Do we really need a grid?

[hans]

May seem obvious, but if you suddenly install several windmills on your property, your neighbors may not like the view or the noise. Let alone if you install generators that burn stuff.

I have one anecdote on that here in Netherlands: during the electricity cost boom we saw 2 years ago, it was almost cheaper to run your own dinosaur burning generator than to get electricity from the wall. I had to renew my contract and I was almost considering it
1 liter of E10 petrol was around 1.8 EUR back then. Converting 1 liter of petrol @ 20% efficiency would yield 1.8kWh. So that's 100ct/kWh.
At its peak, I think our electricity tariffs shot up to 98ct/kWh (incl tax) for a new contracts. So if you lived close to a border with Germany/Belgium (which I do), it would probably be doable to get fuel at a much reduced rate (say 1.5 EUR/liter), preferably in a dozen jerrycans at a time, drive back home, and still be cheaper than whatever the grid had to offer you.

1kWh market prices were never really 60ct/kWh+ consistently, but at the time a lot of people were on 1-3 year contracts at the lowest prices ever (10-12ct/kWh), so it had to be balanced out in order not to have electricity companies go bankrupt. In the end a few actually did.
In 2023 our gov introduced a energy tariff limit, so people got subsidized down to 40ct/kWh cost for a certain amount of kWh/month. Annoyingly, even the people that could afford a heat pump and Tesla which were crying their "fuel cost" was on par with a petrol car all of a sudden. Oh, with such investments it sounds like you really couldn't afford anything else. /s

[coppercone2]

I am not sure why there is hatred for investments as objects, it has risk but so does trusting a organization. Funded organizations usually have better PR, but probability of return IMO is not assured. Even a big organization can collapse.

[EPAIII]

I have known people who were living "off the grid". They have my respect and admiration. It takes a lot to set up your own windmill or solar farm or whatever and the battery bank for nights. And to maintain all that. Respect and admiration, but not envy!

Could a city or area do it? Sure they could. But it would surely cost more than the commercial rates in most places so who would sign up for it. Oh, and you would likely need a second set of power poles for distribution. The commercial power companies own the one in your back yard. At the very least, you would need to pay them for it's use. Or they could just say, "Go take a hike!" And you would need to start from scratch, obtaining the rights to place your own poles. Yea, who is going to pay for all that? I sure don't want to.

What about back-up for storms and other disasters. The grid is a great, nation wide back-up. A city would need to install extra capacity for back-up: not double, but some factor greater than one. By spreading the back-up all over the country there is a great economy of scale for the back-up capability. Ever been without power for a week or more? I have and it's not fun. Fortunately that is a rare event. But with more localized power, it would be far, far more frequent.

It IS a matter of economics. The present power grid IS the most economic way of providing power, nationwide.

Some places, cities, counties, etc. do have multiple power supply companies. They have either negotiated or had legislated things like pole usage. And also for emergency power, when needed. My daughter is in one such area, not so far from me. After a recent hurricane she was without power for over a week. I lost it for about three days. I have heard many complaints about the situation in her area.

It's not as simple as you might think.

[EPAIII]

Hans,

You conveniently omit the not inconsiderable cost of buying, installing, and maintaining your own generator. I have one that is only rated for intermittent service and it cost as much as a car.

Oh yea, the less expensive generators are only for occasional use. They will literally burn out if run 24/7/365.24. For a full time generator you can easily pay twice as much or MORE. By the time you finish paying for that, you will feel the fuel is FREE.

[EPAIII]

If you think steel production is bad, check out aluminum.

but the grid does let you sell and buy electricity to and from other areas.

Would say steel production be economical without a power grid, where they can hog energy at night? It might end up ridiculous, i.e. you need a nuclear reactor.

If you have all the interconnects to support buying and sharing power for peak demand, you might as well use them to share power too. It would not be economical to maintain long feeders for industry.

Plus if you have high power available, I think eventually super-ceramics will require great amounts of power to be made.


Energy surplus does mean that there is a desire to find a application. Say something like ceramic motor housings, or ceramic structural elements that are not cement.


