Keeping Overheads so far Down, They’re Underground

We automatically think, in this country, that if power needs to be sent from generating station A to a town rejoicing under the name of B, then some line joining the two points must be sown with large metal skeletons keeping high-voltage wires safely above our heads.

It ain’t necessarily so.  Thomas Blakeslee of Clearlight Foundation, writing in RenewableEnergyWorld.com, makes the case that using high-voltage DC instead of AC and burying the cables underground can cost the same or less than stringing them through the sky, for four reasons:

1. The electronic voltage converters required by HVDC grids (which are the kind we will need for the national backbone described in the above article) are no longer cost-prohibitive, thanks to falling semiconductor prices.

2. Costs for AC transformers, land and steel are rising dramatically.

3. DC transmission requires two cables, AC three.

4. Planning to bury cables along existing rights of way instead of proposing to mar landscapes with towers will likely avoid years of expensive legal battles with environmental and local citizens’ groups.

Images courtesy of ABB

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Clean Solar Power is Here and There. But can it be Everywhere?

Ideas are taking shape in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for a truly comprehensive, continent-wide energy landscape of the future. And some of the strategies coming out of planning bodies ‘over there’ deserve serious attention on the North American continent. They also deserve a more liberal and disinterested response from legislators and regulators at the local level than these officials have historically been wont to give.  And that makes us wonder whether we can rise above the technical challenges involved, only to drown in a sea of regulation and self-interest.

The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), an initiative of The Club of Rome non-governmental global think tank, has developed a concept known as DESERTEC, whose main elements include:

• Establishing large numbers of concentrating solar power (CSP) arrays in desert areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA);
• Transmitting power from these and other renewable sources throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EUMENA) via super-efficient high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission lines.

(Solar Citizen reported on this concept in our May 2008 issue (Is Desert Solar Power the Solution to Europe’s Energy Crisis?)).

The TREC group (now the DESERTEC Foundation) has calculated that an amount of electricity equal to the total present usage of the EUMENA region could be generated in this way if less than 0.3 per cent of the Sahara Desert was covered with CSP plants. And on a larger scale, the DESERTEC Foundation envisages a supergrid running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian peninsula, from the Baltic Sea to Bathurst, Gambia, in which offshore wind and wave farms, photovoltaic sites, tidal stream generators, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric stations would unite with desert CSP arrays to meet the region’s actual daily and hourly demands over an HVDC network of unprecedented size.

Graphic courtesy of DESERTEC Foundation

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Get Your Lawmakers to Sign on to REAL Clean Energy Legislation

Now that we’ve got a stimulus package in place from the Government that recognizes renewable energy’s place in our future, it’s time to turn our attention to the bills that will, if properly supported, create a healthy market for solar and other clean energy sources.

Members of both chambers of Congress have written to their respective leaders, strongly urging them to support specific pro-solar measures expected to be debated in the coming weeks and months.

It’s important, right now, to get as many senators and representatives as possible to sign on to the letter calling for support from their respective leaders.  (You can read about the pro-solar measures and read the letters themselves by clicking below).

Can you send a message to your own senators and representative, urging them to sign on to their chamber’s letter?  The more support your legislators get from you, the more they will give to clean energy legislation affecting all of us.

Click here to read more and to TAKE ACTION!