A Simple Fix Could Double the Size of the U.S. Electricity Grid (msn.com) 202
"There is one big thing holding the United States back from a pollution-free electricity grid running on wind, solar and battery power," writes the Washington Post. "Not enough power lines... the nation's sagging, out-of-date power lines are being overwhelmed — slowing the transition to clean energy and the fight against climate change."
But experts say that there is a remarkably simple fix: installing new wires on the high-voltage lines that already carry power hundreds of miles across the United States. Just upgrading those wires, new reports show, could double the amount of power that can flow through America's electricity grid...
Most of America's lines are wired with a technology that has been around since the early 1900s — a core steel wire surrounded by strands of aluminum. When those old wires heat up — whether from power passing through them or warm outdoor temperatures — they sag. Too much sag in a transmission line can be dangerous, causing fires or outages. As a result, grid operators have to be careful not to allow too much power through the lines. But a couple of decades ago, engineers designed a new type of wire: a core made of carbon fiber, surrounded by trapezoidal pieces of aluminum. Those new, carbon-fiber wires don't sag as much in the heat. That means that they can take up to double the amount of power as the old lines. According to the recent study from researchers at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, replacing these older steel wires could provide up to 80 percent of the new transmission needed on the electricity grid — without building anything new. It could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line and avoid the headaches of trying to get every state, city and even landowner along the route to agree to a new project...
If stringing new lines is so easy — and cheap — why hasn't it been done already? Part of the problem, experts say, is that utilities profit more from big infrastructure projects. Routine maintenance or larger-scale upgrades of the electricity grid don't help utilities make a lot of cash compared with building new transmission lines... Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at UC-Berkeley and one of the authors of the recent study, said that many transmission engineers are not used to thinking of rewiring as one of their tools. "But it's a much faster way," he said. Some changes are already underway to encourage this approach. For a long time, utilities had to undergo lengthy environmental reviews if they were rewiring a line longer than 20 miles. Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that those would no longer be necessary if utilities are simply replacing wires.
Most of America's lines are wired with a technology that has been around since the early 1900s — a core steel wire surrounded by strands of aluminum. When those old wires heat up — whether from power passing through them or warm outdoor temperatures — they sag. Too much sag in a transmission line can be dangerous, causing fires or outages. As a result, grid operators have to be careful not to allow too much power through the lines. But a couple of decades ago, engineers designed a new type of wire: a core made of carbon fiber, surrounded by trapezoidal pieces of aluminum. Those new, carbon-fiber wires don't sag as much in the heat. That means that they can take up to double the amount of power as the old lines. According to the recent study from researchers at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, replacing these older steel wires could provide up to 80 percent of the new transmission needed on the electricity grid — without building anything new. It could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line and avoid the headaches of trying to get every state, city and even landowner along the route to agree to a new project...
If stringing new lines is so easy — and cheap — why hasn't it been done already? Part of the problem, experts say, is that utilities profit more from big infrastructure projects. Routine maintenance or larger-scale upgrades of the electricity grid don't help utilities make a lot of cash compared with building new transmission lines... Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at UC-Berkeley and one of the authors of the recent study, said that many transmission engineers are not used to thinking of rewiring as one of their tools. "But it's a much faster way," he said. Some changes are already underway to encourage this approach. For a long time, utilities had to undergo lengthy environmental reviews if they were rewiring a line longer than 20 miles. Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that those would no longer be necessary if utilities are simply replacing wires.
Great Plan (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything must be manufactured in the United States using raw materials in the United States by gainfully employed and generously paid Americans.
If the plan is to stuff China's pockets, fuck off.
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I can agree with that and with an addendum that if we currently lack the manufacturing capacity to do this we should be kickstarting that as well.
The incentive for a private contractor is to use the cheapest materials they are allowed to, which is fair, so we pass a law that says domestic only and the capacity doesn't exist we can't just shrug and hope it appears, plus that's the type of thing that creates long term jobs.
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Everything must be manufactured in the United States using raw materials in the United States
Unless you have a magic wand that can make bauxite reserves pop into existence, that ain't gonna happen.
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Bauxite reserves aren't the bottleneck in new aluminium smelting. Power prices are.
