12 ms·

The aging U.S. power grid is about to get a jolt

neonate 2y ago
https://archive.ph/sXWU3 https://archive.ph/sXWU3
tedunangst 2y ago
> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Solar anti correlates with wind. Then the typical: - Large grid to decouple weather patterns - Demand response - Storage People already get on hourly contracts and schedule car charging for when it is cheap. The next step is automating it and making it more streamlined. Some companies already support chargers which integrate with the pricing, they can even give you money back through demand response. https://support.tibber.com/en/articles/5597987-smart-charging-explained https://support.tibber.com/en/articles/5597987-smart-chargin...
- recursive 2y ago
  > How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy? Market prices and "smart" chargers
  - mortify 2y ago
    That can encourage it, but people will need to charge even when it's not windy. Having a smart charger wait for cheap electricity which may never come is a great way to end up with dead battery.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Smart chargers can predict weather, demand, carbon, price for the coming hours, they don't need to be entirely reactive. There's various APIs you can check to see these predictions https://docs.watttime.org/ https://docs.watttime.org/
    - recursive 2y ago
      That's not too smart then. I'm talking about something with a bag of weighted goals. Having a dead battery would have a strong enough cost that it would pay more for higher market rates if state of charge is low.
- solarpunk 2y ago
  V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
  - dangrossman 2y ago
    Maybe it will some day. I have two electric cars in my garage sitting idle most of the day and night. I have no way to connect them to the grid in a bidirectional manner. There is nothing a local electrician can order and install for me that will allow it. If I had a Ford Lightning truck, they could get me a proprietary Ford Charge Station Pro (which doesn't use ISO 15118-2), that's about it.
  - pyrale 2y ago
    This article is about power transit, not about fixing production peaks. V2G is not a solution here.
- pyrale 2y ago
  You don’t, but you can schedule work on nearby lines at this time for instance.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  The solution seems obvious in the use of wind turbines: when the wind blows there is power, the lines are cooled and the cars charged. No wind, no power, no need for cooling. Am I missing something? A <sarcasm> tag maybe? On a more serious note on how to get people to change their electricity use there is a real solution in flexible (hourly) pricing. This is what we have where I live - Sweden - and it can be a way to lower electricity bills quite a bit [1] by moving power hogs like water heaters, tumble driers and car chargers to the lowest-priced times of day. If you have solar panels and a contract which enables you to sell excess power at market rates (like we do) you can decide to feed their output into the net when prices are at their peak - usually around noon and somewhere between 17.00 and 21.00 (when it is still quite light in much of Sweden given that we straddle the polar circle) - while using most of it for power hogs off-peak. [1] on the assumption that flexible pricing is controlled by supply and demand, not by some policy-enforcing surcharge. Electricity prices need to be able to go lower as well as higher than 'normal', not just normal or higher.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- callalex 2y ago
  I don’t understand how your quote and question are related, can you connect the dots for me?
  - travisb 2y ago
    The quote is saying that transmission line capacity is higher when it's windy and lower when it is windless (due to less cooling). If you assume that EV charging is the marginal load which would put you over the windless capacity, but not the windy capacity, then in order to prevent overload you'd need to prevent EV charging when there is no wind and therefore the transmission capacity is lower. Taking a step back it's a general problem with this type of optimization, what to do when the system has become accustomed to, and is designed for, capacity which isn't available. How do you get people to use less power in order to avoid a blackout?
- vel0city 2y ago
  > How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy? My electrical provider gave me a good discount on my fixed rate plan by letting them micromanage the charging times of my car. I tell them I need it X% charged by some time in the morning, and they'll make sure it's at that charge by that time. If I really need to charge it right away I can still just do that, but the vast majority of the time I don't need to think about it. My car sits in the garage for many hours, there's plenty of time to optimize the charge timings. Chances are they even pick up a lot of time where spot prices go negative, so they're making money selling it to me and buying it from the grid.
- AndrewDucker 2y ago
  If you don't monitor conditions then you always have to operate as if conditions are at their very worst. And that may only be 1% of the time. So monitoring may increase the load you can carry the vast majority of the time.
pyrale 2y ago
These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases. Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit. The bit about automaticaly shifting power to other lines in a strained network is interesting, but I wonder how much security analysis is run to make sure it’s safe (or if it’s just an automation system working within bounds the operator deemed safe).
- wubrr 2y ago
  [flagged]
- neltnerb 2y ago
  Is this not just the same question as for decades? Which is cheaper, a peaker plant after the transmission line hitting peak capacity, or increased transmission line capacity for a small percentage of the time? Now it's just battery storage instead of natural gas peaker plants. You can still smooth out the transmission line capacity with downstream storage. Or have we already done that to the max with peaker plants and now transmission lines are running at their capacity 90% of the time? I haven't read the numbers in a while, it used to be really bad!
  - pyrale 2y ago
