[wisconsin_cur]

link

“As we add more and more wind power, the grid will get more stressed, and there’s going to be a point where the grid can’t handle any more,” Wellinghoff said at an energy conference in Chicago. “The first thing we need is to build out transmission.”

The country’s electricity network sprawls over 211,000 miles (340,000 kilometers) of high-voltage power lines, a patchwork connecting substations and transformers owned by utilities and federal agencies.

Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan to end the deepest U.S. recession since the 1940s dedicates $6 billion in the next two years to expand the country’s transmission system for renewable energy. By contrast, China is spending 23 percent of its 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) in stimulus to make its grid ready for alternative sources, using advanced electrical technologies from Zurich-based ABB Ltd. and American Superconductor Corp.

[Mudpuppy]

I fully agree that the grid must be expanded. I make that comment not as someone who lioves in the U.S.A but as someone who studies its energy systems as that is what I consult about for my everyday income. There is energy being wasted at times in the U.S.A simply because it is being produced in areas that were designed for supply as opposed to production, and therefor there is no spare grid capacity to take that energy back to the the consumers who need it.

But re-designing an electricity distribution system costs a lot of... a lot of money, and crosses state boundaries and that ends up resulting in red tape headaches, etc ...

It is much easier to get a wind farm constructed with all loans, planning consents, construction, transport, and all other logistical factors taken into account in one county or state, than it is to get a nationwide agreement on cross country distribution.

There are many demands on distribution, not juts making the electricity, but preserving the quality of that electricity as it crosses the country. But in the end the only way to get people to agree and get everything into action in a nationwide scale is for there to be a real emergency. But by that time it is too late and all the incentives to build the alternative or semi-alternative source points of power production
have since long gone.

P.S - It is only fair of me to note that this post is written on a Saturday night here in Japan after returning from an Izakaya (tavern) and having eaten a lot, but more to the point drunken 5 beers ... therefore feel free to dismiss much of this as drunken naivety. But the electricity distribution problem is one that I have heard from clients over the last four years, so had a gut reaction in responding too.

[dunewalker]

The title of this thread seems backwards. Reality is that in lieu of expanding the grid, the only feasible alternative looking forward is to expand solar and wind, but on an individual, or local basis. The obvious solution going forward is to de-emphasize centralized power distribution and concentrate on local electrical production. I live off-grid with solar & wind power, as do all of my immediate neighbors. There is no need for a grid here, never has been a grid, never will be--why waste the resources that could be better spent on independent, more reliable, power? One might argue against this logic on the basis that independent solar, wind cannot produce as much as centralized. Hey, there's a solution in itself--make less power, use less power, problem largely solved.

[coyote]

Hey, there's a solution in itself--make less power, use less power, problem largely solved.

I agree 100% - but it's going to be a tough sell in Washington. Bread and circuses and all that.