At my current company we're working on one of the problems involved in this in much of the developed world. Actually coming to the point where you can lay power lines is a huge issue that has to do with figuring out property ownership, the stuff that's already in the ground, water ways, roads, trees and more. People work months on finding a route that's actually possible and that sometimes involves paying a lot to property owners for using their land.
Right now we're creating a tool that gives the engineers insight into all these factors and automatically creates possible routes through all this madness. It's quite interesting to work on and fascinating to learn about all these complexities. It also doesn't scale well, we're building this for the Netherlands, which has a lot of centralized, (mostly) open data that can be used. In other countries that's not so much true.
Why shouldn't the property owners be paid for a profit taking enterprise to functionally steal their land? I understand that it has to be done to make the world work but it absolutely disproportionally effects rural people while the benefits go to the urban areas. This is one of those situations where a percentage of those gains flow back into the rural areas.
I used to be a permitting attorney. My wife is presently a prominent permitting attorney who works on linear transmission corridor projects at a large firm. Unless we change the permitting process, and several federal environmental laws in particular, we will never realize even a fraction of the capacity required to hit our renewables goals. We can’t get a single new line across the cascades in Oregon, much less the dozens that will be required. Tidal energy faces the same issues vis-à-vis the load centers on the other side of the coast range.
There will probably be a lot of pressure to change the permitting process in the near future. Power outages, along with rising prices, are one of the events that most reliably get politicians thrown out of office.
We are facing a major crisis in South Africa where we used to have more than enough power, 30 years ago, but the government neglected the maintenance of the network, and now we cannot make enough electricity, nor even maintain the existing levels!
> "At the turn of the century a couple of power plants a year might be connected ... new plants often using the same connections as old ones."
It's still generally true that the old grid infrastructure is re-used.
The UK has many closed coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power plants on or near the coast. When those plants are decommissioned or demolished, the grid infrastructure that was built for them (substations, transmission lines) is usually left intact.
New off-shore wind farms can now use those access points, which greatly reduces the cost of connection compared to having to build everything from scratch.
Over the last few years, lots of renewable generation and storage projects have taken advantage of the grid capacity in this area, but all the low hanging fruit is gone now.
These days, it is not usual for projects to be given a connection date in the 2030s due to the requirement to reinforce the transmission network.
In theory yes, but the locations in the UK don’t coincide.
The old coal plants were built nearer to consumption, most of which is in the South East of England. The planned wind farms are mostly in the North Sea, far from South East of England. It will cost billions to build the infra to connect the north with the south. It’s not a simple matter of reusing what exists.
Here in Canada my province went through a hurricane last Sept. I was without power for 10 days.
Much of the problems were due to poor maintenance; trees not trimmed, old poles not replaced, transformers old, salt spray on wires, etc. But the parent company crowed each year of profits and dividends. They also raised rates 5% to 10% each year claiming they had no money.
Solar would help but we also need a stable grid. But even with solar my local government doesn't even allow the use of battery storage in homes batteries can only go in garages.
> battery storage in homes batteries can only go in garages.
Batteries in that quantity are something of a fire risk, which is why some jurisdictions mandate they be "outside". Although this is probably just a different kind of over-caution.
I'm in Western Australia which like South Australia is a state with a very high solar | renewable input to our grid.
We're currently rolling out required remote management to remotely disable rooftop input on high solar input low demand days and likely to see a future where batteries are larger, isolated (for fire | emergancy), and serving local clusters of ~ 200 homes moreso than every home having batteries.
There's an efficiency and robustness at that cluster size.
Just as with nuclear power reactors, I hope that we can develop standard transformer modules that would reduce the need for "one off" production, and utilize the economies of scale that modern manufacturing is capable of delivering.
Smaller standard designs would make it easier to handle disruptions, make a power grid more resilient in the face of natural or man-made disaster. It would also make it easier to scale. Having a power grid with interchangeable parts would reduce the logistical complexity of spares management.
The issue is not that much about the ingress or about a single piece of equipment, as it is that adding new power sources (or consumers) creates topological changes in the network.
That new sources changes the power flow not only locally, but potentially all over the grid. It also changes the way TSOs react to equipment failures: typically, when an equipment like a power line opens, the power flows differently in the network. In order for other equipments not to become overloaded, operators study the network situation and have go-to solutions that involve changing the network topology, rerouting power and, in extreme situations, cutting some consumers. If power sources within the network change rapidly, that study work becomes obsolete fast, and that becomes a problem for operators and their ability to maintain a secure transport grid.
