Old Rocks
Diamond Member
Spend, baby, spend.
Considering we currently have thousands of square miles strip mined for coal and occupied by drilling rigs, thats not too much of a problem. The electrical infrastructure just needs to be upgraded to high voltage DC.
Thousands???
The grid is set up right now to operate on AC. You are talking about disassembling what we have and reconstructing the whole thing at a cost equal to the cost of building what we have from scratch except doing it with today's dollars.
Not even Edison sould make DC work. What do you know that he didn't?
Are you a Liberal? Debt is what you apparently live to build.
The really high capacity lines in the present grid are DC.
http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/elec_eng/world_bank_hvdc.pdf
Synopsis
Beginning with a brief historical perspective on the development of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)
transmission systems, this paper presents an overview of the status of HVDC systems in the world today. It
then reviews the underlying technology of HVDC systems, and discusses the HVDC systems from a
design, construction, operation and maintenance points of view. The paper then discusses the recent
developments in HVDC technologies. The paper also presents an economic and financial comparison of
HVDC system with those of an AC system; and provides a brief review of reference installations of HVDC
systems. The paper concludes with a brief set of guidelines for choosing HVDC systems in todays
electricity system development.
In today electricity industry, in view of the liberalisation and increased effects to conserve the environment,
HVDC solutions have become more desirable for the following reasons:
· Environmental advantages
· Economical (cheapest solution)
· Asynchronous interconnections
· Power flow control
· Added benefits to the transmission (stability, power quality etc.)
Power transmission: Where the wind blows | The Economist
Where the wind blows
A grandiose plan to link Europe's electricity grids may recast wind power from its current role as a walk-on extra to being the star of the show
Jul 26th 2007 | from the print edition
PLUG in your toasteror your television or your vacuum cleanerand the electricity that surges through it is an alternating current. The question of whether the world would be powered by direct current (DC), in which electrons flow in one direction around a circuit, or by alternating current (AC), in which they jiggle back and forth, was decided in the 1880s. Thomas Edison backed DC. George Westinghouse backed AC. Westinghouse won.
The reason was that over the short distances spanned by early power grids, AC transmission suffers lower losses than DC. It thus became the industry standard. Some people, however, question that standard because over long distances high-voltage DC lines suffer lower losses than AC. Not only does that make them better in their own right, but employing them would allow electricity grids to be restructured in ways that would make wind power more attractive. That would reduce the need for new conventional (and polluting) power stations.