How Laser Sensors Could Improve America's Electric Grid (npr.org) 71
By 2035 America needs a 43% increase in its power-transmitting capacity, according to an analysis by the REPEAT project.
But NPR reports there's another way to quickly improve capacity without building new transmission lines:
That's where the laser sensors come in, says Jon Marmillo, co-founder of LineVision, the company that makes them. Sensors can help utilities get real-time data on their power lines, which can allow them to send more renewable electricity through the wires. This tech is part of a suite of innovations that could help the U.S. increase its grid capacity faster and cheaper than building new transmission lines...
At any given moment, utilities typically know how much power is going through their lines. But they aren't required to know the real time conditions of those lines, like the wind speed or how hot the line is. Without that data, utilities have to use conservative standards for how much power can safely flow, says Jake Gentle, senior program manager for infrastructure security at Idaho National Laboratory. But when sensors gather information from the wires — about wind, temperature, and wire sag — that data allows utilities to go beyond their conservative standards and safely put more electricity through the wires... With this tech, called "dynamic line rating", utilities are able to increase the efficiency of their lines — sometimes as much as 40%, says Gentle.
One Pittsburgh company using similar technology told NPR that "we found an average of 25% additional available capacity on transmission lines that were equipped with the sensors."
At any given moment, utilities typically know how much power is going through their lines. But they aren't required to know the real time conditions of those lines, like the wind speed or how hot the line is. Without that data, utilities have to use conservative standards for how much power can safely flow, says Jake Gentle, senior program manager for infrastructure security at Idaho National Laboratory. But when sensors gather information from the wires — about wind, temperature, and wire sag — that data allows utilities to go beyond their conservative standards and safely put more electricity through the wires... With this tech, called "dynamic line rating", utilities are able to increase the efficiency of their lines — sometimes as much as 40%, says Gentle.
One Pittsburgh company using similar technology told NPR that "we found an average of 25% additional available capacity on transmission lines that were equipped with the sensors."
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These kinds of comments (that talk sensibly) will get down voted to death (by those who don't like their cognitive bubbles burst). The down voters keep taking in the 'energy density storage' mantra, and deliberately turn a blind eye to the real the limiting factor, which is energy distribution of the energy. We don't have enough wires, and we can't build them in time; especially in regions where the majority of the people on earth live (which is not North America and Europe). This laser BS is just some sale
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Also TFS mentions:
"dynamic line rating"
It's and the end of TFS so I went got to this point after reading it, I misread that as "dynamic line racing" because that's all I could think of by then. "Let's transform our lines into racing lines thus solving the needs for more electricity for EVs."
I don't know how much more capacity could (realistically) be gained with that but setting aside safety margins and putting anything to its limit usually means things last for a shorter time and break more often, just like race cars do.
https [abc.net.au]
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If your system has hit capacity it's hit capacity.
Define capacity. And define system. You're absolutely right by the way, the thing you're missing is that for overhead transmission lines you never actually hit capacity due to the way they are rated.
That applies whether you get the information in "real time" or a few minutes from now.
What do you mean "a few minutes from now". The issue here is there's zero information at all. Transmission lines are inspected 6 monthly at best; often less frequently than this. The capacity of a transmission line is not monitored since we don't monitor the factors that limit their capacity. We simply guess thr
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You can transport hydrogen on existing roads and using existing trucks, but you can't transport it in existing pipelines or existing trailers.
Pipelines need special coatings at minimum, or potentially redesigns. Trailers need complete replacement, the only useful parts are the tires, wheels, axles and brakes, and they are realistically not going to be reused.
The idea that we can just switch our existing transport networks to hydrogen trivially is almost as dumb as using hydrogen as a motor fuel in general.
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The idea that we can just switch our existing transport networks to hydrogen trivially is almost as dumb as using hydrogen as a motor fuel in general.
There is plenty of research going on in this regard, and actually it is trivial.
However: a hydrogen grid/infrastructure has not really anything to do with a power grid upgrade that is aimed at simply utilizing existing grids better.
Re: Transformers (Score:2)
Wow. Gee Whizx (Score:2)
utilities get real-time data on their power lines, which can allow them to send more renewable electricity through the wires
These sensors can actually tell how the electricity was generated? /s
Thank god we won't be transmitting other types of electricity more efficiently
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The utility doesn't have to pay to put stuff on the poles, but they do have to pay to put stuff on the ground.
