Being an Electrical Power Engineer, I can say Sam explained this complicated topic best one can in the easiest way. Thank you Sam for making video on my favorite topic.
If you guys are willing to respond, I have a question I haven't been able to get a proper answer to. I am curious what effect on the lines/power grid a sending and receiving source may have. Ie, a house that will receive electricity in the far north during short cloudy days, but also will produce electricity in the long cloudless days in the summer with solar panels on the roof. I get that AC is a thing but you figure there is some difficulty having the power and usage change possibly multiple a day.
@@route2070 actually main problem is that electricity can not be stored, it has to be consumed at the instance it is produced. Grid system is the facility that enables electric power to consumed at the user house but actually it is made far in a power plant. Now if I install a solar rooftop panel then it will produce power only at the day when the sun is on the sky and shine brightly, but others time it can not provide any electricity. At that time grid system provides the needed electricity. Now if my solar rooftop system is large enough that it will generate more than I need, then you can actually send excess amount to the grid and get some money for that. When you supply power to the grid then some where any other plan might get rest. Mainly gas fired power plant is operated whan peak demand occurs. All this power flow management is a real-time challenge which is managed from any central Load Dispatch Center control room's huge computer.
I live in TX and during the Winter Storm here they mentioned that we were a few minutes away from a total grid reset. My question is, does a grid need to have a certain frequency for power plants to prevent a total grid collapse and if so, why?
@@subhajitkarmakar1 So then the house can switch between producer and user no problem. It doesn't have a negative on the power lines or anything? Also is the starting up the turbine at the natural gas facility automated, or is someone sitting there monitoring usage versus production and telling everything to start. Sorry for all the questions, and this video is great, there just seems to be a lot of minutia that are simple to think of but would require 2 minutes of video to answer each thing, so I get why Sam didn't go further.
One of the most British things I've ever heard is that the power grid has a massive spike in demand at certain periods as people boil kettles to make tea, often in ad breaks and at the end of certain shows 😂
Why are you not working on exploiting the best forms of renewable energy which are known and not being exploited and or coming up with new ways to convert electricity? Over unity is easily possible while obeying all the laws of thermodynamics.
@@unlisted9494 Yes it is very easily possible. The labour and mantenance can be minimal after contruction while working on projects that will directly benefit you and yours is hardly slave labour while perhaps a labour of love.
@@Shinzon23 I think there are other very important areas that when bombed could cripple the USA, but i think power grids are quite like the veins of the country
@@ldelgg you could also argue that hitting the gas pipelines that are unguarded and cross through areas that are very easy to access as well as telecommunication infrastructure like fibre optic lines which again are also in places that are easy to get to and are also unguarded would also work
Shockingly, there is still a lot of resistance to green energy in the US. Some people still need to flip the switch. But Wendover is leading the charge for a brighter future! Ok. I'll stop with the bad puns.
The statement that supply has to exactly match load every instant is a bit too strict, although it is true. The saving grace of the electrical grid is all those turbines and the angular inertia they all represent. Whenever the load exceeds supply, the extra energy needed is extracted from that inertia and the turbines start to slow down. And whenever supply exceeds load, the reverse happens and the turbines start to speed up. And because there's a MASSIVE amount of inertia, the rate at which the turbines speed up, or slow down is fairly slow, giving the power companies time to adjust the amount of power they supply the turbines. So depending upon where in the world you live, the power grid has a nominal frequency of 50 or 60 Hz. But that frequency is only nominal, it starts to decrease when more loads are turned on and the power plants start to increase their output to match the load, and the frequency increases when loads are turned off and the power plants are taking time to decrease their output to match the new load.
Yes, but when production drops, frequency drops and the allowable frequency range is quite tight. On a 60Hz system in the US, you need to keep the frequency between IIRC 59.95Hz and 60.05Hz. In loads with mostly inductive impedances, IE most loads in the US, small changes in frequency can drastically change the effective impedance and power demand.
@@nicholasdaskalakis772 As I said, due to angular momentum and inertia, the speed of the turbines changes fairly slowly when the production and load don't exactly match. If load exceeds supply, the rotational speed, and hence frequency decreases. And when supply exceeds load, the opposite occurs and hence the frequency increases. And due to inertia, the rate of change is slow enough that the power companies can compensate by changing the power supplied to the turbines and hence generators. E.g. Hydroelectric, open or close gates to increase or decrease supply of water to turbines. Gas plants, increase or decrease gas being burning in turbines, etc.
I know a guy who works for Idaho Power as an engineer and they were talking about experiments to see if they could run a small town purely off the local hydroelectric dam. They tried multiple times, but the lead-lag time was just too high for their control systems to be able to compensate. It was fun to talk to him since he had such deep insight into how our grid works.
Your explanation on usage patterns was both compact and accurate. I work in wholesale/retail pricing for one of the larger independent power producers in the US and that’s one of the better “everyday” explanations I’ve heard. Explaining the differences between consumption (how much is being used overall) and demand (how much is being used at any one point in time) gets tricky.
Underground cable jointer here, mostly working on 11kV to 240/415 substations etc. Great video, you really covered a broad range of important topics concisely!
