
How to Get Wyoming Wind to California, and Cut 80% of U.S. Carbon Emissions - rbanffy
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609766/how-to-get-wyoming-wind-to-california-and-cut-80-of-us-carbon-emissions/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-02-23&utm_campaign=Technology+Review
======
euroclydon
Wyoming is an amazing place. I was just reading about how windy it is there.
Blows vehicles over cliffs. Turns over 26 wheeled tractor trailers.

Geologists have rough estimates for how much sediment, from the once 10,000 -
15,000 foot higher Rocky Mountains, has been deposited in the plains and in
the Mississippi river delta. It's a lot! So much that the delta has 25
thousand feet of sediment, sinking and pressing down into the Earth's mantle,
causing one heck of a thermal reaction.

But maybe 30% of the former Rocky Mountains is unaccountable as sediment or as
nicely sloped Kansas/Nebraska plains. One day, scientists in South Carolina
noticed a lot of dust in the air. They checked the weather and found out the
dust had been carried from the Rockies. They estimated that over 1,000,000
tons of dust was deposited in the Atlantic Ocean that day.

Apparently, many places in Wyoming don't have any soil smaller than pebbles.
It's all been blown away.

Wyoming has a history of producing energy for the West Coast. The Jim Bridger
Power Plant is turing 250 tons of WY coal per hour into 2,000 MW of
electricity for the Pacific Coast. But, it's keeping all the pollution for
Wyoming.

You can learn a hundred more interesting facts, in poetic story form, by
reading: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H0O8KQ/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H0O8KQ/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

~~~
twothamendment
"The Jim Bridger Power Plant is turing 250 tons of WY coal per hour into 2,000
MW of electricity for the Pacific Coast. But, it's keeping all the pollution
for Wyoming."

How, with all that wind, is the pollution staying in WY?

~~~
euroclydon
Good point. Jim Bridger is in SW WY, so prevailing winds do take it east
across the state, but it must go past the state as well. It just doesn’t go to
where the electricity is used, which is west.

------
aethertap
For anyone else in my position, who thought that AC won because it was
inherently more efficient for transmission, the Wikipedia page [1] has a nice
overview of HVDC. There's also this PDF from Siemens[2] with some data.
Interesting points: the voltage being discussed is in the hundreds of
thousands of volts (800,000 for the line in the PDF), and the transmission
losses are apparently 30-50% lower for HVDC.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
voltage_direct_current](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
voltage_direct_current)

2\.
[https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/201...](https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet-
hvdc-e.pdf)

~~~
thescriptkiddie
The "DC can't be transmitted long distances" myth seems to date back to a time
when solid-state (read: efficient) DC-DC converters didn't exist. In Edison's
time, the entire DC grid had to operate at the same voltage, whereas an AC
grid could utilize transformers to step the voltage up for transmission. But
if a DC "transformer" had existed at the time, DC grids would not have had
that limitation. The physics (capacitance, inductance, skin effect) dictate
that for a given voltage and distance, DC is always more efficient than AC
transmission.

------
niftich
As currently proposed, the TransWest Express HVDC line start in Rawlins, WY,
and first run towards Delta, UT, where without connections [1] it will begin
to run alongside the Intermountain Power Plant HVDC Line [2], for the majority
of its remaining journey, before ending in the complicated clustering of
substations near Boulder City, Nevada.

The Intermountain Power Plant HDVC line begins at the Intermountain Power
Plant, a coal-fired plant in Delta owned in large part by Southern California
cities, and runs to Adelando, CA, on the outskirts of Victorville. It can
already rapidly dump power between west-central Utah and southern California.
With coal prices remaining high relative to natgas and California pushing for
more renewables, the future of the Intermountain Power Plant is in question.
It seems shortsighted then, to not plan an interconnection at Delta from the
start.

Redundancy and resiliency is another issue. Most of the transmission lines
between the Las Vegas Valley and Mesquite, NV closely parallel each other, the
Union Pacific railroad, and I-15. One major disruption to a small area could
easily cripple a significant portion of southern California's power capacity
(including power lines [3] to Glen Canyon Dam, Navajo Power Station, and the
coal plans around Farmington, NM), and cut off a critical transportation route
with the interior. The patchwork of public land, protected land, and military
reservations in southern Nevada complicates the placement of infrastructure,
and confines it to narrow corridors, but piling further projects immediately
adjacent is a risk.

[1] [http://www.transwestexpress.net/about/docs/TransWest-
Express...](http://www.transwestexpress.net/about/docs/TransWest-Express-
Route-Overview-0117.pdf) [2]
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3392214#map=7/37.130/...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3392214#map=7/37.130/-112.95)
[3]
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14282204](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14282204)

------
matheweis
It’s really strange that it doesn’t mention the two big HVDC lines that are
already built and operational from the Pacific Northwest to LA and LA to Salt
Lake City. I think something like half of LA’s power comes over that first
line...

If your goal is just to connect the grid you’d only need to connect Wyoming to
Salt Lake and maybe upgrade Path 27.

------
mooreds
Super exciting that you could solve the issue of intermittency of renewables
and increase the stability of the US grid all while getting a 250% return.
What's not to like?

------
exabrial
What saddens me about wind is that it destroys the landscape. You used to be
able to drive across Kansas on I-70 and just look at the emptiness of the
Plains, now the drive is dotted with wind turbines nearly the entire way.

[Ironically, the EPA was harassing gas companies in Kansas about drilling rigs
disrupting the breeding habits of the greater prairie chicken. Not sure if the
same happened to the wind companies]

I'm happy to see renewables, but they are coming at a cost.

