[wcoenen]

Summary: utilities will use dynamic rating and other tricks to squeeze a bit more performance out of existing lines.

(Transmission lines have losses, these heat up the wires. If they get too hot, they droop too much. So they have a maximum power rating. Dynamic rating takes weather effects into account to vary that maximum.)

Meanwhile in China: thousands of km long megavolt UHVDC transmission lines. https://www.hitachienergy.com/about-us/customer-success-stor...

[lkbm]

I was intrigued by one of the other ways—"high-performance wires"—which they don't explain at all. I found one article[0] (podcast, I guess, but with a transcript) that goes into it: old wires are aluminum supported by steel. By using aluminum supported with carbon fiber, you get less weight and less thermal expansion, allowing for more aluminum and without it sagging as much.

High conductivity, less transmission loss. Potentially fewer towers (because you can space them out a little further), offsetting the cost of the wires. Neat!

[0] https://www.volts.wtf/p/one-easy-way-to-boost-the-grid-upgra...

[luuurker]

> Meanwhile in China

Outside China, companies and governments usually have to be careful when making investments. They can't decide to start building transmission lines/housing/fast train lines/deploy 5G everywhere and spend huge amounts of money if the return is small/non existent... And so usually things are only built or improved when there's a demand for it.

China can make a 5 year plan to build UHVDC everywhere and the grid operator won't go under no matter what. This has been working for them so far (even though it creates some serious problems) and certainly gives them an advantage, but you can't do that in most places.

[JumpCrisscross]

> has been working for them so far

It works in the wake of a decimated economy. War. Natural disaster. Cultural revolution. There is so much slack in the system virtually anything will be put to productive use.

In that state, you can build a road to nowhere and people will put it to use, not because it’s a well-placed road, but because it’s the only road in the vicinity.

[janalsncm]

China’s is not a decimated economy and they haven’t been in cultural revolution for decades. Their government functions much more like a corporation than the popularity contest that will likely give a reality TV star his second term.

[JumpCrisscross]

> China’s is not a decimated economy and they haven’t been in cultural revolution for decades

Correct. I’m describing the era of anything-goes growth. Because, without exaggeration, anything went.

America saw this in its Manifest Destiny era. (Suppose I should add depopulating conquest to the list.) Switching gears was existentially painful.

> government functions much more like a corporation

This was the pre-Xi CCP. A genuinely-effective meritocratic oligopoly. Now it’s a bog-standard dictatorship, with Chinese characteristics.

Also, good analogy. Corporations are mortal. States, theoretically, are not. The problem with dictatorship is it trades immortality for temporary stability. The deal with the devil is in the difficulty of swapping back.

[callalex]

People were saying the same things about their high speed rail network ten years ago, and now it is in an existential crisis and desperately hemorrhaging money. I am definitely not saying the same will happen for the HVDC projects as I am not clairvoyant or qualified enough to make any claims, I am just pointing out that grand infrastructure investment and central planning almost always looks ingenious in the short term, but that isn’t always sustainable because predicting the future is really hard.

[jorblumesea]

The US has numerous HVDC lines and the market is set to grow in the next 5 years. It could improve and be better of course. Renewables will probably force more adoption.

https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-s...

[mnw21cam]

So basically, next time there's a heatwave and everyone cranks up their aircon, the system will still collapse.

[callalex]

(Warning this is a tangent). Cooling/air conditioning actually uses a relatively small amount of energy compared to heating. As we transition away from fossil fuels for heating over to electricity the real existential crisis will happen in cold periods.

This can be understood intuitively: air conditioning is used when it’s 85° outside to make it 70° inside. Heating is regularly used to make it 65° inside when it is 20° outside. It turns out fossil fuels contain a truly remarkable amount of energy that happens to be really easy to release into a living space.

[BenjiWiebe]

At least it's easy to turn sunlight into heat, so that may help somewhat. Absorb sun during the day and release it during the night.

The coldest nights tend to be clear (clouds reflect IR back to the earth).

[xkcd-sucks]

omg the name just sounds like "precision scheduled railroading"