To compare US to other countries is like comparing Apples to oranges. US uses LARGE power plants in central locations sending power Hundreds of miles. Europe uses many small power plants sending few miles. Europe uses co-generation. Manufacturing plants needing heat are next store to power plants using the waste heat. Not done in US except some trial plants. Too much trouble. Anybody read about ohms law? Ok, lets build it out of super conductors!
Next thing we will be sending water from the great lakes down south. Oh, we are.
Homes use plenty of energy, yet many off grid examples to suggest it would be cheaper to take down the power lines and get over it. Problem is what would big business have to do with it? You know it our societies responsibility to make executives rich over it!
Have fun, Scott.
Oh, yeah. Decentralization makes way more sense on almost every level except making MegaCorp [TM] rich.
Much higher security with a spread out system. Much better disaster recovery. So no racoon can take out the whole NE US and adjacent Canadians.
I agree the power grid is a mess and needs an upgrade but the upgrade should be an overhaul where bigger is not considered better.
If California cannot pull its cranium from its rectum and build power plants then they can go without in my opinion kind of deal.
This country has a tendency to think bigger is better and in this case it is not the answer in my opinion.
I think local folks with a resource like wind water or whatever could band together and do it now. Not a simple task but if folks followed a few simple guidelines power could be made available without the massive plants.
Not a popular opinion to those who feel some inherent right to "megawatts on demand".
We got into this by following the easy path. The way out is a bit more of a challenge.
Just my humble opinion as I waste watts online tonight.We pulled in a nice 28 amps most of the day today so its no big deal even if we were off grid which we are about 1/3 rd of the way to achieving in an all electric house heated with wood and passive solar.
I cannot make idiots think nor can I force choices to do things right on a global or continental scale. All I can do is affect my little corner of things. Thats what I do.
Tom
"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."--Mark Twain[ Parent ]
For example, a lot of power in the UK is shipped down to London and Cornwall from hundreds of miles further north (I can dig out URLs for the transmission-flow maps if you would like), and indeed more will be coming all the way down from the top of Scotland in wind and the like.
Sweden/Norway/Denmark/Germany ship a lot of power between themselves to make use of their combination of wind, hydro and nuclear. Denmark couldn't sustain its >20% wind power in its grid without those long transmission links.
I think more transmission is a often good thing (in conjunction with conservation and much more RE) because it makes better use of existing plant and means that less can run on standby for a given capacity.
And cities simply don't have the space to generate their own power by RE for example; it is too diffuse. If you want to get people off burning coal for heat/electricity for example, that energy is going to have to be shipped in, and electricity transmission is a pretty 'clean' way to do so.
All IMHO of course.
Rgds
Damon[ Parent ]
"Denmark couldn't sustain its >20% wind power in its grid without those long transmission links."
Denmark and long? Denmark can't have a "long transmission" in US terms.
Scott's "apples and oranges".
Denmark is less than twice the size of Ted Kennedy's tiny little insignificant Massachusetts. Denmark is about 1/10th the size of California. From wiki: A perfect circle enclosing the same area as Denmark would have a circumference of only 742 kilometres (461 mi). That's little more than half the driving distance from California's southern to northern borders. The Hoover dam's transmission lines (circa 1935!) carry power to L.A. 462 kilometres (287 miles), or about twice the diameter of that Denmark circle.
I drive 1050km (650 miles) to visit my sister. I only cross 3 states borders, because she lives just past the last one. I drive 1100km (700 miles), then go another 300km (200 miles) in a sea-plane to go fishing. Once I drove 1700km (1050 miles), in one day, to Disneyland. (now we fly!) My father-in-law drives 3550km (2200 miles) to see his son. Gosh. I drove more than 461 miles so my wife could meet Steven King for a couple hours. Those distances are one way.
In 2006 (BTS numbers), the US had 13,551,624 lane-km (8,420,589 lane-miles) of roads. Most of it has 'wires'.
Rewiring the US is going to take a lot of wire. And money. That's all I am saying.
I read the US figures it has $50 billion ear-marked to rebuild Iraq. And Iraq has $80 billion of oil money it has no idea what to do with. Maybe Iraq should rebuild itself (it IS their fault they need rebuilt). Then the US can re- ear-mark that $50 billion for updating her own grid! G-[ Parent ]
The US has about 5 or 6 times the population of the UK (which would squeeze into Illinois by land area at a guess) and uses about 10 times the electricity I think (I'm guessing a US peak capacity of ~800GW).
