Bill Gates Urges High-Voltage, Long-Distance Power Lines for Clean Energy Future (gatesnotes.com) 139
Bill Gates is calling for "high-voltage transmission lines that can carry electricity long distances," calling them the key to a clean-energy future:
[M]any of the best places to generate lots of electricity are far away from urban centers... so to maximize clean energy's potential, we're going to need much longer lines to move that power from where it's made to where it's needed.... Beyond being old and outdated, there's another big problem making everything worse: Our grid is fragmented. Most people (including me a lot of the time) talk about the "electric grid" as if it's one single grid covering the whole nation from coast to coast, but it's actually a complicated patchwork of systems with different levels of connection to one another.
Our convoluted network prevents communities from importing energy when challenges like extreme weather shut off their power. It also prevents power from new clean energy projects from making it to people's homes. Right now, over 1,000 gigawatts worth of potential clean energy projects are waiting for approval — about the current size of the entire U.S. grid — and the primary reason for the bottleneck is the lack of transmission. Complicating things further is the fact that new infrastructure projects are typically planned and executed by hundreds of individual utility companies that aren't required to coordinate.
Gates calls for new federal funding and policies , but also faults the permitting processes at the state level as "long, convoluted, and often outdated." As a result, we don't build lines fast enough, and we're slower than other countries. Some states — like New Mexico and Colorado — are doing innovative work to speed up the process. But there is a lot more room for policymakers to work together and make the permit process easier.
Although transmission is primarily a policy problem, innovation will help too. For example, grid-enhancing technologies like dynamic line ratings, power flow controls, and topology optimization could increase the capacity of the existing system. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is part of the climate initiative I helped start, has invested in new technologies like advanced conductors and superconductors — wires that use cutting-edge materials to get more energy out of smaller lines. But these technologies aren't a substitute for real systemic improvements and building lines in places where they don't already exist.
"By the 2030s, we need to build so many new lines that they would reach to the moon if they were strung together," Gates says in a video accompanying the article. "And by 2050, we'll need to more than double the size of the grid, while replacing most of the existing wires." But noting today's power grid problems, Gates writes optimistically that "It doesn't have to be this way."
And he ultimately believes that modernized power grids "will lead to lower emissions, cleaner air, more jobs, fewer blackouts, more energy and economic security, and healthier communities across the country."
Our convoluted network prevents communities from importing energy when challenges like extreme weather shut off their power. It also prevents power from new clean energy projects from making it to people's homes. Right now, over 1,000 gigawatts worth of potential clean energy projects are waiting for approval — about the current size of the entire U.S. grid — and the primary reason for the bottleneck is the lack of transmission. Complicating things further is the fact that new infrastructure projects are typically planned and executed by hundreds of individual utility companies that aren't required to coordinate.
Gates calls for new federal funding and policies , but also faults the permitting processes at the state level as "long, convoluted, and often outdated." As a result, we don't build lines fast enough, and we're slower than other countries. Some states — like New Mexico and Colorado — are doing innovative work to speed up the process. But there is a lot more room for policymakers to work together and make the permit process easier.
Although transmission is primarily a policy problem, innovation will help too. For example, grid-enhancing technologies like dynamic line ratings, power flow controls, and topology optimization could increase the capacity of the existing system. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is part of the climate initiative I helped start, has invested in new technologies like advanced conductors and superconductors — wires that use cutting-edge materials to get more energy out of smaller lines. But these technologies aren't a substitute for real systemic improvements and building lines in places where they don't already exist.
"By the 2030s, we need to build so many new lines that they would reach to the moon if they were strung together," Gates says in a video accompanying the article. "And by 2050, we'll need to more than double the size of the grid, while replacing most of the existing wires." But noting today's power grid problems, Gates writes optimistically that "It doesn't have to be this way."
And he ultimately believes that modernized power grids "will lead to lower emissions, cleaner air, more jobs, fewer blackouts, more energy and economic security, and healthier communities across the country."
No, we need solar (Score:2)
If we don't generate power locally the monopolies that supply power can keep ramping up the prices. Not to mention the chance of widespread outages increase (forget smart grid, the power companies will never bother to build excess capacity and keep it on standby for what they believe is a once-a-decade event). Nowadays anyone with a single family home or building one should get solar panels. It's worth it. There is financing available, and even if not it's worth it. Unless you live in Alaska or something in
Re:No, we need solar (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: No, we need solar (Score:2)
TEN Windmills! Do you have an old photo? Were they Don Quixote type windmills or 3blade windmills that pepper the new lands on the coast or in the North Sea
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If I want to tinker, the government should let me do whatever I want as long as it's not hurting others.
