So I found this article on Scientific American quite interesting. Granted it is short, but it brings in a lot of the points that Dr. Webber made in class when we were talking about the various grid problems of the United States. For one thing, the implementation of a newer grid that uses most of the old grid is an excellent cost saving measure, but I think that the old grid should still get a bit of a makeover for the increased usage of renewable energy such as wind and solar. Another good idea is using DC for long range transmission of electricity. At the moment we have a redundant system of changing DC into AC and then back into DC for some of our household appliances. One thing mentioned in the article that I do not agree with is the formation of a giant grid that is used by the entire country. Now while this may sound like a good idea on paper, and would probably decrease blackouts, there would be many complications and potential risks. Connecting the grids would good, as long as there was an engineered way to prevent a blackout from one part of the grid from affecting the entire grid. Possibly some fail-safe switches where the grids connect would help alleviate some potential problems. Anyway, I found the comments below the article as interesting as the article itself. Several of the people make good points about the risks of the Supergrid.
Here is the link:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-build-the-supergrid
I agree there are ways that the electric grid can be improved but switching solely to do DC power is not one of them. For the class solar project my group had to research and determine whether the garage should use AC or DC power. Our research found, while unrelated to the project, that one one of the main reasons for using AC power today is that there are less losses during transmission. AC power allows electricity to be transported along transmission lines with minimal losses. Switching to DC would also incur a huge cost, especially on this large of a scale. Also discovered in our research for the solar project, and one of the reasons we decided to go with AC power, was that replacing all the existing devices with ones that can use DC current is expensive. To switch the entire country to do DC current would be almost impossible economically.
ReplyDeleteGreg makes a very good economic point. I also think that creating a supergrid in the U.S. could be very dangerous in terms of terrorist. Infrastructure has long been the target of many terrorist attacks, and what is more important than the electrical grid? An attack on a grid that stretches across the country would be a large target and could put the country in a bind if such an attack ever occurred. Crucial data could be lost, the economy could be damaged, and people could get hurt. These are the social/political impacts of a supergrid. If technology develops to where this grid can be controlled independently and built with many fail-safe switches, then maybe there is a chance.
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