The reason why former Soviet states do so much of it is because they used to have a massive amount of heavy industry during USSR era, that died almost overnight. Leaving a lot of capacity. So they put it into smelting.
Chinese do it because they basically have a massive resource transfer scheme from households to everything industrial. It's how they have massive industrial overcapacity coupled with fairly poor general populati
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I'm sure it's just a coincidence we ran out of bauxite just in time for China to cash in.
Canada and Mexico have significant bauxite reserves.
The other necessity is cheap energy since aluminum refining is a voracious consumer of electricity.
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In other words, the U.S. needs whatever the federal government has forbidden
America's lack of bauxite is not caused by the federal government.
Re: Great Plan (Score:2)
We choose not to mine for it... it's our plan.
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Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like the marketing boffins for the carbon-fibre-wire industry are out in full force.
I am confused... (Score:2)
I kinda always expected cable replacement to be a main part of the project anyway.
Also this is a good example of simple not being the same as easy.
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Actually, I read it as an example of perverse incentives.
Regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
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Energy companies already have to allow other providers to sell over the same grid. Why is it we let them keep the grid? They "own" it in one sense, but only through subscriber fees that pay for everything same as taxpayer funded would. The government shouldn't have to pay a dime to take it over on behalf of taxpayers.
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"...but the politicians already sold us out."
No, that's just scapegoating. Our politicians are merely a reflection of our own laziness and willingness to tolerate corruption.
But yes otherwise. There is a role for government to play. We should expect better. As long as we tolerate bad government and voter suppression we won't get it.
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It's a weird thing that almost nobody has an issue with municipal water and sewer systems but power and Internet done that way is contentious?
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This is a intrinsic problem with regulating private natural monopolies. They often are only allowed a fixed percentage profit which incentives then to spend as much as possible. The obvious answer is to make natural monopolies public, but the politicians already sold us out.
Then perhaps the obvious answer is to get rid of the politicians. While we still have a mechanism to do so.
When it comes to the power infrastructure of a nation, we also shouldn’t tolerate complaints about “profits” when every company currently profiting selling overpriced power on purposely crippled grids screams for taxpayer-funded emergency federal funding when the first major blackout happens, as a direct cause of a purposely crippled grid.
Greedy actions like this is what drives cont
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This is a intrinsic problem with regulating private natural monopolies. They often are only allowed a fixed percentage profit which incentives then to spend as much as possible. The obvious answer is to make natural monopolies public, but the politicians already sold us out.
Generation and distribution are NOT natural monopolies. A city can (and must) be feeed with more than one transmission line (for redundancy reasons), and big cities require more than one generation plant or hydro (both for redundancy and also for sheer demand) .
The natural monopoly part is distribution.
And since this article was about transmission, well...
Pick me! Pick me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I guess?
Is it... that there isn't enough pollution-free electricity-generation to saturate the current (pun intended) grid?
Okay, okay, is it... that the transformers and other assorted gear at each end of the wires in the current grid are designed for the wires that are in place?
Okay, uh, is it... that the grid as it stands was designed for centralized base-load generation, not wind and solar distributed all over the places?
Damn. I feel like I just don't understand the topic because I don't come up with the same answer to "one trick the casinos hate but can't stop you from using" that the wire sales industry came up with.
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Life Used to be Horrible. Now This Man Has All the Answers. periods included. Even WSJ writes this way now.
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The problem is that both of the fetishized green power sources are intermittent and very low energy density. So one of the potential "maybe" hail mary solutions is the one currently being experimented with in EU. What if we interconnect everyone into one massive grid, and just hope that it's windy and sunny somewhere, and we have enough wind and solar there so their intermittencies cancel each other out.
Spoiler alert: it failed. How do I know? I am on spot pricing contract (spot price + margin of my electri
Re: Pick me! Pick me! (Score:3)
First off, for Americans, the comma is the decimal point so these are not 31 thousand Eurocents/KWh.
I don't see this list as a terrible negative, but an opportunity to save with small changes. Don't do laundry doing the high price times. Do laundry at night, install control unit on water heater to have it off during peak pricing. Set back AC if you are out of the house.
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I'd argue that the problem is that the grid operators' purpose appears to be making money rather than producing and delivering electricity.
