yet many people i talk to think it's so important that the grid gets a 'get out of reality free' card and will stay around no matter what. they think the same way about the internet when in reality both systems are precariously set on the edge of a knife and even the slightest breeze can wreck havoc.
i also likes how he points out the obvious logic that no matter how you name it, going back to localized generation is a collapse because the result is less complex and less available as a whole then what it was.
the only problem i have with jason is his love of neo tribalism and neo-shamanism, and his un-dying belief that people will automatically go back to it. (see http://anthropik.com/2006/11/christmas-eve-2050/ )
when in reality we will hit every branch on the way down that we touched(and maybe a few we did not) on our way up trying to use each as a way to stop what is beyond our control. only many generations and 100's of years later to end up in a form of tribalism if anyone survives.
A grid is a "maintain or die" system for an industrialized society, it is as important for the running of our culture as clean water is for human survival.
But that only mean that you must maintain it, its not physically impossible, you only have to work! That the worlds largest economy should be unable to do that is a crazy thought.
it is as important for the running of our culture as clean water is for human survival.
but it's not needed and just because it's important does not mean it gets said card.
But that only mean that you must maintain it, its not physically impossible, you only have to work! That the worlds largest economy should be unable to do that is a crazy thought.
you missed the point of the whole article and that is that we have passed the point of diminishing returns in running our grid where massive amounts of work and resources are needed only for a minuscule amount of gain. in such a situation a tree branch knocking out a power-line would as pointed out not just take power out on that street but the failure will cascade through the system.
I think I understand the point of the article and it is stupid.
Its like watching a caravan of cars loaded a kg from having their springs bottom out and conclude "one bump or disturbance and all cars will be destroyed, it is INEVITABLE". Build more cars and distribute the load, duh.
The problem is not foremost in the number of cars, but who will drive them, where and when do they take lunch, who tells them where to drive, who repairs, who decides, etc. etc. The problem is that so much effort is required to control and maintain the system, that it becomes less and less able to fulfill its original purpose. Much like ballooning civil administration, or commercial management remuneration.
Maintaining the grid is indeed possible. They just need to reassess their priorities, though, since it does require more resources than it used to.
This is not wrong, of course - which is why we are suffering such horrible problems from the lack of stables in cities, as supporting the huge number of horses as common in 1880 just got too complex - who (edit) would mow the hay, clean the manure, etc.
Sure, this is not a real example - but changing the way something is done is not evidence that proves only 'inferior' alternatives of reduced complexity are possible.
It just may be that priorities have changed, or a particular technology or custom has changed.
It is certainly true to recognize that increasing complexity has its own limit - but then, so what? Unless you implicitly believe that how we live right now is the only 'correct' way to live.
Again, this is not to dismiss facts behind this discussion, but the framework which often grows from it.
If, as in your reply, you focus on cars, and I say why use cars, would the ensuing discussion be enlightening or frustrating? Why are so many of the people who point out collapse as an unavoidable fate so unwilling to see that adaptability is also a social response, and one which is applied in any number of situations. Whenever diesel engines fade into the past, and for whatever reason, most people in Germany will not mourn for stinking, loud motors no longer being around. They may mourn what the motors provided, unless alternatives are used - including living in a way which does not require diesel motors. This life could be worse, could be better - welcome to the real world.
It's an interesting example, the horses. Around 1900, the car was hailed as the solution for the gridlock in the cities caused by horses and carriages. Cars only take half as much space, so now that problem is solved once and for all!
Legislation is similar. Most nations start out with a fairly basic, fairly simple set of rules. Every time there is a (real or perceived) problem, rules are added. At a certain point, the amount of rules becomes too much to enforce, or even understand with all their interactions. That point is the point of diminishing returns on complexity. So far Godesky's argument (familiar from Tainter). But he's not only smart, he's also religious, and really wants/believes an apocalypse as redemption/salvation/punishment. That is where I disagree.
As for Germany: I live close enough, and I grew up seeing 80-year olds quietly peddling into the fields, balancing a weeding tool over their shoulder.
I have the impression that rather much of the sentiment on peak oil and the future in the US goes towards either extreme: death or glory. Maybe because there is little US history without oil. Maybe because shows and make-belief seem to hold a special place in the US, judging by the popular culture that filters through to the other side of the pond.
Everything will be alright. There are many ways from now to the future. The American Way, however, is special - but everyone knows that. ;)
Also intriguing is the current experiment in European (more Dutch) traffic planning - removing all the signs, markings, etc as a way to reduce accidents. In a sense, this 'simplicity' seems to cause everyone participating in traffic to pay more attention to what is going on around them, and react appropriately to other people and vehicles - obviously, something not really imaginable in the America I visited last summer.
Complexity is one answer to a problem, but it is rarely the only one. That complexity tends to have a lot of support from those involved in creating/maintaining that complexity is another question. Including the idea, certainly not espoused by all people who believe in complexity leading to collapse, that complexity is equal to 'progress,' and thus automatically good.
Electricity grids simply follow Ohms Law, which could be translated into: you get whatever amount of copper you pay for. There is nothing inherently limited about the grid in the US except for the piss-poor maintenance it gets. Grid owners do not like to invest in upgrades because they are expensive and, if unused, are losing money. There are valid environmental concerns about yet another forest of power lines, therefor projects that are needed do get delayed. The solutions are out there: one can put the grid underground for approx. ten times the cost of high voltage lines on towers. The other part of the solution is simply to pay a few cents more per kWh for a more stable grid. It's not a big deal, really... just buy yourself a few computer games less and you are guaranteed the electricity it takes to play them.
