It is true that there are a few cases on record of power outages or equipment damage but the suspectibility is rare and the remedies not hard nor expensive.

On the other hand, most distributed generation IS expensive on a $/kW basis and has very significant diseconomies of scale. You'll find that most DG will use natural gas and be be less efficient in natural gas consumption (kW-hr/mmBTU) than large combined cycle gas turbines.

Your choice will come down to $1 for solar storm protection on the existing grid versus $100 on distributed generation.

If you look at potential sites for wind and geothermal or pumped storage, you'll find many if not most of them dependent on increasingly long transmission lines.

Sorry, but as a practicing power engineer, I find little of use here. Of course, all you have to do is convince the California Legislature of how "green" you ideas are and suddenly every rate payer in the state will have to send in a little more "green" every month when they pay their bills. That still won't keep the lights on.

Safeguarding powerline reliability is expensive. Due to it's large customer base, the "no cost is too much" effect competes with the "it's rare and not needed" crowd. Neither one is true so outages will continue. A large power plant may secure their operation but anyone with a log chain can find a way to take it off the grid.

Distributed generation is not that expensive. It appears expensive because of the analysis given it at this time. It is a fledgling industry with hundreds of isolated technologies competing for the chance to compete with an enormous virtual monopoly. The roadblocks to mass acceptance are everywhere and still it is advancing by leaps and bounds. Progress in the last 5 years has more than doubled it's competiveness with no end in sight. There are many that are nearing the breakover point now and many more on their heels. I give it 10 years before they are cheaper and more reliable than grid power. When comparing costs, one needs to use the total cost of DG and the total cost of every stage (planning to socket) of central technologies without forgetting to add the value of the other benefits. Engineers rarely mention additional land use required by transmission lines or mines or plants or associated roads because it totals more than equivalent PV systems spread across existing roofs.

Cherrypicking a specific technology to make a point is getting old. Yes wind is unpredictable and solar goes out at night and geo is geographically limited and tidal... and wave... and bio... and so on. The good news is that each site has some that fit and some that don't. Compound this by allowing each resident the right to choose their own path. Then consider if they each generated double their needs and the grid became a redistributor with only centralized makeup. What would the economic growth be like if people usually had excess energy? How about when the economies of scale that they do have, selling millions of modular systems, kicks in? How about after an increasing portion of these 'free fuel' systems are paid off? Will centralized plants have dropped their price to half by then or weaned us off using water in cooling towers or mining or burning by then?

Too many engineers are way too quick to throw all renewables into the same bucket and quote the worst in every comparison. Most of them have no clue of where this brand new market is actually headed and they don't care. Their only motive is status quo and supporting that almighty stockholder at the expense of the customer. It's time for the consumer to come first and the stockholders and their engineers to take a back seat.

There is no doubt that our power system of long distance high voltage lines is quite vulnerable - not just to solar storms - but also to weather and people who want to do harm. I think every power system engineeer knows that. The ice storm in Eastern Canada (Ontario & Quebec) a few years back clearly illustrates our vulnerability and how long it can take to get back on our feet.

On the other hand the cost of having duplicate systems of power generation is very very expensive. The benefits of large scale generation of electricity follow the principles of mass production. The more you make the cheaper it gets.

Society has benefitted greatly from the availability of very cheap electrical energy as a direct result of the size and scale of electrical generation and distribution. It is the very fact that this energy is so versatile and so cheap for the benefits it gives that creates the very demand problems we now have.

But to move to DG without understanding the implications on the price of electricity for those NOT able to generate it is foolish and much more thought needs to be put into it.

As recently as last week in Toronto Ontario Canada, Toronto Hydro - the city's main electricity provider claimed that as a result of their aggressive conservation efforts (compact light bulbs, lowering thermostats and other laudible conservation practices) consumers had saved about $25 off their electricioty bill annually. Also as a result of that same effort the income of Toronto Hydro had dropped significantly so that they were forced to increase the price of electricity by 2 dollars a month for the average consumer. So that means the average consumer will save one whole dollar per annum for their significant contribution to saving energy. In other words Corporations require income to maintain the system. if the power carried by that system goes down or they lose customer base then the price of electricity MUST GO UP to compensate. if Toyota or Ford or any automanufacturer instgates a program for you to but LESS of their product then the price of the product MUST GO UP. If not you go bankrupt. I am sure Professor Banks will have some comments - I am not an economist - he is.

While this is not directly related to DG the economic impact ought to be obvious. As more and more people disconnect from the bulk supply system the cost of maintaining it for those that must be connected to it goes up. So if you are a condo dweller or are not able to generate your own electricity then the cost of your power will go up astronomically.

