Most of us don't spend much
time thinking about the grid, the dizzyingly huge system
of cables, transformers, and outlets that reliably
powers our lives. It's an easily ignored,
change-resistant part of the modern world and
that's the way we like it. But, as we move towards
less planet-melting ways or producing electricity, the grid is going to have to evolve too. We're seeing so many countries
and governments announcing high targets when it
comes to decarbonization and being climate-neutral. But this is just one side of the coin. It's not enough to simply
generate green energy. We also need to make sure
that it's transmitted and distributed to the end consumers. The grid of today just isn't
equipped for renewables, so a new kind of grid is starting to take shape, the supergrid. The idea behind a supergrid is basically, a grid that connects nations, not just different parts of a country. And the goal is to try and
maximize the use of renewables wherever they are generating electricity. It's an ambitious idea and
one that could be necessary to avoid the worst case
scenarios of climate change. But actually building it
is a tough proposition. I have to say, politics is
the most difficult thing. We are still trying to
struggle each other, competing each other. A supergrid seems like a super good idea. The question is, will it
ever become a reality? Since the earliest days
of harnessing electricity, getting power where it needs to go has been at least as big a challenge as making it in the first place. And we're talking about the earliest days, since Thomas Edison's first electric grid in Downtown Manhattan in the 1880s. What Edison gave us, that system ran on what's
called direct current. And direct current, you, at
the voltages he was producing, only goes about a mile. Gretchen Bakke is a
cultural anthropologist who writes about, among
other things, the grid. He illuminated office
buildings on Wall Street, for example, mansions, and
then small factory spaces. But every time you wanted
to go more than a mile, you needed to build a new power plant. And he thought this was fine. He was like, "This will be fine. We'll just build another
one one mile over." And then another one and another one. And it was pretty clear
that probably direct current was not going to be the long-term answer. And so, that set up the next problem, which was, how can we
transmit electricity further? And the answer to that was given to us by the famous Nikola Tesla, who was quite the guy. Tesla came up with the idea
of an alternating current, which doesn't just flow in one direction, it keeps alternating back
and forth on a cable. Alternating current, it allows
you to increase the voltage to a very high level, whereas you couldn't do
it with direct current. Bump up your current to higher voltage and you can move your
electricity a lot further. There was some early rivalry over this. Edison electrocuted an
elephant to demonstrate that AC was dangerous
and shouldn't be used. But ultimately, AC was the clear winner. Electricity was finally able to break out of the one-mile barrier. And that's why alternating current became the dominant form of transporting and using electricity world over. And that's the story of electricity. Just kidding, actually,
renewables ruined everything. Solar panels or even a wind farm are not a corollary to a
coal-burning power plant. They're usually in different places. So coal, we can bring it
where we want to burn it. Wind, we have to build where it's windy. And wind is often happening where there's not that many people. Currently we use alternating current to be able to move electricity, but the problem with alternating current is that if you move it
over a very long distance, hundreds or even thousands of miles, you lose too much of that electricity. And so, moving it long distances makes it an uneconomical choice. If we can't get renewable
energy where it needs to go, we can't transition
away from fossil fuels. So, we need a better
way to move electrons. When we're talking about
the history of the grid, AC technology become the dominant approach to distribute and to transmit energy. Nevertheless, the DC
technology did not die. The opposite is actually the case. Jochen Costman is in charge
of onshore DC power systems at Siemens Energy. Yes, that's right, DC power, the loser of the 19th century current wars is making a comeback. The solution that has become a consensus in the industry now is
to use direct current or more specifically,
high-voltage direct current. HVDC turns out to be
the best of all worlds, traveling long distances
without losing as much power as AC along the way. DC wasn't able to go
long distances previously because you couldn't create
a high-voltage version, but inventions in the past
few decades have enabled us to have the equipment and
the power electronics needed to generate high-voltage direct current. The engineers here make
building-sized machines that generate that sweet,
sweet high-voltage DC. They partner with companies
like Italy-based Prysmian, which make the cables themselves, long strands of insulated
copper or aluminum that can span hundreds of miles. Another important use case
of the HVDC technology is the interconnections of countries to allow efficient energy trading between the countries and the network. The supergrid in a way is
already a reality in Europe. Denmark is connected to Norway. France is connected to Spain. Sweden is connected to Germany. Interconnectors let
countries take advantage of renewable energy wherever
it's being generated. If one country is having
a particularly windy day, they can share some of that
power with their neighbors. That's the idea behind the
most recent interconnector to be installed, a project called ElecLink that's rooted through the Channel Tunnel. An interconnector allows surplus power that isn't used in the UK to be transmitted over to France. Or alternatively, take
some energy from France and transmit it back to the UK. Phillip O'Gorman and his colleagues have been working on ElecLink
for more than a decade and finally transmitted
power for the first time in May this year. We transmit up to 1,000
megawatts in either direction, enough to power a million to
a million and a half homes. You're moving clean energy from a place where it's in surplus to a
place where it's in demand. Certainly throughout the world, we're going to be seeing