    Here is the thing: planning a grid is always done with cost in mind, we do not build golden pylons for the sake of it. But on the other hand, reasonable grid planning is done a decade ahead, more for some equipment. Money spent in a hurry is likely to be wasted in that business. Storage to optimize grid (not production) cost is neither efficient nor resilient as far as I know. Also having a peaker plant solves production peaks, not transmission limits. And nobody builds a second peaker at the other end of a line to save on grid costs. Redispatching is a thing, but it is a small optimization, not a solution to an underdeveloped grid.
    - 2y ago
datadrivenangel 2y ago
Another big thing is streamlining regional abilities to accelerate permitting for replacing old transmission line conductors. Modern conductors can transmit significantly more energy by better conductor design, so replacing ancient conductors is a relatively cheap way to increase transmission capacity while also reducing line sag which makes the transmission lines safer.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wcoenen 2y ago
Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines. (Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.) Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stories/changji-guquan-uhvdc-link https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stor...
- jorblumesea 2y ago
  The US has numerous HVDC lines and the market is set to grow in the next 5 years. It could improve and be better of course. Renewables will probably force more adoption. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-high-voltage-direct-current-hvdc-transmission-systems-market-industry https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-s...
- mnw21cam 2y ago
  So basically, next time there's a heatwave and everyone cranks up their aircon, the system will still collapse.
  - callalex 2y ago
    (Warning this is a tangent). Cooling/air conditioning actually uses a relatively small amount of energy compared to heating. As we transition away from fossil fuels for heating over to electricity the real existential crisis will happen in cold periods. This can be understood intuitively: air conditioning is used when it’s 85° outside to make it 70° inside. Heating is regularly used to make it 65° inside when it is 20° outside. It turns out fossil fuels contain a truly remarkable amount of energy that happens to be really easy to release into a living space.
    - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
      At least it's easy to turn sunlight into heat, so that may help somewhat. Absorb sun during the day and release it during the night. The coldest nights tend to be clear (clouds reflect IR back to the earth).
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
EDIT: Where I live, there is mostly 69 kV and 138 kV, with only a few 345 kV lines. There aren't nearly enough 500 kV lines, and 765 kV aren't present in the region. EDIT2: Here's what a 765 kV line looks like: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5 Map of US electric grid: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d4090758322c4d32a4cd002ffaa0aa12 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d409... Real wiring is dominated by current, resistance of the conductor, and cooling.[0,1] The way out is to rebuild with much high voltages and live monitoring, optionally with superconducting segments like Nexans where advantageous. 0. Ikeda, Yoshirô and Katsuhiko Yoneta. Temperature rise of a conductor due to the electric current. (1931). http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682 http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682 PDF: https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/37682/1/2_107-146.pdf https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/3768... 1. Riba, J.-R.; Llauradó, J. A Model to Calculate the Current–Temperature Relationship of Insulated and Jacketed Cables. Materials (2022) 15,6814. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814 https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814 PDF: https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-06814/article_deploy/materials-15-06814-v2.pdf?version=1665283849 https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-068...
- ckdarby 2y ago
  Was surprised only to see one 765 line run into Quebec
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    I see it connects one substation (NYIS): Clark Energy Center, New York Power Authority - Marcy, NY https://maps.app.goo.gl/hvQi4qzgSTbs84296 https://maps.app.goo.gl/hvQi4qzgSTbs84296 to another (HQT): Hydro-Québec - Poste Châteauguay - Saint-Étienne-de-Beauharnois, QC https://maps.app.goo.gl/duDA5wbBPrgVBxc19 https://maps.app.goo.gl/duDA5wbBPrgVBxc19 but, reporting of other attached lines stops there because the datasource doesn't include Canadian-only lines. Live overview status here, but not for a specific power line: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/NYIS https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...
- 2y ago
Efisio 2y ago
[dead]
BurningFrog 2y ago
These are bandaids. Fine in themselves, but not addressing the real problem. The US really need to legalize transmission line construction!
- klysm 2y ago
  As long as it’s not near my back yard - America
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  Lines? Why? Why aren’t we taking better advantage of wireless power transmission? Seriously, Tesla planned to construct Wardenclyffe Tower back in 1901!
foota 2y ago
Is building a long high voltage line not profitable? It seems like the potential for arbitrage should allow for sufficient profit, but maybe not? I know there's a lot of blockers, but if there's money to be made I would have thought more people would have worked around them.
- ntonozzi 2y ago
  It turns out homeowners with veto rights are a lot more powerful than capital in the US.
  - foota 2y ago
    Could you buy land from existing lower voltage lines? It seems like a solvable problem.
alberth 2y ago
Not just power grid … US infrastructure overall is in need of a “jolt” (updating). Bridges, highways, power grid and more are all aging and in need of massive updating / refresh.
- cyberlurker 2y ago
  Didn’t congress pass a gargantuan bill a few years back for this?