Only if you do Ohm's Law in complex arithmetic, where Z = R + jωL - 1/(jωC).
one can put the grid underground for approx. ten times the cost of high voltage lines on towers.
We'd be better off going with superconductors.
The other part of the solution is simply to pay a few cents more per kWh for a more stable grid.
The grid can handle a lot more energy than it does; the problem is that it's sized for a peak which is reached for only part of the day. Instead of spending more per kWh, we should spread our consumption around the clock and get more out of each dollar of equipment. We might even be able to spend less, when all the savings are added up!
I am a physicist who does the job of a EE and has to deal with RF circuits all the time. Of course Ohm's law involves complex numbers for me. It can't be any other way. Ohm's law does not require the impedance to be real. It only requires the relationship between voltage and current to be linear. Which, by the way, it is not due to self heating of wires. But by the time you get to the point where that matters, your wires are usually damaged beyond repair. So I did not talk about it. :-)
Superconductors require power for cooling and lots of it. I have a whole book with a government report on the use of high Tc suprconductors for energy transmission and storage purposes. As far as I remember the technology of the early 1990s was nowhere near the engineering requirements for succesful superconducting transmission lines and generators etc.. I could be wrong but I don't think superconductors are quite there yet. In the future, maybe, for now... don't think so. Superconductors, IMHO, are just another one of those "magical" solutions to the public which are suposed to make the pain of having to pay for proper engineering solutions to go away.
As far as losses are concerned, the premier ways to minimize losses are to raise the voltage and generate locally. PV is a great way to cut I2R losses in summer when there is peak demand due to AC. We have close to 10% losses in the current system, most of which must be due to peak loads (that is simply plysics). If we can reduce peak loads, these losses will go down dramatically. That they exist in the first place is also good indicator that utilities have not kept their grids well maintaned. Which would be a political problem (due to deregulation, I suppose). It is not a technical problem, for sure.
Old houses, by the way can add 5% losses due to their wiring alone. Running loads on 120V is another one of those nonsensical US standards. It won't save your butt when the hair dryer falls into the bath tub but it will cost you four times the amount of copper compared to Europe's 240V standard to transmit the same power with the same losses.
"The grid can handle a lot more energy than it does; the problem is that it's sized for a peak which is reached for only part of the day."
True but currently local energy storage is by far less efficient than energy transmission. There is little to gain there with current technologies. Your assumption that the capital cost of the grid is a major cost driver for energy prices is also wrong. Operating the grid costs a couple of cents a kWh if its done right. If you doubled it in size, it would still be a lot less than the cost of environmentally friendly and sustainable energy sources. But I suppose that selling more energy while overloading the net beyond safe engineering limits is more lucrative to operators than helping customers to conserve and upgrade the net to be rock solid. Again, the solution to that requires social engineering, not EE. Copper, transformers, towers you can simply buy. These are catalog items. The will to invest, is not.
currently local energy storage is by far less efficient than energy transmission.
Not true in general. Consider:
Ice storage A/C. By operating at night when air temperatures are lower, the storage system can move more heat per kWh.
PHEV's. These have no alternative to storage, so no efficiency comparison.
Peaks and slumps are both problematic for the grid; peaks stress equipment and shorten its life (as well as creating the conditions for cascading failures), while slumps leave the investment not paying what it's worth. Levelling the load is good for both of those things, and a grid with a 30% margin day and night is better than a grid with a 5% margin during peak hours and 60% at 3 AM.
I thought the article was pretty dumb. It makes the same mistake of equating physical power, in this case electricity instead of oil, with economic and political power. Maybe the author has a good grasp of how the electrical grid works, but he obviously has no grasp of how the rest of the world works. California imports a lot of power from out of state, and yet in terms of economic and political power the state wields a lot more than Nevada or Arizona. This directly demonstrates the utter falsehood of the BS spouted in the article to support collapse.
The author also doesn't take into account that much of installed PV would be distributed and not add any transmission to the grid, rather it would reduce it. Once again the idea that just because electrical power generation is distributed therefore political and economic power must also be distributed is just crap. I generate my own power, but unfortunately I'm still a part of the United States and its economy. At times I really wish I wasn't, but not having to buy electrical power from the local utility does very little to increase my independence.
Thanks - I too wondered why the author saw everything through a highly centralized lens.
And when you start using clever tautologies like 'Of course, this does little to avert collapse, since this small-scale, localized approach is a collapse from the greater complexity of the international North American power grid.', then I think the author has a particular viewpoint from which he will not be moved.
I do think that both Magnus's point - it is just a matter of doing the necessary work - and the fact that 'industrial' society is not the same as a 'technological' society leads to a certain confusion. Classic industrial processes, like metal working, from smelting on, requires immense amounts of energy which is unlikely to be generated through a decentralized solar/wind based system. However, living comfortably does not require this level of energy intensity (do you really need a new car every 5 years? do you really need a car?) - and quite honestly, the amount of energy required to create and run a rail network covering an entire nation requires roughly the energy requirements and technological skills of ca 1900 - before there was a grid, by the way.