Society must make a decision whether it will continue to to want cheap electrical energy from a bulk system or whether it will requires substantially more expensive energy from small DG providers.

Either method will work - of that I have no doubt - the question is which one is the cheapest and most reliable. Bulk power has a very good track record. DG has yet to show how cheap and reliable it can be.

I suspect that we will migrate to the DG route over time but if any one is thinking this will be a cheap transition they should think again. It cannot be.

I have yet to see any plan that shows me how a city the size of New York can operate without a bulk power system. Since cities are where most of our people live the cost of power in those cities will rise greatly.

I do not see any way it cannot.

Malcolm

Malcolm: I suspect that WHEN eg. solar completes another few years of it's regular significant "Moores Law" cost-per-kw reductions, all your arguments will be meaningless, most energy will be produced by distributed sources. The "Big Power" players, with typical corporate foresight, chose to "de-regulate" for short-term gains, and as such, IMHO, no longer deserve the protection from competition of the old regulation system.

Personally, I've always hated the visual impact of power lines on the landscape. I love the convenience of the electrical power that they deliver, but I wish the hell they were all put underground. Yes, it would cost a bundle, but it would deal nicely with concerns about EMP-induced grid failures, or the prosaic but very real problems of downed power lines caused by ice and wind storms.

I don't buy into the distinction people make between "distributed generation" and "central generation". There are larger and smaller power plants, but the system we have is already highly distributed. Even a small regional balancing area will include upwards of a hundred individual generators at a few tens of sites operating under dispatch. Plus several tie-in points for long distance transmission to and from other RBAs.

The problems of stability and crash vulnerability that bedevil the current grid won't magically go away just by switching from hundreds of large power sources to thousands or millions of small ones. Not unless you're willing to talk about making every home or business a self-sufficient island. I don't see that as realistic, regardless of how cheap solar power might eventually become. The grid will be with us for a long time to come.

Providing Stored Energy for an event of massive Solar storms, is just one of the many benefits that Bulk Energy Storage or DG Energy Storage can provide. Bulk Energy Storage will most importantly “buffer” utilities from the lack of spinning reserve and load following capability as a result of many independent power plants (IPP) installed in the last 5 years. It will remove concerns about power quality, and new threats to reliability.

Energy Storage provides security, reduces transmission constraints, extends (optimizes) the capabilities of efficient clean coal plants, reduces emissions, enhances renewable energy. It provides load management, (rapid response) frequency and voltage control, spinning reserve, black start capabilities, and supports distributed generation

Thanks to Harry for at least thinking of another application for Energy Storage--even if Solar Storms are not very frequent occurences--at least to impact the grid severely.

Septimus--Brulin Associates LLC Thanks to Harry for at least thinking of the application of Energy Storage

Please have your local politician buy 1000 km of it and we will get lots of jobs in Ludvika, Sweden.

;)

Dassault to Enter Auto Industry With Hybrid Powertrain

I think the more significant development may simply be the cables with extruded polyethylene insulation. I'd guess that it allows higher voltage DC lines to be buried in trenches, rather than run through tunnels. In any case, I hope we see a lot more of this--and not just for the sake of jobs in Ludvika. It's definitely in line with the downward cost trend for power electronics, and it will go a long way toward making electrical service more reliable and more robust. To say nothing of improving the landscape.

In a solar disturbance, the solar wind, which is charged particles as Roger mentions, disturbs the auroral electrojets. The electrojets are bands of currents conducted through the ionosphere at magnitudes in the Mega-amps, and which circle the poles high above the earth's surface. During disturbances, the electrojets expand and move away from the poles toward the more populated areas where power systems are located. The currents in the electrojets are very low frequency ac, in the milli-Hz. The ac in the electrojets are like one winding of a very big transformer and the earth itself is the other winding. The currents in the sky (which, by the way, cause the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis) cause huge eddy current flows in the earth, which cause voltage gradients in the earth concentrated in certain areas where the deep-earth geology results in high resistivity. An example is the lower Hudson Valley region in New York (where transmission lines are not very long, and yet geomagnetic effects on the power system are routinely observed). The earth potential differences between different substation locations cause very low-frequency current to flow up from the grounded neutral at a transformer in one location, pass over the transmission line, and back to earth at a remote substation. The very low frequence ac is virtually dc to the transformers, and can result in half-cycle saturation. This, in turn, causes noise, harmonic current production, reactive power demand, and rarely, significant transformer heating. The quasi-dc earth currents through the power system are called GICs or Geomagnetic Induced Currents.

