I'd like to weigh in with industry insight. I work for a company that builds high voltage AC transmission in Iowa. The HVDC line that SOO Green proposed is 100% dead in the water. The AC system on either side of the line was deemed insufficient by the Independent System Operators (MISO and PJM). Neither system can handle such a large injection of megawatts onto the AC system. When presented with this information, SOO Green was unwilling to fund the necessary system upgrades. On top of that, SOO Green was marketing and paying for the line using a "Merchant Line" system. In this system, individual loads and generators directly pay for their transmission usage along that line. For context, there are currently 0 Merchant Lines in PJM or MISO. Here are two examples of many where that system falls apart. 1. "I want to pay to bring Iowa wind energy to Illinois" "No, the local energy companies want that investment. Build wind farms in Illinois instead." 2. "Illinois has extra generation right now, and we've paid SOO Green for a percentage of their line. Export to Iowa!" But at the same time, "Iowa wind is over producing, and we've paid SOO Green for a percentage of their line. Export to Illinois!" When it is economical for both paying customers to supply or pull from at the same time, the system breaks down. Feel free to reach out to me with more questions about how electricity markets work in Midwest USA. If you want a great video idea on the topic, search "MISO Long Range Transmission Planning" (LRTP).
I have friends everywhere who talk about unfunded schemes for the redevelopment of the whole world, however most will not be implemented because they are unfeasible and maybe not just for monetary reasons, it might be because the World is not "joined up" at the minute it's going the other way!?!
Yes, the key phrase is, "known for years"! Having a background in utility operations, I can express my dislike for the REGULATORY processes that are being administered by fearmongering politicos and other incompetents, both of whom are kept in control of the processes by the largest battalion of media and talking heads that exist on earth. If this were NOT the reality of this issue, the problems that are being discussed would already have been solved. Industry will continue to advance at a very slow pace relative to the underlying solutions that are already KNOWN!! FINAL comment there are NO UNKNOWNS in this matter of utility operations. EVERYTHING is KNOWN! Pay attention to the competency of the regulatory people and political interest and resolutions will occur at the speed of commerce.
From Romania, we're putting up solar panels on residential roofs at breakneck pace. Just got our residence wired up last month, and injected 500kW into the grid since. Cool to know that we'll be able to leverage timezone differences to share the benefits.
@@alanhat5252 power loss increases exponentionaly over distance hence why power generators are often as close as possible to where the power is needed. This is also the reason why ideas like lets just build the entire worlds supply of energy as solar pannels in a remote desert somewhere dont work.
Olympic levels of sarcasm at the beginning! As a fellow Brit and electrical/electronics tech, I appreciate not only the research and production values in your videos, but also the great British art of sarcasm being alive and well.
As a French men , I don’t usually have to deal with Brits sarcasm , and I barely understand their jokes but if this is one them , it’s not funny ! You are telling me that almost everything I learned about transmitting DC and AC is wrong ? And Tesla was wrong for using ac electricity for long transmission lines. I am surprised that only few comments were sent. Can a smart person give me some infos !
NZ has a 800km UHVDC 1.0 million volt line from Benmore power station in the South Is to the Haywards Converter station in Lower Hutt, North Is. It was chosen as the transmission losses for DC were significantly less than for the traditional 220KV AC lines normally used. The route involved the undersea crossing of the dangerous Cook Strait. Generously, NZ Electricity provided a HV generation facility for the new Engineerig School in Christchuch - 2.5 MV makes a very loud bang when discharged (Also used for testing the insulators for the DC line). Ken Baird BE(Elect) CHCH School of Engineering.
There was a similar G.E. insulator facility in the US that had a huge Tesla in a very old building, which was recently demolished. Surprisingly, they didn’t destroy the Tesla Tech, which they sold to a bloke in Florida that wants to house it in his museum. He is currently trying to fund setting that up. Saw this on another channel where these very tech savvy guys snuck into this secure and security guarded building and filmed the Old Tech from all angles and described what they saw and how they thought it functioned. Super Cool!
Taylor also met resistance while he was inventing "time & motion studies" for Ford. The outcome gave us mass-produced cars & an excellent Charlie Chaplin film.
@@Snugggg *RE: " what's a "climate huckster"* Generally speaking, it's those con artists who cash in on the brain washed scientifically illiterate who now cling to the idea that CO2 releases caused by humans are anything other than beneficial to all life on Earth. There are innumerable corollaries to the nutty idea that such human CO2 releases somehow damage "the" climate, make the oceans go "acid," cause the seas to rise, cause forest fires and the like. Essentially they support political interference supporting unworkable electrical power generation fatuously referred to as "clean energy," or alternatively, ridiculous battery driven vehicles which are essentially more than multi-ton golf carts. People are not naturally this stupid, rendering them so requires endless hours subjected to sheer nonsense in government indoctrination camps called "public education" Corporate media plays its role as in mass producing ignorance as well. They are currently testing the heights of nonsense that such brain atrophied idiots mass produced in "public schools" will accept as "settled science." The current project: "Men are often impregnated by women" What next: eating bugs and maggots in high priced restaurants as a sign of enlightenment? .
@@Snugggg the doom-sayers that constantly remind us that global warming will end civilization/displace coastal populations/whatever in 2012, 2018, 2028, etc.
I lived off DC/AC assisted for 13 years starting 1990 in Australia. My system was solar, later wind which enabled AC. The system was very primitive, a fair amount of maintenance but it worked and I was one of the few who still had power when devastating bush fires hit.
I liked your casual reference to the technical engineers and other professionals just quietly getting on with the job. They are effectively dragging the rest of us, many kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Thanks Dave. As usual I feel more knowledgeable for having watched this video.
Yah misinformation and money has nothing to do with what engineers are made to create. Wind and solar can’t compete with coal atm. And why do they have to lie about the oceans rising and we all will die if it’s such a great path?
One must not forget the world wide electricity distribution between several electrical transportation suppliers. These AC-to-DC-to-AC transfer points are being used for far more than a century. Then there is that comment from a US Congressman who was frustrated because the US cannot transport an electron from New York to San Francisco; many state boundaries do not have synchronisation capacities to allow AC synchronisation between states. Thank you for your presentation.
New Zealand has had an HVDC cable running from the lower South Island, over the Cook Straight to the bottom of the North Island since 1965. It moves hydro generated electricity north most of the time.
The converter stations - the most difficult and expensive part of a very short HVDC link like this - have been completely replaced twice since then to keep up with the improving technology, with the second involving a complete redesign and new cable.
@@lestermarshall6501 sure, oil and gas drilling crews are already drilling geothermal wells. Engineers and experienced technicians are needed everywhere, they don't need to search long for their next job
@@IanPritchard through the cutting of subsidies to the PV industry, the CDU/CSU government were responsible for the loss of approx. 100,000 jobs here in Germany. So, the jobs were here and could be created again. Tesla isn't the only company deciding to build batteries in Europe. The transition requires multiple solutions therefore multiple opportunities for new jobs.
Keep in mind the UK peak demand is already over 60GW. so the HVDC projects you mention about are relatively small and suitable for top-up rather than to support the UK's core need. We can envisage UK needs rising to 100GW later in this century. Also in the past, fossil fuel generation was fairly localised and reduced the need for the National Grid to carry an extensive transfer of power. The future architecture of the UK power generation will be interesting. There are 2 competing scenarios. One is where renewables dominate and we rely on a massively upgraded National Grid. This is the approach preferred by the EU and buyers and sellers of power. The other approach is a network of small nuclear power stations serving their local communities with a significantly reduced need to upgrade the N Grid. I suspect the business community will opt for the first approach as it makes the most ROI in the short term, but this approach risks being displaced by local power generation as consumers rebel against high energy prices.
It's good to see this progressing. There was a study decades ago showing that commercial wind power in a 1000 radius connected by a grid, would be as reliable as a coal power plant. Trying to achieve reliability by storage alone is making the task much harder than necessary. DC is the way to make long distance feasible with modest losses.
It's true, what you said. In some places (as in the big Morroccan project Dave mentioned) you can place significant solar generation somewhere within that 1000 mi radius as well, and gain considerable diversity over wind alone. Now consider that both weather and (heh) nighttime darkness are predictable hours in advance. Here in Ontario we have a program where large consumers can receive payment for shutting down large power draws temporarily. It also helps to have hydroelectric power that can be ramped up and down. Overall (assuming some co-operation across borders) it's not clear why a person looking at the whole picture would think we need to burn fossil fuels beyond 2050.
Transmission going between states & countries faces right-of-way hurdles and takes years. Good that it's finally starting in earnest, 30 years late like everything else that could have started in earnest in the 1990's; EV, clean energy, reduced car dependency with bike lanes, e-bikes, microcars, and small modular reactor nuclear power. Grid batteries/storage aren't here to "make the task much harder" they're being used for load balancing, Virtual Power Plants, and home energy storage & blackout protection. Look at how Hornsdale battery stabilized part of Australia's grid. More UHV and HVDC are part of long-term grid stabilization that includes batteries.
@@Nphen you say 1990s, it *_did_* start before the _1890s!_ The first self-propelled motor vehicles (long before steam) were electric (2, 3 & 4 wheeled) & are still used industrially, the first house fully electrified was powered by water, microcars (then called cyclecars) were very popular from the beginning of the internal combustion engine (1897?) but were essentially killed off (in the UK) by the Austin 7 of 1923 though by modern standards it was a microcar at 1m wide & 2m long & it didn't stop there, hydro-power was common with Niagara Falls in the 1880s being nowhere near the first (though it did have the first long-distance transmission line in 1896). Even "small modular reactors" have been in service since 1955 as ship & submarine power initially but also land-based later.
Being a Construction Engineer and having worked on these transmission lines I still am surprised that the cost of these national transmission grids is never analysed. 5 times more electricity will be needed with no fossil fuels in the future. Can you do a video on this topic please ? 😊
Here in New England and eastern Canada we can imagine connecting 34 GW of Quebec hydro power to act as a huge battery with the planned 70GW of offshore wind with bi-directional HVDC.
I'm in Vermont and the governor and the utilities (the largest of which is owned by Hydro Quebec) have been arguing for years that we don't need any more in-state renewable energy because we'll just get power from Hydro Quebec. The renewable energy community, like you said, keeps pointing out that we should have as much in-state renewable energy as possible and Hydro Quebec can be used as a battery either by slowing hydro generation and raising water levels while other renewables are online or by pumping the water back upstream.
I had a Friday night cards friend who works with HVDC. He was in town for a few months setting up one of the red pins on your screen. Neat tech with great potential. It was almost 10 years ago now since we parted ways but I recall him recanting (in general terms) the many challenges of getting the system running at the time. Since then it's slowly been ramped up in capacity with major teething pains but looks like it will work out.
