Craig Wohlers’ Post

Are you a policy maker working on #energy issues? Agency staff - Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, DOE Grid Deployment Office, state? A #planning engineer with an RTO or ISO? This webinar (recorded) and materials (posted) should be on your “to do” list this week. Have a full list? Bump a few items - this is worth the attention investment. Johannes Pfeifenberger has put together an accessible and thorough overview of planning with #HVDC. There’s enough good info here even for those who do planning work daily - and I think some of it will be surprising and change the way some think about system planning. Is HVDC the answer for everything? No and there are clear spaces for AC. Outside the scope of this webinar, there are also important mindset shifts that need to made around AC. In 2024, we should be using efficient conductors (carbon core) that carry 2x the energy at the same voltage and line size (same ROW, structures, etc.) as steel core. It’s like continuing to buy incandescent light bulbs that too often in the US, the efficient and available option is not utilized. Individually and together, these are powerful (unavoidable pun) cost saving tools that should be the norm. If we internalized these, we’d also see some potentially materially different results on some of the even recent longer term studies.

Excellent analogy from Johannes Pfeifenberger comparing HVDC vs. AC transmission to a Swiss Army Knife vs. a pocket knife. While they can perform the same basic function, HVDC offers many more capabilities. The U.S. must adopt multi-value planning processes that consider all these benefits and help enable greater HVDC deployment. HVDC is especially beneficial for interregional transmission lines! Check out his presentation below ⤵

Hopefully CenterPoint Energy will also develop and implement an intermediate term plan and long term plan to transform their transmission and distribution (T&D) system from a one-to-many topology to being a network-of-microgrids ... with each microgrid being capable of island mode operations as well as each microgrid being capable to producing energy for the T&D network ... as well as being a consumer of electricity of the CenterPoint system. Adopting the US Department of Defense architecture and implementation plan for all US military bases would be an appealing start for CenterPoint Energy to make their grid much more resilient ... and well as better enabling lower cost electrical energy generation to be more quickly introduced to the grid. https://lnkd.in/gqC-rKf7

What is #Transmission’s role in enabling meaningful #electrification of the #transportation sector? We see increased hosting capacity of the #grid as a #PositiveExternality particularly for transportation. What #policies can help expedite these benefits and avoid future cost impacts? Looking forward to this conversation at #FEUS23 Global Transmission Report

This is the future of PlugNPlay solutions decarbonising the energy sector through agile ways of working, 2hrs set up and 4hrs shut down timeframes mean it is a solution for disaster recovery tasks, infill black Out stop gaps. With scalable PlugNPlay additional modules this can provide a modularised growing power source. What this space as the applications are endless. #PlugNPlay

Join us as we go behind the scenes at #DiabloCanyonPowerPlant. Watch how a planned outage helps #DCPP maintain its status as the state's largest, single source of #cleanenergy. #Safety and #reliability—always our #priority. #ghgfree #nuclearpower #nuclearpowerplant #cleanenergyfuture

Electric #Arcs are called this way because they have the shape of an upward bow when the distance between the electrodes is not small. This is the result of the buoyant force on the hot gas. Source: https://lnkd.in/etqnt43y #ElectricArc #HighVoltage

Solid-state high power radio frequency directed energy systems for force protection https://hubs.la/Q02hRsFh0

This excellent WAPO article (gifted for all to read) captures a few of the real-time, serious power grid challenges: -- Growing Power Demand - due to proliferation of AI, data centers, and clean-tech factories. -- Georgia’s Record High Demand - projected to increase 17-fold over the next decade due to industrial demand, straining existing capacity. -- Arizona’s Transmission Capacity Struggle - APS anticipates transmission capacity shortages by the end of the decade without major upgrades. -- Northern VA’s Nuclear Plant Equivalent - requires power equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve new data centers. -- Infrastructure Challenges and Solutions - utilities grapple with aging grids, while airports and data centers pursue on-site clean-power microgrids. The Biden administration is working to address grid bottlenecks, but the process is complex, politically sensitive, and time-consuming. WAPO could have highlighted several other key trends that complicate grid reliability: -- Extreme weather events (storms, floods, heat waves, deep freezes, wildfires). -- Transitioning to a low-carbon grid (renewables, storage, decommissioning fossil plants). -- The impacts of electrification (EVs, heat pumps) on winter peak.

Mobile Energy Generation Austere-environments (MEGA) solicitation just posted! The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has historically engaged in operations far from United States territories, necessitating expansive logistics tails and substantial power generation equipment in order to operate effectively. In the near future, the DoD likely will continue to operate in distant and disbursed locals and face increased threats and obstacles to the logistical supply line unencountered in the previous half-century. The DoD is seeking commercial solutions to disseminate energy, on-demand, from tactical vehicles to supported tactical equipment and systems, bypassing the need for supplementary generators. Submissions requested by 6/26/24. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/erXEqkYJ