Archive for the ‘Power Grids’ Category
Posted by pfairley on March 27, 2013
An industrial research consortium that is a who’s-who of the European power industry says development of technologies to produce high-voltage DC (HVDC) supergrids accelerated in 2012 — “surpassing expectations.” The assessment comes in the supergrids technology roadmap updated earlier this month by Friends of the Supergrid, whose members include power equipment suppliers such as Siemens, ABB and Alstom, as well as transmission system operators and renewable energy developers.
Summarizing the conclusions of an expert group within the International Council on Large Electric Systems — better known as CIGRE, its French acroynm — the Friends of the Supergrid says there is now no doubt as to the feasibility of HVDC networks ferrying renewable energy resources from wherever they are in surplus to wherever they are needed: “CIGRE Working Group B4–52 considered this question, specifically whether it was technically and economically feasible to build a DC Grid, and the answer was yes.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Integrating renewables, Power Grids, Renewable Energy | Tagged: ABB, Alstom, Friends of the Supergrid, HVDC, power grid, Power transmission, renewables, Siemens, supergrid | Leave a Comment »
Posted by pfairley on January 31, 2013
Much of your editor’s reporting in 2012 focused on the re-emergence of direct current or DC power — through pieces in IEEE Spectrum, Technology Review, and Power & Energy Magazine — and there is more in the works. Some of you, however, may still be wondering what DC power is and how it differs from the alternating current or AC power flowing from most electrical sockets. So here are some answers.
The questions were posed by Andrew Huang, a 9th grader at High Technology High School in Lincroft, NJ, who recently interviewed me for a history project on Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison’s late-19th Century War of Currents. (Check out The Oatmeal’s Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived for a rather tilted yet entertaining take on a key combattant in this epic tech tussle.)
What are some differences between the physics of AC and DC? Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Energy Efficiency, Integrating renewables, Photovoltaics, Power Grids, Renewable Energy | Tagged: AC, alternating current, DC, direct current, Edison, Nikola Tesla, War of Currents | 3 Comments »
Posted by pfairley on April 11, 2012
An advisory body for Japan’s powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has endorsed a tripling of the capacity to pass power between Japan’s otherwise estranged AC power grids: the 50-hertz AC grid that serves Tokyo and northeastern Japan, and the 60-hertz grid that serves western Japan. This frequency divide hascomplicated efforts to keep Japan powered since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami — a task that keeps getting harder with the inexorable decline in nuclear power generation (at present just one of Japan’s 54 reactors is operating). Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Feed-in tariffs, Integrating renewables, Nuclear Power, Power Grids, Renewable Energy, Solar energy, Tariffs, Wind power | Tagged: frequency converters, HVDC, japan, power grid, Renewable Energy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by pfairley on November 2, 2011
Flywheel energy storage developer Beacon Power filed for bankruptcy last weekend, prompting immediate comparisons to infamously failed solar manufacturer Solyndra. But while both firms used millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees to expand their businesses, Beacon Power — which Spectrum profiled this summer – has working assets and a good shot at restructuring and carrying on. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Energy Efficiency, Energy storage, Integrating renewables, Power Grids, Smart grids | Tagged: Beacon Power, energy storage, flywheels, frequency regulation, power grid, Solyndra | Leave a Comment »
Posted by pfairley on September 9, 2011
The blackout that squelched power flows to nearly 5 million residents of Arizona, California and northern Mexico last night and shut down California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant may be the latest sign of strain in an outdated U.S. power grid. The incident began during maintenance at a substation in Yuma, Arizona that lies at the center of a sclerotic section of the grid between Phoenix and Tucson—one long recognized as critically congested and thus at heightened risk of failure. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Coal, Energy politics, Power Grids, Tariffs | Tagged: Arizona Public Service, congestion, Department of Energy, DOE, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, high voltage, power grid, Transmission, transmission planning | Leave a Comment »
An industrial research consortium that is a who’s-who of the European power industry says development of technologies to produce high-voltage DC (HVDC) supergrids accelerated in 2012 — “surpassing expectations.” The assessment comes in the supergrids technology roadmap updated earlier this month by Friends of the Supergrid, whose members include power equipment suppliers such as Siemens, ABB and Alstom, as well as transmission system operators and renewable energy developers.
