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It seems pretty clear to me that neighborhood level power grids are the way to go here. Large grids, long distance transmission and massive infrastructures are

It seems pretty clear to me that neighborhood level power grids are the way to go here. Large grids, long distance transmission and massive infrastructures are all a waste. Imagine if you could cut up a coal plant into small pieces and distribute it? Maybe a simple local neighbor grid sharing to cover a single failure. I don't think power companies can (or want to) shift their thinking to local. Are their profits lost? Government subsidies lost?

mastax 4y ago
Centralization allows massive economies of scale.
jcranmer 4y ago
> Large grids, long distance transmission and massive infrastructures are all a waste. Imagine if you could cut up a coal plant into small pieces and distribute it? Smaller infrastructure is actually more wasteful. Since you suggested a coal plant, consider the sheer number of extra jobs it would take to hire people to drive the coal truck to the neighborhood plant and handle the offloading of coal. At the scale of per-neighborhood, you might even need someone to literally shovel coal into a furnace, I don't know if the coal conveyor lines make sense at that tiny a scale. Double that because you need to transport the resulting fly ash as well. Then there's the extra instrumentation you need, the duplicate emissions mitigation points. And this is before considering the literal better efficiency of larger boilers/blowers/etc. themselves. In a concrete example I have familiarity with: I worked for a large water treatment plant that supplied water for about a million people. It required 2 engineers being present 24/7/365 to keep it running. Replace it with a water treatment plant that is 1/100th the size, and you still need 2 engineers present 24/7/365. Go much smaller than that, and the inability to economically provide on-site permanent engineer oversight leads to the idea of controlling the water treatment plant remotely via the public internet, with all of the increased risks that entails.
- mixdup 4y ago
  The other half of the micro hyper-local grid is to get out of the business of needing very large plants like coal plants and moving to things like distributed wind and solar (perhaps as local as being on every rooftop in town) with battery storage That's of course easier said than done, but with things like wind/solar/battery, and small failsafe nuclear you can get to smaller grids that don't have to be so absolutely interconnected and trying to ship power from Nebraska to New York City
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    The problem with distributed wind and solar is that some places are better than others. Solar can go on roofs everywhere but it works better in sunny places. Utility solar is cheaper than roofs. Wind has places where it is stronger like offshore and the plains. Also, windmills are more efficient when bigger. The result is that it is more efficient to put wind and solar in best places and ship the power to where needed. The independent survival area probably depends on where end up putting batteries. I suspect that substations and neighborhoods make most sense but houses might also be best.
- swamp40 4y ago
  Both your examples are reasons for the consolidation of existing infrastructure. My point was that you couldn't break up a coal plant, but with renewables they are already broken up into small pieces. Putting the pieces together at one location instead of distributing them as they exist naturally seems like a poor design choice to me. And I wonder if it is motivated by the fear of loss of control and money more than just a poor decision?
nkingsy 4y ago
Seems like hvdc would be great across hemispheres so summer solar can go to winter areas.
hannob 4y ago
It is a lot cheaper to build transmission lines compared to providing storage. In the future the vast majority of electricity will come from wind and solar. If production does not match consumption then it is almost always the best option to move the electricity somewhere else. (That said: Of course storage will be needed, but only if there are no better options to balance the grid otherwise.)

mastax 4y ago

Centralization allows massive economies of scale.

jcranmer 4y ago

> Large grids, long distance transmission and massive infrastructures are all a waste. Imagine if you could cut up a coal plant into small pieces and distribute it? Smaller infrastructure is actually more wasteful. Since you suggested a coal plant, consider the sheer number of extra jobs it would take to hire people to drive the coal truck to the neighborhood plant and handle the offloading of coal. At the scale of per-neighborhood, you might even need someone to literally shovel coal into a furnace, I don't know if the coal conveyor lines make sense at that tiny a scale. Double that because you need to transport the resulting fly ash as well. Then there's the extra instrumentation you need, the duplicate emissions mitigation points. And this is before considering the literal better efficiency of larger boilers/blowers/etc. themselves. In a concrete example I have familiarity with: I worked for a large water treatment plant that supplied water for about a million people. It required 2 engineers being present 24/7/365 to keep it running. Replace it with a water treatment plant that is 1/100th the size, and you still need 2 engineers present 24/7/365. Go much smaller than that, and the inability to economically provide on-site permanent engineer oversight leads to the idea of controlling the water treatment plant remotely via the public internet, with all of the increased risks that entails.

mixdup 4y ago
The other half of the micro hyper-local grid is to get out of the business of needing very large plants like coal plants and moving to things like distributed wind and solar (perhaps as local as being on every rooftop in town) with battery storage That's of course easier said than done, but with things like wind/solar/battery, and small failsafe nuclear you can get to smaller grids that don't have to be so absolutely interconnected and trying to ship power from Nebraska to New York City
- ianburrell 4y ago
  The problem with distributed wind and solar is that some places are better than others. Solar can go on roofs everywhere but it works better in sunny places. Utility solar is cheaper than roofs. Wind has places where it is stronger like offshore and the plains. Also, windmills are more efficient when bigger. The result is that it is more efficient to put wind and solar in best places and ship the power to where needed. The independent survival area probably depends on where end up putting batteries. I suspect that substations and neighborhoods make most sense but houses might also be best.
swamp40 4y ago
Both your examples are reasons for the consolidation of existing infrastructure. My point was that you couldn't break up a coal plant, but with renewables they are already broken up into small pieces. Putting the pieces together at one location instead of distributing them as they exist naturally seems like a poor design choice to me. And I wonder if it is motivated by the fear of loss of control and money more than just a poor decision?

nkingsy 4y ago

Seems like hvdc would be great across hemispheres so summer solar can go to winter areas.

hannob 4y ago

It is a lot cheaper to build transmission lines compared to providing storage. In the future the vast majority of electricity will come from wind and solar. If production does not match consumption then it is almost always the best option to move the electricity somewhere else. (That said: Of course storage will be needed, but only if there are no better options to balance the grid otherwise.)