Re:No, we need solar (Score:4, Informative)
Austin is a bright baby blue smear in the otherwise predominately red state of Texas. Having worked with Austin Energy, and knowing who has been elected to their city council, it surprises me not one bit that even residential modifications require multiple layers of governmental approval.
Of course, this is the same city who is a full week into a massive outage due to NIMBY homeowners fighting the utility's vegetation management efforts for years, and the 20-month backlog of tree trimming that AE's VP of Field Ops says is going to take three years to catch up with.
Sadly, solar alone isn't enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I will agree that solar should be a "major" part of the solution, but it isn't anywhere near the perfection you imply. Oh, and in Alaska not even the wind blows all the time, and not everybody has the property to just put up wind turbines. Ergo, you'd still be stuck with a wind farm somewhere, preferably several somewheres so that a single weather event can't take a huge amount of power out, and we're back to Gate's "we need more transmission lines".
But back on solar:
1. If you're going off grid as you mention the problem becomes not the solar panels, but the batteries you need to keep power on at all times. They are both more expensive and wear out quicker than solar panels.
2. Not everybody has a home compatible with solar panels. Roof not facing the right direction, not a large enough roof, other shading structures, living in an apartment, the list goes on.
3. There are plenty of businesses and industries that use more power than what roof solar could provide.
4. While financing is available, it's still a big risk and manufacturing capacity is limited. So it only makes sense in areas where a reasonable amount of efficiency is possible
In the end, just consider "solar anywhere" but where you have a high efficiency powerline system stretching from the east to west coasts. You can use power from the east coast to help power the west coast before the sun reaches them, for things like the morning commute. Then you can use power from the west coast, shipped to the east coast, to satisfy the power needs of making dinner and such.
If you install high capacity high efficiency power transmission lines to more places, longer distances, then we can, for example, use wind power in Montana to help power Texas when Texas gets an inversion or such, and power needs spike while power production is in abeyance.
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Look up dunkelflaute.
Some times you have no wind and no sun. Then what? Fire up the diesels or freeze to death?
For transmission lines the ones you need to convince are the environmentalists along with the ESG bunch, the ones who file suit against any and all transmission line projects.
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Then what? Fire up the diesels or freeze to death?
No, gas turbines for a relatively short while.
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Or use pumped hydro, like this one which is good for about 1700MW and can store about 9GWh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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> You can't put solar everywhere
You literally can, though. It's only a question whether a particular location gets sufficient sun to justify the cost.
> But it'll never be that good that that's an option for 90% of the population
[citation needed]
I'll grant you that there will be some portion of the human population for which solar alone will be woefully insufficient. I will assert that it is substantially less than 90% though, considering the distribution of human population [visualcapitalist.com] is in a pretty favorable ra
Re:No, we need solar (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the only people who oppose having a grid are the nuclear shills who want a mini-nuke in every city.
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What about the other half?
From something else
We still need a grid.
I don't recall people saying we don't in this scenario.
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No solar doesn't require all that much energy. did you read what I wrote anyway? i said people who have single family homes (of which there are plenty in most cities with the exception of NYC.) I don't propose getting rid of the grid, I was saying we need to eliminate as much dependency on it as possible.
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typo correction: solar doesnt requre that much land (not energy, obviously)
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Solar requires a lot of land/roof area per capita. How does that work in cities where people live in higher density? Or are you proposing to abandon dense cities and suburbanize the world ... sprawl has its own issues.
If people live in dense cities, there's more space at the edge to put solar collection. You are proposing a false dichotomy here.
You lack understanding. (Score:4, Interesting)
If we don't generate power locally the monopolies that supply power can keep ramping up the prices.
The power network is to enable solar and wind power to be distributed evenly across the US. This makes solar and wind a more attractive option because it requires less storage.
Not to mention the chance of widespread outages increase
Not going to happen because that's not how interstate power transfers work.
(forget smart grid, the power companies will never bother to build excess capacity and keep it on standby for what they believe is a once-a-decade event).
Actually, this is required for all interstate grids by federal law. There are a couple exceptions.
* Texas power companies are not required to do this because they have a purely in-state grid name ERCOT... which fails regularly.