  - theNJR 2y ago
    Yes but that money went to the working groups who need it more than silly bridges.
    - BryantD 2y ago
      I mean, for just one example, the DoT awarded $600 million to replace the I-5 bridge between Washington and Oregon. I don't pretend the funding is perfect but it is reaching real projects.
    - callalex 2y ago
      Got any examples? Name and shame!
    - enragedcacti 2y ago
      The BIL alone has already funded ~30,000 Road/Bridge projects totaling $95 billion so far, plus hundreds of billions more on other infrastructure. Would you mind pointing to the specific working group funding that you have an issue with and which specific bridges need repairs but had their funding rejected? https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/?utm_source=invest.gov https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/?utm_source=invest.gov
  - BryantD 2y ago
    Yeah; it's a good start. As per the third paragraph of the article: "In New York, Algonquin Power won a $42.9 million grant to install devices that automatically redeploy power when lines are overloaded. Virginia’s Dominion Energy won $33.7 million for a project that includes devices that will let it adjust power distribution in response to changing conditions on the grid. The funds are part of a $3.5 billion program for grid-boosting projects the Energy Department rolled out in October." To save you a few clicks, that program is funded by the bill in question, as per https://www.energy.gov/gdo/grid-resilience-and-innovation-partnerships-grip-program https://www.energy.gov/gdo/grid-resilience-and-innovation-pa...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
claytongulick 2y ago
I hope we're hardening it too in prep for another Carrington event.
- HankB99 2y ago
  Modern electrical generation, transmission and distribution systems are protected by "relays" that open breakers to prevent damage. I did a quick search on "Carrington event protective relaying" and found https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/report/115.pdf https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/report/115.pdf. It seems that what is needed is to properly configure the protective relaying for the possibility of a geomagnetic storm and to make sure that all relaying is operational and modern enough to do so. Anything new or upgraded should meet these criteria. Older stuff probably needs to be reviewed.
rconti 2y ago
It looks like during last year's heat wave, California FINALLY broke its previous all-time peak load of 50,270mW in 24 July 2006, with a whopping 52,061mW on 6 September 2023. Still, peak usage year over year looks flat to my eyes. I'm sure we can't keep time-shifting and efficiency engineering ourselves out of a fundamental need for more total energy for a huge % of EVs and the push to phase out natural gas, but it might do most of the work for us. All big power hogs are getting more efficient. Electric cars can charge "whenever", but I imagine a future where just spreading the EV load between 11pm and 6am is no longer enough. Plus, we need more energy storage or non-solar) sources to handle the fact that loads are going to increasingly move to the overnight hours. https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory...
- nmeagent 2y ago
  It's pretty clear from the context what units you intended to use and I kind of hate to be 'that guy', but just FYI: mW -> milliwatt, MW -> megawatt.
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  California has lots of problems, but availability of money is not one of them. I have no worries whatsoever about our ability to properly handle changes in demand going forward. Will a bunch of money get wasted and mis-managed? Of course. It wouldn't be CA if we didn't do that! But we'll still grow just fine.
  - jart 2y ago
    How dare you use the word "we" to lump us in with our corrupt policymakers. Just because we're exploited and victimized by a parasite, doesn't make us one.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Unless you're in jail for tax evasion or making below what you're worth (which; your reputation precedes you, you definitely are) which means you're not meeting your earning potential, which is a failure of the economic-maximalizing society you live under, you're complicit. (email in profile, apparently this thread has been marked by HN already)
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Works where archive/ph is blocked: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-aging-u-s-power-grid-is-about-to-get-a-jolt/ar-BB1nJZ92 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-aging-u-s-power-... Text-only: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1nJZ92 https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1nJZ92
simonblack 2y ago
The aging power grid is not capable of charging millions of EVs on instant high current demand. Until that happens, EVs will never be useful enough to make ICE cars obsolete. "It's the infrastructure, stupid". The US and other countries should have spent those trillions on infrastructure instead of wasting lives and treasure on stupid military adventures. Too late now, the countries are going down the gurgler big time.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  It's not that much power compared to the terawatt or so of peak capacity, and the "instant" nature of a single car doesn't affect the overall grid in the slightest. For some rough math, people drive 10 billion miles per day in the US, and at 3-4 miles per kWh that's an average of 105-140 gigawatts. Average production is half a terawatt, so replacing half the cars on the road might only need 10% more average power production, and almost all of that charging can be done off-peak without an impact on transmission. In the optimistic case, electric cars can even reduce peak loads on big distribution lines.
londons_explore 2y ago
Most power lines across the nation have <5% utilisation. Ie. They transfer in a year less than 5% of what they could have transferred. If we had smarter systems to plan and route power transfers, we could get the network to move far far more power Most of that overcapacity is in little local wiring, like the cables to your street, where there is likely nothing smart at all right now.