There is a lot more complexity than this even. I work for the electrical system operator here in Ontario and we control the price of electricity. Not only does supply have to match demand but you have to make sure everybody is getting paid fairly. Every 5 minutes an auction occurs where produces and consumers can bid on what they're willing to pay for electricity. It gets insanely complicated figuring out exactly who needs to pay who for what. For example the baseloads shouldn't get paid the same price/kwh as the natural gas plants, since the natural gas plants are what do the work to balance the supply and demand. We also provide incentives for green environmentally friendly power stations so that they can stay competitive in the market. All this goes on behind the scenes and none of the daily electricity users know about it.
I’m pretty sure electrical grids fall into the catagory of ”Natural Monopoly”. Meaning a case where the laws of Physics and the ”laws” of economics are too often at odds with each other. Texas got to experience this first hand recently during a cold snap. Most of their power is Natural Gas sourced, but neither the gas pumping stations, nor the power plants were sufficiently winterized. Some gas facilities froze up, which drove up the spot price for Nat Gas. Power generators refused to buy gas at a loss, so they stopped producing. This cascaded the load on the grid, and resulting brownouts and blackouts caused even more gas pumping facilities to shut down (electric powered compressors, valves, and heaters) which cascaded spot price further. You get the vicious cycle...
@@samr9408 I'm imagining a 1900s silent auction with the utility company represented by an enthusiastically fast-talking auctioneer, but that's probably not it.
why there is no larger time frame contract ? is there that much difference in pricing between low demand hour and high demand hour pricing that 5 minute auction cycle can bring enough extra to be worth the additional operation complexity. Seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of gain
Interesting. Here in Brazil, the TSO is a different entity than the chamber of commerce. The pricing is done weekly for the overall operations of the grid, and TSO centrally determines which companies (generators) have to be on at any given moment. This gets even more complex when you try to factor in cascading hydro plants (on a same river). How do you dispatch a plant in order to not deplete the reservoir, also not financially penalizing the ones up river (which are called upon less frequently). To divide the burden of such a interconnected grid, centrally operated by an independent operator, we have to have financial and legal instruments to divy up the profits and loss between the generating companies. It's fare to say it is insane
The "water in the pipes" so to speak is the collective angular momentum of all of the generators on the grid. A common misconception with electricity production: it's not the electrons we care about, it's the electromagnetic field. My other favorite thought experiment related to this: if two generators spin at 60Hz, how does one produce more power than the other? The answer is to not look at the rotation frequency, but instead to look at torque being imposed between the turbine and the generator. The more torque there is, the more electricity is being produced.
All turbines don't spin at the same speed. Depends how many poles are in the generator. But yeah once a generator is synchronized to the grid and you can't change its speed. Remove the steam it becomes a motor and uses power, full steam it doesn't speed up just makes more watts.
It's not actually all that much, depending -- the statistic I saw is that reactive power in the grid is about 10% of total power; which is to say, if you suddenly disconnect a generator, the whole thing just kind of goes thud within a millisecond or two. Which sounds about right, and is essentially putting a number on the response time hinted at in the video -- it's not instantaneous of course, it takes some time for power to get to customers from the generator, and this is about the figure. What's interesting is where this statistic fails: there's still a fair amount of rotating machinery on the grid, which will keep going. But as it slows down in the process, it shifts out of phase with what the grid is supposed to run at, effectively breaking the statistic -- in essence, when power cuts, all that slowing machinery shifts out of phase with what the grid was running at, and so a simple measure of reactive power won't account for this. Put another way: on a cycle-to-cycle basis, the speed of any given rotor changes imperceptibly (ideally, not at all for 3-phase motors; 1-phase motors however get torque in pulses), not nearly enough to show up in a measure of phase shift or reactance. But change the frequency or voltage, and suddenly you can see a whole hell of a lot of reserve power, at least in the short term. Granted, that term is still probably only a second or something!
@Mck Idyl California is one of the very worst states and ranks last in quality of life, has the most unreliable power grid, has the least educated population per capita, and the highest poverty rate per capita.
I like the idea of nuclear to cover the true baseload, and renewable+batteries to cover the swings, with renewable spikes being used to generate hydrogen or desalinate water
In France they do and not just a small percentage but a large one with hydro damn. Sometime they produce so much that they let Germany have some when their winds dont blow that strong
But that's just a dream, nuclear power plants simply take too long to build to tackle cimate crisis are expensive and are suffering from building delays annd cost overruns around the world.
@@deathgun3110 So instead of waiting 10 years for nuclear power plants, you think we should wait 100 years to solve our climate crisis? Because that's about how long it will take for batteries to cover the whole grid.
@@deathgun3110 those are all solvable problems, though. the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago, but we can still start construction now and see a salvageable future alongside the help of carbon capture and disaster mitigation. and we have plenty of money to fund them, the only reason why we can't right now is because the climate crisis is politicized. genuinely all we need to do is put on our big kid pants and get to work.
Growing up in Canada where there’s lots of hydro-electric production, including gigantic amounts in Quebec (99% of their domestic power production) and British Columbia (97% of B.C’s production), I’ve grown up with the idea of production being really far from demand. Great video, it was insightful to learn more about how we got from where we started to where we are now.
Here in France, while nuclear power plants still are our baseline, they are also capable of load tracking, (ramping up or down according to demand) and represent around 75% of the electric mix. In fact, because there isn't enough battery capacity to make Germany's very renewable-heavy mix a controllable system, they import our nuclear electricity when the wind doesn't blow. We also have large hydroelectric dams basically everywhere we could build them, and use some of them as reversible dams to store excess electricity. The marginal cost of a hydroelectric dam is the salary of the guy opening the valves. So not much. The marginal cost of nuclear is also very low, because it's basically the cost of salaries you'd pay anyway, and uranium, a by definition extremely dense energy source. Because both our dams and our nuclear power plants are pretty old, the initial investment has been completely written off multiple times over.
