Other countries are finding ways to address these problems. China, for example, is looking beyond its heavy dependence on coal and fossil fuels and is now aggressively pursuing renewable energy. The effort has made China a global leader in wind and solar technology and a major exporter of solar panels and wind turbines to many developed countries. But China is also upgrading its grid to enable a far more cost-efficient means of distributing power, covering vast regions throughout the country.
China’s State Grid Corporation has invested a breathtaking $100 billion in ultra-high voltage (UHV) technology that promises to remedy many of the power problems that have plagued China and other advanced countries for decades. China’s biggest challenge is similar to ours: linking the country’s new renewable installations, located in areas far away from the urbanized east coast, where energy demand is soaring. Without some form of UHV technology, energy from renewables simply cannot reach its destination markets efficiently. UHV transmission can also help optimize coal consumption by improving efficiency, both generation and transmission, to minimize load losses over long distances and reduce the intensity of greenhouse-gas emissions, a persistent challenge facing most industrialized countries.
If this new and promising transmission technology can deliver on its potential, improving the environment while increasing efficiency, can it possibly hold promise for America’s aging grid system?
I certainly appreciate that the costs associated with upgrading America’s electric grid will be a tough call for those involved. Some studies estimate that a business-as-usual approach will require investment of $18.5 billion over two decades, while a system designed to integrate renewables like wind energy on a large scale would cost more than $100 billion. And that’s to say nothing of the difficulty of finding and negotiating suitable sites for transmission lines – or any facility – today.
But we cannot afford to continually ignore or put off finding a solution to our energy woes. Despite the cost, the political hurdles and certain effectiveness that are to be gained with the piecemeal implementation of today’s “smart grid” technology, there is no getting around the fact that America’s power grid system needs to be upgraded on national scale.
Just as America found a way to achieve President Dwight Eisenhower’s ambitious vision of an interstate highway system, we can and must now construct a national transmission superhighway if we are to get the most from renewables and bring our crumbling grid into the First World.