Also, maybe, one day, very advanced chemsitry large scale electroforming can use power to make stuff. instead of bending or die casting or forging, with alot of power you can grow metal structures. There must be an appeal, otherwise tesla would not have made that ridiculous die-casting press for their car bases

[Simon]

We are already converging on the ideal solutions. There are different models that broadly fall into
1) a local micro grid
2) a local micro grid with the facility to grid tie to the main grid but also work separately
3) a national grid that has fixed grid tied local supplies that cannot work alone
4) a national grid with no local / distributed generation

Currently we are at 3) for sure with small wind and solar, we are also moving into 2) with the availability of batteries but it is not as flexible as people will want to seriously use. I have a socket on my inverter that will output islanded mains. But there is no switch over function, I would have to only load it with certain devices like the lighting circuit and maybe the fridge/freezer. To move to 1) would be silly. Balancing supply and demand is harder than people realize until they try. With a local system it will be impossible, the larger the grid you are on is the easier it is to balance. For starters just the averaging out of the different times that consumers make demands on the grid comes for free, but then when actual action needs taking there is more flexibility.

[rstofer]

Without a grid, California would be dark.  We get a lot of power from Oregon and Arizona where both have excess generating capacity for their current needs. We have 'deregulated' electricity and created an Independent System Operator (a bureaucratic organization that buys and sells power to distribution companies like Pacific Gas And Electric and San Diego Gas And Electric).  We do not generate anywhere near enough to meet our needs.  If Arizona shuts down the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant, California will be in serious trouble.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/energy/2018/04/12/palo-verde-nuclear-plant-could-close-if-renewable-energy-measure-passes-aps-says/491088002/

The ISO takes all the capacity pressures off of the utility companies.  They can only sell what the ISO allocates to them and there is very little control over this government agency.

Texas doesn't connect to the nationwide grid and it likely caused some deaths a couple of years ago when their internal grid crashed during severe weather.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

Check "Outages", "2021"

[rstofer]

Caifornia may invent AI but it probably doesn't have enough power to benefit from it:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/12/tech/ai-chatgpt-white-house-power-energy/index.html

It used to be crypto currency that was going to overwhelm the state, now it's AI.

[Smokey]

...
If Arizona shuts down the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant, California will be in serious trouble.
...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Its average electric power production is about 3.3 gigawatts (GW)

[TimFox]

Without a grid, California would be dark.  We get a lot of power from Oregon and Arizona where both have excess generating capacity for their current needs. We have 'deregulated' electricity and created an Independent System Operator (a bureaucratic organization that buys and sells power to distribution companies like Pacific Gas And Electric and San Diego Gas And Electric).  We do not generate anywhere near enough to meet our needs.  If Arizona shuts down the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant, California will be in serious trouble.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/energy/2018/04/12/palo-verde-nuclear-plant-could-close-if-renewable-energy-measure-passes-aps-says/491088002/

The ISO takes all the capacity pressures off of the utility companies.  They can only sell what the ISO allocates to them and there is very little control over this government agency.

Texas doesn't connect to the nationwide grid and it likely caused some deaths a couple of years ago when their internal grid crashed during severe weather.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

Check "Outages", "2021"

Short discussion of the US grid organization:
With the Mississippi River in the middle, there are three grids here:  Eastern, Western, and Texas.

[SiliconWizard]

Caifornia may invent AI but it probably doesn't have enough power to benefit from it:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/12/tech/ai-chatgpt-white-house-power-energy/index.html

It used to be crypto currency that was going to overwhelm the state, now it's AI.

Well, I asked:

Hi, AI is going to require a very large amount of power worldwide to function in the coming years. Does AI have some suggestions as to how we could solve this problem?
As an AI, I can suggest a few ways to address the issue of power consumption in AI systems:

    Optimizing algorithms: Developing more efficient AI algorithms that require less computational power can help reduce energy consumption.

    Hardware improvements: Investing in more energy-efficient hardware for AI systems, such as specialized chips designed for AI applications, can help lower power usage.