Yeah, his representation here was pretty disingenuous. While it can take one or more days for a nuclear plant to turn off and on, largely due to Xenon poisoning, they are entirly capable of changing their power output marginally by a few percent almost instantly, and tens of percents over the course of an hour - keep in mind that a percent of a single reactor is still ~10MWe. Nuclear plants are quite capable of load following - their 100% baseline is driven prettymuch entirely by the economic considerations. It also peeves me a bit when he says hydro is "green, like wind and solar". ...and Nuclear too? Nuclear produces 3x less co2 per kwh than solar, and 10x if you're running a CANDU. Dunno what it is in the rest of the world, but 2/3 of Canadians think Nuclear produces as much CO2 as burning oil. Small wonder why when it arbitrarily gets excluded from the 'green' category
@@the1barbarian781 wut ? France is self sufficient, with a mix of nuclear ands dams, where germany get a lot of coal in his energy mix I cannot see how germany energetical mix could be better
@@Xylos144 I’m pretty sure since he already stated that hydroelectric plants generate a non-significant amount of carbon pollution, when he said “green” he was referring more towards renewability than actual carbon emissions
@@kint87 I'm talking strictly in terms of grid reliability and both countries import and export plenty of energy. If I recall correctly Germany has the second most reliable grid behind Denmark. I agree Germany's current coal use is high but the good news is that it's decreasing
I feel you've missed an opportunity to talk about Hydro-Québec; which is only second to China and Brazil in terms of total hydro-electric capacity despite being a state-corporation representing only about 8 million people. Nearly 100% of the electricity of Quebec is supplied by hydro-electric dams, with the majority of them being thousands of kms away in the North of the province. Its pretty much a full case-study of a fully hydro-powered economy and its drawbacks, like the potential damage to the environment. It also relates to the US given there are plans to massively increase the transfer capacity to the Northeast states.
here in plattsburgh NY which is 40 from montreal we have the cheapest electricity in either the country or state because we get our power from hydro quebec. I even think Hydro quebec even sends some power to NYC.
@@ELYELYELroy Does Renewable mean cheaper in the U.S? I’m from Scotland. We meet 100% of our needs from renewables (mostly from onshore wind and hydro) and produce enough electricity to power the country twice over. Under construction are 2 massive offshore wind farms at 4.1GW and 1.1GW each respectively, a large under water tidal farm and 2 large hydro pumped storage schemes and tbh there hasn’t been reduction in prices.
@@scottwhitley3392 not necessarily. But Hydro damns are cheap to run once constructed and, as long as the water keeps running, run forever. So hydroelectric is cheap in areas where there are lots of rivers, like Northern Quebec. Things like solar or wind vary on cost effectiveness based on the design and location.
I can’t get over how good your videos are. I feel like I’ve learned more about how the world works from your channel over anything else I’ve read or watched since I got done with school.
In Italy, like most of Europe, we abandoned nuclear power after what happened at Chernobyl. But the politicians who made these decisions ignore the fact that Chernobyl was poorly maintained and that the reason that the damage was as major a it was is because the USSR was more worried covering up the incident to preserve their already tainted reputation.
Wendover explaining power grid perfectly gives me hope that he covers Smart Grids in the Future The technology isn't economically viable enough yet for widespread adoption but it has been one of the fields that aim to better manage load on a power grid
hey sam do you think you could talk more about the drought here in Colorado? I'm sure you have also been DEEPLY concerned with the impacts of this incredibly warm winter we're having right now. also I want more Colorado content and you make the best.
@@Wendoverproductions Also if you’re looking to do a video on micro grids and need an example from the Valley, I believe they’re looking to connect the Aspen Airport, the RFTA hub, and other public utilities so they operate independently after the vandalism that shut down the gas lines around New Years.
This focus on Colorado, especially the mountain cities like Glenwood springs and grand junction is really cool lol, hearing about your state makes it extra interesting :)
He has a fixation with CO for some reason, I have a feeling he lives here. For example, his Amazon video and ski resort video also used Colorado as an example
In South Australia, and soon Western Australia, new legislation is stating that all roof top solar panels need to have the ability to be disconnected from the grid by the grid provider remotely to level out the grid. This is to make sure that the system can cope with any fluctuations during the day.
Wrong on the wind turbines are free once installed. They have a pretty good annual maintenance cost. $42,000 to $48,000 per year per turbine. So yeah, they're not free. Plus that is a lot of plastic to landfill once their short service life of 20 years is over. Love your channel. Have been watching lots of the videos. Very well done. Fun and entertaining. Cheers! Also, has anyone mentioned you sound a little like Rob Lowe?? :)
One interesting reason why a greener grid might _not_ include lots of long-distance transmission lines comes down to two other things mentioned in the video: HV lines are expensive, and renewables are cheap (and getting cheaper as we speak). For example, the U.S. northwest has less solar and wind energy available to it than the southeast and midwest respectively, so it's often suggested that they build large HV lines to draw power from new renewable construction in those areas. However, considering the price of such high-capacity HV lines, it can actually be cheaper just to build double or triple the renewable+storage capacity in situ to make up for its 1/2 or 1/3 efficiency. Of course, this all comes down to economics - if HV lines see significant price reduction due to economies of scale, they might become more competitive - but right now, it's surprisingly close, and renewables are getting cheaper faster than transmission systems. It feels weird that building three times as much power generation might be the _cheaper_ option, but it just might end up being the case.