Truly, not having air conditioning in the summer in North America will pretty much resemble the entire time I was in school, in Fairfax County - we only had one day off for heat, since the rules were 100° before noon.
This is not to dispute the central role of electricity in modern societies, but the 'grid' is only part of it - the part which allows for convenience to become confused with necessity.
'Photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources may play a role in the future, but they will not save civilization, for the simple fact that these energy sources are only viable on a local scale.' I still don't know what 'civilization' he is referring to - unless he means how Americans live today is the very definition of civilization, and any variance from it is a sign of collapse. I would call changing it an 'improvement,' but as in the past, we will just have to agree to disagree - as I recall, he has no experience of other countries (could be a faulty memory, and is not a personal disparagement in this case).
Jason Godesky is a fast-crash doomer (cannibalistic hordes and all), and looking forward to it. His viewpoint on civilization (defined as coercive centralization) is too all-or-nothing. As Leanan said, we will hit all branches we used to climb up while falling down. After all, as contact between regions diminishes and central control weakens, all these regions will have to go their own way and try their own ideas; compare the different coping styles of Cuba and North Korea. The capitalist world will end, but it will not vanish, it will not explode, it will crumble bit by bit.
Godesky is an ideologue, a true believer. He really can't see anything which calls his ideology into question or, heaven forbid, contradicts it. As others have said below, he is arguing from wish-fulfillment rather than reasoning from facts and projecting possibilities.
I'd be more than happy to give him and his band of followers what they want, on an island or some disintegrating society somewhere. Maybe buy them machetes and loincloths and one-way tickets to Zimbabwe?
By his definition, a conversion of transport from internal combustion engine cars to fuel-cell cars would be "collapse" because fuel cells are much simpler. Converting from 2000 ft² homes cooled with electric A/C to 4000 ft² homes cooled with solar absorption A/C would be "collapse" because the system complexity would go down. A shift from feeding 6 billion so-so on grain, root and fruit crops and mammalian food animals to feeding 9 billion well on algae-fed fish and shrimp grown on a far smaller area would be "collapse" because the long-distance flows of foodstuffs wouldn't be necessary. Our consumption and well-being can go up during a "collapse". If that's collapse, I'm all for it.
when in reality we will hit every branch on the way down that we touched
How could that be possible? History is never so perfectly mirrored. More importantly, the resources that made those previous eras possible no longer exist. Most of the "branches" in question were fundamentally provided by agriculture, for instance. Our Green Revolution began not as a fluke, but because we had finally consumed all arable land on the planet, and had turned much of it to desert. Without fertilizers, very little of the world can still be farmed, even without climate change. I'm afraid that while this scenario has that scent of common-sense truth, I simply cannot figure out any way in which it could possibly be supported once we get down to the details.
only many generations and 100's of years later to end up in a form of tribalism if anyone survives.
I believe that the map will open up first in those areas where it most recently closed. There are even now areas where tribalism is possible--even in fairly surprising locales. This will only increase as civilization contracts in fits and starts. Sure, in 50 years, you'll undoubtedly be able to find functioning cities. But you'll also be able to find new tribes forming, not out of ideology, but because it's the only way of life that fundamentally works. Even in New Orleans after Katrina, people began forming tribes almost immediately. In any crisis, humans instinctively form tribal structures. I think it's evident that we can expect more, not less, of this as the alternative breaks down.
I did a quick google, and the meme [is] that "The industry estimates that $100 billion is needed in new transmission capacity" or "issues cost the U.S. economy between $119 billion – $188 billion annually" or "The industry estimates that $100 billion is needed in new ..."
That sounds big, but do you really think we "can't maintain the grid now" or do you think we are just too cheap and distracted?
A similar google shows the war in Iraq's costs running towards a trillion.
No, I think where we are [with] the electrical grid is like the guy who owns an old car ... trying to get a few more miles out of it before believing the mechanic and doing the overhaul.
I just went on another hike, this one just across town, 4mi, for a burger. A very cheap and very enjoyable outing. It also is nice to find that I can put on thermals and a wool shirt (old tech) and be toasty warm in 30-40F, without a jacket.
That may seem like a non sequitur, but I see it as all related, especially when you want to tell me that "price in any one currency system is a very bad indicator of the actual cost."
You're right, sometimes the cost is very small in relation to the value.
Odie,
I think he is referring to "externalities".
On the other hand, continuing from our earlier conversation, you are talking about situations where a good pair of hiking boots and good thermals are "priceless" when hiking up a cold rocky mountain trail. I fully agree. This weekend as temps sunk into the low 30's (F) here in the Bay area, I pulled out that old sweater & layered it under my thin jacket. Layers took the bite out of that "brisk" arctic front.
Cheers.
The US consumes about 4000 billion kWh/year. If we spent $100 billion on new transmission capacity over 10 years, that's $10 billion/year or 0.25¢/kWh. I get the feeling this is manageable.