* California power companies actually do comply with the law but it's not enough because California put the cart before the horse. Specifically, they prohibit the construction of non-renewable power plants while making it easy to prevent nuclear, wind, and solar power plant installations. They should have made mandates for new energy plants to be built, NIMBYs be damned.
Off grid is the way to go.
This is presently the most expensive option (due to battery costs) but I understand your frustration.
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Texas power companies are not required to do this because they have a purely in-state grid name ERCOT... which fails regularly.
Pedantic perhaps, but just for fact's sake, ERCOT is the organization which operates the Texas Interconnection (grid). The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern Interconnection with two DC ties, and has a DC tie and a VFT to non-NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) systems in Mexico.
The Texas Interconnection is not an island.
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The Texas Interconnection is not an island.
Yes, but it's a lot more fun to make fun of them as if they were, misinformation be damned.
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thank you for your knowledge!
and new / news this is not.
You can't run the grid of the future off the technology of the past. Agreed.
Re: power grid balance is need to keep frequency! (Score:5, Informative)
?
"Hertel–New York interconnection line"
https://www.hydroquebec.com/pr... [hydroquebec.com]
A 400-kV direct current line over about 600 km.
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https://www.hydroquebec.com/pr... [hydroquebec.com]
A 400-kV direct current line over about 600 km.
Awww cute. A little baby.
Current state of the art: http://www.sgcc.com.cn/html/sg... [sgcc.com.cn] For those people blocking Chinese domains: The Changji-Guquan is a 1100kV, 3293km long 12GW UHVDC transmission line.
Re: power grid balance is need to keep frequency! (Score:5, Informative)
+1
"High-voltage direct current - Comparison with AC"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It can, but all you achieve nothing. There's a few issues with it:
1) Transformers are incredibly sensitive to DC so you need to filter it out. You can see this on consumer equipment, on a typical 110V transformer, even 50-100mV can cause core saturation making it buzz loudly.
2) The benefit of HVDC is its efficiency. This is largely due to the lack of imaginary** power being transmitted as DC is always 100% real power. Adding AC to the line adds this reactive component back in.
3) HVDC lines can be smaller an
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... the grid of the future will use exactly the same technology as the past.
Funny you should say that. Very high voltage DC long distance lines were first deployed by Switzerland almost exactly 100 years ago, and widely used all over the world. This is not new tech, though not used as much in the U.S. as it should. But new lines are being planned.
Re: power grid balance is need to keep frequency! (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you've discovered a magic incantation
Reminds me of that saying: Any reasonably advanced educated engineer's work is indistinguishable from magic.
For the record the largest HVDC transmission line we have in place currently is a 1.1MV (megavolt, none of this pathetic 400kV stuff) and runs over 3300km (feel like using megameters here just to stir some shit) and can transmit 12GW.
It's not magic. It's science!
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Unless you've discovered a magic incantation that allows DC voltages to be stepped up for transmission and stepped down for distribution at the same amperages and comparable losses to passive AC transformers, the grid of the future will use exactly the same technology as the past.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your objection, the incantation in question is "high voltage". HVDC lines carry electrical power over long distances with lower losses than AC. For more futuristic methods, we can look to superconductors. The problem there is that, with conventional superconductors, you still have losses because you have to keep them very cold, which means you have to continuously use energy to keep them that way. A well-insulated optimized arrangement might still have considerably better perform
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Unless you've discovered a magic incantation that allows DC voltages to be stepped up for transmission and stepped down for distribution at the same amperages and comparable losses to passive AC transformers, the grid of the future will use exactly the same technology as the past.
The issue is the losses from transmission plus voltage changes, not just a single metric. If you lose, in an AC system, 10% in transmission, 1% in conversion, and in a DC system 2% in transmission, 5% in conversion then even though the latter has poor conversion efficiency, it is better for moving the power from A to B. In reality there are going to be a range of possible locations and thus a more complex calculation. It also depends on the cost of generation, so even if the power in B is lost to transmissi
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Re:No, we need solar (Score:5, Insightful)
I just use a solar panel. It's cheaper than a generator, and I never have to use gasoline or propane ever. Instead I get a daily shipment of photons arriving.
Such a different perspective with so few changes.
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I just use a solar panel. It's cheaper than a generator, .
Wow, what panels did you buy? For my house, panels are about $10,000 and battery storage for a day's use is another $10k each. A generator is bout $1,000, a factor of 20 cheaper.
