Los Angeles to Open Five New Natural Gas Plants to Avoid More Outages.

[turbguy + 1,398]

3 hours ago, wrs said:

 I just drove through west Texas to Utah and back last week.  There are more new wind farms everywhere and what I saw were new transmission towers.  If there were buried lines, I couldn't see them but I could plainly see the new transmission lines that I know are for the wind farm to grid connectivity.  I will stick with my actual reality based assumption that more power load is going to require more transmission lines which is consistent with my actual practice as an electrical engineer.

Burying AC transmission lines ain't cheap.   It's difficult to keep conductor spacing sufficient to minimize reactance issues that can destroy transmission "effectiveness".  

Underground DC Transmission works much better, since reactance issues become much attenuated (and cheaper, one less conductor).

Until you factor in the cost of the Valve Station or Variable Frequency Transformer required to invert or synchronize the current for the grid.  It's all driven to a great degree by transmission distance and transmission losses.

Else DC works great to "tie" asynchronous systems together, which is a totally different line of reasoning/justification.

Edited September 12, 2021 by turbguy

[Jay McKinsey + 1,489]

3 hours ago, wrs said:

 I just drove through west Texas to Utah and back last week.  There are more new wind farms everywhere and what I saw were new transmission towers.  If there were buried lines, I couldn't see them but I could plainly see the new transmission lines that I know are for the wind farm to grid connectivity.  I will stick with my actual reality based assumption that more power load is going to require more transmission lines which is consistent with my actual practice as an electrical engineer.

I said the new renewable energy would need feeder lines just as you described. I said nothing of them being buried. I said off shore wind would be connected by underwater cables. Last I checked Texas and Utah are not off shore.  

Those new transmission lines are for connecting new power sources that did not previously exist. 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Jay McKinsey

[turbguy + 1,398]

8 minutes ago, Jay McKinsey said:

I said the new renewable energy would need feeder lines just as you described. I said nothing of them being buried. I said off shore wind would be connected by underwater cables. Last I checked Texas and Utah are not off shore.  

It would make some sense to feed into a retired fossil station, as all (or a lot of) the required grid relaying, switching, and transmission tie is already there...

Edited September 12, 2021 by turbguy

[Eric Gagen + 713]

8 hours ago, turbguy said:

Burying AC transmission lines ain't cheap.   It's difficult to keep conductor spacing sufficient to minimize reactance issues that can destroy transmission "effectiveness".  

Underground DC Transmission works much better, since reactance issues become much attenuated (and cheaper, one less conductor).

Until you factor in the cost of the Valve Station or Variable Frequency Transformer required to invert or synchronize the current for the grid.  It's all driven to a great degree by transmission distance and transmission losses.

Else DC works great to "tie" asynchronous systems together, which is a totally different line of reasoning/justification.

Outside of heavily built up urban areas and a few other special places buried power lines don’t really make sense.  Over the air lines are much cheaper to construct and maintain, and in most places are safer also.  

[wrs + 893]

19 hours ago, Jay McKinsey said:

I said the new renewable energy would need feeder lines just as you described. I said nothing of them being buried. I said off shore wind would be connected by underwater cables. Last I checked Texas and Utah are not off shore.  

Those new transmission lines are for connecting new power sources that did not previously exist. 

DOH, to support new loads that don't yet exist.  Much of the wind generation capacity is not used because it's not available in enough quantity at the highest use time of day.  At night, charging cars would be a good idea and there is more wind early in the morning hours is what I think I remember from looking at the Texas wind charts that ERCOT supplies.  Regardless of your twisted logic, more transmission lines are needed and more local lines will be needed, it's inevitable if EV is inevitable.

[wrs + 893]

On the same topic, here is an article where it looks like in the UK you won't be allowed to use your charger except at off peak times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4ef85eba-133f-11ec-a8a6-db0b408d06d6

[wrs + 893]

Natural gas was up another 5% today, $5.20/mcf.

[turbguy + 1,398]

42 minutes ago, wrs said:

On the same topic, here is an article where it looks like in the UK you won't be allowed to use your charger except at off peak times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4ef85eba-133f-11ec-a8a6-db0b408d06d6

I suspect that new home-based chargers will be "price sensitive".

Certainly easy enough to do.

[Rob Plant + 2,616]

13 hours ago, wrs said:

On the same topic, here is an article where it looks like in the UK you won't be allowed to use your charger except at off peak times.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4ef85eba-133f-11ec-a8a6-db0b408d06d6

Dunno where this story has come from but its rubbish, I can assure you this does not happen and the UK hasn't suffered from blackouts for decades. Charge my hybrid up every day at work no problem.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Rob Plant

[wrs + 893]

2 hours ago, Rob Plant said:

Dunno where this story has come from but its rubbish, I can assure you this does not happen and the UK hasn't suffered from blackouts for decades. Charge my hybrid up every day at work no problem.

Says it doesn't go into effect until next May.

[Rob Plant + 2,616]

we'll see but I very much doubt it will actually happen