Its cool to see all the investor owned utilities. I never knew there was so much overlap. I pretty much just assumed that the entire state uses one system. I wonder how difficult it would be to start an energy company of that caliber, and what the profits look like.
People are getting restless about planning permission for power lines to bring electricity from WV to Ashburn to power the endlessly growing datacentres.
Datacenter capacity is at 3 GW power consumption, but planning permission has been given for multiples of this capacity without a thought as to what it means for the electricity infrastructure.
Projections are that this will grow to 48 GW.
You can be sure that wind and solar aren't going to power datacenters 24 / 7, and nobody will be happy when their internet streaming stops when the sun goes down.
One view is that the Virginia Clean Energy Act means Virginia can't build fossil fueled power stations, so it is importing gas fired electricity from WV and PA.
What does 48 GW of carbon free electricity look like?
Lake Anna has two nuclear reactors producing 1.9 GW, with plans to add a 1.5GW Boiling Water Reactor to take it to 3.4 GW. Lake Anna covers 20 Sq miles to provide cooling for these reactors.
So 48 GW of carbon free electricity would be 14 expanded Lake Anna's, 42 nuclear reactors and 280 square miles of reservoirs for cooling.
I wonder when Dominion will publish their plans to build 40+ nuclear reactors in NoVa as an alternative to power lines. If 3 GW of High Voltage power is a problem, what does 48 GW look like?
The crazy thing is that this is all being dealt with through local planning committees.
I like your use of Meredith's definition of the grid. It sets the grid apart from what it delivers. Too often, the debates today center on the supply side as if changing that will "clean" the grid. Those discussions may hinge on grains of truth, but they stumble over one huge flaw -- they trivialize the grid. You even mention it specifically with reference to the vagueness of the reported 47,300 gigawatt-miles requirement.
Seen from the supply side, a giant solar generation plant covering many square miles in a desert may appear equivalent to a single reactor in a nuclear power plant, but among its many shortfalls, that bright shiny new solar farm needs bright shiny new grid infrastructure to carry power where it is needed. The cost of doing that never appears in the "cost of solar" ledger. That externalized cost is not trivial. There is an environmental cost to adding more transmission through wild land. Then, a bit off topic, are the costs of compensating for the intermittency of solar power (a huge cost of redundant natural gas fired plants) the relatively short life of PV panels, the cost of end of life recycling (this will be a problem of scale).,
In short, you do a great job of shining a light on a national blind spot. We don't appreciate just how big this grid is and we trivialize extending it or replacing it with a "smart" grid. In the abstract, this is a problem of scale. Public appreciation and comprehension fails at the edge of the familiar objects near at hand.
As in most things in life, "central planning" has the advantage of being a worse solution than all others, which means politicians favor it.
More, distributed power generation is the solution. The only technologies out there which show any possibility of becoming cheaper than fossil fuels while also allowing for the complete retirement of fossil fuels are nuclear and closed loop geothermal (Eavor dotcom the current leader). Neither has achieved price parity yet; closed loop geothermal shows more potential in that regard.
The fact base to support the claim that Eavor can compete with nuclear is essentially the empty set. See: "Geothermal energy in Geretsried: Electricity could be produced for the first time in 2024" July 21, 2022, 8:00 p.m By: Doris Schmid Merkur.Dehttps://www.merkur.de/lokales/wolfratshausen/geretsried-ort46843/geothermie-in-geretsried-2024-zum-ersten-mal-strom-moeglich-91680655.html The key sentence is, "The maximum output of the power plant should be 8.2 megawatts." Eavor does not have any commercial projects producing power. There are many risks with Eavor's approach which apparently does not have metal casings as most geothermal projects to date use casings. Thus, the horizontal boreholes could be easily blocked by unsound rock. As a counter-example, Diablo Canyon nuclear Power Plant produces about 275 times as much power utilizing well-established technology.
You seem confused. Gretsried is the first commercial installation. Do you imagine the first car was cheaper than a horse? The first of anything is always more expensive. That' s why it's the technology life cycle, not the technology event. Solar panels were once $10,000 per watt, too.
