President-Elect Barack Obama talks about upgrading the US electric grid. He talks about making it a "smart grid", so that customers can be charged by their time-of-day use, fluctuations from wind and solar can be more easily handled, and it is easier to sell electricity back to the grid. One presumes that he is also talking about upgrading the physical structure of the grid, so that it has better long distance carrying capability and so that parts that are exceeding their normal lives are replaced.

Doing all these things has obvious advantages. Our current grid has been neglected for years, so that many of its parts are nearing the end of their useful lives. Currently, most customers have no incentive for using appliances and machinery at night, during times of excess capacity. This could reduce fuel usage during the day time. Also, as many have noted, to add more wind and solar capacity to the grid, upgrading the grid is a necessity.

In this post, I will offer a few thoughts on the upsides and downsides of the upgrade.

This is a guest post from Neil Howes. Neil is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. The post describes a response to the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Green Paper” (27 August 2008).

Executive Summary

We are proposing that the Government of Australia facilitates the replacement of 50% of Australia’s base-load coal fired electricity generation by financing the building of a high capacity National Electricity Grid (NEG) by 2020. This will interconnect high value renewable energy sites for wind, solar and geothermal energy to enhanced hydro electricity pumped storage capacity enabling these low CO2e energy sources to provide base-load power to major retail and industry consumers.

The objective of the plan is to :

(1) Link the East Coast and Tasmanian electricity grids (known as the NEM - National Electricity Market) to the Western Australian electricity grid via a 1500Km high voltage DC (HVDC) connection between Norseman, WA and Pt August SA,

(2) Build a new 1000 Km HVDC connection between Leigh Creek SA and Roma, QLD to link the SA and QLG regions within the NEM, in order to access solar and geothermal sites in WA, SA, VIC,NSW and QLD.

This would also require;

(3) A high voltage AC (HVAC) extension and upgrade of the WA grid north of Norseman, via Kalgoorlie, to the proposed Pilbara local grid to access stranded natural gas (NG) power in WA mining communities and solar thermal sites in the NW of WA

(4) A HVAC interconnection from Norseman to Esperance and Albany wind power sites with increased capacity HVAC connections along the SW coast of WA t4 Perth. This infrastructure project will assist the development of all renewable energy resources, starting with developing wind resources along the SW coast of WA, West Coast of Tasmania, and coastal and highland wind sites in SA, VIC, NSW and QLD with an installed capacity of 28GW by 2020.