Transmission cable made from Carbon fiber with an aluminum jacket is available from a company called TS Conductor. It's ampacity is 30% greater than traditional steel core aluminum jacket transmission cable. That means an existing transmission line could be upgraded to carry more energy without and changes to the support structures.
@@timtravelnomad AC transmission lines run the electricity over aluminum. The steel core is there just for strength to support the wire and does not actually carry much current due to the skin effect caused by AC. HVDC works differently... because it is DC, the current runs through the whole core so cable strength has to be engineered differently. Copper is way, way too expensive to use for transmission lines.
@@timtravelnomad there are too many modes of failure & they happen too frequently for copper to be used in transmission lines, it's also hugely expensive.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ideas and videos. Nice to see an update on new transmission projects coming up. Like everything, moderation is the key to implementation. Big projects can cause big problems. As long as they are well thought out the problems can be dealt with. Having worked in the power transmission industry for more than 32 years I’ve coordinated all types of technologies. No one is better than any other. The problems come from situations when exceptions are made in operating policies because this or that just can’t happen, which of course is usually proven wrong eventually. The DC import from HQ into NY was limited by the ability to recover from the loss provided from a single contingency. The primary contingency was the loss of the HQ power system and we trained to recognize it if it happened. After many years they decided that’s just not going to happen again. And people retired and new people were not trained to recognize it. Then the rule was dropped. Come one morning I’m doing my job and earlier I read about forest fires in the HQ system that were so big nasa had spotted them from space. I noticed it was in a major HQ transmission corridor. And pondered that can’t be good. A little while later the impossible happened and we lost all of our DC imports at the same time. Thankfully the imports were relatively low. I recognized it as the loss of the HQ system probably due to the forest fires. Sent my theory up the chain and surprisingly that was exactly what had happened even though all the experts said it couldn’t happen. Thanks again for your videos, wishing you and your family the best.
Thank you for this brilliant update! I saw the initial one in 2021. Great news for us all and it puts a rosier pic on the fact that climate temps are rising faster than projected. We will undoubtedly have some generations that suffer and some species lost, but the future with clean energy will allow us and the Earth to recover. I'm old but I hope I'm around to see this cleaner future.😊
Thank you for this overview of the HVDC transmission system. I've been amazed at how rapidly the system has expanded. What used to be technically impossible a half-Century ago has become routine due to the creation of the high voltage, high current switching semiconductors utilized in the converter stations that convert the AC to DC and back again at the respective end stations.
The New Zealand HVDC ( 350 kV ) cable , called "The Cook Strait Cable" , runs from Benmore Hydro Dam to Wellington is 610 km long and runs for 40km under the Cook Strait been the South and North Islands started construction in 1961 and commissioned in 1965. That is rather more than 50 years ago. This technology is not new even though some RUclips channels may have only just learned about it. The Cook Strait Cable system has been significantly modernized over the years but the principle remains unchanged. It is now a bipolar thyristor based 1200 MW system.
@@andrewpaterson5192 Interesting. Which technology was used for the Cook Strait Cable system in the 1960s? Good old vacuum tubes (well suited for high voltages)?
👏👍 "Absolutely Olympic levels of sarcasm right from the start! As a fellow Brit and tech enthusiast, I can't help but appreciate the thorough research, high production values, and the fact that the great British art of sarcasm is alive and well in your videos. It adds that extra touch of wit and entertainment. Keep revolutionizing power transmission! ⚡🔌🇬🇧"
Good demonstration. I came to this technology in 1972 when working in Mannheim with Brown, Boveri & Cie. AG, now ABB. It was a cable from the Cahora Bassa dam about 1,400 km to South Africa . The power line had a facility which I could not believe. If one of the line broke its transmission would go on because the HVDC currant would go under the earth by an earth electrode to the final end.
That is amazing that we can move that much power through underwater transmission lines .I am excited about the new technology in battery storage systems like Iron flow and vanadium flow batteries that last twenty five years or longer and are environmentally sustainable that could help get the intermittent supply issues resolved to store energy from these new lines
@@alanhat5252 yes I bought a few shares a couple of years ago from ESS they make iron flow batteries and a German company prolux is making a flow battery for home use they are going to be less expensive than lithium batteries for home storage
Wow amazing video, I’m very lucky to be somewhat involved in the ‘energy transition’ but this just take it to another level understanding the worldwide impacts
People must have felt the same at the start of the industrial revolution, the speed and scale of innovation is incredible. That 'oh, hang on' bit genuinly made me laugh as well. Keep up the good work JHAT team!
Here in the US during the 2008 financial meltdown, one of the things I argued was that we should create a big infrastructure build of just such an interstate line. Precisely to help out with load sharing and the fact that we create so much energy in the southwest at exactly the same time that it is necessary in the Northeast... Instead we got nothing... 14 years we could have been ahead of everything... Having said that, I am extremely happy to see this going on now
The elite (royalty and their politicians) had nothing whatsoever to do with the industrial revolution; a revolution that freed great populations of slaves upon which the elite previously used for their energy needs.
Don't let the critics get you down. You have an amazing channel with currently 530.000 subscribers. Obviously you're doing something right. The internet has in many ways become a very toxic place. It's hard but focus on the positive and the constructive (criticism).
Excellent news.....looks like an actual solution is taking shape. Thanks for giving us something to reduce our anxiety about this current problem.... better than all the negative conspiracy theory!
Intelligent and practical scientists and engineers keep charging ahead to generate impressive output, while the insular fossil fuel interests remain static and resist change.
@@TheHorseshoePartyUKIncomparable with dam catastrophy in China in 1975. Nuclear is the safest energy source. In Poland aprox. 10.000 die yearly due to carbon and fuel burning (pm 2.5 and pm 10, beznoapiren, NOx --> lung cancer, stroke, heart failure)
@@TheHorseshoePartyUK Did you even LOOK at the cost overruns for nuclear and nuclear storage? Compare it to solar, wind and subsea cable projects, and you'll see what a stupid investment in money, time and mental resources nuclear projects are. It's just a hobbyhorse for people who don't like (for mostly emotional reasons) the resources (wind and solar) that make the most sense.
Sharing appears to be key to the workability of these ideas, and unless we are convinced that sharing is good, we may not see or understand the well being of us all as being connected.
Man so happy didnt see any of the doubters on my feed, but I did get recommended this nerdy beaut of a video and channel based on my algorithmic housekeeping
Sun Cable in Australia appears to be set for HVDC transmission from Western Australia to Singapore, Cannon Brookes has won control of the venture from Twiggy Forrest. The scope for electricity sales to Asia of green energy from the vast outback seems to be a real game changer.
and how wonderful it will be when we no longer have ugly overhead power lines going through our forests. right now there are huge areas of our forest being cut down to make a path for the long distance power lines. i just hope people are smart enough to lay a large conduit so the lines can be serviced, updated, repaired, etc. i know it would make for a more expensive startup but it would also make resilient flexible connections where we could also run fiber or any other new tech that will come up. just think how awesome it would be to have true distributed network of power and information that is cheaply update-able with zero impact on aesthetics or the environment. it could me a huge machine that we can dump all our plastic waste in and have a heavy conduit spit out the other end which buries in in the soil it dug just before. i saw an awesome asphalt road replacer system that dug the old asphalt, crushed it, heated it, added new tar, laid it down with a squadron of rollers flattening the new road. it was only moving at a mile an hour or so but it was taking a poor road and leaving a perfectly new road in one move... it was awesome.
That road technology sounds cool. I don't think that we could do plastic recycling the same way. HVDC cables are very sophisticated and need to be made under exacting conditions, so a factory is needed. Recycled consumer waste doesn't have the properties needed for underground HVDC cables. It would use a sophisticated engineering resin or composite.
@@incognitotorpedo42 true but i was not suggesting the wires be made on the spot. i was suggesting the tunnel (conduit) they run through be made on the spot... out of waste materials.
You have one of the best most professional youtube channels I have seen. Great well researched explanations with good graphics and presentation. Thanks.
It wasn't for a long time - that's why we went with AC. Its been known for ages that the transmission itself is less lossy than AC, but the stepping up and down on either end of the HV line was always a problem. Modern technology has improved however and that's no longer quite as much of an issue. Its still more troublesome than AC stepping of course, but its now less of a problem than the transmission losses, so we're slowly making the switch.
You missed Sun Cable: a link from Northern Australia to Singapore, to supply Singapore with solar PV from the Northern Territory, and gigawatt hours of storage, to also power Darwin. Mike Cannon-Brookes has gained control of the project, dissolving his partnership with Twiggy Forrest's FFL. It might happen.
Britain has been linked to France by dc cables from Sellindge in Kent since the 1960s. Cost is not the only consideration, but system stability and fault levels have to be contained. Joining 2 large ac grids by a single ac interconnector can quickly become unstable, hence the use of dc. For long lines, the Ferranti effect can lead to excessively high voltages at the receiving end with light loading, so again for that dc wins. The small size of Britain means that the overhead 400kV ac lines are quite sufficient for secure operation. If that was to be wholly replaced by underground cables (You think your bills are expensive , now?), then the situation may change. As for the viability of the Morocco link, the vast profits being made by the wind and solar power suppliers are due to the cock-eyed way that the electricity industry was privatised, whereby cheap generation can be remunerated at the same rate as the highest cost generation on the grid. That situation, currently costing everyone in the country, may not last. Like every other major infrastructure project, I predict that it will be years late, way over budget and the constructors will be begging the government to bail them out.
This is interesting and encouraging but it is key that we don’t forget lesson from recent world events. Inter-country arrangements have a lot to offer but we need to factor in energy security too. I hope to see less reliance on hoge distance power transmission with a grid comprosing more ‘local’ renewable generation and storage delivering a significant percentage of overall needs
Yes, it's great if as much energy as possible is generated locally, but once every country also has multiple sources of energy coming from others, then no country will have the ability to hold others to ransom. That has been the problem in the past with Russian gas, OPEC, etc, and that's why these changes will prevent such abuses in future.
It might be interesting if the Crown Estate built some wind farms rather than just charging 'ground' rent. Perhaps the King himself might build some? Over the last century & more the Monarchy has been more interested in the Public Good than the Government...
I just realized how much Mr just have a think looks and moved just like Wallace ... from 'Wallace & Gromit'. Once you see it you can't unsee it, but it does explain such a technical mind & love for the environment as it's in the family. =)
Fascinating! I wonder how DC handles solar flares vs AC? Have no idea, just something that came to my mind as I was imaging all the conductors wrapping around the globe.