TSOs are working on it with both R&D and industrial applications, but that's not a fast process, and sometimes it challenges assumptions that used to be safe, and uncovers big question marks.
The point I failed to make is because I brought a machinists understanding to an electrical engineering conversation. I assumed a specific definition of the word "standardized" that isn't common to electrical engineering.
Here's what I should have said....
What's needed is standardized, interchangeable transformer modules. We need to be able to parallel as many of them as we need to manage a load, and if one dies, swap it out with a new module, possibly 30 years later, with NO need for adjustment.
Just as precision makes it possible to deliver parts that fit within 100 microns from countries on the opposite sides of the globe (and has for almost a century thanks to Johansson[1]), we should be able to produce a standard, easily paralleled transformer module that can simply be bolted to others to match situational requirements.
Bolting in a new module shouldn't result in the need for balancing or any other adjustment, the parts should just work together.
This would have helped immensely in Ukraine, for example... as missile damaged sections of a transformer stack could be individually replaced, instead of the whole thing.
There are enough CNC tools and measurement techniques in the world to make this possible, we just need to make it happen.
Standardization isn't really the issue described here. One of the issues is the manufacturing capacity for producing standardized parts is limited. The manufacturers are not interested in investing in the costly expansion of capacity required to meet a temporary surge in demand.
Other issues are regulatory in nature. The article goes into some detail on the matter.
tl;dr Connecting new power generation to the electricity grid is a queue-based permit system that is stupid and slow, but simple and supremely stable. There is a decent chunk of renewable power “in the queue” but speeding up the connection process risks damaging stability.
The article notes India’s electrification as a partial counter-example: relatively fast, but correspondingly relatively unstable. (One marker mentioned was “kerosene liters consumed”, as a proxy for how much lighting has been replaced by electricity, they note the amount dropped from 9 billion liters to 2 billion liters, which I take as a very rough indicator of ~80% grid reliability - not even one “9“ of stability. It’s hard to find representative data on developed-world power grid reliability but for instance there is a common estimate that the average Australian resident experiences 200 minutes of power outage per year, which corresponds to somewhere above three-and-a-half 9s and below four 9s. This suggests potentially quite an extreme cost in stability for the moderate benefit of speeding up queue times for renewable power.)
Grid stability is essentially a different thing than local power availability. You lose your power if a tree falls on your power line, or if your local transformer fails. Sad for you, but completely unrelated to grid stability.
Grid instability happens when load and supply are no longer matched. That's when serious things have to happen - load shedding and rolling blackouts. In the developed world we put a lot of money into avoiding this - pumped hydro, battery storage, fast response gas turbines, frequency control programs running with big industrial users, and (opt-in) load shedding of big industrial users. All so that power is available to an end user who needs it.
> "speeding up the connection process risks damaging stability"
The UK has transitioned to renewables perhaps faster than any other major economy in the past decade[1], yet has a very reliable and resilient grid[2].
[1] As recently as 2012, around 45% of the UK's electricity was generated from coal. Now it's almost zero, with the last coal power plants to close by 2025. In the same period, renewables have grown from <5% to over 40% of grid supply.
Interestingly enough, Tesla just released their "Master Plan 3" which admits the need for hydrogen for seasonal energy storage and synthetic fuels. It doesn't admit the need for nuclear though. So we can see it as a first step to coming to reality, but it is not there yet.
I bring this up because I am constantly annoyed by those who really haven't thought through their green energy dreams, and forget that compromises need to exist. These compromises actually have no serious penalties whatsoever BTW, it just requires a more complexity thinking process.
And in this case, it means that there will be a lot of times where the solution is to build a gas turbine running on hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic fuels, etc., or build a nuclear reactor. Just piling up more and more renewables onto the grid isn't a solution. We are finally seeing some people come to reality on this, and I expect even further shifts to more realistic thinking in the future.
Centralized grid instability is not going to stop new power generation from coming online. Decentralized power generation is what's already happening in countries with inadequate grids. People install batteries, solar, wind mills, generators etc. Anything they can do to mitigate against loss of power or unacceptably high prices for power. The more unstable the grid is, the more people do this. Just look at most of the developing world. There are lots of countries that never had much of a functioning grid where economic growth is creating demand that cannot be met by their electricity grid. In most of these places, people just go ahead and fix things themselves. And that increasingly means solar panels and batteries rather than expensive to operate generators.