Too, your quote of the power output is effectively a lie by omission. The plant will also deliver about 4x that much energy in the form of heat for buildings. These installations are estimated will last around 50 years, a lot longer than other technologies and allowing a longer period to recoup costs.
Try looking at the studies by the IEAA and others. There is an excellent PDF in one of the articles on Eavor's site containing about a hundred pages or so of itemized cost factors for the first plant, and explanations where they anticipate cost savings will begin to appear with experience.
A good place to start is Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid, Paperback, October 13, 2020 by Meredith Angwin . This book is also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format.
Here's a 2010 book regarding the generation side of the grid - Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens (Author), Richard Rhodes (Introduction) It is available in paperback and Kindle editions. Electrical Substations for Beginners by Boris Shvartsberg, 2017 Kindle Edition offers a good introduction to substations. The National Electrical code provides information regarding residential electrical wiring including outlets, switches, and the connection to the step-down transformer that is typically on a pole. A 2016 book regarding the power grid is The grid: the fraying wires between Americans and our energy future by Gretchen Bakke. Her book is also available via a Kindle edition.
One of the reasons "it works" is because no central planner designed it. It developed organically to deliver power, and nothing else. No ideological agenda was served. I will choose Adam Smith over John Kerry every time.
The green nonsense is just a vehicle to try and take it over, subvert it.
Similar to here in canada the federal government has created a housing crisis without out of control immigration and inflation, and now they are trying to take over zoning from municipalities because they supposedly aren’t doing enough to solve the crisis.
One other consideration is how to shield the grid (if at all possible) from a Carrington level event? It's a question of when, not if. Is anyone in leadership discussing this?
You make it sound so perfectly clear Robert. I (for one) can't fathom why this isn't common knowledge amongst our Energy Literati who would instead cut the United States "off at the knees" by mandating 'renewables' as the major source of electrical energy for our future?
"Perhaps the most amazing part of the U.S. electric grid is that somehow — despite its massive size, competing policies, and myriad of different owners — it all works."
Could it be that it shortly will begin to fail to work? As in Texas in 2021, is the rest of the country going to feel the effects of 'renewable unreliability' soon enough to make a difference with the current thinking in DC without wholesale deaths of thousands because coal and natural gas generating plants have been taken off-line?
Thank you for this information. There will soon be other sources of electricity generation available to the world. A move to de-centralize the sources will be possible. Massive grids stretching for many miles will be slowly obsolete. Wind and solar is not the solution. The future is bright and very close.
Please supply the references for your claim, :Massive grids stretching for many miles will be slowly obsolete." I agree that wind and solar are non-answers.
Gene, there is a geo-thermal developement taking place in Germany. The drilling is underway and progressing nicely. A Canadian company named Eavor. Funding is in place for this and future projects. It has great potential and can be done world wide. Please look them up, thanks.
The key sentence is, "The maximum output of the power plant should be 8.2 megawatts" only after several years of tweaks of a first of a kind geothermal plant.
I believe a nuclear power plant 275 times as large such as the 2,256 MW Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, California is a much more cost-effective and reliable way to power modern industrial societies such as Germany or the United States. California's experience with The Geysers field shows that even under very good conditions, geothermal is limited by the rate of heat flow from inside the Earth. The production of The Geysers field dropped off to about half as the rock cooled down. There are big problems with geothermal piping etc. being corroded by the minerals in the rock. Geothermal waste water can be very polluted.
Until we can figure out how to drill very large holes very, very deep, geothermal will be little more than a boutique energy source, like hydro entirely dependent on siting. The only place in the US I know of is Thermopolis, Wyoming. Small geothermal working there.
Thanks. I wasn't aware the technology had improved, though I'm not surprised. Still, it remains a nascent technology and is decades away from scalable deployment.
Having no piping casings is a new idea? That approach will only work in a few locations with very solid rock. The downside to being at any location is lower heat fluxes from the Earth. Low energy density is the deal killer, just as it is for solar and wind.
Good piece, Robert. I would quibble with including CCAs in the owned and manage slide. They own nothing, they manage nothing, they contribute nothing,they are profit taking free riders. But at 1%, I suppose it isn’t really worth a quibble.