a lot more interconnectors across the world, across the globe. There is potential for them to do exactly as we are doing now. But in other parts of the world, this idea has run into some trouble. When I was first beginning
to research the grid book, which was in 2007, there was a thing in America
called the supergrid. It didn't exist. But anytime you talked to anybody, they would show you this
beautiful little map. They'd be like, "Here's the map. Here's how we're going to
build these giant long-distance high-voltage DC cables
and link the country." The problem is, nobody
would let anybody build a long-distance power line. Like, you couldn't build a
transmission line in America. There is a surge of renewables being built around the country and a lot
of the best renewable solar and wind resources are in
places like in the central part of the country. But building transmission
is really difficult in this country. There is a patchwork of federal, state, local landowner rights that
all have to be heard of. Communities all have to have a say. So TransWest is a
planned transmission line that would take about 3,000
megawatts of wind power from Wyoming into Vegas,
more than 700 miles. And TransWest has been in
development for 17 years. Part of the reason it's taken that long, the project has had to secure permission from more than 400
landowners along the route and even a single holdout can
delay a project for years. Ranch owner Andy Maneotis
did ultimately sell a chunk of his land to TransWest, but he's not happy about it. TransWest, they sent a young guy in, pretty pushy, and he'd get
you flared up real quick with his pushing ya, they were condemn you if you didn't agree with what they wanted. They're just going to take the land and there wasn't nothing you
were going to do about it. I have no leverage. I think they like to pick
on the guys they know that not got the money to hire the lawyers to go to federal court. If he waited and they actually filed eminent domain papers, then the value of like what he could get out of that deal would fall tremendously. I'm really not against
the power lines itself because I understand that
people need electricity. But it's the way they come in here and now I'm going to be dealing with it, with construction, with
people tearing the land up. I've already got a full plate
to handle with this ranch. Just this year, TransWest settled with the last holdout property owners, meaning that finally, after 17 years, construction of the line can get started. And this is one of the more
successful examples in the US. There's several transmission lines that have been going through the process. It's been taking years. They're all held up for different reasons. If we have this mandate to
clean up the grid by 2035, we're going to have to figure out how to speed up the
construction of transmission now to be able to build it in time. Meanwhile, Asia is trying
to be less like America and more like Europe. Mika Ohbayashi runs Japan's
Renewable Energy Institute, which has come up with a
plan to link up the grids of some of the region's biggest economies. So the Asia Super Grid is a concept to integrate Asian countries. We started to focus on the
Eastern Asian countries, like China and Korea, we focus, because that that in Far East Asia, there is Mongolia, which has the best renewable
energy potential in the area. That will benefit all Asian countries. In theory, wind and solar energy from Mongolia's Gobi Desert could produce as much as 2.6 terawatts of electricity, more than twice the capacity
of the entire United States. The Asia Super Grid would link that power to countries that produced more than 1/3 of the world's CO2 emissions. It's an ambitious and
potentially transformative plan, but it's not even close to the biggest idea coming out of Asia. There is an idea that's
being floated by China to try and build a global grid. China has a state-owned
company called State Grid that has the technology
to build HVDC lines and has built many of them across China. And they want to try and promote this idea of a globally interconnected
electric grid. It's hard to overstate the
potential climate impact of a global grid connecting
the most renewable-rich parts of the world to the most
energy-hungry population centers. But these proposals from Asia
are just that, proposals, and that might not be
changing anytime soon. I have to say, politics is
the most difficult thing. We are still trying to
struggle each other, competing each other. Japanese government has tension with other countries that
especially China, Korea. Countries that aren't 100%
friendly aren't likely to want to link their
energy systems together. And with the war in Ukraine
making European countries regret their dependency on Russian oil, any notion of a global supergrid is likely to be off the table for a good while. But the way Mika sees it, we are past the point where the actions of individual countries
can move the needle on climate change. Developed countries, like
Japan, Western World, has to be renewable energy, like kind of more than
60% or 70%, 80% by 2030. So, we don't have enough time to do it, so I'm already saying, every single cent or every single yen that we invest something
has to be invested for climate change actions from now on. As the grids evolved, we have had to cooperate on
larger and larger scales. Edison's DC grids served
just a few factories and rich people's homes. The grids of the 20th
century spanned nations, and now the grids of the 21st century would forge links between people hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. But if we can all get used to the idea of being a little less isolated, we might find the puzzle
of decarbonization gets a lot easier to solve, which would be super. If we are going to hit net zero goals and have 80, 90, or 100%
renewable power grids, then there is little chance to do that without having really good transmission across long distances. If we look to our targets
and ambitions we have, we need to accelerate these processes. And I think this is doable. If we enable the grid to deal with this new green energy generation, I do believe that a climate-neutral
world will be possible.
The limiting factor at the moment is HVDC circuit breaker technology. HVDC is traditionally point to point circuits, with protection being on the AC side of the converter and both ends of the HVDC converter stations being able to communicate with one another.
The supergrid will require multiterminal, multi vendor mesh HVDC networks, and HVDC circuit breakers will be crucial in this.