In the UK, and elsewhere, there are a lot of home owners that have solar on their roofs. The reason is not power outages but electricity prices. And with recent price spikes, more people are considering doing that all over the world. The whole assumption that most new generation has to come from the grid is increasingly less true. Both companies and consumers invest in cheaper private power generation. Especially companies have a big incentive to reduce their cost. The more power they need, the bigger the potential savings. And of course increased demand with a limited supply creates price spikes as well. We saw that in the last few years. This just speeds up the decentralization.
Australia is a good example. About a third of the houses have solar panels already and the building codes are being updated to require solar panels for new construction and renovation projects. Millions of house holds generating tens of kwh every day is adding up to a lot of power. And a lot of it goes straight into the grid as well. Which adds to the instability. Lots more will be coming online in the next few years.
The average outage time per year in Germany, as far as I remember, is below 2min. The uptime of my non-USV-backed server at home supports that, but that’s only anecdotal data.
Here in South Africa the power can be off for anything from 2h to 8h a day and given the regularity of that interruption I've since gotten an inverter (with batteries) as well as several battery powered emergency lights to power me through. I know that many residents of India do something similar, and so I'm a little skeptical of this kerosene marker.
If I understand correctly there's little slack in transmission capacity to service new supply, and that new transmission infra isn't built out until new generation is queued. What wasn't clear to me is if construction of the new generation has to be completed before it can be enqueued or if e.g. completed permitting is sufficient.
I think reliability should be divided up in different ways.
Their is "how well the moving bits are moving" which is different than "lines getting knocked down by acts of nature".
So, for example, I live in Seattle. Our power generation is quite reliable, but trees falling down during wind storms and knocking out power lines is also reliable, gravity being what it is.
I don't consider the Seattle grid to be unreliable, though I do acknowledge that digging up the entire city and burying power lines would, at great expense, prevent nearly all power outages.
But that sort of unreliability feels different than brown outs.
here in CA, the CPUC is trying their best to prevent people from adding Solar to their roofs. They've even got rid of Net metering almost entirely with their new NEM 3 rules.
Nice survey of challenges. For follow ups, deep dives on the manufacturing of grid hardware and software would be cool.
For a (mostly) US perspective, check out David Roberts' Volts, "a newsletter about clean energy and politics". https://www.volts.wft Links below to episodes specifically about grids.
But since our grid is the elephant in the room, it's touched on in most episodes.
My noob TLDR for USA is:
Overlapping jurisdictions are a huge roadblock. To build new capacity, you likely need permits and buy off from every state, county, property owner, and special interest touched.
There's no federal plan to reform our currently siloed systems. Build Back Better addressed this. But because the Inflation Reduction Act was passed thru "reconciliation", it doesn't contain those "third leg" of necessary reforms. Huge disappointment.
Predictably, progress is being further stymied by a huge reactionary anti-electrification noise machine. All the usual suspects are dumping money into astroturf groups and propaganda to oppose anything and everything, from windmills to induction stoves.
NIMBYs have weaponized environmental regulations, created in response to past abuses, to thwart progress.
Just like how "the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it", reformers and innovators are finding alternatives. Stuff like: colocating generation with consumers (industrial heat), embracing geothermal, and beefing up existing grids with storage.
People are so wedded to fossil fuel religion, they'd rather pretend their country is entirely incapable of the most basic tasks.
China isn't playing by the pretend limitations you put on yourself and it looks like you've already admitted they deserve to be the new hegemon. Yay for totalitarian communism I guess.
The stat that 80% of the UK queue might be effectively domain squatters with no actual project waiting to flip to real developers is shocking. Pure rent seeking middlemen.
Though at the same time, it means all the other stats are BS. Like saying that a concert is sold out and there's no way to get a ticket until the next time they visit in 5 years time because 80% have been sold to scalper's bots. It just doesn't logically add up. The tickets are available, you just need to pay a markup to a scalper who performs no real service to society.
Unless the government in its infinite wisdom decides to exterminate all sparrows or so and causes a countrywide famine, I guess...
Some of the limitations are pretend, but some are very real. European countries in general want their grid to be stable and reliable, and the surges and dips of power that come from "too much sun" or "too much wind", or lack of either, are going against it.
On the other hand, India, mentioned in the article, has so many blackouts already that it can cope with some extra instability. Of course, the unreliability of the grid contributes to the reluctance of foreign investors to build industrial plants in India, which is a major downside, but hey, they can alter their grid faster.
well, not so fast. so far China managed to build a lot of things in a lot of places, but increasingly they are facing a problem of population-generation mismatch, so they would need to build a lot of cross-country transit capacity, which is not cheap, not simple.
and that's also one of the reasons they still have so many coal fired plants close to population centers.
and we'll see how long Xi's luck lasts (which in practice means how long the benefits of the reforms will last, before the inevitable corruption of dictatorships eats it up)
also, tiny nitpicking, so far it seems China is just very authoritarian, but not totalitarian like North Korea.
