Posted by
Robert Holmes on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Score-one-for-small-scale-distributed-power-tp518737p518748.html
Power loss in a transmission line, P(loss) is given by P(loss) = R.I^2 (R =
resistance of transmission line, I = current down it). I can be calculated
from the power P that is extracted at the end of the transmission line (at a
substation for example), P = IV. Get rid of the I from the equations and you
get
P(loss) = R.P^2/V^2
i.e line loss decreases dramatically with increasing voltage. If you're
delivering a certain amount of power down a line you want to get the current
as low as possible and the voltage as high as possible.
I suspect that the driver of big vs. small generation lies in the free
market and shareholders' desire for a *quick* return on investment (I don't
think it's the evil power industry lobbyists: GE would be quite as happy to
sell you 100 small gas turbines as one big one). The lifetime generation
costs for a 2000MW plant (about 25 years) is generally much lower than for
the equivalent ten 200MW plants, but it's heavily back-loaded: you need to
wait 10 years to recover your investment rather than 3 years for the smaller
plants. Private investors are just not interested in that sort of time
horizon. Case in point: when the UK privatised its electricity industry in
the early 90s all the 2000MW power plant projects were dropped in favour of
<500MW ones, even though the former had lower lifetime costs. Why? Because
the old projects' customer was the government, which was happy to think in
the long term and the the new projects' customer was the stock market, which
wasn't. (Of course, there was the dash-for-gas too, but that's a whole
nother story...)
Robert
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: 14 August 2003 17:33
To: 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
Belinda, I was thinking of commenting, but I'm not as knowledgeable as you
about power generation - I'm just a tree hugging eco-radical who thinks that
large scale power plants are a bad idea. I would suspect that the generation
part would be pretty efficient, but even at the high voltages at which power
is transmitted over long distances, I'd think the loss must be tremendous.
My gut feeling is that the large scale power production industry is
successful because of its powerful lobbying rather than any inherent
technological advantages.
// Gary
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Belinda Wong-Swanson
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 5:07 PM
To: The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
Economies of scale is really not much an issue if you use small generation
systems and use the power locally. Most small cities in the US have
sufficient population size and activities to make this viable; it is not
because the utility industry prevents it from doing so.
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]]On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:43 PM
To:
[hidden email]; 'The Friday Morning Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Score one for small-scale distributed power
Small-scale distributed power is OK but has issues of economies of scale
(namely it doesn't have them).
For complexity people like us, the real opportunity lies in distributed
(agent-based) control as a way of identifying cascading outages and
self-repairing them. I know that EPRI were researching this and I believe
they are now (through www.e2i.org) putting together pilot projects.
Robert
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