We are going 120 mph towards a cliff and certain death. The 'experts' are saying to apply the brakes as hard as can be done immediately, and the people driving not _just_ keeping on the gas, but are also whining over how 'difficult' it is to use the brakes. It boggles the mind.
The fact is that, far from using any brakes, we are accelerating GHG emissions. All this talk about electrification while we do nothing to reduce current fuel consumption.And we need not only reduce it, but suck it back, get GHG out of our atmosphere.
great video again. Running new transmission alongside existing infrastructure (railway lines) ... useful ... potentially powerful. I'll get it into the opportunities list for our project team.
Have you looked into the numbers of moving away from this 19th century model of centralized production and transmission to end users? It seems to me that, as with so many other things, decentralization translates into much higher efficiency and reliability through interconnected redundancy.
The SOO in SOO Green is a reference to the old SOO rail line that spanned a portion of the upper midwest. It’s cool that the folks behind the DC project thought that up. Great video that showed we the ae ways arong the NIMBY issue. Keep up the great work.
Excellent summary of HVDC. Its definitely a part of the future especially for geographically larger countries (China, USA, Canada, Australia). One potential big obstacle: politics. Because tying together two or more countries over an energy link (even an electrical link) may move some nations back to being energy dependent on another - certain factions within each government may not like that. We got an all to real reminder of that with Putin using oil & gas as blackmail and leverage. Relations between two countries can start out fine but then, a decade later, not so fine! So the problem with long distance transmission (such as HVDC) is not just technical. Just to be sure, the problem of grid upgrades & expansion is not specific to renewables. It is a problem for *any* new power plant added to the system. It just so happens that renewables are now the most common type of new capacity to the grid and for good reason. Long distance transmission technicalities and energy independence bring up another good point for wind & solar. Wind and sunshine are far more evenly distributed on Earth than oil & gas ever was. Moreover, localized energy generation via rooftop solar (commercial and residential) solve both problems simultaneously. This highlights the miracle of solid-state photovoltaics: no other energy source can blend into an urban landscape so seamlessly. Every watt generated & used locally is a watt that doesn't stress the grid nor pulled from a distant power plant that might even be from another country is long distance HVDC is involved.
Excellent presentation as usual, but there is one unmentioned advantage of HVDC tech. Geomagnetic storms can disrupt AC transmission of electric power by saturating the core of transformers. HVDC should not be suceptible to this hazard.
DC switchgear is based around semiconductors which also aren't keen on Voltage excursions. The lines themselves though are more likely to be isolated by being underground or under water.
An even bigger HVDC transmission project currently underway is the Australia-Asia Power link(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link). It would be a 4500km transmission line.
good point, did he miss that? or did he treat it as a given... I think he mentioned it. Said georgia could send powed to uk when the sun goes down, while UK sends powerback when the wind blows -- but he aimed that point at the peak demand issue... adjacent problem.
Paused rather than necessarily cancelled... it may be revived now that Mike Canon Brooks has wrestled control of the project. My understanding is Twiggy wanted to cancel the HVDC component and Mike wanted to continue the HVDC component.
@@timtravelnomad I wondered about that. Surely the HVDC component is the only thing that makes it actually work. Also, I'm surprised that Mr Forrest would cancel that part of it. Perhaps he's worried it might compete with his plans to sell H2 to the world.
Unlikely to ever happen. HVDC as a one way supply line simply too lossy beyond 1,000km. But it makes a bit more sense over long distances when it is part of a matrix of users and suppliers. Forest's approach of using the energy in the Australian grid and to make H2 makes a lot more sense. If the cable to Singapore goes ahead it would only meet 15% of the city's demand and has no levelling. If Singapore wants to go solar it makes much more sense to lease some land in Indonesia and install the panels there. Indonesia is also installing new nuclear power stations that work in tandem with solar power.. Singapore could also tap into that or install a nuke of their own. One medium sized nuclear plant would easily power the whole city.
Questions / Video Suggestions - between agrovoltaics, roof tops and parking lots (I’m in Canada and we have monsterous parking lots) there seems to be under utilized space where local green power production could occur - reducing or skipping the need for this massive infrastructure element. Why not paradigm shift to micro local production rather bigger centralized continental production? Plus, India selling power to African countries? One of the largest populations is going to sell power to nations that should have power autonomy? Doesn’t make sense outside of profit gain. Basic question is this, what could be done more locally with an equal level of capital & resource investment? What’s the delta between the two scenarios? Cheeers
No complains, well done. I remember when we used mercury rectifiers in the HVDC. Much better now. However I wanted to remind you ( sorry if I overlooked it) of the project shipping dust and gravel from Greenland to Africa and Brazil as fertilizer. AFRICA Got 50% improved harvest and as a byproduct the dust and gravel suck up a lot of CO2 in the process ( >25% of the weight of gravel and dust if I remember right) and we may even see people stopping burning forrest to get the nessary minerals to grow their produce. To your next question, yes it is much cheaper to transport the dust and gravel than to grind it. So please make a video about it unless you already have done that.
Dave ,thx for taking the time to talk about this subject. I agree with the fossil fuel folks in that we need them to bring us to the next level of sustainable energy production and transportation but no further. And for that, my hat is off to them. For me, I feel that nth generation nuclear electrical production is the future also. I don't believe in batteries that are needed to make renewables reliable as their cost is too great at this time. Sometime in the future when the cycle lifetime of batteries is extended far beyond what the current cycle lifetimes are today they will be a viable way to make renewables reliable. The only enhancement left for DC transmission lines is superconductors. With elevated temperature superconductive materials this could improve the efficiency of LONG DISTANCE transmission appreciably. So, the marriage of high temp superconductors and high voltage DC will be the enabler of next generation transmission lines. With no losses, the thought of extremely long transmission lines become a reality. This would revolutionize the layout of electrical producers relative to consumers globally. Again, thx for making this video.
It's a shame Michael Crichton didn't live long enough to see Just Have A Think. I like to think he'd have benefitted from it and engaged with you on many topics.
@@incognitotorpedo42you're confusing him with someone else, he did a lot of reading around of then-current research & added a few threads together to weave a story, usually a terrifying story because it was built on facts you can track down on Wikipedia & academic document servers. Climate-denialism most _definitely_ was not his style.
Thanks again, Dave, for excellent research and presentation. The cross-over graphs will help us explain to the uneducated masses what is real-world physics. I would like to add 2 thoughts: 1) The need for transmission lines may drop almost to zero. If solar panels arrive on 50% of roof-tops world-wide, and battery mega-packs are deployed for regional balancing, along with a washing-machine sized rust battery in every garage, 99% of what the grid does now will become useless. 2) What India wants to do to Africa, combined with the flip-side of what England is up to, constitutes both a) India sells the product to African nations, keeps the generating technology for itself, and b) England uses the African resources to take away solar production that would benefit Africa more by making industrialization affordable IN Africa. And a small side note on the west coast HVDC line - at night, on a good night, California sends electricity BACK to the north, reducing their need to burn coal/gas for a few hours here and there! "During winter, the northern region operates electrical heating devices while the southern portion uses relatively little electricity. In summer, the north uses little electricity while the south reaches peak demand due to air conditioning usage. " Link for that: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie#:~:text=The%20Pacific%20DC%20Intertie%20(also,voltage%20direct%20current%20(HVDC).
As usual a great video very informative and it’s nice to know that it really is coming together behind the scenes despite what you might hear otherwise.
You did not mention the Nebel HVDC transformer that will be rolling out further reducing Transmission cost by about 5 percent at half the cost. It does not sound like much but it is a game changer as well. At least on the infrastructure side.
The problem with this analysis is that, while these technologies e.g. DC inter-connectors will continue to make a contribution, they will not solve the central problem of what the Germans call Dunkelflaute. This is where typically in January high pressure settles in across Northern Europe such that there is little wind or solar. In which case a number of countries e.g. the UK, Belgium, Holland, Northern Germany, Poland and Scandinavia with huge electricity demands will simultaneously require electricity when their renewables stop producing much electricity. For example the UK's neighbours will also be short of electricity when demand is at a maximum.
it's not that big a problem, especially as the _whole_ EU is interconnected (on 2 grids) as well as most surrounding countries. Also dunkelflaute is a *_reduction_* not a absolute cut.
@@alanhat5252 To power our homes, offices and cars with electricity requires the UK to add 1.7 times current capacity to the system. This amounts to a total capacity of 160 GW or more. With a little nuclear and the rest renewable by 2050, and only nuclear providing reliable capacity and with the contribution from wind and solar reducing to 20% during Dunkelflaute, the UK would have a shortfall of the order of 100 GW. And with our neighbours suffering similar pro-rata shortfalls, it is highly unlikely that there would be hundreds of GWs of spare capacity available in Europe, and that there would be sufficient capacity in the DC inter-connectors many of which are yet to be built. The problem with videos like these is that the authors latch onto an existing and useful technology, and then represent that it provides a solution to a much larger problem. It is the same issue with the idea that battery storage will solve this problem. You need to understand the system at a macro level and then push the numbers. I recommend you watch a presentation by Michael Kelly, a professor of engineering at Cambridge University, on the engineering and cost implications of Net Zero at ruclips.net/video/NkImqOxMqvU/видео.html
You're quite wrong about this. The whole point of long ultrahighpower DC lines is that a countries' wind and solar can effectively be spread over VERY large areas. Those large areas massively smooth the variability. Got a dunkelflaute in the Baltic? Never mind - it's windy down in the Bay of Biscay, and if that's not enough it's sunny in Turkey. And if that's still not enough just open the gates a bit more on those Norwegian dams ...
Yes, theoretically it is possible but currently there is only 7.5GW of DC inter-connector capacity coming to the UK from continental Europe. This is only a small fraction of the capacity required to supply the current demand of 60GW in the winter and an even smaller fraction of the capacity required to make up for an 80% or more reduction of 160GW of generation from unreliable renewable power generation required to meet Net Zero on cold windless and sunless day in January.@@kenoliver8913
I am not an expert on electricity but have done a fair amount of research. The more you delve into it the more you realize most people don't REALLY understand what's going on. When the "EXPERTS" can't agree on the laws of what's happening, you shouldn't feel so bad. 😅
That's great. I had heard about HVDC but didn't realise anybody was using it. In the UK we've got a massive problem where I read we can create huge amounts of renewable energy but don't have the cables / capacity to get it to the consumer. Can you do a video about that. In some cases I read that with planning permission some of these renewable projects may take 15 years to go live, but it seems this is mostly about planning and approvals and construction time is relatively quick. It's like our government is putting barriers in the way of saving the planet.
I believe that some steps are being taken to address these issues, but it's like the government's promise of forty new hospitals - many of the few that will be built won't appear for at least another decade, but most are refurbishments and additions to existing buildings. We need a degree of scepticism!