If your goal is to make money, and you happen to do it by generating and delivering electricity, of course this happens.
If, on the other hand, the goal is to generate and deliver electricity, then you don't run into this "we don't make a high enough profit margin" situation. The trouble is that companies - and even public ones - often only count the monetary profit as w
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Power demand is ever increasing, and all of these "one weird trick" plans are aimed at finding the minimum that can be done to raise transmission capacity a little, when what we really need is a plan to step up capacity by an order of magnitude.
Forget megawatts and gigawatts, I really want someone to tell me what the plan is to get to cheap and reliable Terawatt class power generation and delivery by the time we will need it.
Yeah I don't think you understood the article (Score:2)
Aiming low? what about UHVDC? (Score:2)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/chin... [ieee.org]
Why is China Dominating Ultra High Voltage DC https://www [youtube.com]
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Is that very different than the system that uses HVDC to transfer power from the dams on the Columbia to California? I remember visiting this station in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Aiming low? what about UHVDC? (Score:2)
Why is DC better?
It has to do with AC RMS voltage versus Peak voltage. The RMS voltage which stands for the Root Mean Square of voltage on the line can be used directly to calculate the power you transferred. Vrms x Current. 1000 Vrms at 100 Amps gives you 100,000 Watts. However the Peak voltage on that circuit is 14100 Volts. You need to build it with sufficient separation/insulation for 14100 Volts Even though you only get power equivalent to 10000 Volts. Now if you take those same wires that you ran
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DC isn't always better. IIRC, there's a problem with multi-terminal lines that AC handles a lot more smoothly than DC. AC also works with transformers. I don't know how DC does voltage/current swaps.
Or taking down the lines (Score:2)
Marketing Pitch (Score:2)
Unlikely to be simple. Or easy. (Score:3)
Which is great. But the transformers and switchgear at each end of the line won't be able to handle the extra power. So they will need changing. Which will occupy a greater footprint on the ground (and/ or vertical space, to maintain arcing distances between insulator stacks, etc). So for a lot of ground installations, you'll need more ground space - or to stack the equipment higher, then jack up the first couple of transmission towers ...
It's a system. This is one link in the system. It's going to be difficult to upgrade the system. Not impossible - but harder than it sounds.
One weird trick (Score:2)
If "doubling the size of the grid" were really so easy, it would have been done already.
and the generation after that⦠(Score:2)
How about a pilot project (Score:2)
1Mvolt Power Lines (Score:2)
Currently most Transmissiobn Lines go @ 750KVolts. Last century the USSR constructed a 1MVolt AC Line, and the current state of the art is 1MVolt DC lines.
I wander if pushing the current lines from 750KVolts to 1MVolt will help even more.
Yes, it will be more complex than just changing the cables, as not only the cables can/will be changed, but also because the pylons have to be reconstructed, and the transforemes have to be changed (and in the case of DC, the inverters have to be added), but, in a strained
This is painful - the real problem (Score:2)
*The utilities are local monopolists
*they are guaranteed a fixed return on capital investment (so when Southern California Edison Electric was in bankruptcy protection the stock price didn't fall)
*the public utility regulator sets the price of electricity so that in the long run the utility will make their profit
*the regulat
Ok then (Score:2)
I'm waiting (Score:2)
No thanks!
I'm waiting for the fiber optic power lines so I can get my power faster!
That's still not building anything new (Score:2, Insightful)
Your strawmanning. You're suggesting we should dismiss this suggestion because they said it would be free. They didn't. They said we could do it w/o building more. The strawman here is "no such thing as a free lunch!", but that's not what's being discussed, hence the strawman you built.
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The real problem is that blackouts are expensive for customers, especially businesses, but cost utilities almost nothing. Just a tiny bit of foregone revenue. So, they have little financial incentive to make the grid more resilient.
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Is that the real problem? Citation please. While you're at it, how about citations for the claim that blackouts cost utilities nothing. That doesn't pass the sniff test.
But it would seem to me that this "problem" would please you. Let them eat cake. I mean, profit only while its convenient is right up your alley.