HV lines are likely to get more expensive with scale, since copper is an expensive, limited resource, and hence will lead to substitution with less efficient aluminum. Also, the more HV lines you have the more likely they will get push back from NIMBY attitudes, and the more likely folks will want to route them through more desirable areas (folks backyards and wildernesses). HV lines are eyesores to most folks!
@@richdobbs6595 NIMBY arguments are made against HV lines just as often as they are against solar and especially wind power plants. Considering that you will need more resources for more power plants than for HV lines the solution is most likely to build both a more decentralized grid and more HV interconnections. That's at least the most environmentally friendly solution, it may not be the most economical solution.
Large scale grid storage will have very little impact on distance and our current lines. Literally as seen in the video, whether power is coming from a plant or storage, it goes through the same lines to the same end locations. Actually what having a large grid will do is allow a bunch of small storage locations all over the place to feed into one central network and therefore lower cost and raise efficiency by spreading out the storage. Sure if energy storage in montana starts getting depleted to send electricity to colorado, there will be major losses, but the idea is that there would be a bunch of smaller storage solutions all across colorado, so power can be pulled from the nearest one, and then generators charge up the storage. Not to mention electric storage is the answer to making nuclear go from providing only a base level, to being able to fully supply on its own.
It will be a bit of both. Renewables are cheap, which means its really cost effective to overbuild capacity, to guarantee enough supply... but that means at some times, there will be more being generated than is needed. It effectively means some solar farms or wind farms need to be switched off, which is a bit of a waste. Big interconnectors to other regions means that this produced electricity can be diverted somewhere else. Of course batteries or pumped hydro are also an option for this excess energy, but if you connect enough regions it reduces the need to store it at all.
Energy consumption and electric usage are two different things. When considering all sources of energy (natural gas, wood, coal, electricity of course, etc) the US per capita numbers don't stand out as much. A lot of the extra household electric usage in the US is tied to air conditioning and heating. The size of the average US house does not help when it comes to that. I would also suggest US residents don't allow for colder homes in the winter and hotter in the summer due to the low cost of electricity in large portions of the US. I don't know for a fact what other countries do (I live in the US but my travels abroad are limited and therefore limit my assumptions on the habits of other countries) but if you can run an AC all day for pennies why suffer?
Never had an interest in looking up how the power grid worked, and clicked on your video out of boredom this morning while drinking coffee. I'm glad I did. I learned something today I never knew, and appreciate the information and time put into making this video. Kudos!
Before Streaming Services become big, so only about 10 years ago. The Engineers at the UKs power grid would be told everyday what time EastEnders should finish (often inaccurate) and so they also watch it to prepare, and as it gets to the cliff hanger "Doff Doffs" they quickly activate a powerful water damn in Wales as the demand massively peaks due to millions of homes turning on Kettles to make cups of tea.
Not that this really matters, but why does it always feel like the example cities/towns are in Colorado? I guess it doesn't matter, it's just kinda funny. Love the video regardless!
Technology Connections has a video showing another good idea. His house is really well insulated and surrounded by trees, so he programmed his thermostat to cool to 66F overnight when electricity is cheap, then go to the upper 70s during the day. But the house doesn’t ever get that warm, so the AC doesn’t turn back on until electricity cost goes down and the thermostat goes back to 66. This effectively turns his house into a battery during the summer.
I also watched that video, and realized that we could use our stomachs as batteries by going to an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch and not eating anything else until the next day. Sure it's a little uncomfortable but it's a small price to pay! Although I'm a cold-weather mammal and I'm most comfortable around 67F anyway. So when he was describing his house as chilly at night I was like ~orly~
I've been thinking about that video for a while now - solar panels are becoming absolutely dirt cheap, you can get up to 600W panels for like $300 (Canadian Solar, if I'm not mistaken). Slap together 10 of those, get a 7kw pure sine wave inverter, and you have a rather enormous amount of free electricity for a surprisingly small upfront investment. It only gets expensive when you actually try to store that energy - batteries are expensive, and can be a massive pain to manage. But if you just pumped that 6kw straight into your air conditioning, and/or your electric water heater, you could heat your water and cool your house virtually for free. You don't need that power around the clock, 7-10 hours a day should be plenty.
@@gabrielfraser2109 And in most places you can pump excess back into the grid and the utility credits you. In Tacoma, WA for example it's actually valued the same as power you pull down from the grid, so you get a cash payout at the end of the year if your account is still positive. Other places still want to charge you a surcharge for each kWh that flows into your house, so you'd need a battery bank in order to avoid that, and of course there's a base monthly charge at 0 kWh usage for the connection.
One interesting concept is reducing peak demand. I know the local power company was experimenting with subsidized HVAC systems that could be centrally adjusted to smooth out peaks. Long distance transmission also made me wonder if it would be viable to transmit power from one area during non peak times and vice versa. There is a 3 hour offset between 7 am on each coast. Technology Connections has a really interesting video series on home electrification that talks about smart circuit breakers as a way to reduce peak usage on a household level. Maybe automated conservation is a way forward.