But electric consumption is very peaky; the average is less than half our total nameplate generating capacity. If we cap or slightly reduce our peak electric consumption while raising the average, we could move much more energy over the same grid without any expansions. I don't know what this might cost; it depends far too much on the specific technology involved (from ice-storage A/C to PHEV cars). Some of these measures may reduce costs, by eliminating the need for peaking plants and spinning reserves. If we got seriously into vehicles like the Chevy Volt and every year we replaced 8.5 million old cars achieving 22 MPG average (13,000 mi/yr) with 8.5 million new ones using 250 Wh/mile for 2/3 of their driving and 50 MPG for the rest, we'd boost electric consumption by 18.4 billion kWh/yr (about 0.46%) while cutting gasoline use by about 4.3 billion gallons/year/year. At 10¢/kWh and $3/gallon, the juice would cost $1.84 billion/year and the gasoline savings would be $12.9 billion/year. (This could be doubled by building more than 50% PHEV's.)
That would pay for the grid improvements right there. Strange, innit?
I still blame Enron for the state of the grid. Ten years ago they were lobbying and pushing through all these "competition" measures against electric utilities across the continent. One of the distortions they pushed for: separate ownership of generation and transmission. Their idea was that they'd sit around and trade kilowatt-hour futures and get rich. Maintainig the grid would be up to the Reliability Council, which is a government agency with all its inefficiencies and opportunities for corruption ... so much for small government.
Now that Enron is gone, some of their big-cheeses are in jail, but the regulatory distortions are still on the books. My own electric co-op had to separate its 'wires' business from its generation, and my bill has gone up.
Before Enron, I had a pretty good deal on electricity from a hydroelectric dam built by LBJ back in the bad old communist days of the 20th century. </sarcasm>
Electrical deregulation will be a thing of the past. Within a few years I have no doubt we will have moved back to more regulation and put this disaster of deregulation behind us. We'll look back on it as just another failure of uber-rightwing ideology, the false idea that everything will operate more efficiently and cheaply under competition. Some systems simply must be centrally planned in order to operate effectively.
I view the ideological course over the next century being one of determining which systems benefit from competition and free markets, and which benefit from central planning and coordination. The idea that free markets work for everything is just as false as the idea that central planning works for everything. We need to move beyond black and white ideology and go with what actually works on a case by case basis.
Electrical deregulation is just an example of out of control ideology, and once it fails soundly in the Republican bastion of Texas it will be dead everywhere.
Think the Texas Railroad Commission. Possibly one of the great 20th century examples of state regulation in the interest of big business, and the model chosen by the founders of OPEC itself.
Texas has always been as much about 'government-business statism' as it has about 'free markets'.
What Texas' billionaires want is a stable society and regulatory platform which allows them to monopolise their markets.
I would call Texas 'populist' rather than free markets? You get more kick there out of right-to-life or Intelligent Design, I suspect, than one does out of deregulated electricity.
And the US electricity industry is far from being the most deregulated in the world.
It's been a while since I looked at the issue carefully, but I am fairly certain the New Zealand, the UK and others have far more liberalized systems than the US or Texas.
I think it depends on the State, the degree of deregulation.
Yes the UK is pretty deregulated (but we have a strong regulator). In short, generation is less regulated, distribution and transmission (the latter is the Grid) are much more heavily regulated.
We use a 'power pool' to set electricity prices, and you can sign up with whichever supplier you choose. This is such a nightmare (most have bad systems at all levels) that a big fraction of people don't switch.
It's also very hard to get a proper hedging contract ie one that caps your power price.
New Zealand I think is highly deregulated. They also had a summer long blackout in Auckland a few years ago.
Godesky's Tainterite analysis of the grid is definitely interesting.
But we haven't had a massive failure in more than 3 years. I'm not sure we've hit the complexity wall yet.
Godesky quote from his response to comments:
Historically, very few complex societies have collapsed due to a lack of resources. In fact, that answer is a non-starter, since managing scarce resources is one of the primary reasons humans submit to complex societies in the first place. The greater question is why they fail in their very reason for existence.
That's the same description in which I dub myself "Space Pope," and begin with an appropriated quote from Ghost in the Shell fending off allegations that I'm an AI--it's more than a little tongue-in-cheek. There, I was poking a little fun at the "doomer" stereotype.
The complexity of electric utility operations is in the process of being revolutionized - with the addition of vastly more complexity - through the move to smart grid technology. This recent conference is typical of the buzz (irrational exuberance?) surrounding smart grid architecture, based on the integration of communications technology. It will be interesting to see how far down this road it will be possible to go. Its loudest proponents seem to see additional connectedness as equivalent to additional energy, whereas its critics discuss the diffculties inherent in applying huge flows of information to the control of an exquisitly balanced system in real time. The security of that information is a particular concern.
Grids can be controlled (to the best of my knowledge) by either frequency or voltage as the primary variable.
ERCOT (most of Texas#) is an electrical island that varies frequency first because Texas is fairly tightly interconnected and the entire grid can uniformly vary frequency.
The rest of North America varies voltage as a first resort because of the looser interconnections.
Alan
# ERCOT is Texas minus El Paso, Beaumont and northern tip of Texas. Peak demand is close to 70 GW. The 60 Hz "clock" for ERCOT is totally off sequence from that of the Eastern or Western US clocks.
As I recall, ERCOT is designedly isolated from the rest of the North American power grid, so that it does not suffer from Federal Regulation.
Texans like their independence, in many ways ;-).
TXU wants to build 10 new coal plants, using conventional technology. Which will be an environmental disaster, but I have no doubt they will build them (hoping 3 or 4 nukes get build as well or instead, to at least slow down the problem).
I heart Jason Godesky.
