Posts Tagged by HVDC
Power Transmission is a Real Problem for Renewable Energy
| August 24, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
I like to post articles on Renewable Energy World, as they have pretty decent traffic among people interested in a wide range of clean energy topics. Today, I commented on Stephen Lacey’s piece Is the Transmission ‘Problem’ Real? in which I indicated that he’s correct: to some degree, the argument that the grid needs to be upgraded in order to accommodate more clean energy is specious.
I go on to mention that I’m more interested in renewables on a national or continental scale. And, while I’m aware that Bill McKibben and thousands of other smart people see a future dominated by individual energy farmers, each, putting his unused electrons back onto the grid, I question whether this adequately addresses the matter of scale. With our growing population of energy-hungry consumers, utility-scale renewables appears to me to be the only way to get this done.
And this is where transmission really is an issue. As we know, renewable resources are localized: the sun shines hottest in the southwestern deserts, the wind blows hardest in the plains, the mountains have the best geothermal resources, etc. A significant upgrade to the grid — preferably to high-voltage DC — is required to make this happen.
Yet, as usual, the difficulty here is almost exclusively political. In particular, we’re being told that, for legal reasons, we can’t have a national high-voltage grid. And unfortunately, the US Supreme Court didn’t help the cause in its recent ruling, either.
I really don’t understand the problem. We have national pathways for the transportation of automobiles, railway cars, natural gas, etc. Can someone provide a reason — other than sleezy politics — that we can’t use our crystal clean eminent domain laws to get this done? There should be nothing new or scary about this.
More Bad News from the US Supreme Court
| January 29, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Earlier this week I wrote a post expressing my disgust over the US Supreme Court’s announcement that it had found major provisions of campaign finance reform to be unconstitutional. This paved the way for corporate and union money to mute the voices of individual citizens like you and me.
Later in the week, the justices dealt another punch to the gut to the forces of progress. This came with the decision that rendered the federal government impotent against state and local decisions regarding rights of way — for things like power lines.
Many of us are — or were — hoping for long-distance transmission of electrical power. This would have made feasible the development of forms of renewable energy that are prevalent in certain areas of the country, e.g., solar thermal in the southwestern desert, wind energy in the plains, and geothermal in the mountains. As of this week, however, such things will require the buy-in of dozens of state and local bureaucracies.
It hasn’t been a good week of news from high court.
How Much Variety of Renewables Do We Want?
| January 1, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
A reader points out:
Craig, you seem to think that there should be a single best solution for clean energy. I would agree with you if you qualified your assertion to state that there is a single best solution for a given site. For example, a mountain top with high steady winds may be crying out for a a wind farm, but a wooded valley location with almost no wind would probably benefit from a low head hydro plant…..
I acknowlege that I am in a slim minority of those who do not favor a wide variety of renewables. I’m optimistic that we as a civilization will find our way out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves. But I find it hard to believe that this solution will come in the form of 8 – 10 different renewable technologies.
You raise a good point, of course, in that different sites lend themselves to different renewable energy technologies: the plains support wind, the mountains geothermal, the deserts solar, etc. And if you’re truly a “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” type of guy, maybe you really DO want all of them. But I ask: Why?
Let’s keep our eye on the ball. All we need to do is harvest and distribute 1/6000th of the sun’s energy. I grant that this can be done through a variety of means, but if we can choose one or two that meet all our criteria (low-cost, scaleable, safe, clean, etc.) do we really need to develop and support them all?
Of course, all this does presuppose a cost-effective way of distributing power around the continent. As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe that we have to upgrade our grid — even in the absence of deeper penetration of renewable energy. As an integral part of this upgrade, I favor high voltage DC power transmission (VHDC), minimizing line losses over long distances.
I’m not a futurist by trade. But I’ll go on record right now and make a bold prediction. Long before the midpoint of this century, the technology surrounding solar thermal will have matured to such a point that it will represent a clean and bankable path to the end of the world energy conundrum. At a certain point soon thereafter, 90+% of the Earth’s population will enjoy low-cost and very clean energy brought about by a combination of solar thermal (concentrated solar power), molten salt energy storage and VHDC power transmission.
Offshore Wind Farms
| September 26, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
In this quite lucid and compelling video on offshore wind farms, The Sierra Club points out the numerous benefits of this technology. Until I watched it, I was unaware that turbines could be 12 miles offshore, and that the continental shelf off the eastern US was shallow enough such that the units could be anchored to the ocean floor that far from land. In my mind, this makes a compelling case. Of course, the issue is cost, which the video does not mention.
Sierra spokeperson Ivy Main, the renewable energy chair for the club’s Virginia chapter does an excellent job in contrasting this solution with dirty power sources like coal, but does so in a calm, measured, and professional tone. She also points out that this idea does not require the transmission of large amount of power over thousands of miles, which, of course, is a requirement of the solution I favor, solar thermal. However, with high voltage direct current (HVDC), which I also favor, there is relatively little power loss in such a scenario.
Again, it is my fondest wish that we can somehow put politics aside, conduct a fair-minded study of all the options that are available to us as a nation, and make the right decision. There are, of course, numerous reasons that this is not happening — the most obvious of which, as I’ve covered many times, is the power of the interests that are working to prevent it.
But here’s another wrinkle: we seem to be working within the paradigm that a great number of different technologies are all going to be part of the long-term solution, and that anyone who holds a contrary position is an extremist. Frankly, I’ve never understood that. I liken this “macro” decision to the “micro” decision that I would make if I were going to take our farm off the grid. Would I have some array of wind turbines, solar panels, and geothermal heat pumps? Probably not. I’d do a study, and try to remove the biases of the salespeople. Then I’d adopt the technology that made the most sense and implement it in sufficient quantity to fulfill my needs.
I really fail to see where this analogy breaks down. There must be a single best solution. It’s my hope that we can identify it and get it done.