Overall, the impact on the power system from GIC have been indirect and generally non-destructive. I only know of one transformer installation where actual equipment damage has resulted, and this was a particularly vulnerable magnetic design. Most transformers can take a lot of GIC without destructive consequences. A blackout in Quebec also occurred as an indirect result of GIC, due to saturation harmonics affecting a reactive control device and the problem snowballed from there.

This is a topic that arises every 11 years with the solar cycle, and is usually forgotten in between.

Berol Robinson berol@ecolo.org Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy (EFN)

If the rest of the statements in the article are as inaccurate as this statement, then the whole article is suspect.

I was once at a 600MW coal-fired plant when the main power transformer connecting it to the grid failed quite spectacularly. The plant was shut down safely with no damage to the plant.

Mel Zwillenberg Mel Zwillenberg Associates, LLC

Over the years many of us have witnessed a number of extreme energy positions from Amory Lovins' antinuclear sentiments to V.P. Cheney's limited understanding of the importance of energy conservation. Call it the ELSIE (Lovins-Cheney) effect and it has been harmful to a more balanced and productive approach to resolving our energy crisis. It is time for people to come together and drop the nonsense that "My energy source is better than yours!" The definition of what is better often is a disagreement on values, e.g. cost versus potential environmental impact, further compounded by uncertain projections as to the benfits of one's own pet energy source or the detiments of the other guy's. Every energy source has benfits and limitations, so the real issue is how do we make the best mix to protect the environment and to achieve this at a cost that people can afford. Part of the problem with the ELSIE approach is that it is too narrowly structured. When one thinks about energy you need to consider the whole energy system, the sources of energy, the distribution systems and the end uses. Thinking in this broad way can eliminate many issues. For example, if one concludes that you must use coal to make methanol as part of meeting a portion of your transportation demands with a high degree of certainty, but are concerned about the GHG from coal, you might then agree that for a fixed CO2 release limit it is better to shift coal into methanol (and possibly coal gas) and away from electric power production. So one does not eliminate coal, but applies it in a higher priority use. Another defect in these energy debates is that there is no agreed upon time line. Some think, as Lovins has stated in the past, that if renewables need more time to develop, then just get this time by burning more oil and gas. ( But kill nuclear in the meanwhile) Others think that we are far from hitting a peak oil situation, ignoring that we can be in an oil crisis long before the peak just by having demand exceed supply. Part of the time line issue is the fact that our complex energy system has been largely shaped by oil and gas. BTUs are not fungible. You can not put a lump of coal into your gas hot water heater and expect good results, even though the coal might have plenty of BTUs. It has to be in a form that the end uses can make use of and delivered to the point of end use. If the bilions of end use devices had to be redone, as well as the distribution sysytems, to make a new post petroleum future could we afford this and more importantly, could this be done in time to prevent world wide conflict over energy? Most likely, infrastructure issues will turn out to be far more challenging than the energy source issues we love to debate. We should all remember that there are two pathways to environmental catastrophe. First, there are the effects of energy production, such as greenhoouse gases and other waste products. Equally important are the environmental impacts of insufficient energy. Look at the evidence around you: mud slides in poor countries where people have stripped the land of trees for energy all the way to armed conflict in the middle east and Africa over oil, to threats to Europe if its supply of gas from Russia is interupted, to China/Japan friction about potential oil reserves in offshore locations they both might claim.

People who only look at one of these paths to environmental disaster are courting huge problems. Beware those who oversell their goods.

Let a more reasoned and informed group of people step forth and begin to establish broad criteria for an energy policy, let them consider the whole energy structure, let them establish a reasonable set of time lines, let them find ways to assist each other to find the best energy mix, let them throw out the old and destructive ELSIE approach. If you love the environment, you can do no less.

Herschel Specter

"Power generation and distribution systems that operate independently of the main power grid could become a significant source of electric power in metropolitan areas where population densities are high" is unlikely. First any solar activity that destroys large transformers will destroy electical equipment and generators on DG units as well. The hurdles to siting anything larger than a small solar panel in a densely populated area are many and large - the NIMBYs would be up in arms, emissions permits are almost impossible to obtain, the gas turbines mentioned require gas supplies of 400psi and above while gas distribution systems in cities are limited to a few psi or less and the list goes on. Power plants, large or small are located outside the cities for many reasons, none of which are likely to go away.

Mass storage sites are very limited. Try convincing folks to give up their mountain top park so you can flood it with a pumped hydro storage reservoir and you may well find yourself running from a lynch mob.

While I think it might be cool to have a windmill in my back yard to generate my own power, I don't know enough lawyers to defend against all the lawsuits that would be filed by my neighbors. I do think we need to constantly improve the reliability of the grid and look for lower cost energy solutions, the actions need to be based on a knowledge of the required technology and limited to practical solutions that will actually work.