If you’re a military base or a business putting in on-site energy storage, you’re not just enjoying a long-term cost savings, you’re also ruggedizing your site against power outages. If I ran a military, or a large company, I’d be ALL over that for all my key sites.
Here in Québec, 99% of our electricity comes from the massive Hydro dams thousands of km north, thanks to our network of 735kV power lines. It helps that all of our electricity has been nationalised in the 1970s, so we have one big intelligent network and single main supplier that's state-owned so all of the profits go back into universal health care and social programs. ;-)
It helps that Quebec is like 4 times as large as Colorado, gets huge amounts of precipitation relative to Colorado, and only has a population about 40% greater. You guys are playing on the easy setting compared to most of the world.
@@richdobbs6595 Yes and no, we do have a huge area that's mostly unihabitable; our southern 200 miles is about as dense and urbanised as Ohio, while the northern 90% is more like Alaska... Historically, we started as a sparsely populated French colony that ended up conquered by the Brits (paying for it led to the Boston Tea Party BTW), but they let us keep our catholic civil code and french language so we would'nt join the US... We still ended up under the english economic boot surrounded by the brittish crown loyalists that fled New England and formed Canada without our consent (Québec never signed the constitution, between the two referendums for independance)... Let's just say thar we pretty much stagnated as 2nd class citisens and cheap labor for New Hampshire and NewYork factories, until WW2's baby boom electorate quietly overthrew our theocracy overnight into the modern socialist Québec province that's the main reason Canada is leaning left. 😅 It's not all down to luck; for instance Alberta has huge hydro potential but is cursed by tar sands oil that stiffles economic diversity.
@@richdobbs6595 And btw, Colorado has about the same electricity price we have, the difference is that it is dispersed in many private pockets without a unified plan, while we leveraged the nationalisation of electricity as a way to diversify our economy, develop our engineering expertise, and as state revenue to afford a very interventionist state. Pretty much the only way we weathered the 2008 crisis better than the rest of North America. Heck, we have labor shortages even despite Covid. 😅 You're welcome to immigrate if you're willing to learn french. 😉
I'm in Tasmania, Australia, and our system sounds similar - we have a 100 year old network of hydro stations, built by the government, running the state! Emission free electricity before it was cool!
What makes me proud is that I just finished an energy management course and I understood everything you said! That makes me really happy, makes me know that I am retaining my knowledge! :D
@@SecularSynthesis He's probably referring to the phenomenon called "TV pickup" causing surges in demand. That phenomenon is real even if he's exaggerating how much it requires preparing for.
Somewhat tangent to the topic of the electric grid but interesting to me when learning this factoid about Extra High Voltage EHV electric transmission lines. EHV lines are often rated to operate at a temperature of 242 degrees or so. Current through the wires heat the lines causing the lines to sag to no more than a designed amount. Stand under a EHV transmission line on a humid day and you will hear a crackling noise. That noise is humidity vaporizing due to the high temperature of the wire.
8:20 Fun fact: the Ford lightning can already do this. If your power goes out and you have the system set up correctly and the truck plugged in, it can be used as a battery bank for up to 4 days Worth of power
The cost to set it up can be as much as $7K. The Tesla Roadster in 2009 had V2G but not many used it. I see that changing now that people are more familiar with V2G.
That also means that driving a car for 100km uses the same amount of energy as the average austrian uses in a day, which is kind of crazy to me. I know plenty of people who drive that much or even twice that much every day.
Crazy to see how electricity usage peaks in US in July, because of air conditioners. A lot of countries in Europe peak in winter and summer is the trough. Edit: yes, it's because it's hotter in a lot of the US, that's the point. Especially more than 'gay paris' yes..
@@jr2904 in a way it's worse in the UK when it gets very hot. Because we don't have aircon and our houses are built for warmth in winter. We also have higher humidity. I've had 100F in LA and 90F in London and LA is much more preferable even ignoring the air con. But yeah my point was because it's hotter.
I'll give you an immense amount of credit.... Even in describing for all of us that don't know, you even open a door to a discussion (see all the below) that absolutely COULD NOT BE BETTER..... not only for our nation, but for the world [read, exposing/exploring/discussing the myriad other ways and possibilities]. Thank you for such a golden moment/opportunity here.
Flipping a home light switch in LA will not start a turbine in Washington. Though the control of the Grid is complex, at its simplest it is a matter of the system frequency. When the demand increases and the frequency drops by a predetermined amount, additional generation will be added to the system. However, flipping a light switch will result is such a miniscule reduction in the frequency as to be unmeasurable, and, as a result will not affect the Grid at all. However, at 5pm when thousand of people return home from work and turn on thousands of lights, not to mention stoves and air conditioners, additional generation will most likely be called for. And it might kick on the turbine in WA.
7:16 "While such a system can make economic sense for large complexes that can invest in infrastructure that won't pay off for more than a decade, it's just not practical grid-wide" What is he talking about? How is a country's entire grid not the perfect example of a large complex?
because the entire country involves multiple parties, and so keeping electrical costs low is much more important. a "single large complex" involves just a single party who accepts the additional upfront cost ahead of time ie they are their own customer.