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Poisson process (Score:4, Insightful)
For the electric industry it's probably something else, and they probably know what, but they need to start building for it, and we need to recognize that it's a cost of "electrifying" the country and moving away from other sources of energy, rather than externalizing the costs of things like EVs and renewables. The "we can improve capacity without adding lines" is a recipe for failure and disruption when the statistics reach an unfavorable peak.
Re:Poisson process (Score:5, Informative)
Decades ago the telecom companies figured out how to provide adequate quantities of circuits to serve large numbers of customers with "nine nines" reliability (99.9999999%).
Well, I was there decades ago, and I assure you, they *never* achieved nine nines reliability. (That's one second of downtime every 30 years, BTW. We'll assume that you actually meant the more realistic "five nines", or five minutes per year.)
We would get a "fast busy" signal after dialing local calls at least a few times per year. The outages could sometimes last for an annoying length of time. This was on the Bell System in a major metropolitan area too, not some podunk rural service. On peak calling days such as Mother's Day, attempts at long distance calls could in fact result in fast busy signals due to congestion, requiring multiple attempts through the day to actually get through.
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The key difference with energy is that we have storage. Not just batteries and grid scale stuff like pumped, but at a domestic level. Your fridge can drop the temperature by an additional 1C for an hour or two, to shift energy consumption to an earlier time and away from the peak. Your AC can do the same, or even run overnight and provide enough cool air to coast through the day without turning on in a reasonably well insulated house.
Much of the projected extra demand on the grid is stuff like AC that can b
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Your AC can do the same, or even run overnight and provide enough cool air to coast through the day without turning on in a reasonably well insulated house.
Well insulated houses are in short supply in the United States. Brick laying is a skilled trade and bricks themselves got very expensive. Most of the US home inventory built subsequent to 1970 is stick built with 4" stud walls and attic insulation is hit or miss throughout the southern states. Home builders raced to the bottom generations ago and stayed there as price pressures started ramping up and never let up.
More of the consequences of wage stagnation.
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Brick isn't the best way. A lot of Passivhaus buildings are factory pre-fab. Steel or wood frame.
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Your comment is basically how they do build the grid but there is more to the grid which is made up of generation, transport and distribution. The hardest to solve is generation in a sense as it is made up of a mix of sources and availability and constraints which is changing. The Transport also needs to adap
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There actually quite recent developments in measuring the inertia using fancy mathematics: https://www.nationalgrideso.co... [nationalgrideso.com]
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The peak is typically on a hot summer day, in the late afternoon. [eia.gov]
Most of the US uses gas for heat, but even where electric heat prevails, summer is often worse unless you live fairly far north (or south, if you're in that hemisphere).
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No, they didn't. And, no, it won't work for electric power. The issue is growing demand requires additional capacity which is non-trivial to add.
The article's system is actually a pretty smart design, especially for areas with high winter peak demands. It is significantly less effective at adding capacity for peaks during heatwaves with high winds, but can allow those lines to operate at the maximum safe current for given conditions which is still useful.
Yeah, that works (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, that works (Score:5, Insightful)
When there's more wind the lines are cooled more and you can transmit more power through them, which is one of the many many reasons why you need sensors on each segment of a high tension transmission line to determine its actual carrying capacity.
Forget it (Score:3)
Going cheap and not fundamentally improving that infrastructure will not cut it. In fact, this question may be central to who is still part of the first world in a few decades.
Re:Forget it (Score:5, Insightful)
Cutting into your safety margin is never a good idea. And pushing more current through the lines may improve capacity, but it will reduce efficiency. I-squared R losses are a thing after all.
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Indeed. Cut safety margins, end up with "cheaper than possible" "solutions" and things starting to blow up. Not good. The US grid is not the best anyways, going this way will just make it even more fragile.
And yes, there is a reason the current current limits are in place, because they work. Because of basic electrical laws, you do not get that much more current anyways. Also, if these magic sensors mess it up like reacting too slow or delivering wrong numbers, you can end up with loss of transmission lines
Re: Forget it (Score:2)
Also resistance tends to rise with temperature too.
Re:Forget it (Score:5, Informative)
The mentioned procedure is in contrast not cutting into safety margins, because you apply safety factors/margins any time you don't know the real condition or behaviour, when you have that data at hand the safety margin will become expensive overhead.
However when the sensors stop working or the data transmission is blocked you need to got back to the conservative calculations.