~~~
tibbetts
I can’t speak to Kansas, but driving across Spain I found the wind turbines a
pleasant part of the landscape. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

~~~
ghouse
I can speak to Kansas. The land owners appreciate the rents paid, and the
counties appreciate the property tax base and jobs that come with the
turbines.

~~~
Feniks
Yeah here in Europe lots of farmers are happy with wind turbines on their
land. It helps them earn a stable income.

------
SubiculumCode
I appreciate this idea. My only concern would be putting ourselves in a
situation where the west coast could lose power by sabotaging a single
transmission line

------
rbanffy
And probably give Wyoming the best public school and healthcare system in the
country.

------
newnewpdro
Is it public knowledge who is supplying the conductors for these HVDC lines? I
presume this is going to be an application of relatively new HTS wire...

~~~
philipkglass
HVDC uses ordinary resistive conductors at high voltage. There's no
superconducting wire involved.

EDIT: I see that you might have been wondering about this sentence from the
article:

"In addition, researchers are exploring different types of semiconductors to
improve the cost and performance of circuit breakers and voltage converters,
Sivaram says, and working on superconducting cables that could boost power
capacity and cut energy losses to nearly zero."

Wide-bandgap semiconductors like silicon carbide and gallium nitride are
already working their way into high power applications. Superconducting energy
transmission is much further from industrialization.

~~~
newnewpdro
It's been on my radar that HTS wire is now commercially available and has
already made an impact in the planned development of dramatically smaller
fusion reactors. I also read reports of their use in massive electric motors
used by navy vessels. Basically all these massive electromagnets can be made
smaller, more powerful, and more efficient thanks to HTS wire.

They're already being used in the Tres Amigas project [1], though I haven't
investigated what the scope of the application is there. I assumed it would be
the power transmission since it seems likely to have the greatest losses due
to the distance. It's clearly stated that American Superconductor is supplying
the HTS wire for the project.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation)

~~~
philipkglass
The plan at Tres Amigas was to use superconducting equipment and short-range
superconducting cables on the interconnection site. It's not replacing any
long-range transmission with superconducting wire. You can see a diagram in
the lower left of this article:

[http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/HTS-Cable-TA-Energy-
Indust...](http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/HTS-Cable-TA-Energy-Industry-
Times-Nov-2010.pdf)

I say Tres Amigas "was" going to do this because the project seems dead. It
lost a major partner in 2015, scaled back a lot, and the project site hasn't
posted any updates since 2016.

~~~
newnewpdro
Thanks for the link to the pdf, I hadn't read that.

