EDIT: Where I live, there is mostly 69 kV and 138 kV, with only a few 345 kV lines. There aren't nearly enough 500 kV lines, and 765 kV aren't present in the region.
EDIT2: Here's what a 765 kV line looks like: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3fV1hFuQmpq3hVNx5
Map of US electric grid: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=d409...
Real wiring is dominated by current, resistance of the conductor, and cooling.[0,1]
The way out is to rebuild with much high voltages and live monitoring, optionally with superconducting segments like Nexans where advantageous.
0. Ikeda, Yoshirô and Katsuhiko Yoneta. Temperature rise of a conductor due to the electric current. (1931). http://hdl.handle.net/2115/37682
PDF: https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/3768...
1. Riba, J.-R.; Llauradó, J. A Model to Calculate the Current–Temperature Relationship of Insulated and Jacketed Cables. Materials (2022) 15,6814. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196814
PDF: https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/materials/materials-15-068...
It looks like during last year's heat wave, California FINALLY broke its previous all-time peak load of 50,270mW in 24 July 2006, with a whopping 52,061mW on 6 September 2023.
Still, peak usage year over year looks flat to my eyes.
I'm sure we can't keep time-shifting and efficiency engineering ourselves out of a fundamental need for more total energy for a huge % of EVs and the push to phase out natural gas, but it might do most of the work for us. All big power hogs are getting more efficient. Electric cars can charge "whenever", but I imagine a future where just spreading the EV load between 11pm and 6am is no longer enough. Plus, we need more energy storage or non-solar) sources to handle the fact that loads are going to increasingly move to the overnight hours.
https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory...
These ‘grid enhancing technologies’ look like cheap fixes that can only buy some time before real work is needed. Sure, with better monitoring and some overload management systems you may work closer to some limits, but that’s not a solution for long-term usage increases.
Where I work, they are used a lot to adjust for renewables power surges, not to increase transit.
The bit about automaticaly shifting power to other lines in a strained network is interesting, but I wonder how much security analysis is run to make sure it’s safe (or if it’s just an automation system working within bounds the operator deemed safe).
Another big thing is streamlining regional abilities to accelerate permitting for replacing old transmission line conductors.
Modern conductors can transmit significantly more energy by better conductor design, so replacing ancient conductors is a relatively cheap way to increase transmission capacity while also reducing line sag which makes the transmission lines safer.
Is building a long high voltage line not profitable? It seems like the potential for arbitrage should allow for sufficient profit, but maybe not?
I know there's a lot of blockers, but if there's money to be made I would have thought more people would have worked around them.
Not just power grid …
US infrastructure overall is in need of a “jolt” (updating).
Bridges, highways, power grid and more are all aging and in need of massive updating / refresh.
Works where archive/ph is blocked:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-aging-u-s-power-...
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1nJZ92
These are bandaids. Fine in themselves, but not addressing the real problem.
The US really need to legalize transmission line construction!
Most power lines across the nation have <5% utilisation. Ie. They transfer in a year less than 5% of what they could have transferred.
If we had smarter systems to plan and route power transfers, we could get the network to move far far more power
Most of that overcapacity is in little local wiring, like the cables to your street, where there is likely nothing smart at all right now.
I hope we're hardening it too in prep for another Carrington event.
Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines.
(Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.)
Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stor...
The aging power grid is not capable of charging millions of EVs on instant high current demand.
Until that happens, EVs will never be useful enough to make ICE cars obsolete.
"It's the infrastructure, stupid".
The US and other countries should have spent those trillions on infrastructure instead of wasting lives and treasure on stupid military adventures. Too late now, the countries are going down the gurgler big time.
> When the wind blows, for example, power lines are cooler, allowing for more capacity.
Okay, but what do you do when the wind isn't blowing? How do you get people to only charge their cars when it's windy?
https://archive.ph/sXWU3