We need wind turbines on land in England. If you visit Scotland you will see their government has invested in land based wind turbines. On the Yorkshire moors the grouse shooting owners are opposing any changes to their land use that will reduce their few weeks per year of sport shooting..
@@caterthun4853 Scotland also has the much more reliable tidal-flow generators ready to drop in the water but Westminster is blocking that too, the same in Wales, the Swansea Lagoon project just wanted the final signature from Theresa May when she was PM but it's still on ice (she preferred the single most expensive infrastructure project in the history of humanity on the other side of the estuary) & there's a repaired tidal-flow machine that's been sitting on Pembroke dock for half a decade waiting for approval to go back on-line. There's tidal projects all round the coast waiting for Westminster.
@@caterthun4853 grouse, ptarmigan & pheasants don't fly high enough to hit big windmill blades (they are stupid enough though) so I don't see what the problem is? The Crown Estate pulled in £1billion in 2021 just from 'ground' rent from offshore windmills, I don't have any idea why these people would baulk at that level of income. (The King has redirected the income to public benefit though it wouldn't surprise me if the Torys have redirected it again but to their mates).
@JonathanSwiftUK, we have the cables but they're sitting in warehouses waiting for planning permission, usually for more than a decade. Our first foreign HVDC interconnector, as you would expect, was from Kent (Sellindge) to Calais, it was connected in 1986 & has been operating continuously ever since apart from a brief outage while they sorted out a fire in 2001. We now have 9 running & plans for more, it sounds like the next one is Scotland to Iceland. (They have lots of geothermal to sell). Previous to that we have had many 330KV lines criss-crossing Britain for many many decades, we were coal-fired when they appeared, back in the days of the CEGB though I suspect they were AC not DC as the semiconductor switchgear hadn't been invented. (DC has the advantage you can put it underground or underwater without enormous losses).
As an engineer with many years of energy and construction experience I am often told how naive and ill informed I am, and how much better infirmed I would be if only I deferred to the Daily Mail, Top Gear, Dave the Farmer sat in the pub, some bloke who does coding, Donald Trump etc etc. I'll tell them all to just have a think.
My biggest concern is with these multinational projects. What's to prevent those in the producing countries from nationalizing the infrastructure and then flipping the switch or otherwise rationing the output in order to artificially raise prices? OPEC did it during the Carter Administration. I don't want to be held by the "short and curlies" again.
Massive income streams like power supplies don't tend to get interrupted while payments are up to date. The CIA's 1953 coup in Iran was because BP hadn't kept payments up for 40 years. (BP ended up paying more & losing exclusivity).
The difference of "break even distance(s)" between HVAC and HVDC depending on whether they are overhead or underground is something I was totally unaware of. I have always liked the idea of supplying road vehicles with electricity via transduction; something like toy slot cars powered by electric toothbrush chargers. There's at least one trolly system powered this way in Japan. Integrating a transportation system using conventional contact or transduction over underground powerlines could capture electric bleed off.
It would never be done with a transmission line. Transmission lines need to be in an area where digging will not happen, and must be buried fairly deep to protect against incursion. With a HVDC line, there would be almost no power lost to induction, so there wouldn't be any to get in that way. Creating "charging roads" has been talked about, and there are even a few demonstration projects, but they are a dead end. They are far more expensive than a regular charger, are inefficient, so you lose a lot of power, and it would be very difficult to charge drivers for the power. Cars would require expensive extra hardware. Maintenance on such roads would be very expensive.
Trying to explain the benefits of DC transmission to some people is like trying to talk about religion. They were taught AC is better as children and won't accept other possibilities.
That's allegedly because Edison lied about an experiment involving an Elephant and somewhere around 5,000 amps of Direct current to slander and defame Nikola Tesla's DC transmission designs
Small modular nuclear reactors will become the go-to energy source - built to run consistently and as a flexible, carbon-free resource. Those right-sized reactors are emerging now that the U.S. government has incentivized them, making them more attractive for lenders and utilities. “You simply must have some form of reliable, baseload power because you can’t get there with assets that operate (part of) the time,” says Jeff Merrifield, partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, and a former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. “A nuclear power plant is more costly upfront, but it is an asset that OPERATES for 80 years. If you compare that to wind and solar, they generally have 20-year lifetimes and batteries of around eight years. If you compare renewables and batteries to nuclear, nuclear stacks up VERY, VERY well.” The more of them you build, particularly in sites like former coal plants, the more you hook them up to existing grids, or local micro-grids, and ELIMINATE or MINIMIZE the need for new or greater TRANSMISSION infrastructure. The U.S. Navy operates over 160 ships powered by more than 200 small nuclear reactors (aircraft carriers, submarines, ice breakers, etc.)
Sorry, the entire lifecycle cost of SMR or any nuclear power solution per MWh is far higher than slapping down a bunch of PV panels or wind turbines along with a sensible amount of battery storage. The US navy nuclear power programme isn't designed for low cost but to put power in difficult locations.
@@AndyFletcherX31 Popular myth that is FALSE. Majority of large nuclear plant cost is financing over a very long period. Small repetitive designs are built quickly and cheaply. Multiply the solar cost by the 4 times you replace the panels and the 10 times you replace the batteries. Add the cost of recycling the panels / batteries or pollution in landfills. Nuclear is the ONLY energy source with the necessary ENERGY DENSITY to be CARBON NEGATIVE when combined with carbon capture. The ONLY adequate solution is not insufficient when insufficient solutions are sometimes less expensive in the short term by virtue of a failed / incorrect analysis.
@@beautifulgirl219 Nope, panels will last 30 - 40 years before major degradation, LiFePO4 batteries will do >5000 full cycles so will be good for about 20 years. Wind turbines are typically repowered after about 25 years. Nuclear power has a massive environmental footprint from mining and refining to the construction, long term storage and decommissioning. We also have security and safety issues with nuclear which you don't have with renewables that can be fully deployed within 2-3 years after permitting. It is worth noting that EDF in France are effectively bankrupt because of operational and decomissioning issues. In the UK the contract price of Hinkley per MWh is about 3 times that of current bidding for wind power. Hinkley is going up in price and wind still dropping in price. No myth there.
I’m realistic, but leaning more toward pessimism given the world economical systems that prioritize profit, or ‘wealth development,’ over global ecological sustainability. I keep watching your channel with hopes of being persuaded otherwise, someday…
What is globally ecologically sustainable about promoting uneconomic technologies that cannot even fulfill the role prescribed for them? Besides, what is wrong with CO2? Is it bad to have a more productive, greener, more prosperous earth?
Yes, heaven forbid anyone makes a "profit." Sure is a good thing you provide all of your labor and expertise to others for free as you have no bills or liabilities, right? Um, right?
@@joemccarthy7120 Are you talking about technologies like wind, PV, and EVs? Some of these, in some countries, are being subsidized in order to ramp the industries up to the scale we need by developing their markets. The tech is certainly ecologically sustainable, especially when compared to carbon-based fuels. I can't believe that in this day and age, you would even ASK what is wrong with CO2. Yes, higher CO2 helps plants grow, all else being equal. But it's NOT equal. Increased temperature variability with extremes in both directions, droughts and huge storms are all BAD for crop production. The net result of more CO2 will be a huge cost to humanity.
I'd like to weigh in with industry insight. I work for a company that builds high voltage AC transmission in Iowa. The HVDC line that SOO Green proposed is 100% dead in the water. The AC system on either side of the line was deemed insufficient by the Independent System Operators (MISO and PJM). Neither system can handle such a large injection of megawatts onto the AC system. When presented with this information, SOO Green was unwilling to fund the necessary system upgrades.
On top of that, SOO Green was marketing and paying for the line using a "Merchant Line" system. In this system, individual loads and generators directly pay for their transmission usage along that line. For context, there are currently 0 Merchant Lines in PJM or MISO. Here are two examples of many where that system falls apart.
1. "I want to pay to bring Iowa wind energy to Illinois" "No, the local energy companies want that investment. Build wind farms in Illinois instead."
2. "Illinois has extra generation right now, and we've paid SOO Green for a percentage of their line. Export to Iowa!" But at the same time, "Iowa wind is over producing, and we've paid SOO Green for a percentage of their line. Export to Illinois!" When it is economical for both paying customers to supply or pull from at the same time, the system breaks down.
Feel free to reach out to me with more questions about how electricity markets work in Midwest USA. If you want a great video idea on the topic, search "MISO Long Range Transmission Planning" (LRTP).
I have friends who work in the electrical transmission construction industry and they have been talking about this for years.
Me too...of a statistical analysis nature.
I have friends everywhere who talk about unfunded schemes for the redevelopment of the whole world, however most will not be implemented because they are unfeasible and maybe not just for monetary reasons, it might be because the World is not "joined up" at the minute it's going the other way!?!
Yes, the key phrase is, "known for years"! Having a background in utility operations, I can express my dislike for the REGULATORY processes that are being administered by fearmongering politicos and other incompetents, both of whom are kept in control of the processes by the largest battalion of media and talking heads that exist on earth. If this were NOT the reality of this issue, the problems that are being discussed would already have been solved. Industry will continue to advance at a very slow pace relative to the underlying solutions that are already KNOWN!! FINAL comment there are NO UNKNOWNS in this matter of utility operations. EVERYTHING is KNOWN! Pay attention to the competency of the regulatory people and political interest and resolutions will occur at the speed of commerce.
go to deutches museum in germany. they have giant mercury-arc thyristers, probably 70-80 years ago.
From Romania, we're putting up solar panels on residential roofs at breakneck pace. Just got our residence wired up last month, and injected 500kW into the grid since. Cool to know that we'll be able to leverage timezone differences to share the benefits.
...especially once India connects Asia to Europe
@@alanhat5252 that scale of power grid is impossible yet. Also in order to build such grids we have to solve wars problem.
@@alanhat5252 power loss increases exponentionaly over distance hence why power generators are often as close as possible to where the power is needed. This is also the reason why ideas like lets just build the entire worlds supply of energy as solar pannels in a remote desert somewhere dont work.
I think you mean 500kWh? 0.5 MW seems like too much to me.
@@edomeindertsma6669 Mea culpa, you're right. I forgot mega is kilo x 1000, i was thinking it was only 10x
Olympic levels of sarcasm at the beginning! As a fellow Brit and electrical/electronics tech, I appreciate not only the research and production values in your videos, but also the great British art of sarcasm being alive and well.
As a retired electrical engineer I was up for the challenge to find something to be snarky about. Alas, I didn't find anything. Very disappointing.
As an EE from across the pond, I appreciate the overseas delivery of dry British wit as much as I appreciate the delivery of electrical power
Great video as usual.