All the citation needed troll (Score:2)
Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen mostly it's slashdot, learn to spot these trolls and tricks. It's part of media literacy and it will sharpen your critical thinking skills.
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So people should simply argue without facts, eh?
I know this next comment will be very UN /. but I would prefer some facts in an intelligent discussion, assuming that 'dotters' are capable of both concepts ... and I think many are.
The problem is private utilities (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why our food supply isn't left up to the free market. In order to make Americans happy with the widespread socialism in our food supply we use a extremely inefficient and complex series of subsidies and rules and free consultation services but at the end of the day we have a centrally p
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"Your strawmanning. You're suggesting we should dismiss this suggestion because they said it would be free. They didn't."
No, he's not. He's explicit in what he is saying and he's claiming that the "without building anything new" is implying that there is no cost of "building anything new".
Replacing what's already there IS building something new. That's the point.
"They said we could do it w/o building more."
If they did, then that's a lie.
'The strawman here is "no such thing as a free lunch!"'
That may be yo
Re:That's still not building anything new (Score:5, Informative)
Replacing what's already there IS building something new. That's the point.
Come on, you are being pedantic to the point of obtuseness. Yes, sometimes people use the word "building" to mean manufacture. Some part of that cloud be called building. However in reality there are two possible projects
Setting up a new infrastructure project is a nightmare that can take years or decades. Replacing a cable is something that power companies already have to do in order to fix lines which get damaged.
When the author of the article said "without building anything new", he was talking about the infrastructure building part of the equation.
Re:That's still not building anything new (Score:5, Interesting)
However in reality there are two possible projects
Actually, there are at least four more alternatives:
I cringed when I read the summary up above, because reducing the expansion of the wires isn't just about doubling the amount of power. It's about doubling the amount of current. Assuming you're not approaching the dielectric breakdown voltage of your insulators (or the air), you should also be able to double the amount of power way more easily by just doubling the voltage on the line.
I'm assuming, of course, that replacing the transformers on both ends of a transmission line is cheaper than having a crew spend days changing out the lines plus the materials cost of new transmission lines. I could be wrong, but it seems pretty likely.
Alternatively, converting the lines to HVDC can almost quadruple [pnas.org] the total power on each line, again without any changes to the wires, just by changing out the equipment at both ends.
That said, unless you're on solid rock, #3 is a better choice than any of the above options, because you'll never start a fire when the cables are underground (realistically). I think you can put roughly 6 buried HVDC lines into the same space as a single high-tension tower and the right-of-way below it, and that's without taking advantage of the Z axis.
Of the options, replacing the wires with less stretchy wires is quite possibly the least attractive option in terms of bang for the buck.
Sorry man you're not Donald Trump (Score:2)
I think you're just internet arguing at this point. Saying things you don't even believe yourself because arguing on the internet is a game people play. It's not a
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So, you would consider replacing the light bulb over your stove to be new construction? Do you always pull a permit and hire a general contractor for that?
Are you an automaker by virtue of putting gas in your car or changing the oil?
What Matters is Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
it's replacing what's already there.
The only question that really matters is whether this is cheaper than building new power lines. While you are saving on the costs of constructing new pylons you still have the cost of replacing the wires. The other disadvantage is that you only end up with twice the original transmission capacity instead of three times it if you built new and you have to follow existing routes while new lines can go between places that that power needs to be transmitted which are likely different now since new, renewable power sources are located in sunny, typically arid regions whereas the old coal fired powerstations were located near large water sources for cooling.
These are all complex factors that have to be carefully examined and while it might be that replacing cables is the cheapest option at least in some cases it's certainly not as clear and obvious as the article suggests.
That's not the point of the article (Score:2, Flamebait)
You're not comparing what the article is comparing. The article is comparing the cost of fixing the power lines with the cost of rolling out more raw capacity a
Re: That's not the point of the article (Score:3)
The head of the Republican party is literally a convicted felon and there is absolutely no discussion of him stepping down for Christ's sake
Probably because nobody can legally bar him from running. Besides, it seems like you're a lot more confident in him winning than just about everybody else is. The only people in your party who want Biden to lose are the Hamas supporters.
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the question is are we going to build out a whole bunch of extra power infrastructure ...
