[Pops]

Several people have mentioned lately that we aren’t facing an electrical shortage; only an oil shortage. Many solutions therefore, involve renewable, coal and nuclear electrical generation to replace gasoline for personal transport (what else?) and probably many industrial processes. Of course in the transition we may very well face electrical shortages without unified action and investment.

Aside from the untold cost and NIMBYism involved in building new generation to power hybrid, hydrogen, electric cars, we haven’t considered the US grid itself. It is largely (I think) privately owned, old and antiquated in many regions; the various regions themselves use different standards to control their areas, and most importantly, deregulation has caused a decline in maintenance and investment in transmission capacity.

Also, I would assume an increase in small distributed generation i.e. grid-tie PV, wind, etc. would place an increased demand on switching, generation control, etc. And of course, there will be increased demand in all areas, although as has been pointed out to me, plugging in the car at nightwhich has traditionally been a low demand time will ameliorate peak demand to a degree. I am not sure if the low demand nightime hours are currently used for maintenance, but that could be a problem if true.

Now that we’ve de-regulated the system that seems to be increasingly a main tool in transitioning to post peak energy, can the “Invisible Hand” be counted on to anticipate these new needs in time and make the incredibly huge investments required for a reliably supply down the road? Or, will the current crop of profit at all cost, corporate welfare cases with friends in high places utilities simply do an Enron-style end-run?

I don’t believe the government should be involved in regulating every aspect of society, however, I'm not so sure we can trust the short-term-profit driven, patchwork system we have now, much of which is foreign owned BTW, to act in the LONG-term interest of society.

Anyone have thoughts about de-regulation and the electric grid?

[notacornucopian]

Hi Pops,

It is interesting to think that while most of us that follow the peak oil issue are thinking in terms of oil prodution/decline, the electrical grid is probably the system/infrastructure more prone to failure. Last year's blackout was officially blamed on a lack of tree branch maintenance if I remember correctly. Believing that story underlines the fragility of the grid. Not believing that story makes one wonder whether there will be another blackout this year because of lack of capacity.
Switching to coal from NG won't happen overnight. If you have read the articles by Julian Darley, NG decline rates are less predictable because the decline is much steeper compared to an oil field.
As far as deregulation goes, perhaps it is this unpredictability that government wants to distance itself from. Private industry ( especially foreigned owned ) can more easily be made the scapegoat when things go wrong.

[gg3]

The "find someone else to blame" mentality is basically identical with "buck-passing," which is to say, personal irresponsibility elevated to the level of corporate and government policy. As such it qualifies as a moral failure, but the practical question is what to do about this.

I would say that all of the "rights-of-way" networks should be operated either as regulated monopolies on the old Bell System model (remember how well that worked?), or be publicly owned and maintained (similar to the highway system). Deregulation has been an unmitigated disaster, as capital eschews such mundane and low-return investments as trimming trees next to powerlines. Also the amounts of capital needed to build and operate transmission infrastructure are so large that they lend themselves to the creation of corrupt nexes of influence that are inimical to a free society.

In addition to the powerlines, the rail lines should be managed as a national regulated monopoly or under public ownership.

The outcome of this should be a policy whereby producers and consumers can tie into the grid on a non-preferential basis, and private investment can concentrate on buiding generating facilities of all types.

[notacornucopian]

gg3 - just a quick comment on free enterprise providing the required power generation facilities - the need for transparent and reliable data for fuel reserves of all types would certainly help those with the capital decide which type of plant to build. Who's data do you suppose these builders could rely on, given the wide variance published ?

[Ender]

gg3 - just a quick comment on free enterprise providing the required power generation facilities - the need for transparent and reliable data for fuel reserves of all types would certainly help those with the capital decide which type of plant to build. Who's data do you suppose these builders could rely on, given the wide variance published ?

The problem is that major infrastructure like that generally doesn't get off the ground spontaneously in response to market forces. Historically, that sort of work has had to be bureaucratically planned and usually financially supported in some way by governments.

[smiley]

Maybe you recognize the feeling, but lately I feel like Buck Rogers in the 21th century. Somewhere along the line the society took a 90 degree turn and I missed it.

The last time I checked, people still believed that we live in a very fragile system and we had to be very careful not to upset it. That's why we had all kind of rules and regulations. We planned and prepared for the future.

But now that has all changed. The economist found out that the system is self-regulatory. They discovered that there is this mysterious "Market force" sorting things out for us. It's a great discovery because it means that no one has to feel responsible for anything. The less rules, the less involvement, the better things work. So please sit back keep your hands away from the steering weel and enjoy the ride.