The whole of the EU however is maybe 50% larger in population terms than the US, though probably has a smaller total electricity generation capacity and consumption than the US, and is in many ways as bizarre and fragmented as the US grid I guess.
Homes and vehicles consume 70% of the energy used in the USA. Homes use 2/3 of the energy. Agreed? Vehicles 1/3 (wonder why all the focus on cars?) Yes many homes in cities, more are not. I believe the power used by homes should be addressed before doing anything else, especially since a small investment can make a drastic reduction in power use!
IF I was offered the same deals as the government sponsored grid improvements I could go off grid. Not only off grid Off everything! No gas, nothing. Net zero energy home and vehicle.
Looking at the numbers, solar is available up to 20% efficiency. (32% with mirrors) I use 30kwHr/day. 10 ft x 30 ft solar panel should supply everything I need. Replacing appliances could drop it down to 8-10kwhr/day easily. Or 10 ft x 10 ft panel. Converting to EV, what do I need? http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf Suggest 3 to 6 miles per KwHr. Interesting. Lets use 4 mi/Kwhr. GM posted the average ride to work is 40 miles round trip. Or 10kwHr/day. Doubling the solar panel to 10 ft x 20 ft total! Hot water 4 ft x 8 ft supplies 60-90% How much for heating? Assuming 60% efficiency (too high?) My 92% 76KBTU/hr furnace runs 4-6 hr many winter days, once 23.5 hr when -23F. Heat per day" 6 x 72KBTU = 432KBTU Solar heat per day 1,000BTU/ft2 or need 432 ft2 solar heat collector = 20 ft x 21 ft My house or Roof is bigger than the above needs of 664 ft. Not many smaller? Edit: Oops forgot collectors efficiency, got to go, consulting work to do.
Back up energy is required, could be grid or gas of some kind. Even in cities homes are plenty large enough. Apartment building may have a problem, then most have large parking areas to offer for the energy production.
My numbers are based on my homes needs here in Michigan. Will change based on location.
Manufacturer have their own special needs, most have huge parking areas outside of making cement they may be able to locally produce their own power. Co-generation works.
I do not see much use for a grid, let along spending trillions fixing the current one. Thanks for your comments!
Have fun, Scott.[ Parent ]
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of distributed generation (and hope to go electricity-neutral at home within months), but for the UK at least RE generation still seems to look better done at a macro level with a supporting grid, eg see:
http://zerocarbonista.com/2008/07/21/micro-generation-the-emperor-new-clothes/
The Zerocarbonista man (Dale Vince) runs a pure-wind 'green' UK supplier, and I happen to be a customer.
As to domestic vs other consumption of electricity, see in the 'Links' section of my draft doc http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-dynamic-demand-value.html
"DUKES": Digest of UK Energy Statistics notes amongst many other things that: in 2006, domestic electricity consumption was 29% of all UK demand of 406TWh (ie about 116TWh), of which only about 33% was on Ecomony 7 or another off-peak/grid-friendly tariff. Mean domestic electricity power demand was thus ~13GW, most of it potentially not 'off-peak'.
DUKES is the UK gov's official exec summary, as it were.
Damon [ Parent ]
The cost analysis of solar vs wind vs nuclear are messed up when you add the cost of a New grid to make use of it.
Next Town over is putting in 20 miles new transmission lines, cost estimated at $15 millions. These are not even big lines. Going with larger lines must cost more? Still working on right of ways two years. The lines are going into GM test facility, employees 4,000 people. The lines are a third redundant power feed. Three years ago they lost power for a day and still pissed about it.
Macro power generation looks good cost wise until adding in the upgrade cost necessary to the transmission grid. Part of the system cost. Micro generation starts looking more attractive. Loosing 10% to transmission changes the equations.
Recently a company started production of a $1/w solar cell, first 18 months sold out. If solar panels were produced in volume to be put on homes... how would the economics change?
Prior post was using the numbers for total energy. Home energy can be used in many forms. Newest generation heat pumps are looking attractive even for Michigan!
The final comment of micro vs macro. Micro has a fixed cost over a period of time. Mostly up front, little after. Macro power will forever have to new bill to pay!!! Always going UP! Which fits in your wallet?
Having fun, Scott. [ Parent ]