That's part of the question yes, but the whole question is "what is the cheapest way to upgrade the power grid to cope with modern electrical generation and consumption?". If you want the best solution you need to answer that question. Just upgrading the existing grid by a factor of two might not be always the best option because, with generation taking place in new and different locations you may end up with bottlenecks.
Note, I'm not saying that you are clearly wrong just that you might not always be r
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So was Jesus Christ!!!!!
!!!!
!!!
(yes the trial was dumb but no Trump isn't Mandela)
Re:What Matters is Cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: What Matters is Cost (Score:2)
It had me confused as well. In the author's own dumb little way, it seems like he's trying to blame capitalism, but then he talks about how it would be more profitable for the utilities to put up new ones. Kind of an odd non-sequitor.
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And from the summary, "For a long time, utilities had to undergo lengthy environmental reviews if they were rewiring a line longer than 20 miles." so time will tell if utilities take advantage of the new regs. The headline infers it was the utilities who were dragging their feet, when the regulatory hurdle was probably much larger. It could have very well been when you add in the reg's approval process it was easier and less expensive to just put up new ones. Now the dynamic has changed and maybe new ones will go up. I also looked at the article and really got lost. I was looking for a simple metric. Price per mile of the new cable versus price per mile of the old one. If the new one is 5X the cost per mile, then is there really much gain to be had except for whoever makes the specialty wire. Could the wire maker be funding the study???
Crew time, route prep, specialized equipment, etc.
Even at 5x I suspect the wire itself would be just a small fraction of the upgrade cost.
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They twinned the power line by me some years back. It was a huge job doing the towers, endless gravel trucks outside my place for a good part of a year, it is a big job just anchoring those pylons. Putting up the wire itself at the end went fairly quick, some weeks for the perhaps 10 miles of line by here compared to most of a year to put up the pylons. With replacing the lines, the hard part of putting up an initial cable is also already done.
Walking on the right of way, those pylons are huge and you can s
Re: That's still not building anything new (Score:2)
it's replacing what's already there.
Your strawmanning. You're suggesting we should dismiss this suggestion because they said it would be free. They didn't. They said we could do it w/o building more. The strawman here is "no such thing as a free lunch!", but that's not what's being discussed, hence the strawman you built.
Here's an even better idea that's not even new: Instead of adding new overhead lines, just fucking bury them. Phoenix has been doing this for decades, and they even do it in caliche. The thermal problem is dealt with using fluids, which you can't even do with overhead wires. You don't have to worry about branches falling on them, they don't buzz or crackle, and hurricanes and tornadoes don't bother them.
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It's easy to say "bury the transmission lines", but what you're proposing is to dig over 120,000 miles of tunnel to house cables which carry up to 1,200,00 volts. Sure, it can be done, but it's a lot more expensive per mile than burying 240 volt neighborhood power distribution. In fact, it costs about five million dollars per mile. So the total cost of what you're proposing is on the order of six hundred billion dollars.
If the 500+ companies which operate the grid can't even agree to replace outdated cab
Re: Logic error (Score:2)
It's more like I have a grilled cheese sandwich. I could add a slice of ham and have a tasty ham and cheese. Only costs me a slice of ham, not the entire sandwich.
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Quote: "but it's still not magically free from materials or labour and their associated costs."
Then, prove me it's more expensive that the YEARLY losses of materials (unrefrigerated goods from markets/restaurants/ice cream shops/etc.) due to electric shortage, accidents due to traffic light/electric tramway/etc. unable to work properly, losses of lives (breathing machines/hospital equipment/etc.) due to stop working/not cleaning, etc. and their associated costs.
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It's not usually their loss. Few people even know when they can make a claim against a utility. And a heat wave is a "natural disaster" - it's not their fault.
The real problem here is that demand based pricing drives profits and they make more money by having restrictions on how much electricity that they can sell. They "have" to raise prices to lower grid demand and not have rolling blackouts.
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I didn't claim it was more expensive than any of those things. The summary claimed nothing new was required, this was flat out untrue. That's it.
You're arguing against statement that wasn't even implied.
