The truth of the matter is we don't "need" any more transmission at all. What we need is reliable generation closer to the load... you know, like we used to have before it became fashionable to shut down all reliable generators.
The reason for more transmission is that unreliable resources are hundreds of miles from the load and the lack of reliability means shuffling power from all over the place in an impossible attempt to make unreliable generation somewhat more reliable.
You ain't putting a nuclear reactor in my back yard. Sorry. Or a coal burner, or gas fired plant, or bunch of giant wind mills, nor acres of solar panels, or a giant lake behind a new dam. In fact, just about the only thing you can put in my back yard is me....and maybe some of my neighbors if I'm in the mood. (which is seldom)
Then I suggest you move you and your backyard to somewhere like South Africa, where you can experience the joys of daily blackouts (actually more like short daily periods of power availability), because that is what your position will cause. Oh, maybe you meant JUST not your backyard - everyone else can sacrifice THEIR backyard so you can have limitless power and still have that pristine view? ALL power generation comes from SOMEBODY's backyard, so unless you like living in a shithole country with unreliable power, maybe you should modify your position just a bit.
In real life, you have a choice; you can have cheap, reliable power, or you can NIMBY to your heart's content, and eventually the music dies and you and your NIMBY friends find yourself in a dead-end country where power, if available at all, is expensive and unreliable. You choose, and if you think you can have it both ways, you should look in a mirror.
In real life, me and my neighbors get to say to h---l with you. You aren't destroying my neighborhood. Find a better solution. Maybe Manhattan if you think it is sso easy or the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills.
I'm well aware that wherever you live, you won't have to worry about it because your neighbors will make sure you that you aren't affected by it and will be free to continue denouncing them for protecting your interests.
Before we get to building transmission we need to look at where the consumption is located and then put in the plan to deliver electricity from the closest generator. Of course we need more generation. Of course we are behind in the planning!! But we also need to look at the components needed to deliver the electricity - one biggie us we need transformers, and we should be manufacturing these components in the USA. IMHO there is too much focus on generation and not enough on delivery. In the generation there is far too much wind and solar. Somehow the economics of electricity had been overlooked, and I’ve never found a politician that understood the cycle from generation to consumption.
I think the real question is do we need all the transmission lines/structure that was previously planned now that we know the “energy transition” isn’t happening any time in the foreseeable future and since we are getting rid of some of the more wasteful, pointless renewables. Maybe all we really need to do is to keep upgrading/repairing at our current pace or maybe at a slightly higher pace.
Actually, I live in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and over the last half century have watched the U.S. power situation go from best-in-the-world 'never fails' to rolling blackouts and dubious 'renewable power' schemes designed solely to enrich the one-percenters you spoke of. This result is something any first-year engineering student could have predicted. Everyone thinks power magically appears at their wall socket.... until it doesn't. Then they (and their neighbors) discover the hard way that all the NIMBY decisions taken over the last few decades have resulted in the current situation where the entire U.S. power grid (with the exception of Texas, which operated an entirely independent grid) could collapse at any time with the failure of just a few critical transformers (which are made in China and have a multi-year replacement delay, even assuming China will sell them to us anymore). The U.S. has NO high-capacity transformer manufacturing capability, so we are entirely dependent on our enemies for these critical devices. These are indisputable facts, and although you can ignore them for a while, you can't change them. Facts don't care what you think.
While I certainly agree with you that pipe-dream 'renewable' power generation technologies like solar and wind are not only eyesores and anything but 'environmentally friendly', the same is NOT true for SMR's and natural-gas power plants. Without the 'anti-everything' posturing by NIMBY groups bent on destroying the country, you would probably never notice a SMR installation a mile away. While you would certainly 'notice' a gas-fired power plant (their footprint is orders of magnitude larger than an SMR), you and your neighbors would directly benefit from its installation, and in a landscape defined by dubious power availability your and your neighbors' land values would probably increase - not decrease. Instead of potential buyers looking for upscale school districts, they might instead be looking for upscale power availability.
What would happen to your property values if your power was intermittent at best? Would anyone want to buy your house if it was surrounded by other homes, all of whom were operating noisy gas electrical generators 24/7? What happens if you didn't have reliable enough power to charge that Tesla or other E-car? You get up one morning to find your car hasn't charged at all overnight and you don't have enough left in the battery to make it to work? What happens to your property values then? You have factored in an assumption about power availability that isn't necessarily true anymore, but you can't see it because 'it's always been this way and of course will CONTINUE to be this way regardless of what I, or my neighbors think or do'. Assumptions, as you know, especially the unthinking kind, can bite you, your neighbors, and your children in the A**.
The ONLY way out of the power dilemma is to revitalize the nuclear power industry. With small modular reactors (SMRs) the power plant can be located close to the major power sinks (like large AI farms), eliminating the need for long power transmission lines (and all the NIMBY politics that go with them). SMRs can probably be located 'inside the fence' of heavy power-draw industrial park, thereby zeroing out the transmission line requirements for all of that power, and probably having some left over for local residents (like the NIMBY guy below). Anything else is just more 'rainbows and butterflies' wishful thinking.
Reasonable observers might expect the NREL (National **Renewable Energy** Laboratories) to be a bit biased and not always a reliable source of information. Although I did find their roof top solar power calculator to be quite useful in persuading me not to get solar panels.
Anyway, all this transmission is only needed if one is planning to build a bunch of disperse generation in sparsely settled areas and transmit it to the cities.
End the plans to build useless, wasteful, ecologically disastrous, unreliable, intermittent, short lived "renewable" energy sources and the projections for transmission disappear.
The truth of the matter is we don't "need" any more transmission at all. What we need is reliable generation closer to the load... you know, like we used to have before it became fashionable to shut down all reliable generators.
