tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post2011995190380497676..comments2024-03-24T11:01:27.668-04:00Comments on Resource Insights: Climate change, energy, and an unstable grid: The mainstream belatedly gets the connectionsKurt Cobbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05330759091950742285noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861605.post-2465676800577338622022-06-19T08:47:40.186-04:002022-06-19T08:47:40.186-04:00John, a reader from Canada, provided the following...John, a reader from Canada, provided the following additional information in an email to me and gave permission to post it here:<br /><br />1) Transmission lines increase in resistance as they get hotter. So as they carry the highest loads on the hottest days for cooling their capacity is reduced, and losses (costs) increase exponentially.<br /><br />2) You must build the grid to carry the highest expected seasonal load. For the one hour (or even second) of peak cooling, the entire transmission system must be (over) designed for that one hour and amortized over the rest of the year where it operates at a fraction of the capacity. This becomes very important for long ties between regions. Here in Ontario I have been warning about the costs and risks of importing large quantities of hydro power from Quebec over thousands of kms for the one hour in August in steamy Toronto.<br /><br />3) Exposure to catastrophic events. We just had a weather event (derecho) that blew down local and regional transmission lines over about 1,000 kms. The longer the transmission line, the greater serial dependencies. Areas of Ottawa (where I lived for a few decades) were without power for the last week. The economy of long inter-regional intermittently-used grid ties is even less when more frequent events require costly repairs.<br /><br />4) You can't ration electricity. The only two options are brownouts and blackouts, done by geographic selection, and guess what... it isn't always done equitably. So, while supply is limited you could limit consumption per capita (roughly) of petro-products, the same can't be done with electrons. In the Ottawa outage mentioned above, there have been complaints that power was back on for some but not others based on status.<br /><br />I don't know if I went into much detail previously, but I have an electrical engineering degree, and so did my father, who worked for Ontario Hydro (now Hydro One) for thirty years keeping the grid up. I'm also a former Ontario Green Party energy critic. In Canada the provinces own the energy file which is why I entered politics. A former teacher of mine left teaching to go on to be an Ontario Minister of Energy in the 1970s, so I've been following things quite closely.<br /><br />Needless to say, most people (including my former colleagues in the Green Party) do not understand energy, particularly electricity or how grids operate, and go on to propose ridiculous policy as a result.<br /><br />A final anecdote, Toronto Hydro applied for a rate increase many years ago to strengthen the grid in the city and were turned down. People then complained when it failed (quite predictably).Kurt Cobbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05330759091950742285noreply@blogger.com