The North American Power Grid

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The grid is old and fragile. What efforts are being made to renew and refresh it?

[Larks2242 251]

I have not heard anything about the grid being in danger.

[Meg 368]

Well, there was the Northeast  Blackout of 2003.

I knew it was still going on when I couldn't get anywhere near this site.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Man has survived 1000's of years of recorded history with out electricty.

only the last 50-70 years has there been electric power.

We will survive as a species with out it.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

The grid is old and fragile. What efforts are being made to renew and refresh it?quote>

Insufficient ones.

For one thing, we're currently very caught up on the idea of "green power". Nice, but it's a money drainer. How about fixing the existing infrastructure before we start tacking new stuff on, eh? Those windmills won't do us any good if the power lines connecting them to homes and businesses fall apart.

[Larks2242 251]

Originally posted by: Duke87

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

The grid is old and fragile. What efforts are being made to renew and refresh it?quote>

Insufficient ones.

For one thing, we're currently very caught up on the idea of "green power". Nice, but it's a money drainer. How about fixing the existing infrastructure before we start tacking new stuff on, eh? Those windmills won't do us any good if the power lines connecting them to homes and businesses fall apart.

quote>

Can't just reley on that though, i still don't understand why we are not offshore drilling as it is a much cheaper alternative.

[astronelson 339]

Originally posted by: Larks2242

Can't just reley on that though, i still don't understand why we are not offshore drilling as it is a much cheaper alternative.

quote>

Pollution, CO₂ stigma, etc.  Plus oil will run out eventually, and we prefer using fuel for transport.

Anyway, I do remember hearing about a study that said the weakest points of the grid weren't the main lines, but some of the secondary ones. It seems that if some of the secondary lines were damaged, then it would set of a domino effect of collapse. I can't remember where this was, though - it may have been New Scientist magazine.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The apathy and lack of awareness around here is truly disappointing. If one of the main stations failed, it wouldn't be a big deal to drop it off, but if a distribution point failed, it could knock out the whole grid.

The reason for the great blackout last time was a simple outage caused by a damaged line, but the chain of events was interesting. After the "short", the whole grid began to oscillate, so some companies dropped out, and the rest fell like, as someone said, dominoes.

Yes, I agree that the infrastructure needs work. The question is whether there is political will to allocate the funds to do it. This is too big for the private sector to tackle alone.

[hamsterTK 93]

I'm glad I live in a subtropical climate

[Streetwise 3]

Interesting points, all.

The power grid is indeed fragile, as many stories of squirrels knocking out substations testify. While I don't know what the answer is, the problem always seems to be what is known as the "last mile", meaning while the main power stations function well, it all comes down to what astronelson alluded to, the secondary line, or smaller parts of the final delivery system.

Perhaps a variety of ways, such as solar/wind/nuclear, ect. along with updating the distribution system would work so we're not putting all of our eggs in one basket, as each one has its particular pros and cons. Of course, no one system is perfect.

[SounderBruce 173]

If the ice caps melts in BC, Washington will be without power because of our dependence on hydroelectricity.

[Easy Bakes 253]

I remember  a few years ago a substation near us was struck by lightning and caught fire. Power was back the next morning but it wasnt till 6 months or so later that substation was finaly rebuilt/brought back online.

those stations and  stepdown transformers are not something you would replace  just because their old because of the expence and  lack of parts. mabey not lack of parts they may just build the  equipment required for something like substations only when needed.

[DazzaDazza 29]

well i don't know about anywhere ells, but hear in Melbourne they have mutable line that supply the extra high voltage to the substation, acutely just recently one of the towns blow over in the wind, but the majority of Melbourne where not affected

because they just diverted the power though the other lines, I would say all cities have this system, as fore secondary lines that would matter ether I think if one was affected. because the grid would be set up in a triangle like matter, so if point goose down the other 2 is not affected, when they set it up they like to spared the load, maybe because it's cheaper

If you're really worried about it maybe invest in a generator. That's what all the importing building has got.