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Re: No, we need solar (Score:3)
Do kill the messenger (Score:4, Insightful)
Gates has been a tough sell for the tech savvy crowd for a long time, and his mainstream popularity is diving now that he is the go-to conspiracy billionaire for one spectrum of political belief.
I don't know if this is a great idea, but he's had some, and he is involved in seemingly altruistic acts regularly. If this is the method needed to bring us to the forefront of electrical generation, perhaps he is not the ideal spokesman.
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as if spokesmen are appointed. Not everyone views the world through an entirely partisan lens, or even through a partisan lens at all. Some might even consider what is being said on the merits.
Re:Do kill the messenger (Score:4, Interesting)
If he and Elon could promote the same message simultaneously, seems like it would cover all bases.
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If he and Elon could promote the same message simultaneously, seems like it would cover all bases.
By which you mean that everyone would hate it?
"High-Voltage, Long-Distance Power Lines" (Score:2)
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I was thinking the same thing. There is a reason why high-voltage power lines are called high-voltage power lines. Hint-it's not because they are so high up.
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GERMANY (Score:2)
HVDC has been going on in Germany. The work is being done. Also, it is easier to upgrade conversion tech than it is to mess with powerlines.
You can bury power lines unlike AC.
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You can bury AC transmission and distribution lines. What would make you think that they can't be?
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Also, it can be cranked up to higher voltages without the corona losses that come from AC peak voltages that exceed the average.
Money. (Score:2)
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> it comes from regular people
There's a simple solution for that: Tax the wealthy more. They're not using it anyway; if they were they wouldn't be so wealthy.
More seriously: Such costs are investments, and the improved infrastructure generally pays itself back over time in the form of lower energy costs and better reliability (read: lower maintenance costs, less lost productivity from it being broken). We can and should be spending that money.
=Smidge=
Stop preaching and do something (Score:2, Interesting)
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If anyone can afford to kickstart an improved electrical infrastructure, it's Bill Gates. Spend your money, Mr. Gates, on helping the people that made you rich, not just on third world problems or preaching your ideas and expecting others to simply do them.
This! If power companies are in the way Bill use your money to start buying them up. Government regulations in the way? Use that money to fund the campaigns of politicians that will support your ideas. DO IT BILL! THIS IS WHAT WE WANT!
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Bill Gates doesn't have the money! He only can target small specific things with his wealth because ALL his money is a drop in the bucket. He is tiny but big enough to buy anybody in the GOP he wants and even afford some in the DFL.
The USA wasted more money on the F-35 jet in 10 years than Bill Gates earned in a lifetime.
So he somehow will benefit (Score:2)
He is all about conflicts of interest. Probably all the farmland he bought can levy huge fees to let these lines pass through them. Gates is the single largest farmland owner in the country.
Somehow he wants to profit off this. Thats why it is coming out of thin air.
Limits should be defined (Score:2)
Wonâ(TM)t somebody think of the eagles (Score:2)
Nah, not the team. Never.
Not the âoeyou can come In anytime you like but you can never leaveâ Eagles. Focus!
Freedom & the markets (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow we actually agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I've been saying this for 10 years... We need an electrical superhighway. Specifically we need a federal electrical grid just like we have federal highways.
I might be a libertarian but I have no problem funding things that are obvious and proper.
We need new infrastructure for everything. Rail, electrical, pipelines, and communication. The best solution is we build deep underground tunnels a la Musk and the his Boring company but I'm not saying to only use them of course. Building underground would better protect the system from both the elements, natural disasters, war, and simple sabotage. A 50 year project to be sure but the tunnels can be multi use. The more tunneling machines you build the faster you can tunnel so it is very scalable.
Highways use to be haphazard like the current electrical system. But the federal highway system a brought much needed central vision. One of the few good things the federal government has actually been able to deliver on.
There is actually excess solar and wind. You can use that excess power to dig the tunnels and lay lines down as you go.
Imagine building a national aqueduct system.
Re:Wow we actually agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be a libertarian but I have no problem funding things that are obvious and proper.
Like universal healthcare, right? Like every other civilized country, right?
Obvious and proper. Pffft.
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One grid to rule them all...and in the darkness bind them.
Back in 2003 or 4 there was a tree branch in Ohio as I recall that tripped the grid in a series of cascading failures that took out multiple states and Ontario. Control systems were in various states of neglect and brokenness so appropriate actions to slow the cascade were missed. The interface between the high voltage AC in Ontario and the high voltage DC in Quebec was a DC gateway of some sort that acted as a firewall. The point is that stuff happe
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...The interface between the high voltage AC in Ontario and the high voltage DC in Quebec...
