Related Sections: Green Tech Shift
SHIFT: What would it REALLY take to green the U.S. power grid?
Last November, when the president was still President-Elect Barack Obama, we asked him to humbly consider a "New New Deal" on clean energy in the United States. The focus was on the part of the power grid that most of us are more familiar with: the part from your power pole to your house.
And a lot has happened on that front, with money set aside in the stimulus package to help people make their homes more energy efficient.
But let's talk bigger. What would it take to green the entire power grid? It would mean not just rethinking the grid. It might mean letting go of some cherished political battles.
Green Power Needs Storage
One big strike against gigawatt-scale renewable energy like solar and wind is its intermittency — the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Especially at night when all the good stuff is on TV and I need my microwave to work.
Utility-scale storage solves this challenge. But that doesn't mean we need to wait for new cutting-edge battery technologies, although that's cool, too. Stored water has been in use for 30+ years; water is pumped into a pond on a higher level during the day when renewable energy is flowing, and then flows out through a turbine at night to generate real-time energy. Molten salts, flywheels and compressed air are other ideas.
And since power plants using nonrenewables, like natural gas, usually kick in at peak demand times when renewable-energy generation has waned for the day, we should also continue looking at biofuel replacements that would use the existing "dirty" generating technology, but in a sustainable, emission-free way.
Stop Focusing on Carbon
And speaking of emissions, let's drop the whole carbon thing. For now anyway.
Regulating carbon emissions isn't the rallying cry it was in 2007. And it's not because we have gnat-like attention spans; unemployment has doubled in a few months and the economy has been taking hit after hit since the beginning of 2008. When people lose their jobs, saving drowning polar bears becomes less relevant.
Mr. President, you've put a cap-and-trade program into your proposed budget — shelve it for a couple of years. Since emission-reducing agreements like Kyoto involve cutting carbon levels to some past level by 2050 (or some other far-out date), how much ground do we really lose by accomplishing the same goal by 2053 in the 2011 budget?
In this charged political environment, it'll defang your opponents, who either don't believe in climate change or call carbon regulation a drag on an economy that's at its worst place since the Great Depression. And if you follow my next idea, you'll get a jumpstart on those emission reductions anyway.
Pass that National Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)
We mentioned this in November. RPS' in most states dictate that a certain percentage of power generated and used in the state must come from renewable sources or the utility generating that power must pay a fine. We need one to cover the whole country.
Another knock on renewable energy is its cost. Research into newer, more efficient technology will bring those costs down, but part of this inefficiency also comes from looking for the wrong kind of green power in the wrong places. And when it's left up to each state, there's more incentive to subsidize the less efficient renewable energy sources. What if wind power in Texas was so cheap it could fuel the entire state's needs and maybe those of its neighbors, at less than coal? Does it make sense for someone to get large tax breaks for solar farms there, when those subsidy dollars would be better deployed elsewhere?
A national RPS lets you use what's most effective and at hand. It would also bring in parts of the country, like the southeast, where renewable energy development has been lagging. And since the already-passed stimulus package has set aside $50 billion for renewable energy development and grid improvements, we've got a jump on it.
Break It Down
Our power grid isn't monolithic; it's a bunch of smaller pieces working together. And that's good news, since a lot of small technological breakthroughs — in generation technology, in biofuels development, in electrical flow control — can be brought to bear at the same time.
Every step taken will take us further down the road to a greener and more reliable energy system that can grow with the country, and maybe even allow us to export that expertise elsewhere.
By Default at 9:40 PM ON 04/23/09
one thing that a lot of people don't want to do is just give away these emission-cutting devices. hybrid cars and their expensive batteries, as well as their naturally high cost. in order to make these renewable energies efficient, they need to put money into research, which they then need to tax the people in order to get it back into their hands. no one is simply willing to give money to save the earth out of the kindness of their hearts. true progress IS going to hit you in the pocketbook.
By ForwardThinker at 10:25 PM ON 04/23/09
Think Global Dynamics (pardon the pun). What's really needed is a super-conducting power grid. No limits on current-flow, and no loss of current over the grid. We could transfer energy around the globe (think world, not USA only). Power is a world-wide commodity that could be sold back/forth as supply/demand is made. We could all power our cars from Hydrogen made at home from Electric and water. This is possible TODAY, if we can get the car companys to make them STANDARD. I'd pay $5,000 for a home-recharger, and cheap electric to recharge.