[Streetwise 3]

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460

If you're really worried about it maybe invest in a generator. That's what all the importing building has got.

quote>

I wonder why most buildings, including homes, don't have backup generators that automatically kick in when the power goes out like the hospitals do. I would think an enterprising contractor could make a killing by making backup generators standard equipment in any building (maybe attic/basement) they would construct. When the power was on, they could automatically be charged and ready to go for the next outage. Perhaps houses with solar panels could be a good starting point for this, as solar energy needs to be stored up anyway (it just doesn't go directly from the solar panel right into the devices it powers; it needs a storage system first, which would be the built-in generator).

Of course I'm no power expert, and this is just a general idea. I'm sure there are flaws in it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The idea of in-house backup is enirely viable. It is currently very expensive if you want more than a few KWH for, say, 72 hours.

However, power system prices are coming down. You can get a wind generator (provided you have enough steady winds) now for about $2,000 including the storage system. If you are lucky you can go completely off the grid. Solar/wind systems are also available.

In fact, if you live in the right jurisdition, you can get a special meter on the grid which allows you to supply any surplus you have to the grid. This can lower or eliminate your charges from the grid, and *gasp* you might even have a net outflow with the grid paying you.

Regulations have been proposed that any new high-rise be supplied with an off-grid system, but since they depend on environmental conditions, can't be guaranteed.

An amusing(?) anecdote:

During the great blackout in the '60s, one of the hospitals in Boston discovered that their backup generator had an electric starter hooked into the grid. Fortuntately for them, it was a diesel, and by using IV tubing from the top of the building, they were able to prime the motor and turn it over.

[DazzaDazza 29]

Streetwise while that's sound like a grate, for 90% of house in a city it's just not worth it, most hoses probably only suffer about 2 to 3 black outs a year most of them wouldn't be for longer then 1 hour, your frizzier would stay cold for about 8 hours as long as you don't open up the door. While it sound good most people would Bork at it when building a house they would rather spend it on something ells. Although solar in getting very popular now days, not for it echo friendly part, because I hear not that echo friendly to make, it more so people can get cheaper power bills.

A friend told me that the pollution it takes to make one solar panel, it would take 25 years to use the same amount as if you where using a power planet, I don't know how true that is but it wouldn't surprise me.

N_O_Body@ you will probably find with that hospital the battery that where supposed to start the generator where not properly change. E.g. someone didn't do there job properly. I guy I know had a situation where the change over switch that changes from Grid to generator failed; luckily it was on one tests. Acutely I have a few of them; it happened more then what you think.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

I guess it is fortunate for us Texans that the Texas power grid is generally isolated from the rest of United States, which insulates us from those cascading issues that occassionally plague the vast Eastern and Western grids and the rest of interconnected North America.  There are historical and political reasons for that isolation, one of which keeps management of the Texas grid out of Federal interstate regulation.  With Texas as an energy resource-rich sunbelt state, we have comparatively inexpensive and plentiful power, primarily driven by abundant coal, coastal natural gas, and West Texas wind farms.  Industry is the primary user, and the tech and petrochemical sectors loves it.  Surprisingly, Texas is the largest user of electricity in the U.S.

Meanwhile, we also give birth to the likes of Houston's infamous Enron, who before imploding under creative corporate accounting, was blamed for exploiting the murky energy market of the interconnected Western regional grid to create artificial energy shortages in California and jack up the price.  After that boondoggle came what was then the largest corporate scandal in history--yep, everything in Texas indeed has to be bigger!

Speaking of bigger, one of our Great Works was to be the Trans-Texas Corridor Project, which would have slashed a 4,000 mile-long, 1,200 foot-wide, right-of-way for transportation, utilities, and telecommunications infrastructure across the state, roughly paralleling I-35 from the Oklahoma border past Dallas, Austin, San Antonio to the Mexico border.  This would ease and expand the capacity of the so-called "NAFTA Superhighway" of I-35, which bisects the U.S. as a spine through the Midwest connecting Canada to Mexico as the "International Mid-Continent Trade Corridor."  Though most known as a mega freight highway, this would have also created a grandly intergrated infrastructural power spine through the bulk of the population corridors of Texas, which I would like to call the "Texas Tokaido," but instead have to sometimes pan as Gov. Rick Perry's "Pharaoh's Highway."  The total cost of a staggering $145 billion-$183 billion, fears of foreign companies profiting on taxpayers, plus the unprecedented scale of State-enforced eminent domain needed to create this "Mother of All Toll-Roads" led to its public vilification.  Having been the biggest backroom political pusher for this legacy project, Perry has opted to now flap his more conservative wings for political gratification, ironically joining the backlash against eminent domain that grew out of the U.S. Supreme Court's univerally loathed Kelo v. City of New London decision, which affirmed a government's right to use eminent domain to seize private property from one owner in order to give it to another owner if the transfer offered the potential for increase public tax revenue.  However, the grandly conceived Trans-Texas Corridor is not dead...it's scale has been spun-off into a multitude of smaller, more individually palatable corridor projects under the umbrella "Innovative Connectivity in Texas."