As a French men , I don’t usually have to deal with Brits sarcasm , and I barely understand their jokes but if this is one them , it’s not funny ! You are telling me that almost everything I learned about transmitting DC and AC is wrong ? And Tesla was wrong for using ac electricity for long transmission lines. I am surprised that only few comments were sent. Can a smart person give me some infos !
Possibly the most English name for a RUclips account
NZ has a 800km UHVDC 1.0 million volt line from Benmore power station in the South Is to the Haywards Converter station in Lower Hutt, North Is. It was chosen as the transmission losses for DC were significantly less than for the traditional 220KV AC lines normally used. The route involved the undersea crossing of the dangerous Cook Strait. Generously, NZ Electricity provided a HV generation facility for the new Engineerig School in Christchuch - 2.5 MV makes a very loud bang when discharged (Also used for testing the insulators for the DC line). Ken Baird BE(Elect) CHCH School of Engineering.
How do I get a job in this industry 😆
There was a similar G.E. insulator facility in the US that had a huge Tesla in a very old building, which was recently demolished. Surprisingly, they didn’t destroy the Tesla Tech, which they sold to a bloke in Florida that wants to house it in his museum. He is currently trying to fund setting that up. Saw this on another channel where these very tech savvy guys snuck into this secure and security guarded building and filmed the Old Tech from all angles and described what they saw and how they thought it functioned. Super Cool!
It's only a +-350kV bipole, not 1MV. But HVDC is undergoing a massive boom at the moment.
'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' Upton Sinclair 1935
Taylor also met resistance while he was inventing "time & motion studies" for Ford. The outcome gave us mass-produced cars & an excellent Charlie Chaplin film.
Bingo - especially true for our climate hucksters - agreed ?
@@brucefrykman8295 what's a "climate huckster"?
@@Snugggg *RE: " what's a "climate huckster"*
Generally speaking, it's those con artists who cash in on the brain washed scientifically illiterate who now cling to the idea that CO2 releases caused by humans are anything other than beneficial to all life on Earth.
There are innumerable corollaries to the nutty idea that such human CO2 releases somehow damage "the" climate, make the oceans go "acid," cause the seas to rise, cause forest fires and the like. Essentially they support political interference supporting unworkable electrical power generation fatuously referred to as "clean energy," or alternatively, ridiculous battery driven vehicles which are essentially more than multi-ton golf carts.
People are not naturally this stupid, rendering them so requires endless hours subjected to sheer nonsense in government indoctrination camps called "public education" Corporate media plays its role as in mass producing ignorance as well. They are currently testing the heights of nonsense that such brain atrophied idiots mass produced in "public schools" will accept as "settled science." The current project: "Men are often impregnated by women" What next: eating bugs and maggots in high priced restaurants as a sign of enlightenment? .
@@Snugggg the doom-sayers that constantly remind us that global warming will end civilization/displace coastal populations/whatever in 2012, 2018, 2028, etc.
I lived off DC/AC assisted for 13 years starting 1990 in Australia. My system was solar, later wind which enabled AC. The system was very primitive, a fair amount of maintenance but it worked and I was one of the few who still had power when devastating bush fires hit.
I liked your casual reference to the technical engineers and other professionals just quietly getting on with the job. They are effectively dragging the rest of us, many kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Thanks Dave. As usual I feel more knowledgeable for having watched this video.
Yah misinformation and money has nothing to do with what engineers are made to create. Wind and solar can’t compete with coal atm. And why do they have to lie about the oceans rising and we all will die if it’s such a great path?
Ther is an HVDC line from Canda to Massachusetts, USA. Done around early 1990's.
Glad to hear it :-)
As a retired elec engineer it's great to Great to watch your informative and intelligent videos Dave. Keep them coming. Cheers another Dave
One must not forget the world wide electricity distribution between several electrical transportation suppliers. These AC-to-DC-to-AC transfer points are being used for far more than a century. Then there is that comment from a US Congressman who was frustrated because the US cannot transport an electron from New York to San Francisco; many state boundaries do not have synchronisation capacities to allow AC synchronisation between states. Thank you for your presentation.
New Zealand has had an HVDC cable running from the lower South Island, over the Cook Straight to the bottom of the North Island since 1965. It moves hydro generated electricity north most of the time.
The converter stations - the most difficult and expensive part of a very short HVDC link like this - have been completely replaced twice since then to keep up with the improving technology, with the second involving a complete redesign and new cable.
Thank you so much for this and your many, many great videos. You are doing important work, and it is much appreciated.
Hear hear. Er, having written this, I think that probably only the English will understand it! Well done Dave. Great work.
Thanks Mike. Much appreciated :-)
Great news, Dave, and goes to show, that the transition doesn't just cost jobs, but creates many too
Somebody is gonna have to employ those laid off oil workers. Great job as usual Dave.
@@lestermarshall6501 sure, oil and gas drilling crews are already drilling geothermal wells. Engineers and experienced technicians are needed everywhere, they don't need to search long for their next job
Lol. yeah, right. How many times have we heard that before?
@@IanPritchard through the cutting of subsidies to the PV industry, the CDU/CSU government were responsible for the loss of approx. 100,000 jobs here in Germany. So, the jobs were here and could be created again. Tesla isn't the only company deciding to build batteries in Europe. The transition requires multiple solutions therefore multiple opportunities for new jobs.
@@lestermarshall6501 no they don't, coal miners were just abandoned
Brilliantly communicated as always, Dave. Thank you for not being as shouty as everyone else seems to think they need to be!
Keep in mind the UK peak demand is already over 60GW. so the HVDC projects you mention about are relatively small and suitable for top-up rather than to support the UK's core need. We can envisage UK needs rising to 100GW later in this century. Also in the past, fossil fuel generation was fairly localised and reduced the need for the National Grid to carry an extensive transfer of power.
The future architecture of the UK power generation will be interesting. There are 2 competing scenarios. One is where renewables dominate and we rely on a massively upgraded National Grid. This is the approach preferred by the EU and buyers and sellers of power. The other approach is a network of small nuclear power stations serving their local communities with a significantly reduced need to upgrade the N Grid. I suspect the business community will opt for the first approach as it makes the most ROI in the short term, but this approach risks being displaced by local power generation as consumers rebel against high energy prices.
Huge power to these HVDC companies! Good new info on power distro needed and upgrades, very informative, and great investment opps!
Time to buy gallium, germanium, lithium, HV cable etc shares. I bought Pilbara lithium shares a couple of years ago and have smiled hugely ever since.
It's good to see this progressing. There was a study decades ago showing that commercial wind power in a 1000 radius connected by a grid, would be as reliable as a coal power plant. Trying to achieve reliability by storage alone is making the task much harder than necessary. DC is the way to make long distance feasible with modest losses.
miles or KM radius?
I'm pleased I've not been the only one saying this since wind power became a thing.
It's true, what you said. In some places (as in the big Morroccan project Dave mentioned) you can place significant solar generation somewhere within that 1000 mi radius as well, and gain considerable diversity over wind alone. Now consider that both weather and (heh) nighttime darkness are predictable hours in advance. Here in Ontario we have a program where large consumers can receive payment for shutting down large power draws temporarily. It also helps to have hydroelectric power that can be ramped up and down. Overall (assuming some co-operation across borders) it's not clear why a person looking at the whole picture would think we need to burn fossil fuels beyond 2050.
Transmission going between states & countries faces right-of-way hurdles and takes years. Good that it's finally starting in earnest, 30 years late like everything else that could have started in earnest in the 1990's; EV, clean energy, reduced car dependency with bike lanes, e-bikes, microcars, and small modular reactor nuclear power. Grid batteries/storage aren't here to "make the task much harder" they're being used for load balancing, Virtual Power Plants, and home energy storage & blackout protection. Look at how Hornsdale battery stabilized part of Australia's grid. More UHV and HVDC are part of long-term grid stabilization that includes batteries.
@@Nphen IFA, the first UK-France interconnect has been operating since 1986. It's rated at 2GW.
@@Nphen you say 1990s, it *_did_* start before the _1890s!_
The first self-propelled motor vehicles (long before steam) were electric (2, 3 & 4 wheeled) & are still used industrially, the first house fully electrified was powered by water, microcars (then called cyclecars) were very popular from the beginning of the internal combustion engine (1897?) but were essentially killed off (in the UK) by the Austin 7 of 1923 though by modern standards it was a microcar at 1m wide & 2m long & it didn't stop there, hydro-power was common with Niagara Falls in the 1880s being nowhere near the first (though it did have the first long-distance transmission line in 1896). Even "small modular reactors" have been in service since 1955 as ship & submarine power initially but also land-based later.
Being a Construction Engineer and having worked on these transmission lines I still am surprised that the cost of these national transmission grids is never analysed.
5 times more electricity will be needed with no fossil fuels in the future.
Can you do a video on this topic please ? 😊
Here in New England and eastern Canada we can imagine connecting 34 GW of Quebec hydro power to act as a huge battery with the planned 70GW of offshore wind with bi-directional HVDC.
An excellent idea. the combination of wind, solar and hydro is the only sensible solution.
I'm in Vermont and the governor and the utilities (the largest of which is owned by Hydro Quebec) have been arguing for years that we don't need any more in-state renewable energy because we'll just get power from Hydro Quebec.
The renewable energy community, like you said, keeps pointing out that we should have as much in-state renewable energy as possible and Hydro Quebec can be used as a battery either by slowing hydro generation and raising water levels while other renewables are online or by pumping the water back upstream.
I had a Friday night cards friend who works with HVDC. He was in town for a few months setting up one of the red pins on your screen. Neat tech with great potential. It was almost 10 years ago now since we parted ways but I recall him recanting (in general terms) the many challenges of getting the system running at the time. Since then it's slowly been ramped up in capacity with major teething pains but looks like it will work out.
Transmission cable made from Carbon fiber with an aluminum jacket is available from a company called TS Conductor. It's ampacity is 30% greater than traditional steel core aluminum jacket transmission cable. That means an existing transmission line could be upgraded to carry more energy without and changes to the support structures.
That's cool, but the cost of the cable must be huge.
My understanding is copper has many times greater ampacity than steel wire... so the carbon fiber option doesn't sound very impressive...
@@timtravelnomad AC transmission lines run the electricity over aluminum. The steel core is there just for strength to support the wire and does not actually carry much current due to the skin effect caused by AC. HVDC works differently... because it is DC, the current runs through the whole core so cable strength has to be engineered differently. Copper is way, way too expensive to use for transmission lines.
@@timtravelnomad there are too many modes of failure & they happen too frequently for copper to be used in transmission lines, it's also hugely expensive.
