New Transmission Line in Northern New England

[DBoon]

New England will now say that big bad New York State won't let there be any HV lines be built to bring that cheap RE into New England

The NPX transmission line already exists and has capacity for 1800 MW, and is probably one of the reasons (along with transmission line constraints from western to eastern NY state) that the eastern 1/4 of NY state has significantly higher power prices than the central and western 3/4 of the state.

 

[DBoon]

Hydro Quebec has changed their tune lately regarding the availability of plenty of green hydro.

No doubt that Hydro Quebec is probably increasing their future Quebec demand forecast based on EV adoption, crypto, who knows what else. Also, NY state is building a 1200 MW HVDC line from Quebec to NYC https://www.reuters.com/business/en...e 340 mile (547 km,utility Hydro-Quebec (QBEC. (complete in 2026) which will offset power that used to be provided by the 2000 MW Indian Point nuclear plant north of the city, after Cuomo's ill-advised shutdown of that plant. The Cricket Natural Gas Generation Plant in Dover, NY theoretically offsets the rest of the lost Indian Point capacity.

Perhaps HQ is just taking a pause on exporting more power until the NY and Maine projects are completed? It might be harder for them (in the future) to dam more land and produce more hydro. Or too expensive?

I also notice that (oddly) there are days when power prices weirdly peak in my region and it is usually due to power flows reversing flow and heading in Quebec from NY on the ~1000 MW existing transmission line. Why they would ever need to import power from NY State is beyond me, but it happens often enough.

 

[peakbagger]

Speaking of Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (REGI) and Pennsylvania carbon taxes on power generation and shifting power generation t renewables in the news in PA https://news.yahoo.com/finance/news/pennsylvania-governor-announces-plan-fight-153542040.html

 

[sloeffle]

Check out the power usage of this AI compute rack from Nvidia. More transmission lines will need to be built or we'll need to start building more datacenters next to nuclear plants.

 

[woodgeek]

Naw... just build them in the southwest next to solar and battery plants. Take less time to build, and are cheaper anyway.

 

[sloeffle]

Naw... just build them in the southwest next to solar and battery plants. Take less time to build, and are cheaper anyway.

You'd want to build them in a northern climate because the biggest cost for a DC is cooling. I'm in central Ohio where there's a ton of DC's and the rumor is that Amazon, Google, Facebook, MS etc use outside air in the winter to cool their DC's.

On the other hand, if the electric is much cheaper via solar, battery that might be the way to go too. I just find it interesting that most big cloud providers don't have DC's in the southwest where's it hot most of the year.

 

[woodgeek]

You'd want to build them in a northern climate because the biggest cost for a DC is cooling. I'm in central Ohio where there's a ton of DC's and the rumor is that Amazon, Google, Facebook, MS etc use outside air in the winter to cool their DC's.

On the other hand, if the electric is much cheaper via solar, battery that might be the way to go too. I just find it interesting that most big cloud providers don't have DC's in the southwest where's it hot most of the year.

From an energy perspective, cooling X Watts should use X/COP of cooling energy, and COP>1
So there is a marginally higher energy cost in warmer climates. Maybe its a capital cost?

 

[stoveliker]

... versus the transport losses of 2-3% for high voltage DC per 600 miles or so, I believe?

hm, but I think it's AC, and I don't remember the losses for that one...

 

[begreen]

Perhaps a requirement should be to install them adjacent to residental clusters and use the extracted warmth to heat water for the homes, businesses, and maybe greenhouses?

 

[ABMax24]

Perhaps a requirement should be to install them adjacent to residental clusters and use the extracted warmth to heat water for the homes, businesses, and maybe greenhouses?

I was thinking something similar, but instead with bitcoin miners.

My brother did that in college, had a rented room where electricity was included, and he bought an Antminer to mine bitcoin and keep the room warm at the same time.

 

[stoveliker]

I think for that reason alone the crypto currency system should be changed.
Worldwide it's using as much power as Australia (i read) and I find that very concerning. (Btw, what is the gdp it adds to the world divided by the kWhs it costs and how does that compare to e.g.nthe economy of Australia?)

 

[stoveliker]

I see that the US uses about 1.5 kWh per dollar GDP (2022).

US energy consumption per Real Dollar of GDP 2022 | Statista

Energy consumption per Real Dollar of GDP in the United States presented a trend of decline, despite some fluctuation.

www.statista.com

One Bitcoin takes 1400 kWh to complete, and while its value fluctuates, here

Bitcoin Mining: How Much Electricity It Takes and Why People Are Worried

Crypto consumes a ton of power to keep things running.

www.cnet.com

it was mentioned that that was worth about $130,000
Of course this does not take into account the energy investment into the infrastructure to do so - and that is certainly take n into account with the GDP and its energy usage.

That would be $92 per kWh - or 0.01 kWh per dollar. Not that bad.

Most probably this is too complicated to assess anyway, and my data may not be solid.
So back to transmission lines.

I read that long-distance transmission is needed for grid stability, because distributed power generation AND consumption are rarely matched locally, leading to "pockets of instability". Hence the need for long-distance transmission lines anyway. I.e. I am not sure that colocating large users and generation is necessarily a good option when viewed from a grid perspective.

 

[ABMax24]

Unfortunately, crypto currency and crypto mining is a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. The traits of crypto that make it so appealing to investors and speculators also make it nearly impossible for regulators to control.