There are some options for handling variations in load that you didn't mention. Liquid metal batteries and redox flow batteries are both cheaper alternatives to lithium ion that are good for stationary applications like grid-scale storage. Also, there are other types of potential energy storage besides pumped hydro. These include liquid air, compressed air, and molten salt. Lastly, there is a future base-load capability that will also be load-following: motlen chloride fast reactors. Due to the nature of the reaction, when load is high they produce more power, but when load is low they're output tapers off. (A side benefit is that they can use existing nuclear waste as fuel, leaving a much smaller quantity of short half-life waste afterward.) These still await regulatory approval.
None of these options exists at a grid scale. If they ever exist in the future, Meanwhile, there's li-ion batteries operating grid scale right now. Think he focused mostly on what's on right now.
You also gotta think about having to have 4x the footprint for the same capacity as Li-Ion, it usually is more economic to go Li-Ion which still isn't that economically friendly yet
Thank you for the video. I'm an electrical engineer and working with energy markets. I know about the energy balance of my country so it's interesting to compare to the energy situation in USA. I used to make forecasts of electricity usage in different grids so I was especially interested in 1:10-3:00.
2:32 Fun fact: British electric companies have to prepare for national and international soccer games, as if the British team loses, the viewers immediately turn on their kettles and causes a massive spike
Since two years ago, the transition to renewable energy continues to accelerate. Of particular note are solar and storage. What is developing is a decentralized grid with more generation at the local level. A long time concern (and criticism) of renewables has been the question of sufficient base load. Not mentioned in this video are developments being made in enhanced geothermal electrical generation. The fact is that the core of the earth is very hot. This heat comes from radioactive decay. A deep enough well can tap this heat. I also recently learned that back filling deep geothermal wells can then become a sort of storage battery.
This excellent piece is worthy of more visibility, as it points to both the long term value of sustainable energy, while making it clear the transition requires a lot of infrastructure change and time. I also like that you touched on the complexity of trade-offs around water impoundments: great for storage of water and indirectly, energy, but at the expense of healthy land, flora, and fauna. These are complex problems which under any policy will continually need tough management and optimization.
Good video ,. But one thing. 0:33 it is not true to say they have absolutely "zero slack". Frequency can drift a little. In the UK we have a target frequency of 50hz BUT it can and dose go as high as 50.2hz and as low as 49.8hz with no real problems at all.
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Here are the key takeaways from the video "How Electricity Gets to You": 1. Electricity is produced hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it's consumed, and the grid has to instantly match supply and demand. 2. Electricity demand has significant variability across time - daily peaks in the morning and evening, seasonal peaks in winter and summer. 3. Utilities use a mix of generation sources to meet this variable demand, with nuclear and coal providing baseload, natural gas for peaking, and renewables like wind/solar becoming more prevalent. 4. Storing electricity at scale is challenging and expensive, but electric vehicles could potentially help by acting as distributed batteries. 5. Hydroelectric dams can act like giant batteries, pumping water uphill when electricity is cheap and generating when it's expensive. 6. High-voltage, long-distance transmission is crucial to bring electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed, with AC and DC transmission options. 7. Substations and transformers step down the voltage as electricity gets distributed to local areas and individual buildings. The overall theme is the complexity of the electricity grid and the various technological and engineering solutions required to reliably deliver power to end users.
It would be very interesting to hear about the difference between how much power"should" be lost, and how much actually is lost in the"real world" application
Makes things here seem even more out of touch. All my towns power comes from a coal power plant that's about 10 miles away. I can see the exhaust trails from my house depending on weather. It gets it's coal from a relatively small open pit mine operated right on the site of the power plant. Course the worlds 1st and 6th largest coal mines are also just outside of town to along with several other large coal mines. Several oil and natural gas fields in the area as well. Talking about renewables, clean energy, or going green here is a good way to get dirty looks and possibly lose a person their job.
This just emphasizes how much the government and private business needs to step in and help smooth the transition to renewable energy, so we don't have 900k US oil and coal workers suddenly left out in the cold. But it's not an argument to slow renewables, because 13 million on the coast will lose their homes, jobs, everything and be displaced - not to mention everyone affected by permafrost melt, glacial retreat, ocean acidification, etc. The locals in coal country just don't care about those people as much as they care about themselves. And admittedly, those other people care less about coal folks than they care about themselves. It just so happens if everyone voted on it based purely on the self-interest of survival (and anyone not losing a job or home over it just shut up) the fossil folks would be outnumbered 20:1. So ignoring the potential for all the world's economies and cultures to crash, and ruin the oceans and atmosphere, etc. then the pure democracy of Americans voting for their livelihoods would be an incredibly solid and unequivocal "down with fossil fuels". We need to get those 900k folks solid support in getting out of the industry.
@@markusklyver6277 Though by the time it gets to that point here there may not be anyone left to be discussing it. Without fossil fuels a few ranchs would be about all the economic activity left in the region.
You could be correct in saying all the power to your town comes from that particular power plant but that is probably not the case. Depending upon the size of your town there may be multiple electric substations with multiple distribution circuits in each. Each substation may likely have more than one distribution circuit. Each substation may likely have more than one sub transmission line and possibly one or more transmission lines feeding into one or more power transformers. The power coming into the substation comes from the grid. The grid is like a water reservoir fed by multiple streams. Multiple power generation sources feed into the grid through the mesh of transmission lines. The power to your home cannot be attributed to a particular power generation sources any more than water into your home from a reservoir can be attributed to a particular stream feeding that reservoir.
Fantastic video! That said, I think it's time that you and your fellow edutubers make the switch to listing metric numbers first (and in writing) and imperial numbers second (without caption). You guys have a lot of power to increase the support for and literacy of the metric system in the United States- you should use it!