If we can't maintain the grid now, trying to maintain it, let alone expand it, in an energy-poor future doesn't seem likely.
yet many people i talk to think it's so important that the grid gets a 'get out of reality free' card and will stay around no matter what. they think the same way about the internet when in reality both systems are precariously set on the edge of a knife and even the slightest breeze can wreck havoc.
i also likes how he points out the obvious logic that no matter how you name it, going back to localized generation is a collapse because the result is less complex and less available as a whole then what it was.
the only problem i have with jason is his love of neo tribalism and neo-shamanism, and his un-dying belief that people will automatically go back to it. (see http://anthropik.com/2006/11/christmas-eve-2050/ )
when in reality we will hit every branch on the way down that we touched(and maybe a few we did not) on our way up trying to use each as a way to stop what is beyond our control. only many generations and 100's of years later to end up in a form of tribalism if anyone survives.
A grid is a "maintain or die" system for an industrialized society, it is as important for the running of our culture as clean water is for human survival.
But that only mean that you must maintain it, its not physically impossible, you only have to work! That the worlds largest economy should be unable to do that is a crazy thought.
but it's not needed and just because it's important does not mean it gets said card.
you missed the point of the whole article and that is that we have passed the point of diminishing returns in running our grid where massive amounts of work and resources are needed only for a minuscule amount of gain. in such a situation a tree branch knocking out a power-line would as pointed out not just take power out on that street but the failure will cascade through the system.
I think I understand the point of the article and it is stupid.
Its like watching a caravan of cars loaded a kg from having their springs bottom out and conclude "one bump or disturbance and all cars will be destroyed, it is INEVITABLE". Build more cars and distribute the load, duh.
The problem is not foremost in the number of cars, but who will drive them, where and when do they take lunch, who tells them where to drive, who repairs, who decides, etc. etc. The problem is that so much effort is required to control and maintain the system, that it becomes less and less able to fulfill its original purpose. Much like ballooning civil administration, or commercial management remuneration.
Maintaining the grid is indeed possible. They just need to reassess their priorities, though, since it does require more resources than it used to.
This is not wrong, of course - which is why we are suffering such horrible problems from the lack of stables in cities, as supporting the huge number of horses as common in 1880 just got too complex - who (edit) would mow the hay, clean the manure, etc.
Sure, this is not a real example - but changing the way something is done is not evidence that proves only 'inferior' alternatives of reduced complexity are possible.
It just may be that priorities have changed, or a particular technology or custom has changed.
It is certainly true to recognize that increasing complexity has its own limit - but then, so what? Unless you implicitly believe that how we live right now is the only 'correct' way to live.
Again, this is not to dismiss facts behind this discussion, but the framework which often grows from it.
If, as in your reply, you focus on cars, and I say why use cars, would the ensuing discussion be enlightening or frustrating? Why are so many of the people who point out collapse as an unavoidable fate so unwilling to see that adaptability is also a social response, and one which is applied in any number of situations. Whenever diesel engines fade into the past, and for whatever reason, most people in Germany will not mourn for stinking, loud motors no longer being around. They may mourn what the motors provided, unless alternatives are used - including living in a way which does not require diesel motors. This life could be worse, could be better - welcome to the real world.
This is not collapse, I would argue.
It's an interesting example, the horses. Around 1900, the car was hailed as the solution for the gridlock in the cities caused by horses and carriages. Cars only take half as much space, so now that problem is solved once and for all!
Legislation is similar. Most nations start out with a fairly basic, fairly simple set of rules. Every time there is a (real or perceived) problem, rules are added. At a certain point, the amount of rules becomes too much to enforce, or even understand with all their interactions. That point is the point of diminishing returns on complexity. So far Godesky's argument (familiar from Tainter). But he's not only smart, he's also religious, and really wants/believes an apocalypse as redemption/salvation/punishment. That is where I disagree.
As for Germany: I live close enough, and I grew up seeing 80-year olds quietly peddling into the fields, balancing a weeding tool over their shoulder.
I have the impression that rather much of the sentiment on peak oil and the future in the US goes towards either extreme: death or glory. Maybe because there is little US history without oil. Maybe because shows and make-belief seem to hold a special place in the US, judging by the popular culture that filters through to the other side of the pond.
Everything will be alright. There are many ways from now to the future. The American Way, however, is special - but everyone knows that. ;)
Also intriguing is the current experiment in European (more Dutch) traffic planning - removing all the signs, markings, etc as a way to reduce accidents. In a sense, this 'simplicity' seems to cause everyone participating in traffic to pay more attention to what is going on around them, and react appropriately to other people and vehicles - obviously, something not really imaginable in the America I visited last summer.
Complexity is one answer to a problem, but it is rarely the only one. That complexity tends to have a lot of support from those involved in creating/maintaining that complexity is another question. Including the idea, certainly not espoused by all people who believe in complexity leading to collapse, that complexity is equal to 'progress,' and thus automatically good.
Yes, that is the key cultural change that will need to happen: wanting enough instead of wanting more.
Electricity grids simply follow Ohms Law, which could be translated into: you get whatever amount of copper you pay for. There is nothing inherently limited about the grid in the US except for the piss-poor maintenance it gets. Grid owners do not like to invest in upgrades because they are expensive and, if unused, are losing money. There are valid environmental concerns about yet another forest of power lines, therefor projects that are needed do get delayed. The solutions are out there: one can put the grid underground for approx. ten times the cost of high voltage lines on towers. The other part of the solution is simply to pay a few cents more per kWh for a more stable grid. It's not a big deal, really... just buy yourself a few computer games less and you are guaranteed the electricity it takes to play them.