Re: Logic error (Score:2)
It literally cost half as much as COMPLETELY REPLACING the entire infrastructure... that may be logistically "simple" but it's far from "cheap"
According to the recent study from researchers at UC-Berkeley and GridLab, replacing these older steel wires could provide up to 80 percent of the new transmission needed on the electricity grid â" without building anything new. It could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line and avoid the headaches of trying to get every state, city and even landowner along the route to agree to a new project...
"...could also cost half as much as building an entirely new line..."
Re:How do you get industry to do unprofitable thin (Score:5, Interesting)
If national infrastructure is unprofitable to maintain properly, that is a clear sign it should actually be nationalized like roads. It costs the taxpayers less because they would be taking scarcity related profits away from the utility to pay for it.
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I'll add that last mile fiber is in the same boat. It's important to taxpayers the same way water and sewer lines are. Providers would rather charge the same high rates for limited capacity cellular connectivity.
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable thi (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG you really want a vital infrastructure dependent on the whims of our political leaders? Uhm, no. They have a monopoly on roads and bridges, and they are shite, and now we're talking about roadways being "racist" because they define "the right (and wrong) side of the tracks"
No, just no.
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The only worse option is corporations, which is what we have now.
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable th (Score:2)
Really? I don't know where you live, but on the whole my electric service - privately owned & operated, publicly regulated - does a fine job delivering power to my home, probably delivering 3 nines of uptime the past 12 months (it would be 4 nines, but I had a two hour outage during a hail & wind storm. When I lived in the northeast I barely had two nines of service outage - power outages during snow storms were quite common, several outages a year.
As a reminder, Flint Michigan's water supply was ru
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If something's unprofitable then nobody will want to do it. Being unprofitable means more resources and labor are poured into an enterprise than can be extracted in value from said enterprise. If said end value is constrained by artificial conditions, then it's best to examine those conditions than to revert to the refrain of "nationalize it!". Nationalizing an unprofitable enterprise shifts the burden of subsidy onto the State (and ultimately, the taxpayer).
Or more to the poiint: if you're a voter and s
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Offer a bounty on upgraded lines
Or change the way electricity is priced.
Most Americans pay a flat rate per kilowatt-hour.
I have a smart meter and signed up for variable pricing. I pay less at night and way less from 2 to 4 am when my EV is programmed to charge. I pay a higher rate during the day, so I minimize my AC use.
Upgrading the grid could be financed by a surcharge on peak users since they're causing the problem.
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I feel like in classic American terms many folks would balk at this even if it saved them money overall, but yeah demand pricing seems to be the way to go, I believe most commercial pays that way already and it's mainly residential in flat rate?
It's like the universal healthcare conundrum
"Universal system would save most people $3000 a year"
"Yeah but taxes go up"
"But overall we all save $3000 a year"
"But taxes go up!"
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"But overall we all save $3000 a year"
"But taxes go up!"
I know many conservatives, and this is not what I hear from them.
What they actually believe is that the $3000 in savings will never happen. So they'll be stuck with a higher tax bill for nothing.
This isn't an unreasonable fear. Obama promised that the ACA would save money for "98% of Americans".
The reality was that prices went up for 60%. For many, prices went way up.
The liberal defense of that is, "That's because the health insurance industry perverted the process."
That may be true, but UHC is even more
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Sure but that line of thinking shows an innate incuriosity by conservatives becuase it is widely known we are already the highest paying country for healthcare and have been for a long while.
Also shows an incurosity to just go by clipped quotes instead of actually investigating the issue as that was a statement made about the potential bill but the ACA had a cost saving measure originally in it, the public option, and that stripped to woo Joe Liberman to support it as they needed 60. Ifconservatives wanted
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable thi (Score:2)
I'm having trouble spending the $2,400 Obamacare saved me on my family's health insitmeanxe - politicians keep telling me it's there, but my banker can't find it!
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable th (Score:2)
Sorry - repost w/ correction:
I'm having trouble spending the $2,400 Obamacare saved me on my family's health insurance - politicians keep telling me it's there, but my banker can't find it!
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I agree, we should do something about that instead of nothing.
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And business revenues pay for loans that the company used as capital years before.
Of course all taxes can be presented as a net loss if you choose to not include all the things they go towards.