Thank you for your brilliance and insight. It’s lovely to have such a good example of how to combat the ignorance of this world.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ideas and videos. Nice to see an update on new transmission projects coming up. Like everything, moderation is the key to implementation. Big projects can cause big problems. As long as they are well thought out the problems can be dealt with. Having worked in the power transmission industry for more than 32 years I’ve coordinated all types of technologies. No one is better than any other. The problems come from situations when exceptions are made in operating policies because this or that just can’t happen, which of course is usually proven wrong eventually. The DC import from HQ into NY was limited by the ability to recover from the loss provided from a single contingency. The primary contingency was the loss of the HQ power system and we trained to recognize it if it happened. After many years they decided that’s just not going to happen again. And people retired and new people were not trained to recognize it. Then the rule was dropped. Come one morning I’m doing my job and earlier I read about forest fires in the HQ system that were so big nasa had spotted them from space. I noticed it was in a major HQ transmission corridor. And pondered that can’t be good. A little while later the impossible happened and we lost all of our DC imports at the same time. Thankfully the imports were relatively low. I recognized it as the loss of the HQ system probably due to the forest fires. Sent my theory up the chain and surprisingly that was exactly what had happened even though all the experts said it couldn’t happen. Thanks again for your videos, wishing you and your family the best.
you have a great experience, I’d like to hear more from you
Thank you for this brilliant update! I saw the initial one in 2021. Great news for us all and it puts a rosier pic on the fact that climate temps are rising faster than projected. We will undoubtedly have some generations that suffer and some species lost, but the future with clean energy will allow us and the Earth to recover. I'm old but I hope I'm around to see this cleaner future.😊
Thank you for this overview of the HVDC transmission system. I've been amazed at how rapidly the system has expanded. What used to be technically impossible a half-Century ago has become routine due to the creation of the high voltage, high current switching semiconductors utilized in the converter stations that convert the AC to DC and back again at the respective end stations.
The New Zealand HVDC ( 350 kV ) cable , called "The Cook Strait Cable" , runs from Benmore Hydro Dam to Wellington is 610 km long and runs for 40km under the Cook Strait been the South and North Islands started construction in 1961 and commissioned in 1965. That is rather more than 50 years ago. This technology is not new even though some RUclips channels may have only just learned about it. The Cook Strait Cable system has been significantly modernized over the years but the principle remains unchanged. It is now a bipolar thyristor based 1200 MW system.
@@andrewpaterson5192 Interesting. Which technology was used for the Cook Strait Cable system in the 1960s? Good old vacuum tubes (well suited for high voltages)?
👏👍 "Absolutely Olympic levels of sarcasm right from the start! As a fellow Brit and tech enthusiast, I can't help but appreciate the thorough research, high production values, and the fact that the great British art of sarcasm is alive and well in your videos. It adds that extra touch of wit and entertainment. Keep revolutionizing power transmission! ⚡🔌🇬🇧"
High voltage DC is so cool. I’m glad we have switching power supplies that make this possible.
Good demonstration. I came to this technology in 1972 when working in Mannheim with Brown, Boveri & Cie. AG, now ABB. It was a cable from the Cahora Bassa dam about 1,400 km to South Africa . The power line had a facility which I could not believe. If one of the line broke its transmission would go on because the HVDC currant would go under the earth by an earth electrode to the final end.
That is amazing that we can move that much power through underwater transmission lines .I am excited about the new technology in battery storage systems like Iron flow and vanadium flow batteries that last twenty five years or longer and are environmentally sustainable that could help get the intermittent supply issues resolved to store energy from these new lines
flow batteries are now old enough tech that you can buy one
@@alanhat5252 yes I bought a few shares a couple of years ago from ESS they make iron flow batteries and a German company prolux is making a flow battery for home use they are going to be less expensive than lithium batteries for home storage
Thank you. I did not know that underground and undersea cables were so much more favorable for DC.
Wow amazing video, I’m very lucky to be somewhat involved in the ‘energy transition’ but this just take it to another level understanding the worldwide impacts
Australia would benefit greatly from these!!
Great possibilities & realties well expressed. It is uplifting to get some good news now & again.
Cheers Peter
Interesting approaches solutions and developments. Let us hope humanity survives to enjoy these anticipated outcomes.
People must have felt the same at the start of the industrial revolution, the speed and scale of innovation is incredible. That 'oh, hang on' bit genuinly made me laugh as well. Keep up the good work JHAT team!
Cheers! Glad you enjoyed it.
Here in the US during the 2008 financial meltdown, one of the things I argued was that we should create a big infrastructure build of just such an interstate line. Precisely to help out with load sharing and the fact that we create so much energy in the southwest at exactly the same time that it is necessary in the Northeast... Instead we got nothing... 14 years we could have been ahead of everything... Having said that, I am extremely happy to see this going on now
The elite (royalty and their politicians) had nothing whatsoever to do with the industrial revolution; a revolution that freed great populations of slaves upon which the elite previously used for their energy needs.
Thank you, enlightened and educated on a subject close to my heart. 👌🏻
Cheers Gordon
Don't let the critics get you down. You have an amazing channel with currently 530.000 subscribers. Obviously you're doing something right. The internet has in many ways become a very toxic place. It's hard but focus on the positive and the constructive (criticism).
Good to hear common sence, facts, logical arguments with full verification that is "well thought out and presented"
One of the best regular video channels on RUclips.
Fascinating! I had no idea that these hvdc were already so prevalent. Good to hear!
Thnak you for your thoughtful and concise explanations of technologies.
Excellent news.....looks like an actual solution is taking shape. Thanks for giving us something to reduce our anxiety about this current problem.... better than all the negative conspiracy theory!
Intelligent and practical scientists and engineers keep charging ahead to generate impressive output, while the insular fossil fuel interests remain static and resist change.
@@TheHorseshoePartyUKIncomparable with dam catastrophy in China in 1975. Nuclear is the safest energy source. In Poland aprox. 10.000 die yearly due to carbon and fuel burning (pm 2.5 and pm 10, beznoapiren, NOx --> lung cancer, stroke, heart failure)
@@TheHorseshoePartyUK Did you even LOOK at the cost overruns for nuclear and nuclear storage? Compare it to solar, wind and subsea cable projects, and you'll see what a stupid investment in money, time and mental resources nuclear projects are. It's just a hobbyhorse for people who don't like (for mostly emotional reasons) the resources (wind and solar) that make the most sense.
@@tsaicio None die from solar and wind.
Sharing appears to be key to the workability of these ideas, and unless we are convinced that sharing is good, we may not see or understand the well being of us all as being connected.
Man so happy didnt see any of the doubters on my feed, but I did get recommended this nerdy beaut of a video and channel based on my algorithmic housekeeping
Sun Cable in Australia appears to be set for HVDC transmission from Western Australia to Singapore, Cannon Brookes has won control of the venture from Twiggy Forrest. The scope for electricity sales to Asia of green energy from the vast outback seems to be a real game changer.
Let's hope they can also connect the east and west coast to smooth out supply variability and reduce the amount of backup power needed.
beg to di.....zhank you for the personal research you have carried out and make your own informed decisions
Your channel is one of the best resources available to me (and doubtless many others) to keep off the cynicism.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Nonsense it's a Green/Marxist propaganda channel
taking on the hardest issues to describe here, buddy... Good on you!!!!!!!!! ....Good job, well done!!!!!!!
Thank you :-)
and how wonderful it will be when we no longer have ugly overhead power lines going through our forests. right now there are huge areas of our forest being cut down to make a path for the long distance power lines. i just hope people are smart enough to lay a large conduit so the lines can be serviced, updated, repaired, etc. i know it would make for a more expensive startup but it would also make resilient flexible connections where we could also run fiber or any other new tech that will come up. just think how awesome it would be to have true distributed network of power and information that is cheaply update-able with zero impact on aesthetics or the environment. it could me a huge machine that we can dump all our plastic waste in and have a heavy conduit spit out the other end which buries in in the soil it dug just before. i saw an awesome asphalt road replacer system that dug the old asphalt, crushed it, heated it, added new tar, laid it down with a squadron of rollers flattening the new road. it was only moving at a mile an hour or so but it was taking a poor road and leaving a perfectly new road in one move... it was awesome.
That road technology sounds cool. I don't think that we could do plastic recycling the same way. HVDC cables are very sophisticated and need to be made under exacting conditions, so a factory is needed. Recycled consumer waste doesn't have the properties needed for underground HVDC cables. It would use a sophisticated engineering resin or composite.
@@incognitotorpedo42 true but i was not suggesting the wires be made on the spot. i was suggesting the tunnel (conduit) they run through be made on the spot... out of waste materials.
You have one of the best most professional youtube channels I have seen. Great well researched explanations with good graphics and presentation. Thanks.
I hadn't thought about DC being a viable long distance option. Thanks for causing me to check it out.
It wasn't for a long time - that's why we went with AC. Its been known for ages that the transmission itself is less lossy than AC, but the stepping up and down on either end of the HV line was always a problem. Modern technology has improved however and that's no longer quite as much of an issue. Its still more troublesome than AC stepping of course, but its now less of a problem than the transmission losses, so we're slowly making the switch.
You missed Sun Cable: a link from Northern Australia to Singapore, to supply Singapore with solar PV from the Northern Territory, and gigawatt hours of storage, to also power Darwin. Mike Cannon-Brookes has gained control of the project, dissolving his partnership with Twiggy Forrest's FFL. It might happen.
Britain has been linked to France by dc cables from Sellindge in Kent since the 1960s. Cost is not the only consideration, but system stability and fault levels have to be contained. Joining 2 large ac grids by a single ac interconnector can quickly become unstable, hence the use of dc. For long lines, the Ferranti effect can lead to excessively high voltages at the receiving end with light loading, so again for that dc wins. The small size of Britain means that the overhead 400kV ac lines are quite sufficient for secure operation. If that was to be wholly replaced by underground cables (You think your bills are expensive , now?), then the situation may change.
As for the viability of the Morocco link, the vast profits being made by the wind and solar power suppliers are due to the cock-eyed way that the electricity industry was privatised, whereby cheap generation can be remunerated at the same rate as the highest cost generation on the grid. That situation, currently costing everyone in the country, may not last. Like every other major infrastructure project, I predict that it will be years late, way over budget and the constructors will be begging the government to bail them out.
Love from Québec, Canada ❤
This is interesting and encouraging but it is key that we don’t forget lesson from recent world events. Inter-country arrangements have a lot to offer but we need to factor in energy security too. I hope to see less reliance on hoge distance power transmission with a grid comprosing more ‘local’ renewable generation and storage delivering a significant percentage of overall needs
Seems like internation relationship management, esp wrestling it away from the financial class, is the project.😢
Yes, it's great if as much energy as possible is generated locally, but once every country also has multiple sources of energy coming from others, then no country will have the ability to hold others to ransom. That has been the problem in the past with Russian gas, OPEC, etc, and that's why these changes will prevent such abuses in future.