Rather than providing an argument *against* a federal grid, that seems to be an argument *in favor* of one. You described a situation where 2 provinces designed their grids based on a different technology, then failed to adequately connect them. It sounds like they need a strong central design, interoperability, and testing - which may require a federal mandate and budget.
Canada is more in need of an interconnected grid than most countries. Canada aggressively built hydroelectric power, some of whi
Re:Wow we actually agree... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, you missed the point. Quebec did not go down when Ontario did because the grid collapse did not propagate across the DC link at the border. And Ontario would not have gone down if it had a way to decouple from the US. One grid to rule them all is not a bad idea save that it needs to be compartmentalized in such a way that a stray tree branch in Oregon does not bring down the entire continent. This was not an argument against a grid but rather an argument in favor of engineering for fault robustness.
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Why not put the data center by the power plant... (Score:2)
Bill Gates proves Dunning-Kruger (Score:2)
He's slow boiling frogs: and we're the frogs.
australia needs an east west link (Score:2)
I wish we had a big east-west power link in Australia. If the eastern and western grids were connected, there would be massive solar timeshift potential.
I'm confused (Score:2)
Late to the party (Score:2)
Thank you Captain Obvious (Score:2)
Our broken campaign finance system here in the US allows large donors like the monopolistic power companies to prevent common sense solutions as it would impact their profiteering.
This isn't an engineering problem, it is a political problem. He advocated government spending without any suggestions about the underlying reasons the government won't do it.
Disclaimer: while I don't like everything Bill Gates has done, I do resp
How many overhead power lines across his home? (Score:2)
If he want to further destroy vistas, views, and people's serenity outside of the city, then he should install multiple overhead powerlines at every single property he owns and visits. Power lines over his pool. Power lines over his bed. Power lines over his workspace.
What happened to all that extra money we paid to move overhead lines underground?
Wild fires from long distance power lines would like to fund his effort.
Who needs a grid? (Score:2)
Imagine batteries with ten or more times the energy density of what your Tesla has. Standardize the form factor. When the one in your car runs low, take it to the gas station and swap it for a fully charged one. Take the depleted ones and truck them out to the nearest solar/wind/hydro plant for recharging.
Next, use a bunch of those same batteries to power your house. When you're close to depletion, a truck comes to your house to swap them out, sort of like how fuel oil is delivered.
Someone with better analy
Hurrah! (Score:2)
Finally, the solution to why we don't need a generating station in my basement.
Superconducting cables... (Score:2)
Pretty sure we had this conversation on here 25 years ago.
Re:Of course he wants high voltage (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, high CURRENT would mean higher magnetic field. High voltage = lower current for a given wattage. Also, this is high-voltage DC. An unchanging magnetic field isn't good at charging things.
Nice shitpost, though, but you need to go back to EEng 101 or just high school physics.
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Uh... Duh!
A BETTER WIRE. A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE. [uh.edu]
About 10% of the energy that runs through traditional copper wiring is lost during transmission. The unique properties of superconductor wire allow it to conduct almost 300 times more current than traditional wiring while producing no resistance. Already proven in the power grid and used in high speed rail lines and MRI machines, superconductor wire has the potential for broad industrial application and presents both economic and environmental advantages.
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I mean we can do that. We may one day invent a superconductor that won't breakdown in the kind of situation long distance provides without the need of a cryostat. OR we could just tell States that want to implement complex processes so that their favorite local supplier wins, to shove it and do most of the major runs across the nation in HVDC. The former requires us to eventually invent something and then replace all the lines with it, the latter we could do if States weren't a bitch.
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You are so ten years ago, is this Slashdot or 4chan?
SUPERCONDUCTING CABLES FOR POWER TRANSMISSION APPLICATIONS – A REVIEW [cds.cern.ch]
F. Schmidt, A. Allais
Nexans – Superconducting Cable System (Hanover – Germany)
Abstract
Superconducting power transmission cables have taken a step towards
industrial transfer. The use of high temperature superconductor tapes enables
cable operation with a liquid nitrogen cooling system. The interest for such
components in an electrical network is undeniable, especially to mi
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I guess you think "high temperature" means roughly "Arizona in the summer?"
High temperature superconductors work around 77 degrees above absolute zero. They need to be cryogenically cooled. That can be practical for big lines over short distances in cities. That's what the article you keep quoting is talking about. This story is about long distance lines. It's in the title of the story.
