But those improvements could be added to the grid anyway. Thus, then they net out of the cost-benefit.
Grid issues are not limited to the US.
The International Energy Agency said this week that 50 million miles of transmission lines—enough to wrap around the planet 2,000 times—will have to be built or replaced by 2040 to achieve the climate lobby’s net-zero emissions goal.
DB2
Many improvements can not happen unless the grid is essentially replaced with the next generation. The old system can’t handle the required steps needed to really protect it.
And at the same time, those improvements will improve things irrespective of how much wind and solar are exploited. Hence they net out in a cost-benefit analysis.
DB2
Well they should get started then! But the above may be a bit of an overestimate as it turns out the existing grid is in the process of being rescued by renewables.
Enter “virtual power plants”. Aggregates of residential power wall systems are being organized to supplement the great red state of Texas power grid during times of need on a contract basis.
It is the beginning of the decentralization of the electric grid using renewables without having to do major replacements of the grid. The number of homes with solar/storage will only increase over time providing an ever-growing source of energy for utilities without their having to build utility-scale generation facilities.
This is a significant amount of energy. The Dept of Energy thinks it is possible that virtual power plants could meet 20% of the nation’s peak demand by 2030.
Buying peaking capacity from a VPP made of residential smart thermostats, smart water heaters, home managed EV charging, and behind-the-meter batteries can be 40% lower net cost to a utility than buying capacity from a utility-scale battery and 60% lower than from a gas peaker plant, DOE said. Tripling virtual power plant capacity by 2030 could save $10B, meet 20% peak demand: DOE | Utility Dive
The argument favoring renewables is increasingly becoming economic.
I am reasonably sure every Shiny power company “JC” will tell you they will build all the grid we need, as soon as the government pays them to do it, with a fat, guaranteed, profit. Because the company undertaking any risk, is too much of a “burden”.
Steve
Aren’t most utilities regulated by various public commissions that pretty much determine what their profit is going to be?
Yeah, well whatever. The point though is that a lot of the “shiny” companies support virtual power plants so it actually has a real chance of making a significant difference in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint while also facilitating the use of solar/storage.
This is much better news than if only the “dulls” were onboard.
I think this is a pretty big deal as it means that existing technology using the existing grid can incorporate whatever levels of residential energy storage is out there. It provides a financial incentive to add solar/storage to your home while also stabilizing the grid and reducing the need for gas peaker plants.
Yup, A guaranteed profit percentage, on top of their costs…and the higher the costs, the fatter the profit. The early 50s annual reports from Packard showed that guaranteed profit defense contracts provided a small part of revenue, but the bulk of the company’s profits. When the defense contracts were sold to Curtis-Wright, CW wondered if a marine diesel that was being built for the Navy would have potential in the commercial market. An engineer that came over to CW with the contract, wrote a reply that Packard had so loaded up that Navy engine program with overhead, that you could buy a perfectly serviceable engine from Cummins, for just what Packard was charging the Navy for overhead, with a guaranteed profit.
Steve
Yep, that’s how cost plus works. But we were talking about utilities. The public commission says “you can charge 15 cents a kWh” then the company runs the numbers to see if it can actually make a profit at that rate with solar/wind/gas/whatever, and then either go back to the commission and says “we need it to be a bit higher to make the numbers work” or determines that it can work and builds out their capacity as necessary. It’s not the same as “cost plus” defense contractors.
That number would mean something if they compared it to how many miles are in place or how many miles are replaced or added each year.
Mike
Good point.
“That amount is roughly equivalent to the total number of miles of electric grid that currently exists in the world currently, according to the IEA.”
And that is in just 16-17 years (rather than a century for the present buildout) at a cost of “more than $600 billion per year by 2030”.
“Building new transmission lines takes between five and 15 years, with planning and permitting included.”
“…investment in transmission lines has been insufficient and will ultimately become an ever larger bottleneck, the IEA says.”
And then think about the developing world and its growing needs…
DB2
Here is a link to the IEA report. It is full of all kinds of data such as grid congestion costs and supply chain bottlenecks.