The power grid is something we all just take for granted. That our water heaters, water pumps, furnaces, air conditioners, washer/dryers, fridges, freezers, lights, and electrical outlets always have power 24/7, in our homes. Also, there's the power plants, substations, power lines, and all the wiring in our houses that has been built, too.
In a video game called dig or die, you can make a dam to power your base at night and solar to power it during the day. Once i had excess power in the day from making many solar panels, i used the excess power to operate a pump that moved the water that was just used in the generator back into the reservoir, albeit very slowly. With multiple pumps and enough time, it was almost self sustaining to where i had constant Max power electricity available for my base, until the monsters destroyed the walls of my reservoirs and rendered the pumps useless 😢
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the NSA's massive electricity usage and how the decisions they make about locating and expanding facilities is so dependent on the availability of power.
electric cost are going up all over the country right now and the Biden administration extended the 26% discount for solar into 2022. We'll see about additional years. I'm in Washington DC and I'm paying .0701 cents per kWh. My power company has already received approval to raise it to .0750 for 2022 from DC and is seeking approval to raise it to .0790 in 2023. They've publically said they likely will need to be at or above .09 by 2025 to cover upgrades. My cousin lives in Maryland on the Eastern shore and he's paying .1407 kWh as of Dec 2021.
Electricity is a hot topic at the moment, due to (of course) climate change, and renewed interest in nuclear power. Also the price of electricity has SKYROCKETED in Europe. I'm currently playing 1000-1500% more in electricity bills this winter compared to last year, and places like Norway, prices are up to almost 2000% of what it was last year... We need to start building nuclear power now, these prices are unsustainable.
@@betterwithrum So little? In the Seattle area we pay about 11 cents per kWh, less than the national average of about 14 cents . I looked up DC and it says average 12.6 cents?
3:35 Wikipedia: Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station was built as Colorado's first and only nuclear power plant, which operated from 1979 until 1989... 6:43 4 Colorado battery storage systems. 8:48 hydro plants. 9:51 Cabin Creek pumped hydro. 11:43 higher voltage = less transmission loss. 13:54 Pacific DC Intertie (Path 65) between The Dalles, Oregon to LA.
The transmission part is kinda similar to how Network packets reach the end user, that were stored in a database somewhere across the internet. Amazed to see such correlations exist !
8:30 yeahno. battery degredation compensation of those cars should be included in those payments. But they won't even come close to breaking even. and since the beneficiary is a company that now doesn't need to invest into batteries, but instead have small regular payouts... the benefit is for the COMPANY even IF the payouts "break even" for the user ("hey this payout also include the value of my time being wasted more often because of replacement batteries needing to be installed, right?") even if the math works out to be an actual benefit to the Tesla owner, it's still a better deal for the companies dodging the issue by pawning it off on us.
Several unanswered questions: 1-Although solar energy has peaks in production during day but the production demand is exactly in the demand peak of the hot time of day when the air conditioners are working so why cant they be seen as stabilizers? 2-Why Nothing is said about the geothermal plants which have a constant and steady supply and can be shut down and started easily too? Fro example in Yellowstone park of USA there is a ultra huge potential to generate geothermic electricity which even scientists say can help reduce the energy, impact and harm of any future eruption. 3-Why nothing is mentioned about other possible sources of energy like electricity obtained from sea tide and underwater currents?
1 - Solar is heavily variable due to clouds, and peak heat lags behind peak sun 2/3 - Geothermal and tidal are currently insignificant contributors to the US power mix.
I think Solar doesn't meet consumer demand because a majority of people use large building AC during the day and later, when solar production is lower, go home and turn on AC for their own homes. I'm assuming large AC units are more efficient than small houses.
@@jamesmnguyen More efficient, yes, but also the commercial spaces have better insulation etc. Also the interior sections of the building aren't taking in heat through an outer wall or windows, so they're effectively insulated by the exterior rooms, and it's easier to keep them cool. Re: AC in general, people can also program their AC at home to run at certain times. If you chill your home during off-peak times, then stop the AC during peak hours, you return home to cool air. I just wish refrigerators would pump their waste heat outdoors instead of into your kitchen which makes your AC cool the air down again.
