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Power

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 Beyond being old and outdated, there's another big problem making everything worse: Our grid is fragmented.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funding and policies , but also faults the permitting processes at the state level as "long, convoluted, and often outdated."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."
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Bill Gates Urges High-Voltage, Long-Distance Power Lines for Clean Energy Future

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  • 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)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @05:31PM (#63267401)
      Back in the 80's i had a Great uncle that the rest of the family regarded as "nuts" who loved to tinker. One of his more interesting projects was to convert all of the lighting on to 12 Volt car bulbs which would be powered by a banks of large Led acid batteries for Forklifts located in his barn. To keep the batteries charged he had them connected to Generators from out of late 50's vintage cars which were driven by old Eclipse windmills if I remember correctly each windmill would spin 4 generators and he had 10 windmills like this on his property. While he was not completely off grid as his 12 volt system was not powering things like the T.V. Fridge or the Milking machine. he did claim it cut his power bill enough to make the endeavor worth it.
      • 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

    • by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @05:58PM (#63267443) Homepage Journal

      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.

    • 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.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @06:10PM (#63267467)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • > 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

    • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @06:13PM (#63267477)
      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.
      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )
        High density low rise buildings like in Paris or Barcelona are the most environmentally friendly. [theconversation.com] Covering them with solar panels should achieve at least half of their electrical needs.
        • What about the other half? What about during periods of weather where solar production is limited? We still need a grid.
          • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            I think the only people who oppose having a grid are the nuclear shills who want a mini-nuke in every city.

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            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.

      • 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.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        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.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @07:05PM (#63267587)

      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.

      • 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.

        • 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.

    • Bigger grids make supply more stable & reliable, & reduce redundancy. Yes, solar's great. It's even greater when you can send the energy to where it's needed most when the sun is shining.
  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @05:45PM (#63267421) Journal

    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.

  • It's the way power lines are made today (and for almost 5 decades): I don't get what is the point of TFA (maybe it's "only" a slashvertisement...)
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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.

  • Throwing money at the problem certainly has benefits, but ultimately that money has to come from somewhere... it comes from regular people. Either in the form of increased taxes and/or increased electricity costs.
    • by jezwel ( 2451108 )
      It can also be sourced from reduced operating costs, eg a reduction in fuel costs as solar and wind have none. Of course this requires you to invest prior to cost reduction...
    • > 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=

  • 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.
    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      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!

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by rattaroaz ( 1491445 )
      That's not how Bill Gates works. He doesn't spend money. He only invests. If he cannot see a profit in the investment, he talks about what others should do, and how he is wonderful.
    • 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.

  • 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.

  • I'm all for better and more efficient technology buuut... there is the underlying assumption that mega projects are done for the benefit of profits. Companies. So we are long past the point of not understanding there are huge social and environmental impacts that must be factored in.
  • Nah, not the team. Never.
    Not the âoeyou can come In anytime you like but you can never leaveâ Eagles. Focus!

  • A centrally planned, coordinated, rational nation project? Not gonna happen in the USA because "freedom" & "the markets." (Sounds like the name of a band!)
  • by BlueCoder ( 223005 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @07:31PM (#63267645)

    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.

    • by hondo77 ( 324058 ) on Sunday February 05, 2023 @09:21PM (#63267859) Homepage

      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.

    • by glatiak ( 617813 )

      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

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        ...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

        • by glatiak ( 617813 ) on Monday February 06, 2023 @10:29AM (#63269113)

          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.

  • ... and run the *data* wires the long distance?
  • He's a sanctimonious know-it-all who is happy to dictate the future terms of humanity, but not to live by them. This whole clandestine food chain mobilisation he's got happening doesn't sit well with me from a distribution of power standpoint.

    He's slow boiling frogs: and we're the frogs.
  • 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.

  • Surely power has been moved around this way since forever? The UK uses 400kV, 275kV and 132kV lines and has does this for decades. I remember doing it in physics back in the 70s as to why the pylons etc had such high power on them. Is that not the norm in the US too?
  • People have been saying this for, what, four decades? Maybe I should invent VisageTome in 2045?
  • It is far too easy to identify a problem without offering a realistic solution.

    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
  • 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.

  • 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

  • Finally, the solution to why we don't need a generating station in my basement.

  • ...cooled by the liquefied Hydrogen that runs your flying car.

    Pretty sure we had this conversation on here 25 years ago.

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