This being Texas, we are not done with "big" yet...

With projected state growth anticipated in coming decades to follow the boom examples of Florida and California, there is a scramble to grab or organize resources to accomodate this growth while still maintaining affordability, with water and power likely to be the great limitators.  My own city of San Antonio is currently building and replacing several coal plants, but those are not considered sufficient in the long-term, and our public utility CPS has partnered with private venturer NRG of New Jersey and Toshiba to expand the South Texas Project nuclear facility along the coast in Bay City from two currently operating reactors to four.  The original STP was the last nuclear power plant finalized in the Unites States after the nuclear scares of the 1970s and 1980s, and its expansion was on track to become the first new U.S. power reactor since that time.  However, it is now in limbo due to apparent bait-and-switch cost figures.  A firm cost has not yet been set.

CPS as a public utility had to win public support for what was initially presented this past summer as a $13-billion project.  Given that pricetag, the campaign demonstrated that the nuclear expansion was more cost effective in the long-run than alternative plans drawn up to expand wind farms and new transmission lines across the empty expanse of West Texas or to build a 100-megawatt solar plant.  Weeks later, and on the the eve of a City Council vote to commit the public's first $400 million installment, uncovered secret emails revealed that figure was more likely to mushroom to $17-billion, outside the public's ability to finance its share and far less cost-effective compared to the alternatives.  There has been lots of finger-pointing, with the public pouncing on apparent misrepresentation by CPS, and CPS claiming fraud by lead partners NRG and Toshiba under their umbrella corporation Nuclear Innovations North America (NINA).  At any rate, the taxpayers and ratepayers were almost locked into an ever-growing financial commitment due to low-ball cost estimates, which I would argue is an unspoken standard practice in all public financing.  The final contractual cost from Toshiba, which was negotiated to never to be fully revealed to the public, was not required till after the commitments and installments were made, and omigosh, the cost I think went up again by another billion!  The court trial between the partners started this past Monday, with CPS likely looking to reduce its exposure or even fully withdraw from the partnership while recouping the $500 million in ratepayer money already invested.

What is now not certain is where the expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear plant now stands.  A deadline for partial Federal financing is quickly looming, and with the current partners in disarray, the STP has dropped from the first to the second or third ranking among several frontline projects competing for those coveted funds, without which no financing scheme for the hefty up-front construction costs of nuclear power plants are considered viable.  However, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has recently indicated interest in joining into the STP expansion, which would for the first time extend Japan's largest utility's nuclear plant operations outside of Japan.  It is hoped that CPS can ease some of its exposure by selling part of its share to TEPCO.  The project will ultimately likely continue, but to the benefit of which players remains to be seen.

Amusingly, newer projections these past few weeks suggest that in light of the recession slowdown and the need to growback from it, the forecasted San Antonio growth and rate demands driving the need for the nuclear expansion may be delayed by some years, giving breathing room to allow for further market development and cost-reduction of wind and solar power options.  We may have dodged a costly big bullet, which neighboring Austin was smart enough to completely avoid by not joining the bandwagon to expand its share of the costly original nuclear plant to the the new expansion.

Yep, everything is bigger in Texas, including our debacles!

Of course, San Antonio is a sunny sunbelt city, and solar power has a potential market here.  The local Full Goods Building at the Pearl Brewery urban redevelopment is Texas's largest solar power installation.  Pricetag for this converted warehouse store:  $1.35 million for 200 killowatts to cover 1/4 of the building's total energy needs.  That is still a huge upfront expense for an urban grocery store, in this case covered by the public utility CPS and the developers as part of showcasing their project, but I fear still enough to make less visible and less monied commerical property owners gasp.  Upgrading homeownership power alternatives is great, but the meat that needs addressing is in commercial and industrial energy at scale.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Odainsakerquote>

The expansion of the Comanche Peak facility is still on track.

