History
- local, but economies of scale rapidly drove mergers and cooperation until
- 1926 – Electrical (Supply) Act of 1926
- 1934 – Public Utility Holding Company Act
- electric utilities were recognized as public goods of importance and
- regulated as public goods
- 1938 – the National Grid => began operating as a national system
- Rural cooperatives helped distribute high costs, but depression change view of role of government
- cities vs rural – now we see the digital divide – then it was the electrical divide
- by 1920s half of urban homes had electricity
- 10% of rural had electricity
- micro-grids for the rural wealthy (hobby farmers)
- energy poverty for the rural poor – not so much now
- cities vs rural – now we see the digital divide – then it was the electrical divide
- the need to transition from cheap fossil fuels to renewables is complicated
Power Grid. CONUS power transmission grid consists of about
* wires
* 450,000 miles high-voltage lines
* 186,411 mi of high-tension lines ~ 1 light second if laid out in a line
* operated by approximately 500 companies.
* The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) oversees all of them.
* 440GWatts
* 31% Coal
* 20% nuke
* 34% gas
* 15% renewables (hydro 6.6%, wind 5.7%, biomass 1.5%, solar 0.9%, geothermal 0.4%)
Some important concepts
* baseload – measured as the minimum demand over time (say a week)
* dispatchable – adjustable (coal/oil, nuclear, hydro, biomass, geothermal, ocean thermal)
* oddities – batteries (2%, pumped storage (like I saw in Vermont, 94%) for 195GWatts
* pumped storage can come on line quickly (~16 seconds in one case)
* biggest is A-WV border at 150% of Hoover Dam – the “Biggest battery in the world”
* stores from coal, nuclear, and other power plants – letting them op[erate at peak efficiency
* non-dispatchable – wind, solar PV – need storage, not direcly useable for baseload
* spinning reserve – able to quickly come online – like in my MM LCC
* load following power plant – follow daily changes in demand
* peaking power plants – able to come on line to balance load-demand over a day’s cycle
– typically gas
– typically expensive
Grid is mixed blessing
* able to use most efficient sources
* Failure-prone (at sources) but indifferent to those failures (because of load balancing)
– like the Internet
* Centralization creates perverse incentives to use power of gov’t to keep an effective monopoly
* Hence Public Utilities Commission (oversight)
* But, gives power to block as well,
– a rooftop solar on your house is one thing – [Alan]
– but a rooftop solar on a QuikTrip or Walmart might cross into “utility scale” and
really run into issues.
Small cities (like Colleges) may find some advantages in creating their own local grids
* might be a good time to think locally rather than just assuming power is magically there
* strategic resources may require local thinking (Y2K planning), but
really just a good conservative use of planning and contingency thinking
The KYMN Climate Show with Bruce and Alan: The KYMN Climate Show with Bruce Morlan and Alan Anderson is a once-monthly show that explores the climate issues in the news and then digs into the stories to clarify what the supporting science tells us about our changing climate and how we will have to respond to those changes. With diverse backgrounds, their pursuit is knowledge and reason about our changing climate. KYMN Climate Show will air the first Wednesday of the month at 11am.