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Overview
While “The Future Electric Grid” online session was in progress at the 2021 ARC Industry Forum, Texas was plunged into outages caused by unusually cold conditions and heavy snow. With this catastrophe fresh in mind, this is a good time to review some of the politics, economics, and technologies driving the future electric grid in Texas and elsewhere.
The electric grid is the most complex machine ever invented by humans. It has transformed our way of life and rests on the three pillars of high reliability, low cost, and environmental responsibility. Yet, in the case of the recent Texas outages and the damage done, we clearly see the Texas grid is still vulnerable when it comes to reliability. Necessity is the mother of invention and the power outage could very well motivate Texas to become the leader in how to shape the future electric grid. Texas already ranks as the number one state for wind power and Texans have plenty of sunshine as well as experience with fossil fuels, aerospace, and a new Tesla giga-factory, so they are likely to be a big part of the transition to electric-powered transportation.
Government in the Power Business
Governments have always been in the middle of the energy industry, particularly electric power. North America has two major (Eastern and Western Interconnections), and three minor, synchronous (60Hz) electric grids. The latter include the Texas, Quebec, and Alaska Interconnections. Additionally, the smaller, federally owned Mexican grid has some connections to the US.
Politics, Economics, and Technologies Shape the Grid
Many people are surprised to see the extent to which China and India have both expanded their grids to reach their populations. With all the recent experience building new grids in Asia, India and China appear to be competing in a much larger political and economic arena. More than two years ago, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi said, “We have a dream: One World, One Sun, One Grid. We can generate around the clock electricity from the Sun as it sets in one part of the world but rises in another part.” A compelling idea, and one certainly motivated by India’s confidence based on the nation’s own grid expansion.
Meanwhile, China has created the most modern grid on the planet that produces more power than the US and EU 24 countries combined with state-of-the-art, one-million-volt HVDC transmission lines. While China built out its grid with coal fired power plants, it also generates more renewable power than the next five leading countries combined. Concerns have been raised about debt traps and dependency on China, but bringing reliable power to a country provides many economic advantages. Building grids to international standards with smart grid technology has implications for energy security, cybersecurity, and technology supply chains.
There are many ways to achieve the goals of reliable, low cost, and environmentally responsible power, but experts disagree about the best approach. In our Future Electric Grid Forum session, we asked our largely industrial audience to vote on generation options that are likely by 2050. As expected, there was no consensus on this.
Although this was a small non-scientific survey, it is interesting to see that participants considered wind, solar, various grid storage technologies, and demand response as the most important generation options. Respondents considered natural gas with CCS least important, and that a highly connected North American grid was not a leading result. Even with a 2050 timeline, nuclear power was not particularly popular. While there were some strong supporters, many others were unconvinced of a nuclear renaissance.
One of the more surprising results was the lack of support for combining the currently separate North American grids. It could be that many people do not see the stability benefits of a large electric grid, particularly one with growing non-dispatchable renewables. While previous grid management mistakes have led to cascading blackouts of large grids in general, large grids add stability when power can flow from areas with reserve capacity or low power cost to areas struggling to meet demand or have a higher cost. However, when grids are interconnected there is also more competition for supplying power. While the consumer may benefit from improved reliability and lower cost, some suppliers don’t welcome competition. There have been several proposals to tie North American grids together and to add new transmission lines. This includes improving the connection of Quebec Hydro to New England with HVDC lines. This is where the political, economic, technical, and environmental issues can come into play. For example, the “Tres Amigas SuperStation” proposal fizzled in 2009 and, in 2018, NREL evaluated the benefits of combining the three North American grids with the “Seams” project. A brief summary of the technical report can be found at: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/seams.html. On August 14, 2018, 30-year-old research engineer, Joshua Novacheck, working for the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, started presenting the results of the Seams study.
But before he even had a chance to finish with the presentation, political forces conspired to prohibit the authors from presenting the Seams results or even discussing the study outside NREL. Some of the political background on this issue can be found at:
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Keywords: Electric Grid, Electricity Cost, Electricity Reliability, and Electricity Environmental Responsibility, ARC Advisory Group.