Rethinking electricity grids.

I have been a shareholder in an upper Midwest (US) electric utility for over 50 years. I speak with the CEO on a regular basis. This topic has been part of our discussions for the last two years. The companion to this are the sensors which can be placed on the cable that relay temperature information back to the utility. These two technologies can increase the ampacity on the line 30 to 50%.

I'm a utility regulator in Maryland, USA. You are 100% correct. Currently, it takes between 8 and 17 years to build a new transmission wire. Reconductoring and the reuse of existing rights of way is the strategy!

Wonderful video and message. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I'm one of the founders of CTC and co-inventor of the ACCC Conductor. Quite a challenge convincing utilities to embrace modern technology to solve modern challenges. Fortunately we've supported 300 utilities in 66 countries supplying to 1,250+ projects. There is hope :)

From what I understand, a big holdup with this has to do with the perverse incentives of investor-owned utilities: building new stuff counts as adding assets while, as noted, upgrading the wires on existing stuff counts as maintenance - that is, cost - so the former looks better on their balance books than the latter, despite the latter being a far more efficient way to increase capacity.

Dave, you're one of the best. Your regular updating of the energy/renewable landscape is appreciated and valuable.

With an aging grid people are leaning towards roof top solar + batteries or generators to provide power while the grid is down. Every state has their own rules for selling power back to the grid. Some states are revoking net metering rules. We need to encourage rooftop solar to be paired with batteries so the utility could buy power from residential customers when the grid is over loaded.

When I gradated with a BSEE in 1978, it was common knowledge that the transmission system was the "redheaded step-child" of the "Grid". It hasn't changed.

Some encouraging news for a change. Thanks as always Dave.

In The Netherlands, it’s not only about transmission lines but also about transformer capacity. 🌷🤷‍♀️

I'm a transmission planner. Unfortunately, some of what you said is not true here in NY State. Article 7 makes projects even on existing ROW very slow and costly. Our environmental requirements also force us to use matting on most projects where soil will be disturbed, even just by heavy truck traffic, driving up our transmission line work by 40%. No, that is not an exaggeration. Most reconductoring (anywhere) requires all new towers as well, more than doubling the cost. Our average 115 kV line rebuild cost (existing ROW) is around $12M per mile and growing fast. It was half that less than a decade ago. Lastly, I'll mention that reconductoring a typical transmission line will get you 2-3x the capacity, and there are limits to what you can transfer at any voltage, regardless of conductor capacity. In cold climates where our biggest peak loading will soon be the backup (auxiliary) heat strips in ducted heat pump systems all kicking on when the heat drops below 10F (because most homeowners are buying the cheap ones that can't do -10 or -20F with the heat pump alone), we're going to need much more than 2-3x the capacity of our existing network, especially when also considering the coming EV loading. We're still grappling with how we're going to handle it. Finally, what good is added transmission capacity when we can't get the added baseload generation that we need? Here's hoping that small modular reactors become a reality and FAST.

excellent video as always. one thing that occurs to me is that adding one or two mega packs(batteries) to substations would allow a much lower peak transmission to them.

3:34 Energy Central CTC Global webinar bullet points. Cable types: ACSR ACCR ACFR AECC 4:52 ACCC: lighter weight but increased strength, capacity, reduced resistance line loss, and less sag at higher temps.👍

The most important property of the high temperature low sag (HTLS) conductors, such as the ACCC type, is that their cores have a much lower coefficient of thermal expansion compared to the conventional galvanized steel core of the normal ACSR conductor. This means, that those HTLS conductors feature a knee point in their thermal expansion (which is the result of heating proportional to roughly i^2 (i=current)). This means, that, above a certain temperature (knee point) (depending also on the stringing tension), the sag(Temp) curve becomes flatter, when the aluminum becomes completely slack (no tension) and all the tensile load is transfered to the core (which has a low coefficient of thermal expansion). This allows to transmit more power per sqcm with these conductors (allowing a higher temperature than 80°C) without running into a insulation coordination issue.

I am someone with a pice of land that the transmission authority would like to traverse. The land is in Tasmania, around 70 acres mainly of cool temperate rainforest, and has been a conservation project for us for more than 40 years. Of course, we hope that they will not need to do this, but if they do it will be a fly-over between high points, and they claim our forest will be untouched. So listening to you speak about sag was very interesting. I intend to share this with TasNetworks and asking them to comment. Engaging with them has not been pleasant or fruitful to dat, but you never know. Thank you for your erudite piece - I've subscribed.

Re-conductoring is a no-brainer. What people don’t realize is the grid can handle more load. All conductors are sized for peak load which happens twice a day. How much power do you think is running through those lines at 2 AM? taking a first principle approach with energy storage means that localized batteries eliminate any grid upgrade requirement. Now of course you still need to plug in the windmills and solar panels into the grid but if you take a ridiculous example of scale and put a sea can of batteries in everybody’s backyard then we could probably power the world with extension cords! 😊 now adjust this scale to reality and we have decentralized energy storage and most importantly the elimination of curtailment which is the ultimate waste.

really good material, I was not aware( and I am a retired electrical engineer)

Brilliant as always thank you

Another very informative and encouraging video. I had no idea that reconductoring was even a thing or that several new types of conductors had been developed. Good news indeed.

A beautifully presented and very encouraging summary. Incremental improvements like these are less dramatic than cutting edge inventions that you often cover, but absolutely essential.

In Québec, they've slowly been upgrading the network over the last 2 decades. More often than not, they tear down the entire line and start from scratch. What they've been doing is upgrading lines and substations from the old 200KV to 315 KV which is the more common voltage nowadays for the second layer of the transmission network. Most of the long range transmission is done using 735 KV lines. Increasing voltage reduces losses, but requires taller towers. Another big issue to consider is redundancy. In Québec, we learned that the hard way with the 1998 ice storm. One of the big changes has been to ensure that most substations can be powered by at least 2 separate circuits.