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Why are Power Grids so Large?

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Why are power systems so large and interconnected? For example, what technical obstacles prevents the US eastern interconnection from being 8 isolated islands? Why not separate them by ISO/RTO? Why does every power grid in the world strive to be as large as geography allows?


Better yet why not have scattered power plants about (with redundancies of course) feeding load radially? A lot simpler and a lot less to go wrong.

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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member

    John Russell:




    ProMbrooke:

     Why does every power grid in the world strive to be as large as geography allows?




    If we're talking about "as large as geography allows" Cigre have recently released a first serious attempt at an economic optimisation study of intercontinental grids.  Looking at the cost of generation in each part of the world (the renewable intermittent generation resource is particularly variable by region), daily and seasonal energy consumption, and the cost of building the interconnectors, it suggests that there would be overall cost savings from building a global grid, as well as significant reductions in CO2 as wind generation in Central Asia displaces gas turbine generation in the global energy mix.


     








    Curve ball, what if all generation was nuclear? Or at least 80% so?

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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member

    John Russell:




    ProMbrooke:

     Why does every power grid in the world strive to be as large as geography allows?




    If we're talking about "as large as geography allows" Cigre have recently released a first serious attempt at an economic optimisation study of intercontinental grids.  Looking at the cost of generation in each part of the world (the renewable intermittent generation resource is particularly variable by region), daily and seasonal energy consumption, and the cost of building the interconnectors, it suggests that there would be overall cost savings from building a global grid, as well as significant reductions in CO2 as wind generation in Central Asia displaces gas turbine generation in the global energy mix.


     








    Curve ball, what if all generation was nuclear? Or at least 80% so?

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