I think the whole deregulation idea is a fine example of that attitude.

Personally I think the whole system will collapse in a very deregulated way as soon as the first peak oil problems hit. After that the government is probably forced to take over again. But then they have to repair years of mismanagement and neglect.

[Cynus]

Can anyone direct me to links discussing the power sources for the electricity grid? I know that oil only supplies a small amount of the power used to generate electricity, but I would like to know how much. A state by state listing would be nice since I know that each state has a different percentage of it electricity generated from various sources. I've looked but can't seem to find the info.
On a related note, if oil only supplies, say, 10% of the power used to generate electricty in the US, why is the oil peak a threat to electricity supplies? Many of the Mad Max scenarios seem to think that there will not be any electricity after the peak, but I don't see why this has to be. We may have to conserve to make up for that 10%, but that is fairly easily attainable by conservation or efficiency measures today without the need for shortages. Now, what will happen to electricity after the coal peak is a different question.

[Leanan]

Can anyone direct me to links discussing the power sources for the electricity grid?

Maybe this table from the DOE would do? table

On a related note, if oil only supplies, say, 10% of the power used to generate electricty in the US, why is the oil peak a threat to electricity supplies?

Because when oil grows scarcer and pricier, people will turn to other energy souces - coal, natural gas, electricity. All of which will impact our already strained power grid, since we get a lot of our electricity from natural gas and coal. In the Northeast, the competition for natural gas between power plants and home users is already intense, and if there's a bad winter, either the lights will go out or people who use natural gas to heat their homes will freeze. What happens when all those people who use heating oil have to switch to either electricity or natural gas? What happens when people who can't get gasoline for their cars turn to natural gas-powered or electric cars?

[Specop_007]

How do you think they get coal out of the gournd, or natural gas? They use oil. As oil prices increase, so does extraction of other products.
Electricity wont just shut off, but it will become prohibitively expensive.

[MarkR]

There is growing interest in the use of small scale power generation at point of use, with grid supply used to supplement short fall and absorb excess generation. However, there is a possibility that excessive reliance on this type of generation could bring significant grid stability problems.

Grid connected generators are configured to inject a certain amount of power into the grid. If this grid is overpowered then the generators are commanded to reduce power, and vice versa. The problem with distributed small generation is that these devices are not easily remote controllable - in other words an struggling power grid could not be stabilized by the small generators. Indeed, the overall total generation of the distributed generators may not even be known by grid controllers, so that provision of adequate central generation to stabilize the grid may not be possible.

What happens if there is a massive expansion in consumption in one region, offset by expansion in local generation? Would the electricity companies strengthen the grid, even if they weren't supplying power to the region? What would happen if there was a sudden loss of local generation?

Big power grids have a facility called 'islanding'. Essentially, in the case of a major grid failure, the grid should disintegrate into small separate mini-grids or 'islands' each with its own power generation and consumers. This can be useful to keep critical loads e.g. a major financial city centre could supplied from municipal power stations even though the main city grid has failed and there is insufficient power for residential areas.

However, in the case of distributed generation 'islanding' is highly undesirable. An island grid is inherently much less stable than a major grid (due to its smaller size) and it may be much more sensitive to generation and demand fluctuations. The worst possible scenario would be a whole village full of small generators losing the grid connection and becoming a small island supplied only by the end-user generators. The total lack of control would cause the grid to black-out, brown-out or burn-out within a brief period of time.

Because of this, modern small scale generators contain very sensitive 'anti-islanding' controllers. If the grid parameters fall outside of very strict limits, the generators/inverters simply disconnect from the grid. Imagine then, a slightly unstable power grid with occasional power glitches due to the load. What would happen if suddenly 20-30% of power generation on that grid disconnected due to the instability? The grid would collapse immediately.

[Devil]

The received data that is considered viable for variable renewable sources (as opposed to constant ones) is that no more than 18% of the peak power consumption of a single type should be permitted or 20-22% of all types together, assuming a well managed grid. These figures should be reduced if the grid is not well managed (i.e., subject to instability).

These data were derived after the Danish catastrophe where, on one of their two grids, they had 24% wind generation, which caused the system to become unstable to the extent it had to be closed down and restarted.

This does not answer your question: the secret of stability is to have sufficient power in reserve at full load to be able to bring it in smoothly as the variable supply fades out from high to low output. This oftem means having turbines idling, because the time to get one working from zero rpm to full output and on grid (synchronisation etc.) is not negligible and may be longer than the change in weather as a front passes a whole country.