This can tip the scale in favor of efuels (as opposed to battery-electric). Just run the electrolysis straight from a windfarm and produce at the rate the windfarm is currently outputting.
The very low efficiency of e-fuels probably more than outweighs the cost of upgrading the grid. They will be important for sustainable aviation, but anywhere else they don't appear to be economically feasible.
This is what’s currently happening. It’s windy in some remote places. Connecting those places to the grid is horribly expensive but building a chemical plant there isn’t. That’s the locations where efuels are being made today. Like the Porsche project in Chile.
An idea that sounds good, but has the problem that efuel production capital expenditure is fixed and high. So once you've built it, you want to run it 24/7 rather than intermittently.
I'm very much open to suggestions for "low capex ways to make productive use of 'spare' electricity, preferably reversibly even if efficiency is low".
[+] [-] spindle|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donkeyd|2 years ago|reply
Right now we're creating a tool that gives the engineers insight into all these factors and automatically creates possible routes through all this madness. It's quite interesting to work on and fascinating to learn about all these complexities. It also doesn't scale well, we're building this for the Netherlands, which has a lot of centralized, (mostly) open data that can be used. In other countries that's not so much true.
[+] [-] eppp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MonaroVXR|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hcurtiss|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostrademons|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reason077|2 years ago|reply
It's still generally true that the old grid infrastructure is re-used.
The UK has many closed coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power plants on or near the coast. When those plants are decommissioned or demolished, the grid infrastructure that was built for them (substations, transmission lines) is usually left intact.
New off-shore wind farms can now use those access points, which greatly reduces the cost of connection compared to having to build everything from scratch.
[+] [-] scrlk|2 years ago|reply
Over the last few years, lots of renewable generation and storage projects have taken advantage of the grid capacity in this area, but all the low hanging fruit is gone now.
These days, it is not usual for projects to be given a connection date in the 2030s due to the requirement to reinforce the transmission network.
[+] [-] gppk|2 years ago|reply
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/guy-martins-great-britis...
[+] [-] nindalf|2 years ago|reply
The old coal plants were built nearer to consumption, most of which is in the South East of England. The planned wind farms are mostly in the North Sea, far from South East of England. It will cost billions to build the infra to connect the north with the south. It’s not a simple matter of reusing what exists.
[+] [-] halhod|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|2 years ago|reply
Much of the problems were due to poor maintenance; trees not trimmed, old poles not replaced, transformers old, salt spray on wires, etc. But the parent company crowed each year of profits and dividends. They also raised rates 5% to 10% each year claiming they had no money.
Solar would help but we also need a stable grid. But even with solar my local government doesn't even allow the use of battery storage in homes batteries can only go in garages.
[+] [-] pjc50|2 years ago|reply
Batteries in that quantity are something of a fire risk, which is why some jurisdictions mandate they be "outside". Although this is probably just a different kind of over-caution.
[+] [-] defrost|2 years ago|reply
We're currently rolling out required remote management to remotely disable rooftop input on high solar input low demand days and likely to see a future where batteries are larger, isolated (for fire | emergancy), and serving local clusters of ~ 200 homes moreso than every home having batteries.
There's an efficiency and robustness at that cluster size.
[+] [-] thomasjb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pibechorro|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikewarot|2 years ago|reply
Smaller standard designs would make it easier to handle disruptions, make a power grid more resilient in the face of natural or man-made disaster. It would also make it easier to scale. Having a power grid with interchangeable parts would reduce the logistical complexity of spares management.
[+] [-] pyrale|2 years ago|reply
That new sources changes the power flow not only locally, but potentially all over the grid. It also changes the way TSOs react to equipment failures: typically, when an equipment like a power line opens, the power flows differently in the network. In order for other equipments not to become overloaded, operators study the network situation and have go-to solutions that involve changing the network topology, rerouting power and, in extreme situations, cutting some consumers. If power sources within the network change rapidly, that study work becomes obsolete fast, and that becomes a problem for operators and their ability to maintain a secure transport grid.
TSOs are working on it with both R&D and industrial applications, but that's not a fast process, and sometimes it challenges assumptions that used to be safe, and uncovers big question marks.