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/1885517.html

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Streetwise

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460

If you're really worried about it maybe invest in a generator. That's what all the importing building has got.

quote>

I wonder why most buildings, including homes, don't have backup generators that automatically kick in when the power goes out like the hospitals do. I would think an enterprising contractor could make a killing by making backup generators standard equipment in any building (maybe attic/basement) they would construct.quote>

A good backup generator will add another $10,000-20,000 to the cost of a house for a device that will be used very infrequently.  They don't make good standard installation options.

When the power was on, they could automatically be charged and ready to go for the next outage. Perhaps houses with solar panels could be a good starting point for this, as solar energy needs to be stored up anyway (it just doesn't go directly from the solar panel right into the devices it powers; it needs a storage system first, which would be the built-in generator).quote>

Generators take a form of energy and convert it to electrical energy; they do not store charge.  When the power goes out, they begin consuming another form of energy (usually natural gas if they're an installed system) and burn it to produce electric power to house.  All you're doing is converting on form of energy to another.

Storage duties are delegated to a battery, and batteries make horrible solutions for dealing with a power outage.  Home battery arrays typically go through hundreds of charging/discharging cycles per day, and it is entirely possible that the power could go out while the battery was finishing up a discharge cycle, leaving the homeowner with effectively nothing to power his home. 

Also, most people don't realize this, but in the event of a major natural disaster such as a hail storm, solar power systems are a power company's worst nightmare.  Not only is the system entirely torn up, it's still producing enough power to kill all the repair workers.  In an event like this, what would normally only take a couple of weeks to restore power would likely stretch into several months at a minimum.

[Meg 368]

Shipstones!   We need shipstones.

Too bad they only exist in Robert Heinlein's imagination.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: Meg

Shipstones!   We need shipstones.

Too bad they only exist in Robert Heinlein's imagination.

quote>

Yes too bad.

[hamsterTK 93]

What is the weakest point, anyways? Where I live ice is uncommon, and when we do get it there is unlikely to be a threat of it bringing down power lines.

Hurricane Ike left residential parts of Houston(which have thousands of miles of overhead wire) without power for extended amounts of time. However, people's survival wasn't exactly at stake, in fact there are some positive stories of neighbors coming to know another in the street and children playing outdoors.

Also basic services stayed intact, or least were available if you drove out of town. I worked at the Krogers in College Station, and people from the northern Houston suburbs drove up here and pretty much swamped it. The parking lot overflowed, there were no buggies, and items flew off the shelf. It was crazy. Speaking of Krogers, they got their Galveston store operational even when most of the city was in ruins, that was kind of cool.

But then in Montreal millions could literally freeze to death, so its a whole different situation.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The actual power lines and related transmission stations are the most vulnerable and fragile parts of the grid. This whole business is generally exposed to the weather. You could say that it is a single point of chickening out. When something fails, the rest of the grid is supposed to act like the Internet and hold it up anyway. That is why there are so many interconnections.

However, the mechanical switch over is often monitored by frail humans who are afraid of the very electricity they are supposed to be managing so that, when the crunch comes, someone gets in a panic and drops out a station before they know that they should or should not do this. This is one of the causes of the big one in the 1960s. A breaker tripped out at Niagara Falls dropping a transmission line; this caused the net to oscillate, but it would have settled down; an operator at a remote power station saw the oscillation, and without thinking about it much dropped off the grid; this increased the oscillations and all kinds of chicken-littles thought the sky was falling and did the same. Boom! Black out about one-third of the continent.

I was stuck in the Toronto subway for about five hours before the TTC got enough juice to move us into a station.

[DazzaDazza 29]

 A good backup generator will add another $10,000-20,000 to the cost of a house for a device that will be used very infrequently.  They don't make good standard installation options.

