Lightning Grid Part 1: The boring bit

Theoretically there is enough electricity released in one lighting strike to power about 150,000,000 light bulbs. To put that in perspective there are about 15-30 light bulbs in an average US home. That means a single lighting strike could give light to about 10,000,000 American homes. Wow, wouldn’t that be great. However, the physics involved with successfully harnessing and storing lighting make it about as possible as time travel.  As Ben stiller says in something about Mary, “So you’re saying there’s a chance!” Sorry, Ben, there is no chance. However, even without lighting we still get electricity, and we are able to light our houses, power our electronics, and even shave our moustaches. Amazing I know. Energy has never been more readily available than it is now, but at what cost. Our archaic energy grid has strained both our lights and our wallets for too long. But before I get to the grid let me quickly explain how we get our energy here in the US.

Energy, in the US, is a complex interconnected grid of power stations, transmission circuits, and substations. I could attempt to describe it accurately, but I could never do its complexity justice, so I will attempt to simplify and describe it linearly.

High Voltage Transmission Line

A power station, or power plant, generates a constant stream of electricity, usually at a rate of 20 Kilovolts (kv). This electricity is than lead away from the plant to a nearby transmission substation, or transformer. Here the voltage is stepped up to about 138kv. I couldn’t even begin to describe/understand the processes used to do this but if you are desperate, ask your neighborhood electrical engineer. I’m sure he could talk to you for years about it. Anyway. The reason the voltage is stepped up is because the higher the voltage, the faster and more efficiently electricity can be transmitted over long distances. So from this first station, the electricity is transmitted through long-range transmission lines, you may recognize them as this:

Once these lines begin to near their final destination, say your toaster, they are met by second substation. Here their voltage is reduced to 69kv.  The reason, many industrial and commercial customers, located outside of residential areas, need higher voltages to power their centers. So the lower voltage carries on along before being stepped down again to 13.8kv. This electricity then travels into cities along power lines that are suspended by wooden poles. Everyone has seen these. However, the voltage is still much to high to power your toaster, so they are stepped down again to 120/240v. The step down occurs in something, I am sure you have seen but never known the function, it looks like this:

Finally, the energy generated hundreds or even thousands of miles away is ready to burn the hell out of your toast.

Phew. To think that this description is a joke compared to what actually goes on, but you get the gist. Its complicated.

So essentially that is the grid. Energy from the power plant all the way to your home again, along with everything in between.  The issue with electricity is that it is almost impossible to store efficiently. I mean batteries work, but do you know how expensive and difficult it would be to manufacture a battery that could store the energy needed to power a city? The answer, given current technology we have no way to do it. Because storage is impossible, power companies have to constantly maintain equality between total energy generated and total energy consumed. As most people in CA know, when this ratio is off, you get black outs or brown outs. These events are essentially, the grid equalizing itself, because of failure in the system. This often happens when energy consumption, say in the summer with everyone using AC, outweighs generation. This is known as peak load failure. So as you can see this is an extremely complex system. However, this ancient grid is part of the problem. The amount of energy lost in transit from the power station to your home is a huge part of the problem. Since I have bored you to death with the intricacies of our grid. In the following post, I will explain why a smarter grid is so necessary.


Sincerely,


That Guy