Superconducting Cables Beat Back NIMBY
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 1.08
One can dream about nuclear power or a hydrogen economy, but the best way to deal with a shortage of energy is to eliminate waste. Seven to ten percent of electricity is wasted through transmission losses, and the North American transmission infrastructure is a creaky, leaky mess. But it is almost impossible to get approval for new transmission lines; between aesthetics and EMF, nobody wants them in their backyard.
Superconducting cables to the rescue: they lose almost no electricity, radiate almost no EMF and can be discreetly buried. "This will be a way to move massive amount of power without disturbing the surrounding environment,” said Greg Yurek, chief executive officer of American Superconductor, in an interview. “It’s like putting an energy superhighway in the middle of a city.”
The Long Island Power Authority just opened a half-mile long test project.
It uses a High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) made by American Superconductor that is capable of carrying 574 megawatts of power, enough to power 300,000 homes. The three cables shown entering the ground in the picture above can carry as much power as all of the overhead lines on the far left.
the cable appears to be a pipe of liquid nitrogen with superconductor wrapped around it. See animation here
"High temperature" is a relative term when it comes to superconductors; these are cooled by liquid nitrogen. However, that is positively toasty compared to liquid helium, at 77 degrees Kelvin or -321 Farenheit instead of just above 1 degree Kelvin.
American Superconductor says that their new designs could reduce costs to one fifth of the current cost. It is a safer, more secure distribution system that delivers more power than a fleet of new nukes, but I guess a buried pipe isn't sexy enough to get any attention.
::Press Release from American Superconductor via ::Wall Street Journal
Working on transmission is all well and good. But distribution accounts for 17-21% of losses. Can we apply these superconductors to this part of the system? More bang for the buck.
Sadly, not really, right now. The problem is that these cables are still hugely expensive, as is the liquid nitrogen in them and the infrastructure to generate it. Honestly, I'd be kind of curious to see a larger energy lifecycle, and to see how much ln2 generation offsets the increased transmission efficiency.
Eventually, superconducting transmission and delivery lines will hopefully revolutionize power generation (along with a whole lot of other things, but it's hard to say how long it'll take.
This is a tremendous advance, but probably has a long development cycle before it can be commercially useful. Research continues to raise the temperature at which superconductance can be effective, so this is all very positive.
There are few things that people hate as much as electrical transmission lines cluttering up their view. That alone would lead many folks to push for their implementation.
In addition to power savings, buried power lines are far less prone to damage and have longer life spans because they aren't out in the weather, exposed to UV light, oxidation and temperature cycling. Far less storm damage too, so less likelihood of power failures.
And buried power lines have less EMT, so folks who are worried about electrical pollution and health effects should be heartened about this.
Dymaxion's right that producing liquid nitrogen is very energy intensive, and the cost of the transmission lines and their insulation are also far beyond what is needed for buried transmission lines.
Also I read an article, may have been on here or ecogeek, that talked about researchers stumbling on a new superconductor are something like 178K. So really this is definitely something that needs to be done even if its one of those 5-10 years away from being commercially viable.
where are y'all getting your numbers?? Transmission and distribution are pretty much the same thing.
Liquid nitrogen production is only about a 2% drag on the energy saved. Line losses for both transmission and distribution are only 10-20% total, not separate. With 100% liquid nitrogen-cooled superconducting lines you would see an additional 9.8-18.6% gain in electricity delivered.
American superconductor is in the process of ramping up manufacturing on their generation 2 HTS wire. You will see in the very near future large sections and a lot of new sections of transmission lines utilizing these HTS cables.
A lot of the nitrogen is re-utilized in the lines. Once you liquify the nitrogen you only have to re-liquify what boils off, so you're not constantly taking ambient air to produce liquid nitrogen.
You should do some research before you post comments about something you dont know anything about.
I'm pleasantly surprised to see that this technology is ready for practical use. This is huge!
Transmission and distribution are not the same thing in this context.
Transmission is being used here to describe short distance movement of large amounts of power; distribution is being used to represent the far more interconnected electric grid between our ordinary buildings and houses. It makes economic and energetic sense to use expensive, N2(l) cooled lines for transmission; not yet for the individually low-volume distribution grid.
Also, is there any word on whether these superconducting lines are carrying normal DC or normal AC? Superconductors are superconducting for DC but in fact have (albeit very low) resistance to AC. Basically if we are ever going to switch to a superconducting grid we are going to have to rethink having AC power as the dominant transmission strategy. Which makes sense, since most devices nowadays waste lots of energy converting incoming AC into usable DC