Energy security requires _more_ interconnections not less.
It might be interesting if the Crown Estate built some wind farms rather than just charging 'ground' rent. Perhaps the King himself might build some? Over the last century & more the Monarchy has been more interested in the Public Good than the Government...
I just realized how much Mr just have a think looks and moved just like Wallace ... from 'Wallace & Gromit'.
Once you see it you can't unsee it, but it does explain such a technical mind & love for the environment as it's in the family. =)
Fascinating! I wonder how DC handles solar flares vs AC? Have no idea, just something that came to my mind as I was imaging all the conductors wrapping around the globe.
Underwater and underground cables are not vulnerable to solar excursions.
@@lengould9262 Then another great reason for them. Thank you!
You bring hopeful news. Its always in short supply, thanks.
We are going 120 mph towards a cliff and certain death. The 'experts' are saying to apply the brakes as hard as can be done immediately, and the people driving not _just_ keeping on the gas, but are also whining over how 'difficult' it is to use the brakes. It boggles the mind.
The fact is that, far from using any brakes, we are accelerating GHG emissions. All this talk about electrification while we do nothing to reduce current fuel consumption.And we need not only reduce it, but suck it back, get GHG out of our atmosphere.
"Experts say" is usually followed by some b*shit. Media...
It’s difficult to come up with a comment of the “superlative” type that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll just say BRAVO!
Hi Dave, really appreciate your peaceful and technically capable literature reviews.
great video again. Running new transmission alongside existing infrastructure (railway lines) ... useful ... potentially powerful. I'll get it into the opportunities list for our project team.
Have you looked into the numbers of moving away from this 19th century model of centralized production and transmission to end users?
It seems to me that, as with so many other things, decentralization translates into much higher efficiency and reliability through interconnected redundancy.
WOW! Thanks for taking a dive into that info that has been skewed for so many years, great presentation, way to slap the pinchy twirps so elequintly.😎
The SOO in SOO Green is a reference to the old SOO rail line that spanned a portion of the upper midwest. It’s cool that the folks behind the DC project thought that up. Great video that showed we the ae ways arong the NIMBY issue. Keep up the great work.
Very interesting. Thankyou
Omg I love this channel so much.
Cheers Timothy :-)
Excellent summary of HVDC. Its definitely a part of the future especially for geographically larger countries (China, USA, Canada, Australia).
One potential big obstacle: politics. Because tying together two or more countries over an energy link (even an electrical link) may move some nations back to being energy dependent on another - certain factions within each government may not like that. We got an all to real reminder of that with Putin using oil & gas as blackmail and leverage. Relations between two countries can start out fine but then, a decade later, not so fine! So the problem with long distance transmission (such as HVDC) is not just technical.
Just to be sure, the problem of grid upgrades & expansion is not specific to renewables. It is a problem for *any* new power plant added to the system. It just so happens that renewables are now the most common type of new capacity to the grid and for good reason.
Long distance transmission technicalities and energy independence bring up another good point for wind & solar. Wind and sunshine are far more evenly distributed on Earth than oil & gas ever was. Moreover, localized energy generation via rooftop solar (commercial and residential) solve both problems simultaneously. This highlights the miracle of solid-state photovoltaics: no other energy source can blend into an urban landscape so seamlessly. Every watt generated & used locally is a watt that doesn't stress the grid nor pulled from a distant power plant that might even be from another country is long distance HVDC is involved.
Excellent presentation as usual, but there is one unmentioned advantage of HVDC tech. Geomagnetic storms can disrupt AC transmission of electric power by saturating the core of transformers. HVDC should not be suceptible to this hazard.
DC switchgear is based around semiconductors which also aren't keen on Voltage excursions.
The lines themselves though are more likely to be isolated by being underground or under water.
Technologies like this are so important but not glamorous. Thanks for sharing this so clearly.
An even bigger HVDC transmission project currently underway is the Australia-Asia Power link(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link). It would be a 4500km transmission line.
We were hoping but it was cancelled.
good point, did he miss that? or did he treat it as a given... I think he mentioned it. Said georgia could send powed to uk when the sun goes down, while UK sends powerback when the wind blows -- but he aimed that point at the peak demand issue... adjacent problem.
Paused rather than necessarily cancelled... it may be revived now that Mike Canon Brooks has wrestled control of the project.
My understanding is Twiggy wanted to cancel the HVDC component and Mike wanted to continue the HVDC component.
@@timtravelnomad I wondered about that. Surely the HVDC component is the only thing that makes it actually work. Also, I'm surprised that Mr Forrest would cancel that part of it. Perhaps he's worried it might compete with his plans to sell H2 to the world.
Unlikely to ever happen. HVDC as a one way supply line simply too lossy beyond 1,000km. But it makes a bit more sense over long distances when it is part of a matrix of users and suppliers.
Forest's approach of using the energy in the Australian grid and to make H2 makes a lot more sense.
If the cable to Singapore goes ahead it would only meet 15% of the city's demand and has no levelling. If Singapore wants to go solar it makes much more sense to lease some land in Indonesia and install the panels there.
Indonesia is also installing new nuclear power stations that work in tandem with solar power.. Singapore could also tap into that or install a nuke of their own. One medium sized nuclear plant would easily power the whole city.
At 61goingon16 I grew up l with documentaries. Your're work is as well produced and as informative as any. Thanks
Questions / Video Suggestions - between agrovoltaics, roof tops and parking lots (I’m in Canada and we have monsterous parking lots) there seems to be under utilized space where local green power production could occur - reducing or skipping the need for this massive infrastructure element. Why not paradigm shift to micro local production rather bigger centralized continental production? Plus, India selling power to African countries? One of the largest populations is going to sell power to nations that should have power autonomy? Doesn’t make sense outside of profit gain. Basic question is this, what could be done more locally with an equal level of capital & resource investment? What’s the delta between the two scenarios? Cheeers
This is a great channel. I find videos like this so exciting.
Sun doesn always shine and wind doesnt always blow, except it does.
So dense...
Another great video. Thank you!
No complains, well done. I remember when we used mercury rectifiers in the HVDC. Much better now. However I wanted to remind you ( sorry if I overlooked it) of the project shipping dust and gravel from Greenland to Africa and Brazil as fertilizer. AFRICA Got 50% improved harvest and as a byproduct the dust and gravel suck up a lot of CO2 in the process ( >25% of the weight of gravel and dust if I remember right) and we may even see people stopping burning forrest to get the nessary minerals to grow their produce. To your next question, yes it is much cheaper to transport the dust and gravel than to grind it. So please make a video about it unless you already have done that.
This propaganda (Made in China( will now be forever blocked. Total loons here!
I forget what the application is but mercury rectifiers are still the first choice for something.
Dave ,thx for taking the time to talk about this subject. I agree with the fossil fuel folks in that we need them to bring us to the next level of sustainable energy production and transportation but no further. And for that, my hat is off to them. For me, I feel that nth generation nuclear electrical production is the future also. I don't believe in batteries that are needed to make renewables reliable as their cost is too great at this time. Sometime in the future when the cycle lifetime of batteries is extended far beyond what the current cycle lifetimes are today they will be a viable way to make renewables reliable.
The only enhancement left for DC transmission lines is superconductors. With elevated temperature superconductive materials this could improve the efficiency of LONG DISTANCE transmission appreciably. So, the marriage of high temp superconductors and high voltage DC will be the enabler of next generation transmission lines. With no losses, the thought of extremely long transmission lines become a reality. This would revolutionize the layout of electrical producers relative to consumers globally.
Again, thx for making this video.
It's a shame Michael Crichton didn't live long enough to see Just Have A Think. I like to think he'd have benefitted from it and engaged with you on many topics.
Anything in particular?
@@symphantic4552 Well, he was kind of a wingnut, as I recall. Hard to say what he'd be on about with Dave, but climate denialism comes to mind.
Praise indeed! Much appreciated :-)
@@incognitotorpedo42you're confusing him with someone else, he did a lot of reading around of then-current research & added a few threads together to weave a story, usually a terrifying story because it was built on facts you can track down on Wikipedia & academic document servers. Climate-denialism most _definitely_ was not his style.
Thanks again, Dave, for excellent research and presentation. The cross-over graphs will help us explain to the uneducated masses what is real-world physics. I would like to add 2 thoughts: 1) The need for transmission lines may drop almost to zero. If solar panels arrive on 50% of roof-tops world-wide, and battery mega-packs are deployed for regional balancing, along with a washing-machine sized rust battery in every garage, 99% of what the grid does now will become useless. 2) What India wants to do to Africa, combined with the flip-side of what England is up to, constitutes both a) India sells the product to African nations, keeps the generating technology for itself, and b) England uses the African resources to take away solar production that would benefit Africa more by making industrialization affordable IN Africa. And a small side note on the west coast HVDC line - at night, on a good night, California sends electricity BACK to the north, reducing their need to burn coal/gas for a few hours here and there! "During winter, the northern region operates electrical heating devices while the southern portion uses relatively little electricity. In summer, the north uses little electricity while the south reaches peak demand due to air conditioning usage. " Link for that: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie#:~:text=The%20Pacific%20DC%20Intertie%20(also,voltage%20direct%20current%20(HVDC).
As usual a great video very informative and it’s nice to know that it really is coming together behind the scenes despite what you might hear otherwise.
You did not mention the Nebel HVDC transformer that will be rolling out further reducing Transmission cost by about 5 percent at half the cost. It does not sound like much but it is a game changer as well. At least on the infrastructure side.
have you spelled it correctly? A web search produces no results.
even Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebel produces no results
Wrong timeline *@paperburn* - the Nebel project never materialized in this one!
@@HiAdrian look again, different name same goals
@@paperburn Blimey, you're right!
It;s nice to know that so much progress is being made. In the U.S. there is still some resistance to cooling coal, but I think we will win this one.
The problem with this analysis is that, while these technologies e.g. DC inter-connectors will continue to make a contribution, they will not solve the central problem of what the Germans call Dunkelflaute. This is where typically in January high pressure settles in across Northern Europe such that there is little wind or solar. In which case a number of countries e.g. the UK, Belgium, Holland, Northern Germany, Poland and Scandinavia with huge electricity demands will simultaneously require electricity when their renewables stop producing much electricity. For example the UK's neighbours will also be short of electricity when demand is at a maximum.
it's not that big a problem, especially as the _whole_ EU is interconnected (on 2 grids) as well as most surrounding countries.
Also dunkelflaute is a *_reduction_* not a absolute cut.