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That's why the preference is to raise the voltage rather than the current. It's very easy to do when you have big solid state AC/DC and AC/AC converters.
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Re:Forget it (Score:5, Informative)
But KNOWING your safety margin>ESTIMATING your safety margin.
No one is suggesting cutting the safety margin. But replacing the current estimate with actual sensor data is a huge improvement. Because that estimate has been arrived at with stacked assumptions that, over time, may've become invalid. EG: Climate change may've raised the net-average enviro temp for a particular power line to a value never expected in the original testing. (EG^2: Apparently higher LOW temps may be where the greatest changes will come; this would radically alter the expected cooling/day.)
Replace estimates with actual values.
The summary mentioned lasers (Score:5, Informative)
The article points to this company, it actually looks like a pretty well designed product, the fact it's basically self sustaining with a solar panel and battery is smart. I imagine even the sensor itself isn't overly complicated, the magic is interpreting the data into usable information, so this type of hardware should be pretty cheap (relative tot he cost of putting the line itself in).
https://www.linevisioninc.com/... [linevisioninc.com]
Also the article mentions the need for new lines to be built but that takes a long time and if we can squeeze more juice through what we have then, well, this is a good thing overall (if it works)
Re:The summary mentioned lasers (Score:4, Funny)
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There is a reason we don’t rely on pure sensor data but still build in safety margins. A single sensor malfunction and you’re back to square one. There’s an estimated 180M power poles in the US alone, so you need 180M of these sensors and every single one in every single network all have to work flawlessly besides the introduction of even more complexity and cost.
You know what fails a lot: complex things. Base load capacity and critical infrastructure should be reliant on things people cou
Re:The summary mentioned lasers (Score:5, Informative)
There is a reason we don’t rely on pure sensor data but still build in safety margins. A single sensor malfunction and you’re back to square one.
That’s funny, because airplanes rely heavily on sensor data to stay aloft and there is typically redundancy. A single sensor failure means it just defaults to the lower capacity, sensors in general really don’t fail in a way that mimics normal use but instead get pegged to a rail. It’s trivial considering telemetry already exists
There’s an estimated 180M power poles in the US alone, so you need 180M of these sensors and every single one in every single network all have to work flawlessly besides the introduction of even more complexity and cost.
Not flawlessly at all, that’s a layperson understanding of how actual engineering works. If the cost to install them is significantly cheaper than the cost to upgrade to thicker or more runs then it’s a quite viable solution.
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They probably don't need one sensor per pole. I didn't see any mention of the range of each sensor. But it could be many spans, possibly a mile or so.
Also, the wind and temperature measurements can be interpolated between sensors. Line capacity is already modeled based on wind, ambient temperature and current readings made at substations. This is just providing actual conductor temperature plus better measurement granularity as inputs. The models might be good enough if measurements are made every few mil
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Base load power plants do not need sensors.
They are running 95% of the time at 95% of their capacity - providing: base load.
That is why they are called: base load plants.
BTW: the technology is about transport grids. Not about base load or base load plants.
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[...] the fact it's basically self sustaining with a solar panel and battery is smart. [...]
Using solar power to monitor electrical distribution systems is smart? Isn't there already power available? It's not as if there is an electrical distribution system nearby or anything...
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Probably a bunch of potential issues and complications on using 3 phase extremely high voltage line power to run what is essentially no more than a couple dozen watts of electronics. The cost of the transformer to do that probably would cost more than the entire sensor unit itself.
Re:The summary mentioned lasers (Score:4)
Yes and no. One of the problems with modern industry is that it has been taken over by bean counters. They will find ways to run whatever system up to its limit so a mild incident turns into a major incident because they squeezed all the hysteresis out of the system. Systems need room to manoeuver.
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And thusly why its good to remove the profit motive from the specific industries that people quite literally rely on to live.
How (Who) does this help? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Just building a system to proper size is the correct solution.
Or squeeze a bit more capacity out of the system you have before investing in upgrades. On one hand, it can make dynamic load and source scheduling smarter. On the other hand, since line capacity estimates are pretty conservative, this could lead to diverting more ratepayer revenue from system investments to shareholders in the form of dividends.
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There are basically two kinds of grids:
distribution grids: that is the grid your is connected to, and depending on voltage of such a grid the next best bakery etc. is also connected to a distribution grid
transport grids: girds that connect power plants to distribution grids, and/or interconnect distribution grids
A distribution grid is usually connected to several transport grids, if it needs more power one of the transport grids would need to deliver that power. Now one more transport grid is able to do tha
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You have the capacity or you don't.
