New grid for renewable energy will be costly
Wall Street Journal 2009
A substantial increase in the amount of electricity produced from renewable energy would require building a transmission system that would carry a price tag of up to $100 billion, according to a study.

If the U.S. wants to get 20% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2024, the study says, it would be necessary to build a new electricity circulatory system, including 15,000 circuit miles of extremely high voltage lines. The system, which would be laid alongside the existing electric grid infrastructure, would start in the Great Plains and Midwest – where the bulk of the nation's wind resources are located – and terminate in big cities along the East Coast.

Building the wind turbines needed to generate the desired amount of power would cost about $720 billion, the study estimates – making the total investment about equal to the size of the current stimulus bill.

The report was prepared by organizations responsible for electric-system reliability in roughly half the states, including the Midwest Independent System Operator, SERC Reliability Region, PJM Interconnection LLC, the Southwest Power Pool, the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

New York and New England grid operators provided information for the report but say there might be ways to build resources in their regions more economically than hauling power from the Great Plains. "This study doesn't look enough at alternatives to huge transmission additions," said Stephen Whitley, chief executive of the New York Independent System Operator.

Alternative energy faces power line bottleneck in west
Reuters 2009
President Barack Obama aims to double alternative energy production over three years, but how much "green" power will come from the U.S. West is uncertain if the sunny and wind-swept region cannot overcome a shortage of power lines. Delivering the region's green power to markets, however, is proving easier said than done. For years the rule of thumb was $1 million per mile, but a recent project in Southern California cost $16.5 million per mile. Transmission line projects in the U.S. West, much of it mountainous, face another steep challenge the region's industry and public officials say the Obama administration must tackle: federal bureaucracy. Much of the region's expanses are overseen by a variety of U.S. agencies charged with managing natural resources, wildlife, parks and native populations.

Proposed station would connect separate grids, enabling electricity generated in remote sites to reach a wider market
Wall Street Journal 2009
A new proposal to build a transmission link to connect the nation's three major electricity grids -- Eastern, Western and Texas -- is generating interest among energy policy makers because of its potential to accelerate development of renewable energy. The project, called the Tres Amigas "superstation," to be built at Clovis, N.M., would bring a major change to the U.S. electricity infrastructure by improving connectivity. For example, power produced in Phoenix at this point can't be shipped to Dallas.

The proposed substation, functioning like a traffic roundabout, would use superconducting cable from American Superconductor Corp. of Devens, Mass., capable of carrying 5,000 megawatts of electricity -- equivalent to the output of five nuclear-power reactors. Superconducting cable is chilled to minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit, which greatly increases its carrying capacity, and the rights-of-way the cable requires along its path are smaller -- and cheaper.

Plugging into the future
Newsweek 2009
Electric smart-grid technology may transform how the country powers up. But first it's got to overcome costs and competing interests.

The "smart grid" is a catchall phrase for the power grid of the future, with various test projects underway in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and Hawaii. The idea is to make a system that will stop power surges from causing blackouts. It would create more energy-efficient power lines to carry electricity longer distances without losing voltage (current grids lose about 8 percent of power over distance). It would incorporate wind and solar energy into existing power grids. And it would let customers monitor the electricity they use in their homes, paying less for power consumed in off-hours.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said updating the power grid could "cost more than $100 billion." Experts say that figure could vary widely depending on one's definition of the smart grid. It could cost significantly more if the tab includes building new transmission lines, wind turbines, or solar panels. Much of this discussion doesn't touch on the cost to consumers. Advocates argue that smart-grid technology ultimately could allow people to monitor and control their daily use of electricity, but to do this, consumers would first need to purchase a smart meter, a device that can cost a few hundred dollars.

Million-volt answer to oil
Manhattan Institute 2008
The electricity market could operate much more efficiently than it currently does. Across the country, peak wholesale prices vary by 1 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. Over the course of an entire year, about half of the total capacity available nationwide stands idle. And over the course of the same year, one-fifth of the electricity is generated with very expensive fuel.

Historically, as utilities serving adjacent areas gradually linked their grids, three largely discrete interconnection areas evolved: one east of the Rockies, one west, and one serving most of Texas.

A backbone grid spanning the continent and built with state-of-the-art high-voltage technology could readily move 25% of America’s power over very long distances, at a cost well under 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour moved. Overlaid on the existing, fragmented system, a backbone grid will let cheap power chase high demand around the clock and across the country. It will squeeze significantly more electricity out of every dollar of invested capital and every dollar spent on raw fuel.

