I really don’t know what to think about the push for electrification of everything. 🔌
In many ways, electricity is a very elegant way of delivering and managing energy. For one, you can generate electricity a long distance away, ship it down an electrical wire at high voltage and relatively low amperages, and have relatively low losses. Electricity is easily controlled by electronics that drive IGBT transistors to deliver a perfect sine wave for powering virtually anything you would want with relatively low losses. Sounds great.
The question becomes where does all this electricity come from? God doesn’t send electrons bouncing down the wires, instead most power comes from fossil fuels, with a relatively smaller portion coming from nuclear and hydroelectric. Renewables barely make a dent. It’s hard to generate a lot of electricity from renewables when urban demand is so high and renewable energy is not dense or easy to harvest on demand.
Most of the big solar facilities being built these days are for show, they aren’t that big of contributions to the grid. Maybe they’ll scale up – wind is now a noticeable part of the electricity grid at times in New York State but it’s still a pretty minor player.
Despite optimistic predictions, I just don’t see how in a few years the majority of our electricity will come from renewables especially with demand surging as people replace fossil fuel heating with electric heat pumps and gasoline cars with electric vehicles. Existing plants along with additional renewables and natural gas capacity might allow these technologies to be integrated relatively seamlessly into the grid but it’s not going to decarbonize electricity at the same time.
That said, going electric has big advantages. For one it moves pollution out of our homes and our sense urban neighborhoods. Most large power plants are located in remote, rural areas where there high stacks carry pollution away. It’s also vastly more flexible and efficient, at least to motors compared to internal combustion engines. But also it is no guarantee that electrons will be generated from renewable sources.
In 1989, this story about an underground electrical transmission line spread across the early internet like wildfire. It had a big impact on me as a kid, and I wanted to share it with you! I think the Scattergood-Olympic transmission line is probably LA's most famous power line, although it has now been replaced with a more modern line since 2018.
With the growth of electric cars and renewable energy, many cities will get priced out of street lighting, forcing them to extinguish many street lights.
This is a good thing, less light pollution. 💡
Most street lighting is only affordable now because utilities have such enormous need for spinning reserve to meet the morning ramp.
But if early morning energy prices surge with electric cars and no solar at night, cities could easily get priced out of the street lighting business except the minimum absolutely necessary.
For a long time I've been fascinated by very energy efficient LED bulbs rather than the rather energy hogging LED bulbs currently available. Why don't manufacturers make energy efficient bulbs?
For one, it's cheaper to overdrive and abuse LED bulbs so they burn out quicker and require fewer chips. But also most of the ultra efficient bulbs - those pushing 200 lumens a watt have lousey color rendition, are cold white, put out a lot of glare and don't do a good job at putting light where needed.
America can be explained by our choice of 60 Hz electricity. 🇺🇸
When the frequency increases, the copper and steel consumptions of the generator and transformer decrease, along with the reduction of weight and cost, but will make the inductances of the electrical equipment and transmission line increase, reduce the capacitances and increase losses, thereby reducing the transmission efficiency. If the frequency is too low, the electrical equipment’s materials will increase, along with heavy and high cost, and will make lights flashing obviously. Practices have proved using 50 Hz and 60 Hz frequencies are appropriate.