[+] [-] Gud|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|2 years ago|reply
I suspect transformer production could be ramped up if the manufacturers were convinced that it wasn't just a temporary blip.
[+] [-] mikewarot|2 years ago|reply
Here's what I should have said....
What's needed is standardized, interchangeable transformer modules. We need to be able to parallel as many of them as we need to manage a load, and if one dies, swap it out with a new module, possibly 30 years later, with NO need for adjustment.
Just as precision makes it possible to deliver parts that fit within 100 microns from countries on the opposite sides of the globe (and has for almost a century thanks to Johansson[1]), we should be able to produce a standard, easily paralleled transformer module that can simply be bolted to others to match situational requirements.
Bolting in a new module shouldn't result in the need for balancing or any other adjustment, the parts should just work together.
This would have helped immensely in Ukraine, for example... as missile damaged sections of a transformer stack could be individually replaced, instead of the whole thing.
There are enough CNC tools and measurement techniques in the world to make this possible, we just need to make it happen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block
[+] [-] Kalium|2 years ago|reply
Other issues are regulatory in nature. The article goes into some detail on the matter.
[+] [-] Glench|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoneWithAllThat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodpoint|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwlr|2 years ago|reply
The article notes India’s electrification as a partial counter-example: relatively fast, but correspondingly relatively unstable. (One marker mentioned was “kerosene liters consumed”, as a proxy for how much lighting has been replaced by electricity, they note the amount dropped from 9 billion liters to 2 billion liters, which I take as a very rough indicator of ~80% grid reliability - not even one “9“ of stability. It’s hard to find representative data on developed-world power grid reliability but for instance there is a common estimate that the average Australian resident experiences 200 minutes of power outage per year, which corresponds to somewhere above three-and-a-half 9s and below four 9s. This suggests potentially quite an extreme cost in stability for the moderate benefit of speeding up queue times for renewable power.)
[+] [-] leoedin|2 years ago|reply
Grid instability happens when load and supply are no longer matched. That's when serious things have to happen - load shedding and rolling blackouts. In the developed world we put a lot of money into avoiding this - pumped hydro, battery storage, fast response gas turbines, frequency control programs running with big industrial users, and (opt-in) load shedding of big industrial users. All so that power is available to an end user who needs it.
[+] [-] Reason077|2 years ago|reply
The UK has transitioned to renewables perhaps faster than any other major economy in the past decade[1], yet has a very reliable and resilient grid[2].
[1] As recently as 2012, around 45% of the UK's electricity was generated from coal. Now it's almost zero, with the last coal power plants to close by 2025. In the same period, renewables have grown from <5% to over 40% of grid supply.
[2] "Five 9s" transmission system reliability of supply nationally in 2021-22: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/industr...
[+] [-] _hypx|2 years ago|reply
I bring this up because I am constantly annoyed by those who really haven't thought through their green energy dreams, and forget that compromises need to exist. These compromises actually have no serious penalties whatsoever BTW, it just requires a more complexity thinking process.
And in this case, it means that there will be a lot of times where the solution is to build a gas turbine running on hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic fuels, etc., or build a nuclear reactor. Just piling up more and more renewables onto the grid isn't a solution. We are finally seeing some people come to reality on this, and I expect even further shifts to more realistic thinking in the future.
[+] [-] dmurray|2 years ago|reply
Grid power dwarfed that produced by local generators even when it was 9 billion litres. 80% stability isn't the right conclusion from this.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|2 years ago|reply
In the UK, and elsewhere, there are a lot of home owners that have solar on their roofs. The reason is not power outages but electricity prices. And with recent price spikes, more people are considering doing that all over the world. The whole assumption that most new generation has to come from the grid is increasingly less true. Both companies and consumers invest in cheaper private power generation. Especially companies have a big incentive to reduce their cost. The more power they need, the bigger the potential savings. And of course increased demand with a limited supply creates price spikes as well. We saw that in the last few years. This just speeds up the decentralization.
Australia is a good example. About a third of the houses have solar panels already and the building codes are being updated to require solar panels for new construction and renovation projects. Millions of house holds generating tens of kwh every day is adding up to a lot of power. And a lot of it goes straight into the grid as well. Which adds to the instability. Lots more will be coming online in the next few years.
[+] [-] philippgerard|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liampulles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreareina|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] com2kid|2 years ago|reply
Their is "how well the moving bits are moving" which is different than "lines getting knocked down by acts of nature".
So, for example, I live in Seattle. Our power generation is quite reliable, but trees falling down during wind storms and knocking out power lines is also reliable, gravity being what it is.
