Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Dept of Energy: https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-...

National Transmission Planning Study: https://www.energy.gov/gdo/national-transmission-planning-st...

Transmission Facilitation Program: https://www.energy.gov/gdo/transmission-facilitation-program

"The projects will enable nearly 1,000 miles of new electric transmission development and 7,100 megawatts of new capacity in Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

They include the Aroostook Renewable Project in Maine, the Cimarron Link in Oklahoma, Southern Spirit connecting the Texas grid for the first time to southeastern U.S. power markets and Southline in New Mexico.

The Energy Department's National Transmission Planning study released Thursday was meant to be a long-term planning tool.

It found that a substantial expansion of the transmission system throughout the entire contiguous United States would deliver the biggest grid benefits. That could also save the national electric system between $270 billion to $490 billion through 2050."

> Southern Spirit connecting the Texas grid for the first time to southeastern U.S. power markets

That doesn't make sense about "first time". Southern Spirit is a new HVDC transmission line (which is awesome and what we need, more please!). There are already Eastern DC grid ties. This would be a good bit bigger (not sure existing ties are even GWs) but I don't understand first. Could someone shed more light on that for me?

> That doesn't make sense about "first time".

ERCOT (Texas grid) is famous for operating independently of neighboring grids to avoid federal regulation under FERC.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/congress-texas-should-rethi...

Failing to actually answer the question posed. And this wouldn't be an interconnection requiring that same kind of federal regulation so pretty irrelevant in the end too. And besides your point is already obvious from the above comments.

But I guess we'll just state random Texas facts now. Did you know the state flower is the Bluebonnet?

The Wikipedia article[3] is not entirely clear and has a shocking failure to cite sources, but it claims the the Texas grid connects to the Eastern grid in two place with DC lines, and has an AC connection that has only been activated once in the Houston area.

What I suspect this is referring to is connecting to the SERC[1] area. I can't find a good source, but I suspect the existing connections are to the MRO[2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SERC_Reliability_Corporation 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwest_Reliability_Organizati... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties

The existing active connections are to SPP. The one inactive AC tie is to MISO I believe (which is getting one of the new HVDC ties) and yes these new connections will be to SERC (MISO and SOCO).

That means these new ties will be directly supplying the local grids of about half of the southeastern market which is a first all things considered.

> There are already Eastern DC grid ties.

Strictly speaking there are only three ties into any NERC interconnection. Two of them are ties into SPP. The other is a single AC tie into SERC but it was only briefly activated after Hurricane Ike and hasn't been activated since.

This new project has ties being built directly to both MISO and SOCO which means the texas grid will be connected directly to two of the four main operators of SERC (the southeastern grid/power market).

Ah ok, so I take it the other "East" ties are to MRO and this will be the first to SERC. Thanks for that clarification.

I'm having so much trouble finding details of the existing DC ties. I'd love to know more.

A quick search on ERCOT's website comes up with this doc

https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2020/07/30/ERCOT_DC_Tie_Ope...

This is great and leading me to answers for lots of questions I have. Thanks!

Definitely not the first, surprisingly hard to find clear data about the endpoints of the ties themselves but this random court document has a fairly clear diagram on page 3: https://www.nrg.com/assets/documents/energy-policy/ferc_work...

ERCOT also reports flows for the four existing DC ties: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/dctieflows

With that said the biggest tie is like half a GW, so my guess is that they used the term "power markets"" rather than "power grids" because the current links don't really function as a way to transfer bulk power between markets, even if the Texas grid is technically already connected outwards. Like in an emergency they can import a miniscule amount of power, but nobody's going to be seriously arb'ing power with the existing ties.

I think our energy policy the domestic kind is stuck in a centralized supply-centric policy, when home solar and storage offer a fundamental alternative.

Home solar combined with storage that can enable house to be temporarily or perhaps even permanently off-grid increases resiliency of communities tremendously during emergency situations, which are more common than you think they are.

In addition, by encouraging policies that will help drop the price of home solar closer to grid solar prices and storage costs, you may eliminate a lot of the need to upgrade the grid in order to provide home charging for EVs.

I don't deny the grid needs massive amounts of investment in order to enable it to adapt to new pricing, realities of solar and wind. But I dislike that the home aspect of power generation is essentially ignored at the federal policy level from department of energy.

Regions are all going to experience the same weather at the same time so long distance transmission saves you a vast investment in solar panels and local batteries at 99.9% uptime.

The huge advantage of local solar is intermittent power is useful even if it’s not that reliable. Being able to run a fridge/freezer 8 hours a day dramatically extends how long it takes food to spoil in the summer. Similarly there’s a huge difference in comfortable temperatures and what’s required to avoid your pipes freezing.

Obviously larger investments mean you’re more comfortable in a major disaster, but a mid sized solar install + backup generator + a grid connection is generally more cost effective.

You undersell the benefits of intermittent power. Provides: charging of devices, charging of cars (reduces reliance on fuel), ability to heat water and cook. Very salient point as many americans are currently dealing with tge challenges of no power and also no water (following hurricane helene).

> charging of cars

Add a way for the home electric system to draw power from the vehicles batteries (or even V2G https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid ), and it becomes even more useful.

Local-first generation wants big interconnection transmission grids (for moving excess peak generation to off-peak timezones), and the federal government is way better capitalized to support these kinds of projects. State or even sub-State policy is way better suited to manage the highly heterogeneous landscape of generating power at individual homes, both because the problem is smaller $ but also just has a lot of little regional wrinkles (what power mix is best for the location, what does existing land-use look like, etc). All IMO of course, also the Federal gov't has done a lot to support basic research for solar on a very general level, I think it's just a difference of what scope best suits which governing body.

> Southern Spirit connecting the Texas grid for the first time to southeastern U.S. power markets

How will this work?

Wires.

It is a High-voltage DC transmission line and the infrastructure to connect to it. It runs HVDC, so there's no grid synchronization needed. The grid will still be "isolated", as there are already DC ties.

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