By Default at 11:01 PM ON 04/23/09
but we cant send energy to other places if the efficiency is horrible. our power lines only transfer 50% of the original energy successfully, and that's just from power plant to housing. if we're talking nationwide, or even worldwide, a LOT of things are gonna have to be tweaked for some serious gain to take place, and that's even before we go substantially green.
By Gabe at 8:15 AM ON 04/24/09
Any idea that pushes technology that is neither mature nor economically advantageous is a recipe for screwing up the whole thing.
Science will develop the answers that businesses and consumers want in due time. Let them work it out on their own and keep government out of it.
By tekkblade at 10:57 AM ON 04/24/09
Gabe thank you for a voice of reason. Give research firms and companies incentives to go green, but throwing money, that’s forcefully taken from my paycheck, won't fix the problem. Yes we went to the moon when the President said it had to be done in ten years, but we haven't been back since. Government mandate is not the best solution.
By ForwardThinker at 1:48 PM ON 04/24/09
Google: SuperConducting Power Lines. They're out there. We need more.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperGrid
This is right-on-target. Make liquid hydrogen to cool the grid to super-conductance, and bury the entire grid underground, to use it as a transport for both Electric and hydrogen refueling systems. Hydrogen could power sub-stations during off-gen times (no wind, no solar available), and power our Truck-transport fleets. Output zero Co2.
Think...think...think. I can't see anything here other than cost that's bad. Dear God - Give me Bill Gates's money...I'll do it myself!
By Learath at 4:31 PM ON 04/24/09
Or you could just build nukes, which are probably "greener" than any modern "renewable energy" solution......
And then, if we wanted to be SMRT, we could reprocess the spent fuel and regain about 80% of it, instead of wasting it, but that would require thinking instead of emoting, and we'll *never* do that.
By Default at 5:21 PM ON 04/24/09
Forward, the SuperGrid idea, like they said on the site, is in its visionary stage. Just like all other "new innovation" devices, it's one of two things when it comes out: expensive, or not as cracked up as it was made out to be. It might be good for a time, until problems arise.
Gabe, i fully agree. You can't force it.
By rtavi at 7:13 PM ON 04/25/09
Nukes are the only presently available low emmissions generation thats practical on a large scale. The rest of this stuff is emotion not practicality. Forget the global warming scaremongers we are in a natural planetary warming cyce that happened hundreds of times (Mars is warming up too). Their hysteriaiand doomsday scenarios are hurting the effort to change our energy mis as most of the public is beginning to ignore them and therefore the whole need to change energy sources. Once the publick turns off the politicians will be running to carch up and all hope of a beginning correction anytime in the next 50 years is lost.
A superconducting power grid and reducing the costs of fuel cells is a good start. Then build a standard , expandable nuke plant instead of reinventing the wheel every tims. "People Carbon Dioxide Isnt a Pollutant it's part of the natural cycle and will be dealt with by the life and geology of the planet. Are we going to cap every volcano?
Build Nukes use natural gas in fuel cells and improve the grids that will be the fastest method of getting off thi oil and coal diet.
By mason at 3:38 PM ON 04/26/09
Green energy should only be used if it's a viable, monetaryly efficent solution. Most of america could care less about "saving the world" upon a theory. Which is an uncontested fact of the global warming paradigm, that is only a -theory-. What is more important is saving money because energy rates effect the enterity of america and as result tens of millions of working poor and of course the middle class. All of whom can not afford expensive energy. So let's bring out the nukes or cleaner coal. Coal is cheap and abudant. And I would think in an extremely technological country such as ours we could find a way to make coal substanitally clean; enough to please the green freaks. However, the best solution is of course fusion energy. Which I believe MIT or some other tech school has bulit a small-scale reproduction of. And as advances in technology occurs as we all know is almost quite unpredictable. The process can be long and interminable or vastly ahead of schedule due to a single unexpected breakthrough. So anyways the point is that green freaks suck.
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Green energy should only be used if it's a viable, monetaryly efficent solution. Most of america could care less ab...More »