Transmission Lines

Man, I don't know how people update these things every day. Welcome back to my blog, after two weeks of me having too much fun to pay attention.

I recently learned some things about transmission lines. Transmission lines, for the uninitiated, are high-voltage power lines used to transmit electricity across long distances. These are not the power lines that you would see out on the street in your neighborhood; those are called distribution lines. They're lower voltage (though still dangerous) and are used to distribute electricity to homes.

Transmission lines have everything to do with why we haven't stepped up renewable energy as much as we could. I came into this job thinking "so, if we just build a crapload of wind turbines and solar panels, all our problems will be solved, right?" Well, not really. It turns out that solar panels work best in the middle of the Southwest in the desert, miles and miles from large cities. And wind turbines work best in the great plains, miles and miles from large cities. But this power is truly needed in places like New York City, LA, Chicago, etc. So what do we do? We can't just build a power source, we have to connect it to the folks who need power.

The problem we face is that it's not worth it for the grid operator to build hundreds of miles of high-capacity transmission lines to pick up a few measly megawatts here or there. In order to make it worth their while, a grid operator needs to get a significant pile of power from this very, very costly investment. When small groups say "Hey, we built twelve turbines in the middle of South Dakota! Hook us up to the grid!" the grid operator laughs in their face, as well they should. And if the grid operator isn't going to hook up the turbines, it's not worth it to build them in the first place.

One possible solution to kick-start the process is for one very bank of wind turbines or solar panels to all be built at once. The grid operator will build out to the middle of nowhere, giving way for smaller setups to be built nearby.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you're probably the sort of person who thinks wind turbines are "totally lame."