https://archive.ph/sXWU3 https://archive.ph/sXWU3

> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity. Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Solar anti correlates with wind. Then the typical: - Large grid to decouple weather patterns - Demand response - Storage People already get on hourly contracts and schedule car charging for when it is cheap. The next step is automating it and making it more streamlined. Some companies already support chargers which integrate with the pricing, they can even give you money back through demand response. https://support.tibber.com/en/articles/5597987-smart-charging-explained https://support.tibber.com/en/articles/5597987-smart-chargin...
recursive 2y ago
> How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy? Market prices and "smart" chargers
- mortify 2y ago
  That can encourage it, but people will need to charge even when it's not windy. Having a smart charger wait for cheap electricity which may never come is a great way to end up with dead battery.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Smart chargers can predict weather, demand, carbon, price for the coming hours, they don't need to be entirely reactive. There's various APIs you can check to see these predictions https://docs.watttime.org/ https://docs.watttime.org/
  - recursive 2y ago
    That's not too smart then. I'm talking about something with a bag of weighted goals. Having a dead battery would have a strong enough cost that it would pay more for higher market rates if state of charge is low.
solarpunk 2y ago
V2G solved this yeah: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
- dangrossman 2y ago
  Maybe it will some day. I have two electric cars in my garage sitting idle most of the day and night. I have no way to connect them to the grid in a bidirectional manner. There is nothing a local electrician can order and install for me that will allow it. If I had a Ford Lightning truck, they could get me a proprietary Ford Charge Station Pro (which doesn't use ISO 15118-2), that's about it.
- pyrale 2y ago
  This article is about power transit, not about fixing production peaks. V2G is not a solution here.
pyrale 2y ago
You don’t, but you can schedule work on nearby lines at this time for instance.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hagbard_c 2y ago
The solution seems obvious in the use of wind turbines: when the wind blows there is power, the lines are cooled and the cars charged. No wind, no power, no need for cooling. Am I missing something? A <sarcasm> tag maybe? On a more serious note on how to get people to change their electricity use there is a real solution in flexible (hourly) pricing. This is what we have where I live - Sweden - and it can be a way to lower electricity bills quite a bit [1] by moving power hogs like water heaters, tumble driers and car chargers to the lowest-priced times of day. If you have solar panels and a contract which enables you to sell excess power at market rates (like we do) you can decide to feed their output into the net when prices are at their peak - usually around noon and somewhere between 17.00 and 21.00 (when it is still quite light in much of Sweden given that we straddle the polar circle) - while using most of it for power hogs off-peak. [1] on the assumption that flexible pricing is controlled by supply and demand, not by some policy-enforcing surcharge. Electricity prices need to be able to go lower as well as higher than 'normal', not just normal or higher.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
callalex 2y ago
I don’t understand how your quote and question are related, can you connect the dots for me?
- travisb 2y ago
  The quote is saying that transmission line capacity is higher when it's windy and lower when it is windless (due to less cooling). If you assume that EV charging is the marginal load which would put you over the windless capacity, but not the windy capacity, then in order to prevent overload you'd need to prevent EV charging when there is no wind and therefore the transmission capacity is lower. Taking a step back it's a general problem with this type of optimization, what to do when the system has become accustomed to, and is designed for, capacity which isn't available. How do you get people to use less power in order to avoid a blackout?
vel0city 2y ago
> How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy? My electrical provider gave me a good discount on my fixed rate plan by letting them micromanage the charging times of my car. I tell them I need it X% charged by some time in the morning, and they'll make sure it's at that charge by that time. If I really need to charge it right away I can still just do that, but the vast majority of the time I don't need to think about it. My car sits in the garage for many hours, there's plenty of time to optimize the charge timings. Chances are they even pick up a lot of time where spot prices go negative, so they're making money selling it to me and buying it from the grid.
AndrewDucker 2y ago
If you don't monitor conditions then you always have to operate as if conditions are at their very worst. And that may only be 1% of the time. So monitoring may increase the load you can carry the vast majority of the time.

