The Future of Grid Power?

[RJSV]

   Then there is the pesky, rather large NATURAL GAS pipeline network.   That won't be under the flexibility that electric energy transmission has, and is locked in as to customers and regions.
Plus that market is jeopardized by the calls for (gas) to be banned outright (by the time this shit gets figured out, and implemented.)

   Abandoning the natural gas infrastructure is aot of wasted capability.  I'd bet that 'they' wouldn't even care to sell the whole lot, to some disadvantaged small country !

[Kleinstein]

The changes that may actuall happen could be changing from 115 V to 230 V.  With RCDs the danger of lethal shocks got lower and isolation also got better. The higher current at 115 V in creases the chance for fires from bad contacts / thin wires. I have not seen the statistics, but chances are that there are more fetalities from fires starting from the electrical system than electrical shock.
Chances are the change would be slow, starting with 2 phase 115 V as 230 V and increasingly less use of the 115 V part and more use of 230 V instead. The US plugs are anyway horrible and a makeover would be a good idea. Common sense would limit the US plugs to some 50 V and 10 A.

Those paranoid may have a local 48 V or 24 V network in the house, but this would be nothing for longer distances.

If one would be free to redo the standards a logical step would be a slightly high frequency, maybe near 100 Hz. This would allow for smaller transformers and motors and filter capacitors can be smaller. Slowing down an AC motor is possible with more poles, but there is no easy way to speed up beyound 3000/3600 RPM for 50/60 Hz.  A higher frequency would also be a bit safer for those afraid of electrical shock - the current 50/60 Hz range is about the worst case when it comes to an electrical shock. Anyway I see little chance to actually getting a change in the frequency.

[Analog Kid]

The US plugs are anyway horrible and a makeover would be a good idea.

How so? I beg to differ. I use them all the time and they (at least the well-made ones) are just fine.

For higher current there are the different NEMA form factors, including locking plugs.

[G7PSK]

[quote

If one would be free to redo the standards a logical step would be a slightly high frequency, maybe near 100 Hz. This would allow for smaller transformers and motors and filter capacitors can be smaller. Slowing down an AC motor is possible with more poles, but there is no easy way to speed up beyound 3000/3600 RPM for 50/60 Hz.  A higher frequency would also be a bit safer for those afraid of electrical shock - the current 50/60 Hz range is about the worst case when it comes to an electrical shock. Anyway I see little chance to actually getting a change in the frequency.
[/quote]

Ferranti built his first systems in the UK at 90HZ not sure why they ended up at 50HZ here.

[themadhippy]

The US plugs are anyway horrible

Any particular one?

For higher current there are the different NEMA form factors,

certainly plenty of choice


and people think the european ceeform is complicated

[SiliconWizard]

Due to the skin depth, doubling the frequency is not a very good idea for transporting electricity.

[TimFox]

Aircraft often use 400 Hz to reduce the weight of transformers, etc.
This is a trade-off with the weight of copper.
At 60 Hz, there is a common rule of thumb that there is diminishing returns when using copper wire larger than 0.75 inch in diameter (due to skin depth), slightly smaller than 500 mcm wire (0.81 inch diameter).
At 400 Hz, that translates to about 0.29 inch (AWG 1).
Old-style railroad electrification was done at 25 Hz (Pennsylvania RR) or 16-2/3 Hz (Switzerland) to use reasonable weight on-board variable transformers with DC (brushed) motors.

[G7PSK]

Due to the skin depth, doubling the frequency is not a very good idea for transporting electricity.

Ferranti knew this and his transmission lines were tubular concentric ones at that, he demonstrated the safety of his system by having the foreman hammer a cold chisel through a high voltage line with no ham to the man holding the chisel, earth/neutral on the outside and live inside. I think the only problem was it was a single phase system but this was 1898 1901 era.

[NiHaoMike]

   Then there is the pesky, rather large NATURAL GAS pipeline network.   That won't be under the flexibility that electric energy transmission has, and is locked in as to customers and regions.
Plus that market is jeopardized by the calls for (gas) to be banned outright (by the time this shit gets figured out, and implemented.)

   Abandoning the natural gas infrastructure is aot of wasted capability.  I'd bet that 'they' wouldn't even care to sell the whole lot, to some disadvantaged small country !

CHP is the answer for cold climates. Absorption heat pump technology still isn't that great, so in practice most gas powered heat pumps are electric heat pumps plus generators. Separate it out and then you'll figure out the two don't need to be attached to the same building, in fact they can be many miles apart.

[madires]

The direction is clear: AC smart grid and long haul HVDC transmission. Smart grid means controlling power sources and loads.

[SiliconWizard]

I like the idea of decentralized power generation, but I doubt it's something manageable, at least in large and dense areas.
And, it would require ultra-safe power generators to allow many of them everywhere. Some think of solar panel installations, but that's not an answer to this. Granted that is safe, but that's an option more for individual houses, while the large majority of people worldwide living in large urban areas live in appartment buildings. Also, while that works rather well in very sunny regions such as Australia, not so much in others like the UK.

[TimFox]

One very important property of grids is redundancy, so that it is easy to recover function when one part of the grid generation goes down.
This does no improve efficiency under normal situations, but is necessary for reliability under abnormal or fault conditions.
An example from a few years ago:  in February, 2021 Texas was hit by abnormally cold weather with three serious winter storms in quick succession.
Since Texas, for political reasons, operates its own grid that is not connected to the two large US power grids, there was a serious power shortage when many Texas-located generation stations that were not well-winterized failed in the cold, coupled with high demand due to the weather.
A more reliable grid connection might have saved a few hundred lives.
If the only financial penalty for a utility to go down temporarily is a loss of customer revenue, the utility has little incentive to maintain reliability by extra investment.