GLF wrote an excellent commentary regarding California CCAs almost a year ago on February 24, 2023, available via the above link. I've added a few comments.
As best we can tell in California, CCAs add about 10% to the price of electricity. They were co-created by a man named Paul Fenn. fhttps://www.localpower.com/FounderBio.html His writings show he is opposed to nuclear power. I agree with the assessment they are profit-taking free-riders that add nothing. (CCAs enable "resource shuffling" that does not decrease emissions.)
I was a victim of Marin Clean Energy for about two weeks until I opted out. It was a nifty scheme, buy in the day ahead market for cheap, buy RECs, claim it is all green, ignore CAISO and the CPUC, and sell at a higher price than PG&E. They raked off millions.
The only question is who ended up with the money. The good citizens of Marin County?
Or Shell energy trading, a bunch of old Enron guys, who ran the operation?
Funny how when the dumb asses in the government come up with a new wonderful idea, there is always a smart capitalist who figures out how to scam it for huge profit. You'd think they'd learn.
Its cool to see all the investor owned utilities. I never knew there was so much overlap. I pretty much just assumed that the entire state uses one system. I wonder how difficult it would be to start an energy company of that caliber, and what the profits look like.
https://www.loudounnow.com/news/concern-grows-over-data-centers-power-lines-in-loudoun/article_29255f7a-ba1e-11ee-b337-0b0f125b94a9.html#tncms-source=login
North Virginia is facing an interesting dilemma.
People are getting restless about planning permission for power lines to bring electricity from WV to Ashburn to power the endlessly growing datacentres.
Datacenter capacity is at 3 GW power consumption, but planning permission has been given for multiples of this capacity without a thought as to what it means for the electricity infrastructure.
Projections are that this will grow to 48 GW.
You can be sure that wind and solar aren't going to power datacenters 24 / 7, and nobody will be happy when their internet streaming stops when the sun goes down.
One view is that the Virginia Clean Energy Act means Virginia can't build fossil fueled power stations, so it is importing gas fired electricity from WV and PA.
What does 48 GW of carbon free electricity look like?
Lake Anna has two nuclear reactors producing 1.9 GW, with plans to add a 1.5GW Boiling Water Reactor to take it to 3.4 GW. Lake Anna covers 20 Sq miles to provide cooling for these reactors.
So 48 GW of carbon free electricity would be 14 expanded Lake Anna's, 42 nuclear reactors and 280 square miles of reservoirs for cooling.
I wonder when Dominion will publish their plans to build 40+ nuclear reactors in NoVa as an alternative to power lines. If 3 GW of High Voltage power is a problem, what does 48 GW look like?
The crazy thing is that this is all being dealt with through local planning committees.
I like your use of Meredith's definition of the grid. It sets the grid apart from what it delivers. Too often, the debates today center on the supply side as if changing that will "clean" the grid. Those discussions may hinge on grains of truth, but they stumble over one huge flaw -- they trivialize the grid. You even mention it specifically with reference to the vagueness of the reported 47,300 gigawatt-miles requirement.
Seen from the supply side, a giant solar generation plant covering many square miles in a desert may appear equivalent to a single reactor in a nuclear power plant, but among its many shortfalls, that bright shiny new solar farm needs bright shiny new grid infrastructure to carry power where it is needed. The cost of doing that never appears in the "cost of solar" ledger. That externalized cost is not trivial. There is an environmental cost to adding more transmission through wild land. Then, a bit off topic, are the costs of compensating for the intermittency of solar power (a huge cost of redundant natural gas fired plants) the relatively short life of PV panels, the cost of end of life recycling (this will be a problem of scale).,
In short, you do a great job of shining a light on a national blind spot. We don't appreciate just how big this grid is and we trivialize extending it or replacing it with a "smart" grid. In the abstract, this is a problem of scale. Public appreciation and comprehension fails at the edge of the familiar objects near at hand.
There’s not only bullying, counties cities and states plus the wind/solar companies along with them are so secretive.
Before you know it they are building and then everyone wonders what the hell happened!
As in most things in life, "central planning" has the advantage of being a worse solution than all others, which means politicians favor it.