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How come most of us in the western us pay rates set bureaucratically by a political regulatory commission subject to heavy lobbying by utility companies, in an explicit effort to decouple supply from demand because we actually overproduce electricity so much that utilities are motivated to sell you more to make more money, without decoupling?
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable thi (Score:2)
Or change the way electricity is priced.
California is trying out a new income-based pricing structure for electric service:
https://calmatters.org/comment... [calmatters.org].
That will be fun to watch - from outside California at least...
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable thi (Score:2)
The promise was just a decade ago that solar and wind didnâ(TM)t need any investment and was cheaper than the alternatives. Turns out when you take the full picture into account, it is more expensive for production but now we find we need to reverse engineer the rest of the network as well, make clean coal, gas and nuclear less profitable and efficient just to try and eke out a similar cost on variable solar and wind plants.
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solar and wind [...] more expensive for production
I think this is only the case if you ignore externalities - the cost of cleaning up the pollution caused by coal/gas, the cost of health care issues caused by said pollution and so on, the huge costs that climate change has already started to incur and so on. You can't really ignore those in your calculation. Even if renewables are somewhat more expensive in immediate cost, they help avoid or reduce some of the external effects. This will bring in savings that dwarf the extra expense.
The trouble is that peo
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What you'
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Technically public transit is a benefit for non-riders by reducing road traffic and getting you where you're going faster. It's not as externalized as it appears.
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable th (Score:3)
That benefit presumes many/most public transit riders would otherwise rely on private cars. I suspect most riders of public transit don't have private cars, and couldn't afford them if there was no public transit.
If you shutdown all public transit in NYC (as an extreme example), you'd find most former public transit riders would not travel further than they could walk.
Re: How do you get industry to do unprofitable th (Score:3)
When you talk about the cost of solar and wind power, please don't forget:
Development subsidies
Manufacturing subsidies
Training Subsidies (training installers)
Installation subsidies
Purchase Subsidies
And the ongoing subsidies in the form of premium, per Kw/hr prices for unneeded surplus electricity pouring into the power grid when private solar panels produce surplus electricity and decide to dump it on the grid - at a profit.
Yeah, let's not forget "externalities" when comparing energy sources.
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RIP Paradise, CA
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That they'll sag the same amount while being able to cover peak demand? I mean, except for the building new highway lanes problem where it leads to even more traffic.
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That's a visual cue to what's happening on the inside. The point is, it really does double the carrying capacity.
Re:Hope someone has thought this all the way throu (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I actually read on Slashdot that newer power cable designs can in fact do both, carry more current and sag less due to physical changes, I believe it was these trapezoidal designed wires. I don't know if it solves your power wire-death loop scenario though which I think could be quite plausible, just delays it I suppose.
https://www.buyawg.com/viewite... [buyawg.com]
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If it's these cables, they sag less, can run hotter, have less transmission losses, and contain "Aerospace grade carbon fibers" ($$$$?).
https://www.epsilon-cable.com/... [epsilon-cable.com]
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Yes! I think those were the ones in the comment or story.
As for cost, yeah, who knows.
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The trapezoidal wires (compact as opposed to compessed [electrical...enewal.com]) mean smaller space for the same number of wires, which in turn allows more wires per the original space. That (more wires) allows for more current in the same diameter cable. Same diameter cable means can run thru same bore holes, etc. without having to enlarge fittings.
Replacing the steel core with a carbon fiber one is what allows it to sag less compared to the steel. Total sag is measured when the cable is at max capacity, so the wire-death-loop sce
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OK, what would those be?
You've obviously decided to accept what was presented as fact, yet you don't think any downstream problems have been considered?
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There are some videos from China with a guy doing wire maintenance by climbing along the wires - across a gorge no less.
I am in awe and debt to such men. Way more heroic than mm-chosen celebrities.
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simple fix: installing new wires on the high-voltage lines that already carry power hundreds of miles across the United States"
"simple fix" -- ROTFLMAO!!!
Is simple compared with the alternative: Build new lines. Even the summary said so.
Also, lines fail from time to time, and need maintenance and preventive reoplacement too, so, the process of "Get the old cable out before it fails and put a brand new one in" and the process of "Get the cable that already failed and put a new one in" is well understood at this point.