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Yes, and in the demonstration project covered in the linked article they used liquid nitrogen collected from the atmosphere to achieve high-temp superconducting
The project is a tech demo for a superconducting link that is planned for the entire US East coast
Just admit you can't read so good
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That's possible. It would be great if you could point out the "entire US East coast" part, because that article appears to be about the Long Island Power Authority project (LIPA), which is planned to be 610 m long (Table 2).
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Yes, as I said that was the technology demonstration project, thanks for reading the article
It seems that I was relying on a Congressional bill from the Obama administration that failed to get funded for the entire East Coast Power HTS Super Highway concept
This article goes into further depth on taking HTS beyond the use of interconnect to 600 mile segments. Other articles have mentioned that HTS will need to come down in cost by a factor of 10 to become widely used, which is not unrealistic considering how
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Lol. You think 600 m is 600 miles.
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Literally, from the part of the linked article that I posted above, titled Looking Down the Road (as in the future)
Further out, the Electric Power Research Institute is already studying the development and use of very long inter-regional HTS high-voltage direct current cables capable of transmitting 10 GW over distances of up to 600 miles.
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Ah, the part you linked *after* making some smart ass comments about reading comprehension. Did you realize your reading comprehension isn't maybe so good?
Also, a puff piece in a magazine about "studying the development of" is a looooong way off, and 600 miles isn't "the east coast of the US".
You're not polite enough to be chatGPT and I doubt the superconductor industry hires shills on Slashdot. Regular troll or just someone too full of himself?
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Like I said, the East Coast Superconducting Superhighway was a proposed bill that never made it though Congress under the Obama administration
It was coupled with the New Mexico interconnect as a way to move enough power around the country to enable renewable power sources by getting power from where the wind blows a lot to where it would get used
Sorry about being insulting, but you fired off a bunch of crap without ever bothering to read what I linked, so... not really all that sorry
Hopefully your learned s
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So instead of losing energy in the form electrical losses, you lose energy in the form of maintaining a superconductor wire?
Since we're living in make believe world why not just use make believe mini fusion reactors in each neighborhood?
https://www.lockheedmartin.com... [lockheedmartin.com]
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You would get similar insults if it was not so boring, so you get
TLDR
5. CONCLUSIONS [cds.cern.ch]
The development of High Temperature Superconducting power cables has been going on for about ten
years and it has resulted in a variety of projects on warm and cold dielectric designs. The first move
from laboratory demonstrations to field applications is currently done and represents a necessary step
towards the commercialization of this new product. Superconducting cables have significant benefits
for power transmission and dis
Re: Bill Gates just as dumb as... (Score:2)
That's the first step.
Now we just need the insane amount of cooling, protection from the elements (including wingnuts shooting at electrical equipment) and somehow make this as cheap as what we have now and we're in business.
Also, a leprechaun will come to your door and hand you his pot of gold when this is achieved.
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Aren't most high voltage lines made of steel? Copper is both a lot more expensive and not nearly as strong. Running copper or something even more exotic long distances with the needed capacity and durability will be horribly expensive. Not to mention the mining issues and the need for that material in other devices which consume the electricity.
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About 10% of the energy that runs through traditional copper wiring is lost during transmission.
That's a nonsense statement as it depends on resistance which depends on cross-section and length.
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Any distance power line, 99/100 is a fraction. For HVDC the world is a small place.
Re:Bill Gates just as dumb as... (Score:5, Informative)
Utter nonsense
Long distance power distribution is highly effective and very efficient. Surer there are losses but they are low enough to make the technology effective..
Wikipedia:
Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (600 miles), about 50% less than AC (6.7%) lines at the same voltage.[24] This is because direct current transfers only active power and thus causes lower losses than alternating current, which transfers both active and reactive power.
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So no, Bill Gates is not that dumb.
There already is a 750 kV network in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia. I see no reason not to extend that.
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imo, the problem is not really the "enviros", but to the fund raising organizations that have sprung up to feed off of them
We are part of the environment, and regardless of individual views on growth, we must maintain an environment that will support humans if we do not want to fail the Great Filter [wikipedia.org]
So, people feel a fundamental need to not kill themselves off, and have no real idea how to accomplish that, so they turn to any of a number of "Environmental" groups (who claim to have the environment's best int
Re: (Score:2)
only to lose anyway
So people should only be allowed to object if it's already been approved that they will win the case? Why bother with a legal system in that case?