pyrale 2y ago

These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases. Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit. The bit about automaticaly shifting power to other lines in a strained network is interesting, but I wonder how much security analysis is run to make sure it’s safe (or if it’s just an automation system working within bounds the operator deemed safe).

wubrr 2y ago
[flagged]
neltnerb 2y ago
Is this not just the same question as for decades? Which is cheaper, a peaker plant after the transmission line hitting peak capacity, or increased transmission line capacity for a small percentage of the time? Now it's just battery storage instead of natural gas peaker plants. You can still smooth out the transmission line capacity with downstream storage. Or have we already done that to the max with peaker plants and now transmission lines are running at their capacity 90% of the time? I haven't read the numbers in a while, it used to be really bad!
- pyrale 2y ago
  Here is the thing: planning a grid is always done with cost in mind, we do not build golden pylons for the sake of it. But on the other hand, reasonable grid planning is done a decade ahead, more for some equipment. Money spent in a hurry is likely to be wasted in that business. Storage to optimize grid (not production) cost is neither efficient nor resilient as far as I know. Also having a peaker plant solves production peaks, not transmission limits. And nobody builds a second peaker at the other end of a line to save on grid costs. Redispatching is a thing, but it is a small optimization, not a solution to an underdeveloped grid.
  - 2y ago

datadrivenangel 2y ago

Another big thing is streamlining regional abilities to accelerate permitting for replacing old transmission line conductors. Modern conductors can transmit significantly more energy by better conductor design, so replacing ancient conductors is a relatively cheap way to increase transmission capacity while also reducing line sag which makes the transmission lines safer.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wcoenen 2y ago

Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines. (Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.) Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stories/changji-guquan-uhvdc-link https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stor...

jorblumesea 2y ago
The US has numerous HVDC lines and the market is set to grow in the next 5 years. It could improve and be better of course. Renewables will probably force more adoption. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-high-voltage-direct-current-hvdc-transmission-systems-market-industry https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-s...
mnw21cam 2y ago
So basically, next time there's a heatwave and everyone cranks up their aircon, the system will still collapse.
- callalex 2y ago
  (Warning this is a tangent). Cooling/air conditioning actually uses a relatively small amount of energy compared to heating. As we transition away from fossil fuels for heating over to electricity the real existential crisis will happen in cold periods. This can be understood intuitively: air conditioning is used when it’s 85° outside to make it 70° inside. Heating is regularly used to make it 65° inside when it is 20° outside. It turns out fossil fuels contain a truly remarkable amount of energy that happens to be really easy to release into a living space.
  - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
    At least it's easy to turn sunlight into heat, so that may help somewhat. Absorb sun during the day and release it during the night. The coldest nights tend to be clear (clouds reflect IR back to the earth).

