need east west backbones. Maximised longitude, smooth the curve of human activity, not wind and solar (which also approximately matches non-coincidentally)

01100011 5y ago

Does anyone know the relative efficiency of, say, pumped hydro or lithium battery storage vs, say, a 1000km transmission line? I'm curious how local storage stacks up against something like sending solar power half way around the globe.

patall 5y ago
The one from Norway to the Netherlands has supposedly 95.8% efficiency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed
g105b 5y ago
I don't think it's about the efficiency, it's about managing waste. Currently, a lot of hydro generation is wasted at nighttime because there is less demand, so it's burnt off. Even if inefficient, it would be better to shift this energy to somewhere where it isn't night time
maxerickson 5y ago
The loss from 1000 Km of transmission is probably comparable to the loss from good case lithium ion (making transmission better much of the time). Pumped hydro is worse than both. Pumped hydro is usually built when it will directly reduce overall grid costs. For example, the Ludington Pumped Storage plant in Michigan was built by utilities to make their generation more cost efficient overall, the energy efficiency of the storage system only needs to be good enough to accomplish that goal.
PeterisP 5y ago
Modern pumped hydro gets about 80% round-trip efficiency, perhaps 75% for older plants get 75%. Interestingly, grid scale batteries seem to get something close to that, 80-85 percent - I would have expected more. Transmission losses for 1000km are something like 2%-3%. So halfway around the globe isn't efficient, but 1000km might as well be considered "local" and transferring across the whole EU would be more efficient than local storage.
- legulere 5y ago

syoc 5y ago

This article frames power grid integration across the European continent as a solution to unpredictable power production from wind power for each country. This makes less sense when you factor in that the wind is highly correlated in nearby countries. The ones that are the easiest to import power from. Long distance power export is also lossy. Regulating power is hard to find now and will be even harder in the future as more production goes towards wind and solar.

VyperCard 5y ago
It’s entirely predictable. See energymeteo.com

dctoedt 5y ago

I wonder how these grid interconnections would be at least partly secured against attack, by a nation-state and/or by terrorists — it seems like increased vulnerability should be a concern.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
maxerickson 5y ago
What's particularly different about these compared to the thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline infrastructure?
- dctoedt 5y ago
  > What's particularly different about these compared to the thousands of miles of existing power and pipeline infrastructure? Don't know; it just seems as though the greater the interdependency between geographically-separated modules in a system, the greater the chances that damage to one module can take down remote modules and perhaps even the entire system. Example: Oceangoing vessels are generally designed with watertight compartments, so that damage and flooding in one compartment won't necessarily doom the whole ship — as happened to the Titanic, which sank in part because its transverse internal bulkheads didn't extend high enough to prevent seawater spillover from the iceberg-damaged sections to undamaged sections as the ship started to sink by the bow.[0] Example: The Great Texas Blackout in February 2021 resulted in part from electrical power being knocked offline for some natural-gas compression facilities, which resulted in still-other electrical-generation facilities, powered by natural gas, failing for lack of fuel. [1] [0] http://writing.engr.psu.edu/uer/bassett.html#:~:text=The%20rapid%20sinking%20of%20the%20Titanic%20was%20worsened%20by%20the,spill%20over%20into%20adjacent%20compartments http://writing.engr.psu.edu/uer/bassett.html#:~:text=The%20r.... [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2021_Texas_power_crisis#/Causes https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2021_Texas_power_crisis#/Causes
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Texas also had the problem that the grid was isolated. Energy consumption spiked in neighboring states as well, with some problems, but nothing as severe as Texas. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackmeyer/2021/02/19/oklahoma-power-grid-escaping-crisis-hitting-texas/331388007/ https://www.oklahoman.com/story/business/columns/steve-lackm... I suppose there can be a difference between interconnection and interdependence. Unnecessary interdependence creates the possibility of failure cascades, but interconnections can provide resilience without necessarily increasing the likelihood of problems.