Only if you do Ohm's Law in complex arithmetic, where Z = R + jωL - 1/(jωC).
We'd be better off going with superconductors.
The grid can handle a lot more energy than it does; the problem is that it's sized for a peak which is reached for only part of the day. Instead of spending more per kWh, we should spread our consumption around the clock and get more out of each dollar of equipment. We might even be able to spend less, when all the savings are added up!
I am a physicist who does the job of a EE and has to deal with RF circuits all the time. Of course Ohm's law involves complex numbers for me. It can't be any other way. Ohm's law does not require the impedance to be real. It only requires the relationship between voltage and current to be linear. Which, by the way, it is not due to self heating of wires. But by the time you get to the point where that matters, your wires are usually damaged beyond repair. So I did not talk about it. :-)
Superconductors require power for cooling and lots of it. I have a whole book with a government report on the use of high Tc suprconductors for energy transmission and storage purposes. As far as I remember the technology of the early 1990s was nowhere near the engineering requirements for succesful superconducting transmission lines and generators etc.. I could be wrong but I don't think superconductors are quite there yet. In the future, maybe, for now... don't think so. Superconductors, IMHO, are just another one of those "magical" solutions to the public which are suposed to make the pain of having to pay for proper engineering solutions to go away.
As far as losses are concerned, the premier ways to minimize losses are to raise the voltage and generate locally. PV is a great way to cut I2R losses in summer when there is peak demand due to AC. We have close to 10% losses in the current system, most of which must be due to peak loads (that is simply plysics). If we can reduce peak loads, these losses will go down dramatically. That they exist in the first place is also good indicator that utilities have not kept their grids well maintaned. Which would be a political problem (due to deregulation, I suppose). It is not a technical problem, for sure.
Old houses, by the way can add 5% losses due to their wiring alone. Running loads on 120V is another one of those nonsensical US standards. It won't save your butt when the hair dryer falls into the bath tub but it will cost you four times the amount of copper compared to Europe's 240V standard to transmit the same power with the same losses.
"The grid can handle a lot more energy than it does; the problem is that it's sized for a peak which is reached for only part of the day."
True but currently local energy storage is by far less efficient than energy transmission. There is little to gain there with current technologies. Your assumption that the capital cost of the grid is a major cost driver for energy prices is also wrong. Operating the grid costs a couple of cents a kWh if its done right. If you doubled it in size, it would still be a lot less than the cost of environmentally friendly and sustainable energy sources. But I suppose that selling more energy while overloading the net beyond safe engineering limits is more lucrative to operators than helping customers to conserve and upgrade the net to be rock solid. Again, the solution to that requires social engineering, not EE. Copper, transformers, towers you can simply buy. These are catalog items. The will to invest, is not.
Not true in general. Consider:
Peaks and slumps are both problematic for the grid; peaks stress equipment and shorten its life (as well as creating the conditions for cascading failures), while slumps leave the investment not paying what it's worth. Levelling the load is good for both of those things, and a grid with a 30% margin day and night is better than a grid with a 5% margin during peak hours and 60% at 3 AM.
A "get out of reality free" card. I love it!
I thought the article was pretty dumb. It makes the same mistake of equating physical power, in this case electricity instead of oil, with economic and political power. Maybe the author has a good grasp of how the electrical grid works, but he obviously has no grasp of how the rest of the world works. California imports a lot of power from out of state, and yet in terms of economic and political power the state wields a lot more than Nevada or Arizona. This directly demonstrates the utter falsehood of the BS spouted in the article to support collapse.
The author also doesn't take into account that much of installed PV would be distributed and not add any transmission to the grid, rather it would reduce it. Once again the idea that just because electrical power generation is distributed therefore political and economic power must also be distributed is just crap. I generate my own power, but unfortunately I'm still a part of the United States and its economy. At times I really wish I wasn't, but not having to buy electrical power from the local utility does very little to increase my independence.
Thanks - I too wondered why the author saw everything through a highly centralized lens.
And when you start using clever tautologies like 'Of course, this does little to avert collapse, since this small-scale, localized approach is a collapse from the greater complexity of the international North American power grid.', then I think the author has a particular viewpoint from which he will not be moved.
I do think that both Magnus's point - it is just a matter of doing the necessary work - and the fact that 'industrial' society is not the same as a 'technological' society leads to a certain confusion. Classic industrial processes, like metal working, from smelting on, requires immense amounts of energy which is unlikely to be generated through a decentralized solar/wind based system. However, living comfortably does not require this level of energy intensity (do you really need a new car every 5 years? do you really need a car?) - and quite honestly, the amount of energy required to create and run a rail network covering an entire nation requires roughly the energy requirements and technological skills of ca 1900 - before there was a grid, by the way.
Truly, not having air conditioning in the summer in North America will pretty much resemble the entire time I was in school, in Fairfax County - we only had one day off for heat, since the rules were 100° before noon.
This is not to dispute the central role of electricity in modern societies, but the 'grid' is only part of it - the part which allows for convenience to become confused with necessity.
'Photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources may play a role in the future, but they will not save civilization, for the simple fact that these energy sources are only viable on a local scale.' I still don't know what 'civilization' he is referring to - unless he means how Americans live today is the very definition of civilization, and any variance from it is a sign of collapse. I would call changing it an 'improvement,' but as in the past, we will just have to agree to disagree - as I recall, he has no experience of other countries (could be a faulty memory, and is not a personal disparagement in this case).
Jason Godesky is a fast-crash doomer (cannibalistic hordes and all), and looking forward to it. His viewpoint on civilization (defined as coercive centralization) is too all-or-nothing. As Leanan said, we will hit all branches we used to climb up while falling down. After all, as contact between regions diminishes and central control weakens, all these regions will have to go their own way and try their own ideas; compare the different coping styles of Cuba and North Korea. The capitalist world will end, but it will not vanish, it will not explode, it will crumble bit by bit.
Godesky is an ideologue, a true believer. He really can't see anything which calls his ideology into question or, heaven forbid, contradicts it. As others have said below, he is arguing from wish-fulfillment rather than reasoning from facts and projecting possibilities.
I'd be more than happy to give him and his band of followers what they want, on an island or some disintegrating society somewhere. Maybe buy them machetes and loincloths and one-way tickets to Zimbabwe?
By his definition, a conversion of transport from internal combustion engine cars to fuel-cell cars would be "collapse" because fuel cells are much simpler. Converting from 2000 ft² homes cooled with electric A/C to 4000 ft² homes cooled with solar absorption A/C would be "collapse" because the system complexity would go down. A shift from feeding 6 billion so-so on grain, root and fruit crops and mammalian food animals to feeding 9 billion well on algae-fed fish and shrimp grown on a far smaller area would be "collapse" because the long-distance flows of foodstuffs wouldn't be necessary. Our consumption and well-being can go up during a "collapse". If that's collapse, I'm all for it.
He says my blog "usually misses the big picture". I think he lacks a grasp of irony.
when in reality we will hit every branch on the way down that we touched
How could that be possible? History is never so perfectly mirrored. More importantly, the resources that made those previous eras possible no longer exist. Most of the "branches" in question were fundamentally provided by agriculture, for instance. Our Green Revolution began not as a fluke, but because we had finally consumed all arable land on the planet, and had turned much of it to desert. Without fertilizers, very little of the world can still be farmed, even without climate change. I'm afraid that while this scenario has that scent of common-sense truth, I simply cannot figure out any way in which it could possibly be supported once we get down to the details.
only many generations and 100's of years later to end up in a form of tribalism if anyone survives.
I believe that the map will open up first in those areas where it most recently closed. There are even now areas where tribalism is possible--even in fairly surprising locales. This will only increase as civilization contracts in fits and starts. Sure, in 50 years, you'll undoubtedly be able to find functioning cities. But you'll also be able to find new tribes forming, not out of ideology, but because it's the only way of life that fundamentally works. Even in New Orleans after Katrina, people began forming tribes almost immediately. In any crisis, humans instinctively form tribal structures. I think it's evident that we can expect more, not less, of this as the alternative breaks down.
I did a quick google, and the meme [is] that "The industry estimates that $100 billion is needed in new transmission capacity" or "issues cost the U.S. economy between $119 billion – $188 billion annually" or "The industry estimates that $100 billion is needed in new ..."
That sounds big, but do you really think we "can't maintain the grid now" or do you think we are just too cheap and distracted?
A similar google shows the war in Iraq's costs running towards a trillion.
No, I think where we are [with] the electrical grid is like the guy who owns an old car ... trying to get a few more miles out of it before believing the mechanic and doing the overhaul.
and how many times has it been pointed out that price in any one currency system is a very bad indicator of the actual cost of something?
I just went on another hike, this one just across town, 4mi, for a burger. A very cheap and very enjoyable outing. It also is nice to find that I can put on thermals and a wool shirt (old tech) and be toasty warm in 30-40F, without a jacket.
That may seem like a non sequitur, but I see it as all related, especially when you want to tell me that "price in any one currency system is a very bad indicator of the actual cost."
You're right, sometimes the cost is very small in relation to the value.
Odie,
I think he is referring to "externalities".
On the other hand, continuing from our earlier conversation, you are talking about situations where a good pair of hiking boots and good thermals are "priceless" when hiking up a cold rocky mountain trail. I fully agree. This weekend as temps sunk into the low 30's (F) here in the Bay area, I pulled out that old sweater & layered it under my thin jacket. Layers took the bite out of that "brisk" arctic front.
Cheers.
The US consumes about 4000 billion kWh/year. If we spent $100 billion on new transmission capacity over 10 years, that's $10 billion/year or 0.25¢/kWh. I get the feeling this is manageable.
But electric consumption is very peaky; the average is less than half our total nameplate generating capacity. If we cap or slightly reduce our peak electric consumption while raising the average, we could move much more energy over the same grid without any expansions. I don't know what this might cost; it depends far too much on the specific technology involved (from ice-storage A/C to PHEV cars). Some of these measures may reduce costs, by eliminating the need for peaking plants and spinning reserves. If we got seriously into vehicles like the Chevy Volt and every year we replaced 8.5 million old cars achieving 22 MPG average (13,000 mi/yr) with 8.5 million new ones using 250 Wh/mile for 2/3 of their driving and 50 MPG for the rest, we'd boost electric consumption by 18.4 billion kWh/yr (about 0.46%) while cutting gasoline use by about 4.3 billion gallons/year/year. At 10¢/kWh and $3/gallon, the juice would cost $1.84 billion/year and the gasoline savings would be $12.9 billion/year. (This could be doubled by building more than 50% PHEV's.)