By flattening demand a backbone grid would also shift generation toward bigger plants that use cheaper fuels—coal, uranium, water, wind, or sun. With a backbone grid in place, new plants will also be built where the capital costs are lower from the get-go. Windmills and solar plants occupy very large amounts of real estate, and land costs alone make these technologies prohibitively expensive in all but the most rural areas. Building conventional coal and nuclear plants on existing sites alongside plants already up and running is usually much cheaper, too, but that means adding new capacity where it’s least needed by anyone nearby.

Lifeline for renewable power
Technology Review 2009
To make use of clean energy, we'll need more transmission lines that can transport power from one region to another and connect energy-­hungry cities with the remote areas where much of our renewable power is likely to be generated. We'll also need far smarter controls throughout the distribution system--technologies that can store extra electricity from wind farms in the batteries of plug-in hybrid cars, for example, or remotely turn power-hungry appliances on and off as the energy supply rises and falls. If these grid upgrades don't happen, new renewable-power projects could be stalled, because they would place unacceptable stresses on existing electrical systems.

Best practices in grid integration of variable wind power
Midwest Research Inst. Paper 2008
This paper summarizes results from a number of case studies of wind energy integration and concludes:

• Wind integration costs up to $5 to $6/MWh of wind energy.
• There may be times when a grid is unable to take wind energy into the system.
• Large balancing areas help manage wind variability more easily than small balancing areas.
• A substantial smoothing effect can be achieved by aggregating the output of wind plants in a variety of locations.

Electricity grid in U.S. penetrated by spies
Wall Street Journal 2009
Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

The plan to build the next electric grid
Popular Science 2009
The idea behind the smart grid is to embed the system with sensors and computers so that utilities and consumers can precisely control power usage and delivery. Wireless nodes (on substations, transformers and wires) and smart meters (on homes and businesses) will communicate over the Internet to you and your electrical supplier. That way, when everyone turns on the A/C, the electric company can lower the power headed for other appliances, or even draw electricity stored in the battery of your plug-in hybrid, which, when parked, would act as a backup power source.

Higher capacity cables get more juice through
Power & Energy 2004
The grid is overstressed and can't always perform all the tasks it's being asked to perform. While new transmission lines are desperately needed, adding them is just short of a nightmare for utilities. To avoid the problem, companies have come out with wires that carry twice the electricity that standard overhead cables carry. For about the past 100 years, electric utilities have been using aluminum-conductor, steel-reinforced cables, which have a core of steel strands surrounded by aluminum, to deliver electricity to consumers. The steel supports the wire as it hangs between two towers, and the aluminum conducts the electricity. But the steel also causes the cable to conduct electricity poorly, to sag when heated because of a relatively high thermal expansion coefficient, and to anneal rapidly and lose its strength when temperatures rise above 120°C. One easy way to improve the product is to replace the steel core with a composite material. Composites can tolerate higher temperatures without stretching and sagging as much as steel. This means that more electricity can be put through them, and that the cables can be installed over rivers and across densely forested areas, installations that have typically been problematic for utilities.

China installs ACCR to boost transmission capacity
3M 2008
Chongqing Electric Power Corporation has become the second major utility in the People’s Republic of China to install the 3M Aluminum Conductor Composite Reinforced (3M ACCR) to boost transmission capacity on a key line without the need to build larger transmission towers. Fourteen utilities in the U.S. so far have deployed 3M ACCR, which can carry more than twice the power of conventional steel conductors of the same diameter. Tim Koenig, director of the 3M says, “It’s a proven, high-performance conductor that can match the sag and tension of the existing conductor with less weight while doubling capacity.” 3M ACCR has been recognized by R&D Magazine with an R&D 100 Award as one of the most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace.

IBM develops power-line broadband
Wall Street Journal 2008
International Business Machines Corp. said it has been hired to provide high-speed Internet service over power lines. The project is a sign that using the electricity grid for communication – a technology utilities have long been interested in – has finally matured. IBM said it signed a contract with closely held International Broadband Electric Communications Inc., Huntsville, Ala., to manage the installation of broadband systems at 13 cooperatives in seven states. The system works by using standard power lines to carry a radio-frequency signal in the magnetic field that surrounds the wires. International Broadband developed repeaters that can easily be attached to power lines every quarter of a mile to maintain the signal.