I don't consider the Seattle grid to be unreliable, though I do acknowledge that digging up the entire city and burying power lines would, at great expense, prevent nearly all power outages.
But that sort of unreliability feels different than brown outs.
[+] [-] tshanmu|2 years ago|reply
At some point kerosene subsidy was removed and people shifted to battery based backup systems/ lights etc.
Electricity is unstable in large parts is my experience.
[+] [-] pascalxus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialist|2 years ago|reply
For a (mostly) US perspective, check out David Roberts' Volts, "a newsletter about clean energy and politics". https://www.volts.wft Links below to episodes specifically about grids.
But since our grid is the elephant in the room, it's touched on in most episodes.
My noob TLDR for USA is:
Overlapping jurisdictions are a huge roadblock. To build new capacity, you likely need permits and buy off from every state, county, property owner, and special interest touched.
There's no federal plan to reform our currently siloed systems. Build Back Better addressed this. But because the Inflation Reduction Act was passed thru "reconciliation", it doesn't contain those "third leg" of necessary reforms. Huge disappointment.
Predictably, progress is being further stymied by a huge reactionary anti-electrification noise machine. All the usual suspects are dumping money into astroturf groups and propaganda to oppose anything and everything, from windmills to induction stoves.
NIMBYs have weaponized environmental regulations, created in response to past abuses, to thwart progress.
Just like how "the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it", reformers and innovators are finding alternatives. Stuff like: colocating generation with consumers (industrial heat), embracing geothermal, and beefing up existing grids with storage.
--
Transmission week: why we need more big power lines https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-week-why-we-need-more#d...
Transmission week: how to start building more big power lines https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-week-how-to-start-build...
Transmission fortnight: burying power lines next to rail & roads to make a national transmission grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-fortnight-burying-power...
Transmission month: how to make the existing grid work better https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-month-how-to-make-the#d...
Transmission month: two more ideas to quickly boost the transmission grid https://www.volts.wtf/p/transmission-month-two-more-ideas#de...
The challenges of building transmission in the US, and how to overcome them, with Liza Reed https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-the-challenges-of-buil...
What's up with Manchin's plan to reform energy permitting? https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-with-manchins-plan-to-refor...
[Bay Area] Peninsula Clean Energy attempts to achieve 24/7 clean energy https://www.volts.wtf/p/an-energy-provider-attempts-to-achie...
Utilities are lobbying against the public interest. Here's how to stop it. https://www.volts.wtf/p/utilities-are-lobbying-against-the#d...
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|2 years ago|reply
China isn't playing by the pretend limitations you put on yourself and it looks like you've already admitted they deserve to be the new hegemon. Yay for totalitarian communism I guess.
The stat that 80% of the UK queue might be effectively domain squatters with no actual project waiting to flip to real developers is shocking. Pure rent seeking middlemen.
Though at the same time, it means all the other stats are BS. Like saying that a concert is sold out and there's no way to get a ticket until the next time they visit in 5 years time because 80% have been sold to scalper's bots. It just doesn't logically add up. The tickets are available, you just need to pay a markup to a scalper who performs no real service to society.
[+] [-] inglor_cz|2 years ago|reply
Unless the government in its infinite wisdom decides to exterminate all sparrows or so and causes a countrywide famine, I guess...
Some of the limitations are pretend, but some are very real. European countries in general want their grid to be stable and reliable, and the surges and dips of power that come from "too much sun" or "too much wind", or lack of either, are going against it.
On the other hand, India, mentioned in the article, has so many blackouts already that it can cope with some extra instability. Of course, the unreliability of the grid contributes to the reluctance of foreign investors to build industrial plants in India, which is a major downside, but hey, they can alter their grid faster.
[+] [-] Gigachad|2 years ago|reply
It’s a good thing we are pretty good at performing all kinds of not simple tasks and have been for a very long time.
[+] [-] pas|2 years ago|reply
and that's also one of the reasons they still have so many coal fired plants close to population centers.
and we'll see how long Xi's luck lasts (which in practice means how long the benefits of the reforms will last, before the inevitable corruption of dictatorships eats it up)
also, tiny nitpicking, so far it seems China is just very authoritarian, but not totalitarian like North Korea.
[+] [-] dcj4|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike_hock|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsh|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradfa|2 years ago|reply
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2022/company/porsche-highly-...
[+] [-] pjc50|2 years ago|reply
I'm very much open to suggestions for "low capex ways to make productive use of 'spare' electricity, preferably reversibly even if efficiency is low".