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

EDIT: Where I live, there is mostly 69 kV and 138 kV, with only a few 345 kV lines. There aren't nearly enough 500 kV lines, and 765 kV aren't present in the region. EDIT2: Here's what a 765 kV line looks like: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5 Map of US electric grid: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d4090758322c4d32a4cd002ffaa0aa12 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d409... Real wiring is dominated by current, resistance of the conductor, and cooling.[0,1] The way out is to rebuild with much high voltages and live monitoring, optionally with superconducting segments like Nexans where advantageous. 0. Ikeda, Yoshirô and Katsuhiko Yoneta. Temperature rise of a conductor due to the electric current. (1931). http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682 http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682 PDF: https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/37682/1/2_107-146.pdf https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/3768... 1. Riba, J.-R.; Llauradó, J. A Model to Calculate the Current–Temperature Relationship of Insulated and Jacketed Cables. Materials (2022) 15,6814. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814 https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814 PDF: https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-06814/article_deploy/materials-15-06814-v2.pdf?version=1665283849 https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-068...

ckdarby 2y ago
Was surprised only to see one 765 line run into Quebec
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  I see it connects one substation (NYIS): Clark Energy Center, New York Power Authority - Marcy, NY https://maps.app.goo.gl/hvQi4qzgSTbs84296 https://maps.app.goo.gl/hvQi4qzgSTbs84296 to another (HQT): Hydro-Québec - Poste Châteauguay - Saint-Étienne-de-Beauharnois, QC https://maps.app.goo.gl/duDA5wbBPrgVBxc19 https://maps.app.goo.gl/duDA5wbBPrgVBxc19 but, reporting of other attached lines stops there because the datasource doesn't include Canadian-only lines. Live overview status here, but not for a specific power line: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electric_overview/balancing_authority/NYIS https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...
2y ago

Efisio 2y ago

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BurningFrog 2y ago

These are bandaids. Fine in themselves, but not addressing the real problem. The US really need to legalize transmission line construction!

klysm 2y ago
As long as it’s not near my back yard - America
zarathustreal 2y ago
Lines? Why? Why aren’t we taking better advantage of wireless power transmission? Seriously, Tesla planned to construct Wardenclyffe Tower back in 1901!

foota 2y ago

Is building a long high voltage line not profitable? It seems like the potential for arbitrage should allow for sufficient profit, but maybe not? I know there's a lot of blockers, but if there's money to be made I would have thought more people would have worked around them.

ntonozzi 2y ago
It turns out homeowners with veto rights are a lot more powerful than capital in the US.
- foota 2y ago
  Could you buy land from existing lower voltage lines? It seems like a solvable problem.

alberth 2y ago

Not just power grid … US infrastructure overall is in need of a “jolt” (updating). Bridges, highways, power grid and more are all aging and in need of massive updating / refresh.

cyberlurker 2y ago
Didn’t congress pass a gargantuan bill a few years back for this?
- theNJR 2y ago
  Yes but that money went to the working groups who need it more than silly bridges.
  - BryantD 2y ago
    I mean, for just one example, the DoT awarded $600 million to replace the I-5 bridge between Washington and Oregon. I don't pretend the funding is perfect but it is reaching real projects.
  - callalex 2y ago
    Got any examples? Name and shame!
  - enragedcacti 2y ago
    The BIL alone has already funded ~30,000 Road/Bridge projects totaling $95 billion so far, plus hundreds of billions more on other infrastructure. Would you mind pointing to the specific working group funding that you have an issue with and which specific bridges need repairs but had their funding rejected? https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/?utm_source=invest.gov https://www.whitehouse.gov/invest/?utm_source=invest.gov
- BryantD 2y ago
  Yeah; it's a good start. As per the third paragraph of the article: "In New York, Algonquin Power won a $42.9 million grant to install devices that automatically redeploy power when lines are overloaded. Virginia’s Dominion Energy won $33.7 million for a project that includes devices that will let it adjust power distribution in response to changing conditions on the grid. The funds are part of a $3.5 billion program for grid-boosting projects the Energy Department rolled out in October." To save you a few clicks, that program is funded by the bill in question, as per https://www.energy.gov/gdo/grid-resilience-and-innovation-partnerships-grip-program https://www.energy.gov/gdo/grid-resilience-and-innovation-pa...

