In a lot of ways KISS is a good engineering principal and anything that brings extra management steps will need to be scrutinized heavily. Especially at transmission
Honest Q: why isn't every transmission reconductoring happening at scale if its such a big unlock? Are the suppliers not yet mature? Tech issues/tradeoffs that don't get a lot of discussion? Misalignment of utility incentives? Lack of insurable track record? Impractical to take lines out of service?
One other dynamic is that until now, peak load has been in the mid afternoon on a hot summers weekday, because electricity's primary load is industrial customers and air conditioning.
If we add EVs and heat pumps, those loads will be happening at night and in the cold, you can rate your line higher
I don't really buy the passing higher prices to customers bit in its entirety though. The renewable gen decided to build there with some knowledge of the congestion pattern. The low prices are a result if that happens. They could have paid more to relieve it in the first place
I suppose renewables can always pay whatever exorbitant new infrastructure construction bill the interconnection study random number generator comes up with. But that's not a good way to stay in business
And this is why what we need is *planning*, centralization, and perhaps more vertical integration. In a DER world, where you build transmission is where you get generation. They are not as separate as the 90s RTO power plant and high voltage line model
But this thread is more about centralization along power transmission and building large scale transmission lines - power prices should be a very clear signal about where lines are valuable. It doesn't take a genius to see that New England - Hydro Quebec lines are worth building
Hot take but if your climate plan is to load up with 10x nameplate capacity from what you normally have you'd think that would have knock on effects in how much it would cost to build the network that can deliver that
Especially when said generators get paid on the energy they deliver to the grid, which may or may not actually need that energy at the times and places produced. Might be controversial but I say ix difficulty of renewables is on renewables themselves
It's not on the RTOs and ratepayers to bail out renewable gen that site on congested paths either unless there is clear net benefits which is... Complicated
Yeah it's always been an option, there's just a good reason it's not usually picked. If you have the option to do a proper rebuild, reconductoring just has fewer benefits
Any idea if vendors have roadmaps to address tech performance issues? Any sense if transmission customers have a lagging perception compared to state of the art offerings?
Comments
https://x.com/xiaowang1984/status/1805996572490019079?t=C_RbVYDt1MkkBf7MPN8P7w&s=19
https://x.com/xiaowang1984/status/1791142035073671317?t=n904dg0oLeywEclo6fnkuQ&s=19
And when there is grid congestion, how motivated is the utility to fix it, vs just passing on higher bills to consumers?
If we add EVs and heat pumps, those loads will be happening at night and in the cold, you can rate your line higher
https://bsky.app/profile/worstcaseeng.bsky.social/post/3lausqlzujs2s