That would pay for the grid improvements right there. Strange, innit?
I still blame Enron for the state of the grid. Ten years ago they were lobbying and pushing through all these "competition" measures against electric utilities across the continent. One of the distortions they pushed for: separate ownership of generation and transmission. Their idea was that they'd sit around and trade kilowatt-hour futures and get rich. Maintainig the grid would be up to the Reliability Council, which is a government agency with all its inefficiencies and opportunities for corruption ... so much for small government.
Now that Enron is gone, some of their big-cheeses are in jail, but the regulatory distortions are still on the books. My own electric co-op had to separate its 'wires' business from its generation, and my bill has gone up.
Before Enron, I had a pretty good deal on electricity from a hydroelectric dam built by LBJ back in the bad old communist days of the 20th century. </sarcasm>
Electrical deregulation will be a thing of the past. Within a few years I have no doubt we will have moved back to more regulation and put this disaster of deregulation behind us. We'll look back on it as just another failure of uber-rightwing ideology, the false idea that everything will operate more efficiently and cheaply under competition. Some systems simply must be centrally planned in order to operate effectively.
I view the ideological course over the next century being one of determining which systems benefit from competition and free markets, and which benefit from central planning and coordination. The idea that free markets work for everything is just as false as the idea that central planning works for everything. We need to move beyond black and white ideology and go with what actually works on a case by case basis.
Electrical deregulation is just an example of out of control ideology, and once it fails soundly in the Republican bastion of Texas it will be dead everywhere.
Think the Texas Railroad Commission. Possibly one of the great 20th century examples of state regulation in the interest of big business, and the model chosen by the founders of OPEC itself.
Texas has always been as much about 'government-business statism' as it has about 'free markets'.
What Texas' billionaires want is a stable society and regulatory platform which allows them to monopolise their markets.
I would call Texas 'populist' rather than free markets? You get more kick there out of right-to-life or Intelligent Design, I suspect, than one does out of deregulated electricity.
And the US electricity industry is far from being the most deregulated in the world.
It's been a while since I looked at the issue carefully, but I am fairly certain the New Zealand, the UK and others have far more liberalized systems than the US or Texas.
I think it depends on the State, the degree of deregulation.
Yes the UK is pretty deregulated (but we have a strong regulator). In short, generation is less regulated, distribution and transmission (the latter is the Grid) are much more heavily regulated.
We use a 'power pool' to set electricity prices, and you can sign up with whichever supplier you choose. This is such a nightmare (most have bad systems at all levels) that a big fraction of people don't switch.
It's also very hard to get a proper hedging contract ie one that caps your power price.
New Zealand I think is highly deregulated. They also had a summer long blackout in Auckland a few years ago.
Godesky's Tainterite analysis of the grid is definitely interesting.
But we haven't had a massive failure in more than 3 years. I'm not sure we've hit the complexity wall yet.
Godesky quote from his response to comments:
That's pure Tainter.
A.
Did you follow through to Jason's self description?
I'm sure such things will show up in the forthcoming TOD "concept map."
Not in my concept map;-)
That's the same description in which I dub myself "Space Pope," and begin with an appropriated quote from Ghost in the Shell fending off allegations that I'm an AI--it's more than a little tongue-in-cheek. There, I was poking a little fun at the "doomer" stereotype.
The complexity of electric utility operations is in the process of being revolutionized - with the addition of vastly more complexity - through the move to smart grid technology. This recent conference is typical of the buzz (irrational exuberance?) surrounding smart grid architecture, based on the integration of communications technology. It will be interesting to see how far down this road it will be possible to go. Its loudest proponents seem to see additional connectedness as equivalent to additional energy, whereas its critics discuss the diffculties inherent in applying huge flows of information to the control of an exquisitly balanced system in real time. The security of that information is a particular concern.
The most basic information can be had by monitoring the frequenzy.
Powerplant: Low frequenzy, push out more if I can. High freqenzy, cut back or disconnect. To much in either direction give up. Ok frequenzy reconnect.
Load: Low frequenzy shut down, high frequenzy suck more if I can, ok frequenzy reconnect after a random wait.
The more active parts can then control resonance and if the grid fractures the parts will tend to self stabilize.
Grids can be controlled (to the best of my knowledge) by either frequency or voltage as the primary variable.
ERCOT (most of Texas#) is an electrical island that varies frequency first because Texas is fairly tightly interconnected and the entire grid can uniformly vary frequency.
The rest of North America varies voltage as a first resort because of the looser interconnections.
Alan
# ERCOT is Texas minus El Paso, Beaumont and northern tip of Texas. Peak demand is close to 70 GW. The 60 Hz "clock" for ERCOT is totally off sequence from that of the Eastern or Western US clocks.
As I recall, ERCOT is designedly isolated from the rest of the North American power grid, so that it does not suffer from Federal Regulation.
Texans like their independence, in many ways ;-).
TXU wants to build 10 new coal plants, using conventional technology. Which will be an environmental disaster, but I have no doubt they will build them (hoping 3 or 4 nukes get build as well or instead, to at least slow down the problem).