    Data center efficiency: Improving the energy efficiency of data centers that house AI systems by using renewable energy sources, better cooling systems, and efficient server designs can reduce overall power consumption.

    Distributed computing: Utilizing distributed computing networks instead of centralized servers can help distribute the workload and reduce power usage.

    Energy management: Implementing smart energy management systems that prioritize power usage based on demand can help optimize energy consumption in AI systems.

Overall, a combination of technological advancements, policy interventions, and consumer awareness can help mitigate the environmental impact of AI's growing power consumption.

[rstofer]

Well, I asked:

Hi, AI is going to require a very large amount of power worldwide to function in the coming years. Does AI have some suggestions as to how we could solve this problem?
As an AI, I can suggest a few ways to address the issue of power consumption in AI systems:

    Optimizing algorithms: Developing more efficient AI algorithms that require less computational power can help reduce energy consumption.

    Hardware improvements: Investing in more energy-efficient hardware for AI systems, such as specialized chips designed for AI applications, can help lower power usage.

    Data center efficiency: Improving the energy efficiency of data centers that house AI systems by using renewable energy sources, better cooling systems, and efficient server designs can reduce overall power consumption.

    Distributed computing: Utilizing distributed computing networks instead of centralized servers can help distribute the workload and reduce power usage.

    Energy management: Implementing smart energy management systems that prioritize power usage based on demand can help optimize energy consumption in AI systems.

Overall, a combination of technological advancements, policy interventions, and consumer awareness can help mitigate the environmental impact of AI's growing power consumption.

Clearly NVIDIA and others are building chips heavily oriented toward AI - at least for neural networks.  The algorithms are highly optimized for parallel processing.  I'm happy to see that NVIDIA has produced a Fortran compiler for their devices because Fortran is the only language that has parallel processing defined in the language itself.

Policy interventions sounds like government involvement.  That would be a huge mistake.  Rampant innovation is the way to go.  Settle the privacy issues in the courts.

Logic switching in zero time requires infinite energy.  Yet we all buy the fastest computers we can afford.

Matrix multiplication of million by million matrices takes a fair bit of computing.  It gets worse with many-layered networks.  Hence the interest  in Convolutional Neural Networks where the matrix gets smaller at each stage.  Generational AI is a little beyond me at the moment. My interests lie in machine learning and machine control.

[EPAIII]

Without a grid, California would be dark.   
<snip>

And the downside to that is .....

[Andy Chee]

Without a grid, California would be dark.   
<snip>

And the downside to that is .....

The loss of 14% of USA's GDP.

[EPAIII]

I live in Beaumont, Texas which is about 50 to 150 miles east of Houston, which is a BIG area and about 40 miles west of the Louisiana border. I went through that winter storm and saw the problems almost first hand. Since Beaumont is almost on the Louisiana border our power comes from Entergy which is based in Louisiana. We had very few outages and they were fixed fairly rapidly.

Yes, much of the state is on it's own, separate grid and that is because some here thought they could have cheaper electric bills if there was a more competitive playing field. So in other areas people have their choice of power companies. But someone must maintain the generating and distribution systems, A.K.A. the grid. And perhaps because they were trying too hard to keep prices down, they weren't doing a very good job of it. Small, backup generators that were supposed to keep generating stations and other facilities running or provide the power needed to restart them if there was a general power failure, did not work or ran out of fuel. Nothing could restart until there was a thaw.

Nothing is ever really disconnected from the grid; it is simply a matter of who generates what and who gets to use it and AT WHAT PRICE. There are connections to the out-of-state grid, we just do not normally use them. Due to the same storm, the generating companies out of the effected area, outside of Texas were operating at capacity supplying their year round customers so anything they supplied to the Texas grid was super expensive. I mean like ten times the normal cost. Some people who normally had monthly bills of a couple hundred dollars got hit with bills for several thousand dollars just for the duration of the storm. Can you say, "NOT HAPPY CAMPERS!"