gamegoblin 5y ago

The most interesting thing here to me is the paragraph that alludes to a potential future where Norway becomes the battery of Northern Europe. Norway has a ton of natural places for pumped hydro installations. In most of the world, installing dams involves displacing thousands or even millions of people and doing vast environmental damage. But due to Norway’s unique geography, this is typically not the case there. Norway has an absurd number of natural, deep, steep-walled valleys and fjords.

timeon 5y ago
I do not think that this is popular idea in Norway.
- eru 5y ago
  Why not? Helping the rest of Europe go green should go well with the Norwegian public? Especially after making their money from oil.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > Why not? Because central government has a history of riding roughshod over the wishes of the local people. Not everyone is keen to see the place they call home or a place they enjoy holidaying in drowned under hundreds of metres of water. Pretty much all the easily (both physically and politically) developed hydropower in Norway has already been at least partially developed. Nonetheless there is a lot of potential for new and improved hydro stations and the work is ongoing. Here are some figures about further expansion: https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/vannkraft/potensiell-ny-vannkraftproduksjon/ https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/vannkraft/potensiell-...
barney54 5y ago
Norway already is the battery for Denmark and some of Germany. This is exactly how Denmark gets over 50% of their electricity from renewables—they always have Norway to send electricity to when wind generation is high and the reverse when generation is low.

TeeMassive 5y ago

And let's not forget political hurdles. In my Canadian province of Québec we are trying to sell our hydroelectricity for some time now and one of the major hurdles were disinformation campaigns by energy companies and their lobbying of politicians (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hydro-quebec-ceo-says-company-will-fight-back-against-bullying-by/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-hydro-quebe...). Fortunately things are starting to turn around: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-new-york-1.6182195 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hydro-quebec-new-yor...

pfdietz 5y ago

Here's a paper on a study of a 100% renewable grid for North America. The interesting conclusion is that increased transmission is not needed or even particularly valuable. https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/658 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/658

rossdavidh 5y ago
It should be noted that most of North America is already connected to one very large grid or another.
- entropicgravity 5y ago
  Excepting Texas apparently.

mcbishop 5y ago

An increasingly-viable alternative to global transmission interconnectivity is distributed energy resources (behind the meter, on utility-customer sites). The latter offers better resiliency and lower transmission / distribution losses. A well-insulated building and its hot-water tank are both (thermal) energy storage systems, that are more durable (and more affordable) than electrochemical batteries. A building can be pre-cooled or pre-heated when on-site solar is plentiful, to the end of the occupant's comfort range. This means a smaller on-site battery bank is needed to achieve year-around grid independence (for a conditioned / comfortable building). It seems that we're just getting started with on-site flexible-load control, and building energy automation generally. The higher electric rates in some markets make it financially viable for end users today.

lrobinovitch 5y ago
I work in the field of distributed energy resources and it’s incredibly cool. We’re remote first and hiring. https://www.voltus.co https://www.voltus.co
- caminante 5y ago
  It'd be interesting if you can scale and reach profitability. It seems like a reboot of EnerNoc and has much of the same team. EnerNoc was burning ~50 million/y on 400 million revenues before it was purchased at a discount by Enel. [0] [0]https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enel-to-buy-enernoc-for-250-million https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/enel-to-buy-ene...
  - lrobinovitch 5y ago
    Yep, much of the same team, with a different strategy (more tech-focused and participation in more energy market programs). Regulation of DERs largely killed EnerNoc, now Enel X, and the like. Voltus' CEO helped repeal the order[1], ensuring DERs make parity with conventional generators. > if you can scale and reach profitability I don't know what I can actually reveal, but scaling is our focus right now. [1] https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Order-745.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Order-745.p...

newyankee 5y ago

In theory if the world was one contiguous landmass with uniform population distribution you would always pull solar energy from few longitudes away to fulfil your peak demand of 6 - 10 pm from domestic perspective. At large enough scales even today, I believe there are enough markets where such long distance transmission adds a layer of redundancy that possibly energy storage cannot. Free market or International intervention, either routes point to only more interconnectedness of global grids than less.