More, distributed power generation is the solution. The only technologies out there which show any possibility of becoming cheaper than fossil fuels while also allowing for the complete retirement of fossil fuels are nuclear and closed loop geothermal (Eavor dotcom the current leader). Neither has achieved price parity yet; closed loop geothermal shows more potential in that regard.
The fact base to support the claim that Eavor can compete with nuclear is essentially the empty set. See: "Geothermal energy in Geretsried: Electricity could be produced for the first time in 2024" July 21, 2022, 8:00 p.m By: Doris Schmid Merkur.De https://www.merkur.de/lokales/wolfratshausen/geretsried-ort46843/geothermie-in-geretsried-2024-zum-ersten-mal-strom-moeglich-91680655.html The key sentence is, "The maximum output of the power plant should be 8.2 megawatts." Eavor does not have any commercial projects producing power. There are many risks with Eavor's approach which apparently does not have metal casings as most geothermal projects to date use casings. Thus, the horizontal boreholes could be easily blocked by unsound rock. As a counter-example, Diablo Canyon nuclear Power Plant produces about 275 times as much power utilizing well-established technology.
You seem confused. Gretsried is the first commercial installation. Do you imagine the first car was cheaper than a horse? The first of anything is always more expensive. That' s why it's the technology life cycle, not the technology event. Solar panels were once $10,000 per watt, too.
Too, your quote of the power output is effectively a lie by omission. The plant will also deliver about 4x that much energy in the form of heat for buildings. These installations are estimated will last around 50 years, a lot longer than other technologies and allowing a longer period to recoup costs.
Try looking at the studies by the IEAA and others. There is an excellent PDF in one of the articles on Eavor's site containing about a hundred pages or so of itemized cost factors for the first plant, and explanations where they anticipate cost savings will begin to appear with experience.
Not with current (pun intended) technology. Give it time.
These figures certainly would turn a few heads of the RE advocates....if they bothered to read it.
Interesting. What book talks about how the grid was designed and built?
A good place to start is Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid, Paperback, October 13, 2020 by Meredith Angwin . This book is also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format.
Thanks. I read her book a couple y ago.
My dad (EE '49 SDSM&T) was Technical Manager for WAPA.
Am looking for a book that describes in detail what I learned directly from him. Does that make sense?
Here's a 2010 book regarding the generation side of the grid - Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens (Author), Richard Rhodes (Introduction) It is available in paperback and Kindle editions. Electrical Substations for Beginners by Boris Shvartsberg, 2017 Kindle Edition offers a good introduction to substations. The National Electrical code provides information regarding residential electrical wiring including outlets, switches, and the connection to the step-down transformer that is typically on a pole. A 2016 book regarding the power grid is The grid: the fraying wires between Americans and our energy future by Gretchen Bakke. Her book is also available via a Kindle edition.
One of the reasons "it works" is because no central planner designed it. It developed organically to deliver power, and nothing else. No ideological agenda was served. I will choose Adam Smith over John Kerry every time.
Thanks a lot for your hard work.
The green nonsense is just a vehicle to try and take it over, subvert it.
Similar to here in canada the federal government has created a housing crisis without out of control immigration and inflation, and now they are trying to take over zoning from municipalities because they supposedly aren’t doing enough to solve the crisis.
One other consideration is how to shield the grid (if at all possible) from a Carrington level event? It's a question of when, not if. Is anyone in leadership discussing this?
See this 2013 report prepared for Lloyds of London by AER. https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf AER's website contains additional heliophysics references.
Thanks for that - very informative.
Read Ted Kopel's book "Lights Out" about what would happen if the grid went down. Spoiler alert - we would all die in a few months.
If right now during arctic outflow that would be days not months.
Great charts and very effective presentation of them.
Complexity and Convenience go hand in hand.
Convenience is the modern replacement for sloth.
After several generations benefiting from convenience we have a population who take it for-granted.
What happens next will be interesting.
Sloth is one of the 7 deadly sins ;-)
You make it sound so perfectly clear Robert. I (for one) can't fathom why this isn't common knowledge amongst our Energy Literati who would instead cut the United States "off at the knees" by mandating 'renewables' as the major source of electrical energy for our future?