Money was spent for emergency, mobile generators. Everything was supposed to be fixed. We had another emergency a bit later and those very expensive, mobile generators were not used because they were for some other type of situation. They sat unused while Texans again had no power for days to a week or more. Can you say, "VERY UNHAPPY CAMPERS!"

Somewhere in this time period, even though Beaumont did not really suffer much during these incidents, I decided to buy a whole house generator powered by natural gas. It has already kept my lights lit (and everything else in the house) for a three day outage for another hurricane. My daughter and her family, living north of Houston, were in a motel for over a week before her street finally got power restored. My Louisiana power company's area actually reached withing a block or two of her house (different city) and their customers had power restored very rapidly.

I feel lucky I'm getting my power from a neighboring state. I guess my monthly bill is a bit more, but I am glad to pay it. And I haven't seen one for thousands a month.

Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.

So, do we really need a power grid? Do you really think my answer is anything but a resounding YES!

<snip>

Texas doesn't connect to the nationwide grid and it likely caused some deaths a couple of years ago when their internal grid crashed during severe weather.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

Check "Outages", "2021"

[EPAIII]

It was a joke. A disguised pxxxxxxx statement.

Actually, CA officials should take the power situation there a lot more seriously.

And I personally have much to lose if CA has problems. But I highly doubt that the loss would be as high as 14% before someone wakes up. At least I sincerely hope so.

Without a grid, California would be dark.   
<snip>

And the downside to that is .....

The loss of 14% of USA's GDP.

[mendip_discovery]

The grid brings reliability, stability, standardised soltions etc.

Local systems work but if you have a solar panel it works during daylight, wind power works for when you have wind. A generator is only any good if you keep topping it up with fuel. These all require maintenance which is ok if you have the time.

Ita much like why many people go to the shops for food. You can grow vegetables, farm animals etc but it takes time and space.

[Siwastaja]

The grid brings reliability, stability, standardised soltions etc.

Of course all of these, but somehow people forget to mention the most fundamental thing grids provide: that everybody do not need to produce for their worst-case own use all the time, but as one uses more and one uses less, it averages out when shared. (It is this averaging which also leads to all positives you mention.) Just like not everyone farms all of their own food, but someone farms corn, some other has cattle, and someone else is a blacksmith: fundamentally it's less work, and it also leads to better safety against issues like being bad weather for corn.

Sharing as concept is basically which makes human life possible. It is possible to be a hermit hunter-gatherer, but that is a lot of work. Sharing is way more efficient. And sharing energy is obvious. For example, wind or solar power works way better in grid because the Sun's shining somewhere and wind is blowing at somewhere else, but not at the same time everywhere.

It is the healthy relationship between sharing and having some level self-sufficiency; being efficient but not taking it to ultimate extreme.

[NiHaoMike]

I live in Beaumont, Texas which is about 50 to 150 miles east of Houston, which is a BIG area and about 40 miles west of the Louisiana border. I went through that winter storm and saw the problems almost first hand. Since Beaumont is almost on the Louisiana border our power comes from Entergy which is based in Louisiana. We had very few outages and they were fixed fairly rapidly.

Yes, much of the state is on it's own, separate grid and that is because some here thought they could have cheaper electric bills if there was a more competitive playing field. So in other areas people have their choice of power companies. But someone must maintain the generating and distribution systems, A.K.A. the grid. And perhaps because they were trying too hard to keep prices down, they weren't doing a very good job of it. Small, backup generators that were supposed to keep generating stations and other facilities running or provide the power needed to restart them if there was a general power failure, did not work or ran out of fuel. Nothing could restart until there was a thaw.

Nothing is ever really disconnected from the grid; it is simply a matter of who generates what and who gets to use it and AT WHAT PRICE. There are connections to the out-of-state grid, we just do not normally use them. Due to the same storm, the generating companies out of the effected area, outside of Texas were operating at capacity supplying their year round customers so anything they supplied to the Texas grid was super expensive. I mean like ten times the normal cost. Some people who normally had monthly bills of a couple hundred dollars got hit with bills for several thousand dollars just for the duration of the storm. Can you say, "NOT HAPPY CAMPERS!"