As for costs, looking at their net-zero scenario, the estimate for 2023-30 is $600 billion/yr (2022 dollars). For 2031-40, that rises to $1 trillion/yr. Total: almost $15 trillion. Add another $10 trillion by 2050.
DB2
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. The US power grid is ancient, inadequate, and increasingly unreliable. The cost of bringing it up to date to deal with the increasingly severe weather caused by climate change and growing electricity demand is going to be enormously expensive. Doesn’t matter how the electricity is generated.
If anything, solar energy plus storage will tend to decrease the cost by decentralizing energy production and reducing the demand from the grid.
The US grid has to be updated and expanded anyway regardless of how electricity is generated. May as well do it in way that optimizes the use of clean energy.
The issue is manufacturing. Unless we move and move fast and hard to spend on the grid we cripple our future as an industrial superpower. I hate the ignorance on the sidelines shouting down our country to save a penny.
The IEA is combining what we in the USA call transmission and distribution lines and calls them both transmission lines.
Power transmission lines, which transport electricity from power plants at high voltage over long distances, are over 7 million kilometres long globally. They are connected to shorter distribution lines, with lower voltage electricity, that transport electricity to customers. These cover over 72 million kilometres in total.
50 million miles = 80 million kilometers.
Mostly likely true. Do note that the IEA report was global (the I stands for international). Growth in the emerging/developing countries will be faster and account for some two-thirds of the global grid by the end of their projections.
Not true. The grid costs for renewables are one-to-two orders of magnitude higher. Go back and read the thread on grid costs.
They make that distinction in their report. It is the media reporting that fuzzes things.
DB2
Since developing countries are probably in the process of developing their energy grid (hence the adjective developing) they may as develop it for use with renewables. It is in their best interests to be energy independent.
Have no recollection of the thread you are referring to but did it take into account GETs? Grid Enhancing Technologies are off the shelf methods that can substantially increase the transmission capacity of existing lines with costs that are a fraction of putting in replacement lines. The investments would have a 6-month pay back time.
Our current grid suffers from congestion which means that it often cannot use the cheapest electricity source at a particular time. The annual cost is in the billions and rising as electricity use increases and the grid ages. GETs can solve that problem while in many cases doubling the capacity of existing lines to substantially increase use of renewables.
On a national scale, the results of the Brattle study suggest that GETs could deliver: Double the amount of renewables that can be integrated into the electricity grid prior to building new large-scale transmission lines…Grid-Enhancing Technologies Shown to Double Regional Renewable Energy Capacity, According to Study by Brattle Consultants - Brattle
While new transmission lines will still have to be built, it will be far less than projected if one takes full advantage of existing technology.
Europe has been installing GETs for years now with Dynamic Line Rating tech being one example. Dynamic Line Ratings, Sensing Tech Changing Europe's Transmission System | T&D World
The US is way behind because of the antiquated way utilities are financed. Utilities make a lot more money with huge capital projects funded by users, like transmission line replacement, than they would get by the much cheaper and faster installation of GETs. Biden has done a lot to get GETs moving in the US.
The plan forward seems obvious to me. Accelerate upgrading the existing grid with GETs. Use that added capacity to integrate more renewables. Further stabilize the grid with Virtual Power Plants. All this should provide more time to add new transmission lines, much of which would have to be done anyway even without renewable energy.
Normal weather wreaks regular expensive and at times deadly havoc. GCC increases those risks.
The USA’s main enemies are all studying and almost certainly developing means to knock the USA senseless with attacks by electromagnetic pulse on our extremely vulnerable system.
Energy efficiencies are eaten alive by the older transmission systems,
The system needs to be flexibly decentralized, thoroughly hardened, and that means we need to damn the “house of straw” and “house of sticks” piggies who lazily idiotically refuse to invest in infrastructure and go full on “house of bricks.”
We used to teach this stuff!
david fb
Apropos of this conversation, The Atlantic discusses one consequence/response to the inadequate power grid - just discarding the extra solar and wind energy, and putting the panels and turbines into curtailment. You end up with too much energy at certain locations at certain times, and no cost-effective way to move it to a time or place where it would be usable. So the capacity is just idled.