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claytongulick 2y ago

I hope we're hardening it too in prep for another Carrington event.

HankB99 2y ago
Modern electrical generation, transmission and distribution systems are protected by "relays" that open breakers to prevent damage. I did a quick search on "Carrington event protective relaying" and found https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/report/115.pdf https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/report/115.pdf. It seems that what is needed is to properly configure the protective relaying for the possibility of a geomagnetic storm and to make sure that all relaying is operational and modern enough to do so. Anything new or upgraded should meet these criteria. Older stuff probably needs to be reviewed.

rconti 2y ago

It looks like during last year's heat wave, California FINALLY broke its previous all-time peak load of 50,270mW in 24 July 2006, with a whopping 52,061mW on 6 September 2023. Still, peak usage year over year looks flat to my eyes. I'm sure we can't keep time-shifting and efficiency engineering ourselves out of a fundamental need for more total energy for a huge % of EVs and the push to phase out natural gas, but it might do most of the work for us. All big power hogs are getting more efficient. Electric cars can charge "whenever", but I imagine a future where just spreading the EV load between 11pm and 6am is no longer enough. Plus, we need more energy storage or non-solar) sources to handle the fact that loads are going to increasingly move to the overnight hours. https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory.pdf https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory...

nmeagent 2y ago
It's pretty clear from the context what units you intended to use and I kind of hate to be 'that guy', but just FYI: mW -> milliwatt, MW -> megawatt.
teaearlgraycold 2y ago
California has lots of problems, but availability of money is not one of them. I have no worries whatsoever about our ability to properly handle changes in demand going forward. Will a bunch of money get wasted and mis-managed? Of course. It wouldn't be CA if we didn't do that! But we'll still grow just fine.
- jart 2y ago
  How dare you use the word "we" to lump us in with our corrupt policymakers. Just because we're exploited and victimized by a parasite, doesn't make us one.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Unless you're in jail for tax evasion or making below what you're worth (which; your reputation precedes you, you definitely are) which means you're not meeting your earning potential, which is a failure of the economic-maximalizing society you live under, you're complicit. (email in profile, apparently this thread has been marked by HN already)

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Works where archive/ph is blocked: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-aging-u-s-power-grid-is-about-to-get-a-jolt/ar-BB1nJZ92 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-aging-u-s-power-... Text-only: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1nJZ92 https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1nJZ92

simonblack 2y ago

The aging power grid is not capable of charging millions of EVs on instant high current demand. Until that happens, EVs will never be useful enough to make ICE cars obsolete. "It's the infrastructure, stupid". The US and other countries should have spent those trillions on infrastructure instead of wasting lives and treasure on stupid military adventures. Too late now, the countries are going down the gurgler big time.

Dylan16807 2y ago
It's not that much power compared to the terawatt or so of peak capacity, and the "instant" nature of a single car doesn't affect the overall grid in the slightest. For some rough math, people drive 10 billion miles per day in the US, and at 3-4 miles per kWh that's an average of 105-140 gigawatts. Average production is half a terawatt, so replacing half the cars on the road might only need 10% more average power production, and almost all of that charging can be done off-peak without an impact on transmission. In the optimistic case, electric cars can even reduce peak loads on big distribution lines.

londons_explore 2y ago

Most power lines across the nation have <5% utilisation. Ie. They transfer in a year less than 5% of what they could have transferred. If we had smarter systems to plan and route power transfers, we could get the network to move far far more power Most of that overcapacity is in little local wiring, like the cables to your street, where there is likely nothing smart at all right now.