 

yah,   hear in Australia most house only draw about 10 – 50 amps Max, we work on a 240 volt system,  the US works in 120 V I think so yours would be larger, anyway you can pic a portable diesel generator that can draw about 20 Amp or so of about $200   if you get it properly install it would probably cost you about $10,000. all though I don’t know what you mean buy a good backup generator? Your gen only needs to draw the amount used in you house, other wise it’s a waste. For the time you need it it’s not worth it, most of the time your power goes out you’re asleep or at work anyway so it’s not much help to you then. The other time you simply go out to a suburb that has power, although I am talking about proper back up generators.  I wouldn’t class a solar system a back up generator; it’s more of a tool to cut your energy usages down. E.g. cheaper bills.

 

Also, most people don't realize this, but in the event of a major natural disaster such as a hail storm, solar power systems are a power company's worst nightmare.  Not only is the system entirely torn up, it's still producing enough power to kill all the repair workers.  In an event like this, what would normally only take a couple of weeks to restore power would likely stretch into several months at a minimum.

 

That surprise me (only a bit)  Normally work place incidences are coursed but people not doing there job properly, so they cut corners.    I don’t know what the regulation are like in the US but, hear in Australia you would have to have a change over switch with any generators, solar and so on, the changeover switch simply switchers the power from grid to gen, this also prevents the supply from being feed back into the grid, even if it isn’t there the circuit breaker would probably trip out because it’s trying to freed the rest of the street with power as well thus trying drawing triple if more the amount it can handle. Even if your system is capable of feeding back to the grid, it still should have a one of theses switchers. It will only feed back in when there is power there from the grid, if it not there that, means technically your not connected to the grid. If you are running 3 phase then all 3 phases have to be present running at the voltage you work on or the switch will not turn back on to the grid.

N_O_Body  @ That’s why they like to put power underground now I guess,  As for the other situation, you would probably find that they did it on peruse, they need to “shed some load”    

 

               

 

 

 

 

 

              

[Streetwise 3]

Speaking of which...

http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=11903807

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: Streetwise

Speaking of which...

http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=11903807quote>

That weather is suppose to hit Dallas tomorrow, its already below 30F

[morriswalters 16]

Here's a danger to the grid.

www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45868/title/Electric_grid_still_very_vulnerable_to_electromagnetic_weaponry

[hym 358]

Weaponized nuclear EMP devices don't constitute a significant threat to the North American power grid.  The amount of technical skill necessary to develop a military grade nuclear EMP device is so high that even most nuclear weapons developers do not understand how to develop a good nuclear EMP device.  (To give you an idea how difficult it is to develop a weapons grade EMP device, the US employed the skills of some of the nation's foremost experts on nuclear weapon development and it took those individuals over 43 years to figure it out.)  In the event that a terrorist organization were to develop an EMP device, it would be to a military grade EMP device what a "dirty bomb" is to a nuke--scary, but not really that devastating of a weapon.  A military grade EMP device launched by another country would be a serious threat, but at the same time, the leaders of that country would be faced with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation, which is a rather bitter pill to swallow.  So until such time as terrorists are able to get their hands on and successfully deploy military grade EMP devices, they are not really a threat to the power grid.

[morriswalters 16]

I believe that EMP is the product of any  nuclear device.  The Wikipedia has an interesting article.  But on retaltiation, you can't hit back if you don't know who hit you.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

I believe that EMP is the product of any  nuclear device.  The Wikipedia has an interesting article.  But on retaltiation, you can't hit back if you don't know who hit you.

quote>

There is a significant difference between an EMP event from a weapon discharge versus the EMP blast of a dedicated EMP weapon.  The former is the side effect of physics while the latter is the result of purposeful human design (with the intent of maximizing the damage caused by such a blast).

Additionally, the US nuclear arsenal is hardened against an EMP strike.  In the event that a foreign power successfully launches an EMP strike on the US, those facilities will still be active, along with the facilities to know where that attack was launched.  None but those with a death wish will launch such a strike against a country that possesses thousands of plutonium based weapons, the ability to deliver them anywhere in the world, and is developing a nuclear EMP device with a theoretical payload that makes even today's most powerful nuclear weapons look like firecrackers.  (If you want an idea as to its theoretical level of destruction, imagine the entire country of France completely destroyed in a single blast.)