@@alanhat5252 To power our homes, offices and cars with electricity requires the UK to add 1.7 times current capacity to the system. This amounts to a total capacity of 160 GW or more. With a little nuclear and the rest renewable by 2050, and only nuclear providing reliable capacity and with the contribution from wind and solar reducing to 20% during Dunkelflaute, the UK would have a shortfall of the order of 100 GW. And with our neighbours suffering similar pro-rata shortfalls, it is highly unlikely that there would be hundreds of GWs of spare capacity available in Europe, and that there would be sufficient capacity in the DC inter-connectors many of which are yet to be built. The problem with videos like these is that the authors latch onto an existing and useful technology, and then represent that it provides a solution to a much larger problem. It is the same issue with the idea that battery storage will solve this problem. You need to understand the system at a macro level and then push the numbers. I recommend you watch a presentation by Michael Kelly, a professor of engineering at Cambridge University, on the engineering and cost implications of Net Zero at ruclips.net/video/NkImqOxMqvU/видео.html
You're quite wrong about this. The whole point of long ultrahighpower DC lines is that a countries' wind and solar can effectively be spread over VERY large areas. Those large areas massively smooth the variability. Got a dunkelflaute in the Baltic? Never mind - it's windy down in the Bay of Biscay, and if that's not enough it's sunny in Turkey. And if that's still not enough just open the gates a bit more on those Norwegian dams ...
Yes, theoretically it is possible but currently there is only 7.5GW of DC inter-connector capacity coming to the UK from continental Europe. This is only a small fraction of the capacity required to supply the current demand of 60GW in the winter and an even smaller fraction of the capacity required to make up for an 80% or more reduction of 160GW of generation from unreliable renewable power generation required to meet Net Zero on cold windless and sunless day in January.@@kenoliver8913
I am not an expert on electricity but have done a fair amount of research. The more you delve into it the more you realize most people don't REALLY understand what's going on. When the "EXPERTS" can't agree on the laws of what's happening, you shouldn't feel so bad. 😅
That's great. I had heard about HVDC but didn't realise anybody was using it. In the UK we've got a massive problem where I read we can create huge amounts of renewable energy but don't have the cables / capacity to get it to the consumer. Can you do a video about that. In some cases I read that with planning permission some of these renewable projects may take 15 years to go live, but it seems this is mostly about planning and approvals and construction time is relatively quick. It's like our government is putting barriers in the way of saving the planet.
I believe that some steps are being taken to address these issues, but it's like the government's promise of forty new hospitals - many of the few that will be built won't appear for at least another decade, but most are refurbishments and additions to existing buildings. We need a degree of scepticism!
We need wind turbines on land in England. If you visit Scotland you will see their government has invested in land based wind turbines. On the Yorkshire moors the grouse shooting owners are opposing any changes to their land use that will reduce their few weeks per year of sport shooting..
@@caterthun4853 Scotland also has the much more reliable tidal-flow generators ready to drop in the water but Westminster is blocking that too, the same in Wales, the Swansea Lagoon project just wanted the final signature from Theresa May when she was PM but it's still on ice (she preferred the single most expensive infrastructure project in the history of humanity on the other side of the estuary) & there's a repaired tidal-flow machine that's been sitting on Pembroke dock for half a decade waiting for approval to go back on-line. There's tidal projects all round the coast waiting for Westminster.
@@caterthun4853 grouse, ptarmigan & pheasants don't fly high enough to hit big windmill blades (they are stupid enough though) so I don't see what the problem is?
The Crown Estate pulled in £1billion in 2021 just from 'ground' rent from offshore windmills, I don't have any idea why these people would baulk at that level of income. (The King has redirected the income to public benefit though it wouldn't surprise me if the Torys have redirected it again but to their mates).
@JonathanSwiftUK, we have the cables but they're sitting in warehouses waiting for planning permission, usually for more than a decade.
Our first foreign HVDC interconnector, as you would expect, was from Kent (Sellindge) to Calais, it was connected in 1986 & has been operating continuously ever since apart from a brief outage while they sorted out a fire in 2001. We now have 9 running & plans for more, it sounds like the next one is Scotland to Iceland. (They have lots of geothermal to sell). Previous to that we have had many 330KV lines criss-crossing Britain for many many decades, we were coal-fired when they appeared, back in the days of the CEGB though I suspect they were AC not DC as the semiconductor switchgear hadn't been invented. (DC has the advantage you can put it underground or underwater without enormous losses).
As an engineer with many years of energy and construction experience I am often told how naive and ill informed I am, and how much better infirmed I would be if only I deferred to the Daily Mail, Top Gear, Dave the Farmer sat in the pub, some bloke who does coding, Donald Trump etc etc. I'll tell them all to just have a think.
I hope we can use these tech to make our impact more humane, as well as our future less terrible.
The future looks fine as long as the climate hysterics don't prevail too much.
@@joemccarthy7120 Nor the denialists.
@@joemccarthy7120 Don't think you need to worry about 'hysterics' - they may be proved right, but the denialists have no chance of being proved right!
@@alana8863 That is certainly strange logic.
@@joemccarthy7120 only strange to you.
I'm glad to see that this will help us continue on business as usual with our exponentially increasing economy.
My biggest concern is with these multinational projects. What's to prevent those in the producing countries from nationalizing the infrastructure and then flipping the switch or otherwise rationing the output in order to artificially raise prices? OPEC did it during the Carter Administration. I don't want to be held by the "short and curlies" again.
Massive income streams like power supplies don't tend to get interrupted while payments are up to date. The CIA's 1953 coup in Iran was because BP hadn't kept payments up for 40 years. (BP ended up paying more & losing exclusivity).
Great overview, as always, many thanks.
The difference of "break even distance(s)" between HVAC and HVDC depending on whether they are overhead or underground is something I was totally unaware of.
I have always liked the idea of supplying road vehicles with electricity via transduction; something like toy slot cars powered by electric toothbrush chargers. There's at least one trolly system powered this way in Japan.
Integrating a transportation system using conventional contact or transduction over underground powerlines could capture electric bleed off.
It would never be done with a transmission line. Transmission lines need to be in an area where digging will not happen, and must be buried fairly deep to protect against incursion. With a HVDC line, there would be almost no power lost to induction, so there wouldn't be any to get in that way. Creating "charging roads" has been talked about, and there are even a few demonstration projects, but they are a dead end. They are far more expensive than a regular charger, are inefficient, so you lose a lot of power, and it would be very difficult to charge drivers for the power. Cars would require expensive extra hardware. Maintenance on such roads would be very expensive.
Thank you for what you do!
Trying to explain the benefits of DC transmission to some people is like trying to talk about religion. They were taught AC is better as children and won't accept other possibilities.
That's allegedly because Edison lied about an experiment involving an Elephant and somewhere around 5,000 amps of Direct current to slander and defame Nikola Tesla's DC transmission designs
Stunning report, thanks heaps.
Small modular nuclear reactors will become the go-to energy source - built to run consistently and as a flexible, carbon-free resource. Those right-sized reactors are emerging now that the U.S. government has incentivized them, making them more attractive for lenders and utilities. “You simply must have some form of reliable, baseload power because you can’t get there with assets that operate (part of) the time,” says Jeff Merrifield, partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, and a former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. “A nuclear power plant is more costly upfront, but it is an asset that OPERATES for 80 years. If you compare that to wind and solar, they generally have 20-year lifetimes and batteries of around eight years. If you compare renewables and batteries to nuclear, nuclear stacks up VERY, VERY well.” The more of them you build, particularly in sites like former coal plants, the more you hook them up to existing grids, or local micro-grids, and ELIMINATE or MINIMIZE the need for new or greater TRANSMISSION infrastructure. The U.S. Navy operates over 160 ships powered by more than 200 small nuclear reactors (aircraft carriers, submarines, ice breakers, etc.)
Sorry, the entire lifecycle cost of SMR or any nuclear power solution per MWh is far higher than slapping down a bunch of PV panels or wind turbines along with a sensible amount of battery storage.
The US navy nuclear power programme isn't designed for low cost but to put power in difficult locations.
@@AndyFletcherX31 Popular myth that is FALSE. Majority of large nuclear plant cost is financing over a very long period. Small repetitive designs are built quickly and cheaply. Multiply the solar cost by the 4 times you replace the panels and the 10 times you replace the batteries. Add the cost of recycling the panels / batteries or pollution in landfills. Nuclear is the ONLY energy source with the necessary ENERGY DENSITY to be CARBON NEGATIVE when combined with carbon capture. The ONLY adequate solution is not insufficient when insufficient solutions are sometimes less expensive in the short term by virtue of a failed / incorrect analysis.
@@beautifulgirl219 Nope, panels will last 30 - 40 years before major degradation, LiFePO4 batteries will do >5000 full cycles so will be good for about 20 years. Wind turbines are typically repowered after about 25 years. Nuclear power has a massive environmental footprint from mining and refining to the construction, long term storage and decommissioning. We also have security and safety issues with nuclear which you don't have with renewables that can be fully deployed within 2-3 years after permitting. It is worth noting that EDF in France are effectively bankrupt because of operational and decomissioning issues. In the UK the contract price of Hinkley per MWh is about 3 times that of current bidding for wind power. Hinkley is going up in price and wind still dropping in price. No myth there.
"For reasons that I'm sure are abundantly obvious..." I appreciate the not so subtle color change on the map at that remark
I’m realistic, but leaning more toward pessimism given the world economical systems that prioritize profit, or ‘wealth development,’ over global ecological sustainability. I keep watching your channel with hopes of being persuaded otherwise, someday…
What is "earth development"? Where is it mentioned? (A WEF thing?)
What is globally ecologically sustainable about promoting uneconomic technologies that cannot even fulfill the role prescribed for them? Besides, what is wrong with CO2? Is it bad to have a more productive, greener, more prosperous earth?
Yes, heaven forbid anyone makes a "profit."
Sure is a good thing you provide all of your labor and expertise to others for free as you have no bills or liabilities, right?
Um, right?
@@joemccarthy7120 Are you talking about technologies like wind, PV, and EVs? Some of these, in some countries, are being subsidized in order to ramp the industries up to the scale we need by developing their markets. The tech is certainly ecologically sustainable, especially when compared to carbon-based fuels. I can't believe that in this day and age, you would even ASK what is wrong with CO2. Yes, higher CO2 helps plants grow, all else being equal. But it's NOT equal. Increased temperature variability with extremes in both directions, droughts and huge storms are all BAD for crop production. The net result of more CO2 will be a huge cost to humanity.
Cheers Chris. Stay positive :-)
Plant a shade tree on the west side of your home . Low cost big benefit. Shade on the south side of the house is also helpful.