Money was spent for emergency, mobile generators. Everything was supposed to be fixed. We had another emergency a bit later and those very expensive, mobile generators were not used because they were for some other type of situation. They sat unused while Texans again had no power for days to a week or more. Can you say, "VERY UNHAPPY CAMPERS!"

Somewhere in this time period, even though Beaumont did not really suffer much during these incidents, I decided to buy a whole house generator powered by natural gas. It has already kept my lights lit (and everything else in the house) for a three day outage for another hurricane. My daughter and her family, living north of Houston, were in a motel for over a week before her street finally got power restored. My Louisiana power company's area actually reached withing a block or two of her house (different city) and their customers had power restored very rapidly.

What Texas really needs is a program where people can get paid to be the first in line to get disconnected during such events. It would be an incentive to invest in backup power and actually make use of it. I had a way to get backup power from my car, but that went unused since it was cheaper to charge batteries when the grid is up even though that would add to the problem. (Texas now has Ohmconnect, which, for the most part, works quite well to lower peak demand.)

[johnk0gcj@gmail.com]

No problem, they can use diesel generators. Oh wait...

[Siwastaja]

What Texas really needs is a program where people can get paid to be the first in line to get disconnected during such events.

Hourly energy pricing, such as day-ahead pricing model on Nordpool energy market also seems to work very well. Energy producers and purchasers (companies who sell energy to individuals) have an auction every day where final price is settled based on normal free market mechanisms (supply vs. demand). This has worked here pretty well as weighed average price (annual cost of use) is approx. 6-9 cents/kWh here even during so-called (yellow media) "energy crisis", yet some particular hours are expensive enough to motivate people to adjust their consumption. It has also motivated for technical automation solutions.

Production and consumption can be quite accurately predicted in advance so this works well, and it's nicer to know that it's a good idea to avoid consuming tomorrow between 19-20 and save 1EUR, than to get a message a few hours beforehand that cutting down is now mandatory. After all, you have the option to not do anything, and pay slightly bigger average annually. The actual annual difference is not that big but due to some hours being very expensive (like more than 1EUR/kWh) it feels like it's making a big impact, therefore people react and save energy.

[vad]

No, of course not. We don’t need the electric grid. We don’t need other utilities either. We can dig our own artesian wells for water and build personal cesspools. Forget public transportation too. We should rely on private cars and bicycles. The farming industry? Useless. Everyone should grow their own food. The same goes for construction and textiles - we can all build our own houses and make our own clothes. Healthcare? Unnecessary. Let’s relearn how to heal with natural remedies and prayers. Oh, forget about the police and military. We’ll just protect ourselves with guns or sticks, depending on local regulations.

[madires]

But did we expect that the grid would become a monopoly? Are the big power plants the only game in town?  Not so much, I think anymore.  Granted, it's still very expensive to set up your own power generation, and the grid is still cost-competitive, but for how much longer?  Should the power companies be allowed to continue exploiting their monopolies? 

You forgot to mention the country you're talking about. For example, we have separate business entities for transmission and generation by regulation. Besides that there are tons of regional or local distribution networks, some of which also generate power. And if I install a PV system I may feed the grid too. Also, we are part of the European synchronous super grid and are building new HVDC transmission lines across the country to handle future power demands including transit.

[rstofer]

And then comes the Cal ISO con job.   There are 2 types of generators (companies), base load and peaking.  Normally base load suppliers provide all the energy the state requires at a somewhat reasonable fair market price.  The con:  The suppliers take a base load plant off-line for "maintenance" and peaking providers crank up to provide for the shortfall.  They charge whatever the market will pay and Cal ISO doesn't care how much that might be, they just want to keep the lights on.  Whatever this new, and much higher, price might be, it applies to all generators for the entire day.

It's amazing how much "maintenance" is required on hot days.

Deregulation has been a nightmare for California.  It doesn't help that we are closing down generators.  I laughed when PG&E charged CA additional money to NOT close down Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant as previously ordered.

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/06/pge-quietly-seeks-118b-extend-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-through-2030