Small distributed supplies usually have a detection circuit which cuts it out completely in the event of a grid supply failure. They should not be considered as large UPSs.

[DriveElectric]

Those damn capitalists are upgrading the grid just in time for Peak Oil. Why can't they just let us "power down" and "reduce our footprint"? Don't they know that they are just driving us over a cliff?
msn
Jubak's Journal
3 power plays ready to surge Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The U.S. power grid is set to get a major upgrade worth billions. Here are 3 companies that are well positioned to profit.
After doing nothing for more than two decades, utility companies are poised to spend $50 billion to build and upgrade the system of wires and towers used to distribute electricity throughout the United States. And based on recent spending trends, that $50 billion is probably on the low side.
The spending will transform the electrical utility industry. Who knows, some of it may even lower what you pay to heat your home, drive your car and run your refrigerator and air conditioner -- eventually. But way, way before all this spending puts a penny into any consumer's pocket, it will show up in the stock prices of companies in the utility, energy, construction, engineering and manufacturing sectors.
Warren Buffett knows this. That's why he recently bought electric utility PacifiCorp from Scottish Power (SPI, news, msgs) for $5.1 billion. Electric utilities Duke Energy (DUK, news, msgs), American Electric Power (AEP, news, msgs), and Exelon (EXC, news, msgs) know it. That's why they've all bought other utilities in recent quarters. In my June 3 column, "Why Buffett is buying utilities," I gave you my list of electric utility stocks that you could buy -- both those of companies doing the acquiring and those likely to be acquired -- to get in on this trend.
Continue this article

[DriveElectric]

Prudential Equity Group has put together a list of some of the electric-grid projects now proposed.
$700 million project to connect southern California to power plants in Arizona with excess, unsold capacity. Will serve 900,000 California homes by 2009.

$300 million project to expand the high-voltage line that connects northern and southern California.

$3.3 billion project to build the Frontier Line to connect California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Memorandum of understanding signed April 4, 2005.

$420 million project to connect southern Wisconsin to northern Minnesota to serve 200,000 homes. Potential links could run to Iowa and Illinois.

$1 billion project to raise transmission capacity in Minnesota.

$3 billion project to connect Long Island to New Jersey with an underwater link. Eventually the project would stretch to eastern Canada.

A North Dakota plan to sell $800 million in bonds to finance new transmission lines. New transmission projects would get a five-year property tax exemption.

$750 million Montana plan -- at the talking stage -- to export coal-generated power over a high-voltage transmission line to Seattle.

$200 million plan to build two connections between southern Texas and Mexico to supply fast-growing area around Laredo.

A plan by the province of Alberta to build a transmission line to ship power to Montana. Another project under discussion would ship electricity generated at the province's oil sand deposits to the United States. Alberta has a reported electricity surplus of 30%.

[The_Toecutter]

Imagine what $50 billion worth of wind generators would do.

[DriveElectric]

Imagine what $50 billion worth of wind generators would do.

Well, let's imagine. The offshore wind project for London will produce 1,000 MW at a cost of $2.7 billion. That will power approximately 25% of London's domestic load or 750,000 homes.
$50 billion / $2.7 billion = 18.5
So reasonably we can assume that $50 billion would achieve 18.5 similar projects.
18,500 MW.
13,875,000 homes.

[turmoil]

With better leadership we'd have 100 billion and use 50 for wind and 50 for upgrading the electric-grid carrying the electricity generated by wind and other sources.

[The_Toecutter]

At $50 billion, you'd also have a much larger production volume, and considerably lower cost per home. So you'd basically have an increase in total output from more generators and even more homes powered. Another $50 billion for an electric infrastructure upgrade and $10 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure plus an EV mandate would do wonders for decreasing foreign oil reliance along with a small but still significant decrease in polution.

[lotrfan55345]

A map of the world electricity voltages: World Standards
175 countries use 225v and 39 use 110v. Is there an advantage/disadvantage to using 225v or 110v?

What has better efficiency/less losage?

[MD]

In general, the higher the voltage the higher the efficiency. however efficiency is affected by many other factors also, so the general case will not always apply.

[ChumpusRex]

There's not really that much difference.
230 V can be transmitted further, or over thinner cables, than 115V for the same amount of loss. This means that transformers can be further from the final customer.

Remember, it's only the final part (from the transformer, to the home) that is at a low voltage of 115 of 230 V. The transformers receive power at between 5 and 12,000 V.
The higher voltages are used to mimize losses when transmitting power long distances. On very long-haul power lines, voltages of 400,000 (in some special cases up to 700,000) are used.