"Perhaps the most amazing part of the U.S. electric grid is that somehow — despite its massive size, competing policies, and myriad of different owners — it all works."
Could it be that it shortly will begin to fail to work? As in Texas in 2021, is the rest of the country going to feel the effects of 'renewable unreliability' soon enough to make a difference with the current thinking in DC without wholesale deaths of thousands because coal and natural gas generating plants have been taken off-line?
Thank you for this information. There will soon be other sources of electricity generation available to the world. A move to de-centralize the sources will be possible. Massive grids stretching for many miles will be slowly obsolete. Wind and solar is not the solution. The future is bright and very close.
Please supply the references for your claim, :Massive grids stretching for many miles will be slowly obsolete." I agree that wind and solar are non-answers.
Gene, there is a geo-thermal developement taking place in Germany. The drilling is underway and progressing nicely. A Canadian company named Eavor. Funding is in place for this and future projects. It has great potential and can be done world wide. Please look them up, thanks.
Nonsense, it’s very location specific
Not any more !
For details on Eavor's small geothermal project , see "Geothermal energy in Geretsried: Electricity could be produced for the first time in 2024" July 21, 2022, 8:00 p.m By: Doris Schmid in Merkur.DE https://www.merkur.de/lokales/wolfratshausen/geretsried-ort46843/geothermie-in-geretsried-2024-zum-ersten-mal-strom-moeglich-91680655.html
The key sentence is, "The maximum output of the power plant should be 8.2 megawatts" only after several years of tweaks of a first of a kind geothermal plant.
I believe a nuclear power plant 275 times as large such as the 2,256 MW Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, California is a much more cost-effective and reliable way to power modern industrial societies such as Germany or the United States. California's experience with The Geysers field shows that even under very good conditions, geothermal is limited by the rate of heat flow from inside the Earth. The production of The Geysers field dropped off to about half as the rock cooled down. There are big problems with geothermal piping etc. being corroded by the minerals in the rock. Geothermal waste water can be very polluted.
Until we can figure out how to drill very large holes very, very deep, geothermal will be little more than a boutique energy source, like hydro entirely dependent on siting. The only place in the US I know of is Thermopolis, Wyoming. Small geothermal working there.
Barry, that is the old concept. The technology has improved and the locations are not limited to hot spots in the crust.
Thanks. I wasn't aware the technology had improved, though I'm not surprised. Still, it remains a nascent technology and is decades away from scalable deployment.
Having no piping casings is a new idea? That approach will only work in a few locations with very solid rock. The downside to being at any location is lower heat fluxes from the Earth. Low energy density is the deal killer, just as it is for solar and wind.
I agree with the limited utility of geothermal. California geothermal locations include The Geysers and some fields near the Salton Sea.
Agreed. See my comment above.
Good piece, Robert. I would quibble with including CCAs in the owned and manage slide. They own nothing, they manage nothing, they contribute nothing,they are profit taking free riders. But at 1%, I suppose it isn’t really worth a quibble.
Yup.
https://www.greenleapforward.wtf/p/the-fiat-energy-scam-that-are-ccas
GLF wrote an excellent commentary regarding California CCAs almost a year ago on February 24, 2023, available via the above link. I've added a few comments.
As best we can tell in California, CCAs add about 10% to the price of electricity. They were co-created by a man named Paul Fenn. fhttps://www.localpower.com/FounderBio.html His writings show he is opposed to nuclear power. I agree with the assessment they are profit-taking free-riders that add nothing. (CCAs enable "resource shuffling" that does not decrease emissions.)
I was a victim of Marin Clean Energy for about two weeks until I opted out. It was a nifty scheme, buy in the day ahead market for cheap, buy RECs, claim it is all green, ignore CAISO and the CPUC, and sell at a higher price than PG&E. They raked off millions.
The only question is who ended up with the money. The good citizens of Marin County?
Or Shell energy trading, a bunch of old Enron guys, who ran the operation?
Funny how when the dumb asses in the government come up with a new wonderful idea, there is always a smart capitalist who figures out how to scam it for huge profit. You'd think they'd learn.