A Power Grid for the Hydrogen Economy

A Power Grid for the Hydrogen Economy
Cryogenic, superconducting conduits could be connected into a
"SuperGrid" that would simultaneously deliver electrical power and
hydrogen fuel
By Paul M. Grant, Chauncey Starr and Thomas J. Overbye

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Image: SLIM FILMS; CORBIS (background satellite image); BOB SACHA
Corbis (wind power); ALAN SCHEIN PHOTOGRAPHY Corbis (office buildings);
PREMIUM STOCK/CORBIS (power plant); GEORGE STEINMETZ Corbis (aerial
view of houses); CORBIS (solar arrays and substation); BMW AG, MÜNCHEN
(hydro car); ZUMA PRESS (clean vehicles); AMERICAN SUPERCONDUCTOR, INC.
(superconducting cable); ROBERT HARDING World Imagery/Corbis (houses)

On the afternoon of August 14, 2003, electricity failed to arrive in
New York City, plunging the eight million inhabitants of the Big
Apple--along with 40 million other people throughout the northeastern
U.S. and Ontario--into a tense night of darkness. After one power plant
in Ohio had shut down, elevated power loads overheated high-voltage
lines, which sagged into trees and short-circuited. Like toppling
dominoes, the failures cascaded through the electrical grid, knocking
265 power plants offline and darkening 24,000 square kilometers.
That incident--and an even more extensive blackout that affected 56
million people in Italy and Switzerland a month later--called attention
to pervasive problems with modern civilization's vital equivalent of a
biological circulatory system, its interconnected electrical networks.
In North America the electrical grid has evolved in piecemeal fashion
over the past 100 years. Today the more than $1-trillion infrastructure
spans the continent with millions of kilometers of wire operating at up
to 765,000 volts. Despite its importance, no single organization has
control over the operation, maintenance or protection of the grid; the
same is true in Europe. Dozens of utilities must cooperate even as they
compete to generate and deliver, every second, exactly as much power as
customers demand--and no more. The 2003 blackouts raised calls for
greater government oversight and spurred the industry to move more
quickly, through its Intelli-Grid Consortium and the Grid-Wise program
of the U.S. Department of Energy, to create self-healing systems for
the grid that may prevent some kinds of outages from cascading. But
reliability is not the only challenge--and arguably not even the most
important challenge--that the grid faces in the decades ahead.


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A more fundamental limitation of the 20th-century grid is that it is
poorly suited to handle two 21st-century trends: the relentless growth
in demand for electrical energy and the coming transition from
fossil-fueled power stations and vehicles to cleaner sources of
electricity and transportation fuels. Utilities cannot simply pump more
power through existing high-voltage lines by ramping up the voltages
and currents. At about one million volts, the electric fields tear
insulation off the wires, causing arcs and short circuits. And higher
currents will heat the lines, which could then sag dangerously close to
trees and structures.


MORE ON THIS ARTICLE

OVERVIEW
· A Continental SuperGrid

SIDEBARS
· SuperCables
· The Evolution of a SuperGrid
· Continent-wide SuperGrid





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A hydrogen-filled SuperGrid would serve not only as a conduit but also
as a vast repository of energy.
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It is not at all clear, moreover, how well today's infrastructure could
support the rapid adoption of hybrid vehicles that draw on electricity
or hydrogen for part of their power. And because the power system must
continuously match electricity consumption with generation, it cannot
easily accept a large increase in the unpredictable and intermittent
power produced from renewable wind, ocean and solar resources.

We are part of a growing group of engineers and physicists who have
begun developing designs for a new energy delivery system we call the
Continental SuperGrid. We envision the SuperGrid evolving gradually
alongside the current grid, strengthening its capacity and reliability.
Over the course of decades, the SuperGrid would put in place the means
to generate and deliver not only plentiful, reliable, inexpensive and
"clean" electricity but also hydrogen for energy storage and personal
transportation.

Engineering studies of the design have concluded that no further
fundamental scientific discoveries are needed to realize this vision.
Existing nuclear, hydrogen and superconducting technologies,
supplemented by selected renewable energy, provide all the technical
ingredients required to create a SuperGrid. Mustering the social and
national resolve to create it may be a challenge, as will be some of
the engineering. But the benefits would be considerable, too.

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