Correct.
How does Dynamic Line Rating help you?
It helps you realizing that you actually have the capacity.
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You have the capacity or you don't. How does Dynamic Line Rating help you?
Do you have the capacity? That's what is being answered through this. Currently capacity is inferred through a statistical model and related to current, not by measuring anything real. The whole point of this is understanding if you have the capacity.
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PGE has to do rolling blackouts not because there is not enough generation capacity but because there is not enough grid capacity.
This should answer your entire question.
"Just building a system to proper size is the correct solution."
Welcome to capitalism. This is how it works. You think a power company will spend money they don't have to in order to make a profit?
Margin and Risk (Score:3, Insightful)
What? (Score:2)
" which can allow them to send more renewable electricity through the wires"
Are 'renewable' electrons somehow different than other electrons?
The story is talking about using better monitoring to improve the efficiencies of the grid. That's a great use of tech to optimize everything.
IT HAS FUCK-ALL TO DO WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY.
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It has of cause some great implications for renewables.
it is a damn difference if I
- EITHER -
have to shut of a small wind park which would feed 2GW surplus into my grid
- OR -
another grid, to which I'm connected signals me: under current wind and temperature conditions: I can take your extra 2GW, foreseeable for the next 4h, if the weather holds, for the next 8h
As soon as somewhere is a *sink* for surplus power, and the grid operators who *could* deliver to that sink, but without this system would not: they
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That "sink" for your surplus power might prefer to take guaranteed power. Instead of the stuff which _might_ show up. Unless a cloud blocks the solar array. Those power guarantees are pretty much baked into the way utilities and system operators do business. Sometimes it means that producers make agreements with other generators for standby reserve, should their plants go off line. And often that standby reserve is a thermal plant. Which can be started at the push of a button. Not hope and pray that wind wi
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" which can allow them to send more renewable electricity through the wires"
Are 'renewable' electrons somehow different than other electrons?
The story is talking about using better monitoring to improve the efficiencies of the grid. That's a great use of tech to optimize everything.
IT HAS FUCK-ALL TO DO WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY.
Anyway, electrons barely move in the wire:
https://electronics.stackexcha... [stackexchange.com]
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Good point. It would be much more efficient to deliver the coal directly to the end user.
For once Texas is ahead of the game (Score:2)
In 2005, Texas anticipated the need for more power transmission lines, and laid out and executed a plan to build them. https://www.bakerinstitute.org... [bakerinstitute.org]
As a result, today Texas does not suffer from the same backlog of green energy projects. This has allowed Texas to become by far the nation's wind energy leader, with 3x more wind power than any other state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] In the last year, Texas also installed the most solar power of any other sate. https://quickelectricity.com/t... [quickelectricity.com]
Perhap
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If Texas is so good, explain that to the people who froze to death in 2021. Most of Texas's power comes from biomass (garbage and dead cows), as well as coal and natural gas.
Texas is a joke. The reason they are even thinking of expanding electrical infrastructure is because of Bitcoin mining companies, which Ted Cruz championed a few years back. Think this is for EVs? Enough to make Elon stick around, but not much after that.
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Very simple explanation in multiple parts.
Big Corps failed to follow good engineering practices when they built out their wind farms and gas wells.
Windmill builders cheeped out by not including appropriate heating devices (to heat the equipment & bearings in the event of serious cold) and-or they failed to secure alternate power sources (standby generators) in the event that their main power feed (the feed they send power to) had failed for some reason. If you don't keep the bearings warm, they will fre
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First, this is off-topic. The topic here is having a shortage of transmission lines to support wind and solar energy projects across the nation. Texas doesn't have this problem, because it prepared for and executed on a plan to build those transmission lines in a timely manner.
As to your point, I don't know if you recall, but the big freeze in 2021 was a natural disaster of historic proportions. That kind of freeze had not happened in Texas in more than 120 years. The storm did more damage to homes and infr
Underground wires? (Score:2)
This seems like it is potentially very useful in the US where many power lines are aboveground, but what about places where a lot of them are buried? Do buried lines suffer from the same need for conservative estimates? It sounds like a lot of the rating is about conductor temperature - is that problem better or worse if the lines are buried?
infinite reliability (Score:2)
Infinite reliability is easily achieved at infinite cost.
It will never happen (Score:1)