The reason for more transmission is that unreliable resources are hundreds of miles from the load and the lack of reliability means shuffling power from all over the place in an impossible attempt to make unreliable generation somewhat more reliable.
You ain't putting a nuclear reactor in my back yard. Sorry. Or a coal burner, or gas fired plant, or bunch of giant wind mills, nor acres of solar panels, or a giant lake behind a new dam. In fact, just about the only thing you can put in my back yard is me....and maybe some of my neighbors if I'm in the mood. (which is seldom)
Then I suggest you move you and your backyard to somewhere like South Africa, where you can experience the joys of daily blackouts (actually more like short daily periods of power availability), because that is what your position will cause. Oh, maybe you meant JUST not your backyard - everyone else can sacrifice THEIR backyard so you can have limitless power and still have that pristine view? ALL power generation comes from SOMEBODY's backyard, so unless you like living in a shithole country with unreliable power, maybe you should modify your position just a bit.
Deal. Where is your office so I can send the invoice for my loss in property value? In my case it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Oh wait. I forgot. We both know it will be in black neighborhoods or similar so neither of us will be affected.
In real life, you have a choice; you can have cheap, reliable power, or you can NIMBY to your heart's content, and eventually the music dies and you and your NIMBY friends find yourself in a dead-end country where power, if available at all, is expensive and unreliable. You choose, and if you think you can have it both ways, you should look in a mirror.
In real life, me and my neighbors get to say to h---l with you. You aren't destroying my neighborhood. Find a better solution. Maybe Manhattan if you think it is sso easy or the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills.
I'm well aware that wherever you live, you won't have to worry about it because your neighbors will make sure you that you aren't affected by it and will be free to continue denouncing them for protecting your interests.
I wouldn't mind having a nuclear reactor in or near my back yard as long as I still have use of the land.
Before we get to building transmission we need to look at where the consumption is located and then put in the plan to deliver electricity from the closest generator. Of course we need more generation. Of course we are behind in the planning!! But we also need to look at the components needed to deliver the electricity - one biggie us we need transformers, and we should be manufacturing these components in the USA. IMHO there is too much focus on generation and not enough on delivery. In the generation there is far too much wind and solar. Somehow the economics of electricity had been overlooked, and I’ve never found a politician that understood the cycle from generation to consumption.
I think the real question is do we need all the transmission lines/structure that was previously planned now that we know the “energy transition” isn’t happening any time in the foreseeable future and since we are getting rid of some of the more wasteful, pointless renewables. Maybe all we really need to do is to keep upgrading/repairing at our current pace or maybe at a slightly higher pace.
Actually, I live in a small suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and over the last half century have watched the U.S. power situation go from best-in-the-world 'never fails' to rolling blackouts and dubious 'renewable power' schemes designed solely to enrich the one-percenters you spoke of. This result is something any first-year engineering student could have predicted. Everyone thinks power magically appears at their wall socket.... until it doesn't. Then they (and their neighbors) discover the hard way that all the NIMBY decisions taken over the last few decades have resulted in the current situation where the entire U.S. power grid (with the exception of Texas, which operated an entirely independent grid) could collapse at any time with the failure of just a few critical transformers (which are made in China and have a multi-year replacement delay, even assuming China will sell them to us anymore). The U.S. has NO high-capacity transformer manufacturing capability, so we are entirely dependent on our enemies for these critical devices. These are indisputable facts, and although you can ignore them for a while, you can't change them. Facts don't care what you think.
While I certainly agree with you that pipe-dream 'renewable' power generation technologies like solar and wind are not only eyesores and anything but 'environmentally friendly', the same is NOT true for SMR's and natural-gas power plants. Without the 'anti-everything' posturing by NIMBY groups bent on destroying the country, you would probably never notice a SMR installation a mile away. While you would certainly 'notice' a gas-fired power plant (their footprint is orders of magnitude larger than an SMR), you and your neighbors would directly benefit from its installation, and in a landscape defined by dubious power availability your and your neighbors' land values would probably increase - not decrease. Instead of potential buyers looking for upscale school districts, they might instead be looking for upscale power availability.
What would happen to your property values if your power was intermittent at best? Would anyone want to buy your house if it was surrounded by other homes, all of whom were operating noisy gas electrical generators 24/7? What happens if you didn't have reliable enough power to charge that Tesla or other E-car? You get up one morning to find your car hasn't charged at all overnight and you don't have enough left in the battery to make it to work? What happens to your property values then? You have factored in an assumption about power availability that isn't necessarily true anymore, but you can't see it because 'it's always been this way and of course will CONTINUE to be this way regardless of what I, or my neighbors think or do'. Assumptions, as you know, especially the unthinking kind, can bite you, your neighbors, and your children in the A**.
The ONLY way out of the power dilemma is to revitalize the nuclear power industry. With small modular reactors (SMRs) the power plant can be located close to the major power sinks (like large AI farms), eliminating the need for long power transmission lines (and all the NIMBY politics that go with them). SMRs can probably be located 'inside the fence' of heavy power-draw industrial park, thereby zeroing out the transmission line requirements for all of that power, and probably having some left over for local residents (like the NIMBY guy below). Anything else is just more 'rainbows and butterflies' wishful thinking.
Reasonable observers might expect the NREL (National **Renewable Energy** Laboratories) to be a bit biased and not always a reliable source of information. Although I did find their roof top solar power calculator to be quite useful in persuading me not to get solar panels.
Anyway, all this transmission is only needed if one is planning to build a bunch of disperse generation in sparsely settled areas and transmit it to the cities.
End the plans to build useless, wasteful, ecologically disastrous, unreliable, intermittent, short lived "renewable" energy sources and the projections for transmission disappear.