Storage options like liquid metal batteries or solid state hydrogen can fix the variability issues with renewables, but they also will allow consistent power sources like nuclear to load follow as lowering the cost of electricity even further. That's a big issue because renewables have been causing nuclear to lose money when they're operating. The video doesn't touch on this, but that's because when solar panels, just for example, get pumping at noon on a sunny day, dumping their power onto the grid at zero marginal cost, that the electricity supply exceeds demand and the cost of electricity becomes negative for consumers, with revenue turning negative for producers that can't vary their own output, like nuclear (as they're basically paying someone just to take their electricity and get it off the grid). Cheap energy storage would let nuclear plants bank the power they generate when renewables are going strong for 2-3 hours a day rather than just eat the loss. Nuclear plants could also bank the power they generated in the middle of the night or during periods of lower electricity demand like the fall and spring, allowing them to really match energy demand and production. Cheap energy storage would allow nuclear to have A LOT more power available at any given point in the day and thus be able to provide power to a lot more consumers without impacting prices at all. Cheap energy storage could also lower the cost of electricity from nuclear plants a fair amount. That's because they produce power pretty much at a steady state continuously, with the same cost to produce power at 2am as to produce at 3pm. In markets where a nuclear plant is the primary source of electricity, it's likely that the plant is either 1) operating at a loss at a non-peak time of the day like 2am (as power production exceeds demand), 2) or the plant produces at a level that never exceeds demand and instead it employs peaker plants (like natural gas) to make up for the difference between the power supplied by the nuclear plant and the power demanded by consumers. In case #1, the plant must price it's power such that revenue generated during peak hours will offset the operating losses incurred during non-peak hours. In case #2, the nuclear plant will additional costs from operating the natural gas peaker plant, labor, fuel costs, capital costs, etc. What's more, natural gas peaker plants, which rev-up and down power production in line with demand, operate less efficiently and wear out more quickly than natural gas plants which operate continuously (like nuclear plants do) for the same reason that your car gets lower gas mileage (and suffer more wear and tear) from city miles than it does from highway miles. If nuclear had access to cheap storage, Case #1: the nuclear plant wouldn't have to sell electricity in non-peak hours at a loss and thus wouldn't have to price electricity such that revenue generated during peak hours offset losses generated during non-peak hours, Case #2: the plant could build up power during non-peak hours which would fill the gap between demand and production during peak hours, eliminating the need for natural gas peaker plants. So, while it is true that cheap energy storage will solve the variability issue of renewables, I think the real impact will be from its impact on nuclear. That's because even if you address the short term variability of renewables, that won't address long-term variability, like long-term rain and wind droughts which can last for months to years. You're also taking the power you generated over a relatively short period, most being generated over just a few hours, and then trying to spread that over the ENTIRE day or more. Nuclear is constant and reliable and isn't vulnerable to changes in the weather. I just think it'll be easier to match a consistent power source to demand than an inconsistent one.
Excellent video. I like the decision to look at a broad range of factors and technologies in the electric grid, from renewables to ev-stabilized grids to hydro storage etc, instead of just focusing on one particular aspect, something which many have done. At the same time, the focus on variable demand as an economic and practical driver is a unique and very important perspective. This is an excellent resource for what electricity and the grid will look like over the next decades.
2:14 - Load is not measured in GWh, but GW. However, if that's an hourly chart, we can slip it off under the carpet. However at 8:47, battery capacity is not measured in MW, but MWh. This is not good. It's like the most basic mistake people make when talking about electricity. It would be worth to fix that....
"He plots the same battery twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different units. I mean, what are we, to believe this is some sort of a, magic battery or something?" Though to be fair, this is a little less light-hearted than a cartoon. Alas, proofreading isn't foolproof, it happens.
@7:11 "It's expected to save the army half a million dollors in electricity costs." Do you guys realize how little that actually is compared to their budget? Their yearly budget just for that one base is probably close to a billion dollars. We've essentially saved the equivalent of someone who makes $100,000 a year just one dollar.
Great video... I did find it weird using the rivian as an example of powering a house when the lightning is being marketed as something that can actually do that
Thanks for using Glenwood Springs as the example. I live down the street from the library. You just explained the power grid better than any tutorial I've watched. Fascinating subject but hard to explain.
This is the most concise and layman explanation of the power industry that I've seen. Hope there is a sequel explaining how the electricity spot market works.
Carbon Impact is near zero for hydro? The millions of TONS of concrete poured would make me think otherwise. In fact 600 Kg of concrete is released for every ton of concrete poured. Hydro is not "green".
It never only black or white with energy & carbon emissions, for that fact :D Good or bad, green or dirty are categories that in the real world are often more like graphs, spectres, of continuous transitions, with many many shades of grey ^^
Carbon impact from coal power stations only includes actually burning the coal, it never includes the energy and materials needed to build the power station. Weird how the goal posts seem to move whenever renewables are being discussed.
8:15 Pretty sure you got that backwards. EVs would charge during the day when renewables perform well and then give some of that power back at night when renewables (especially solar) don't provide power. Only works for cars that have time to charge during the day, of course.
When I toured Rocketdyne as a 15 year old, they were making the shuttle engines. They showed us also what looked like a 2 story tower that had the shuttle engine and a turbine mounted with it. The idea was that it could be transported where needed, then lit off and generate huge amounts of electrical power on demand. I don't know if they ever used it.
The rapid proliferation of home and utility scale batteries and the rapid evolution of new battery chemistries have been spectacular. And, wind and solar are the least expensive technologies we humans have ever developed for generating electricity. High voltage electrical transmission is hugely expensive. So, in the near future, small towns and rural residences and businesses will be powered by wind and solar backed up by batteries.
my dad was an electric engineer and used to tell me about the reservoir - electricity conversion plant when I was in elementary school. now seeing WP doing it is soo satisfying.
In the 1950s a power station was dug into a mountain in Scotland. This was the Loch Sloy power station and it was several hundred feet below Loch Sloy and connected to Loch Lomond. The purpose was Pumped Storage. Make electricity with Loch Sloy water to even out demand and pump it back up from Loch Lomond when there was more than adequate electricity production.
@@youtubegremlin3915 It'd be kind cool to see a future where the whole electric grid ran on DC (except turbine generation) from the source, all the way to the consumer. But that would mean a massive overhaul of the current system. Down to the electric appliances themselves.
"I always thought AC power is best for long range power transfer and that's why it won over DC." AC won over Edison's DC idea which was to not step up or down the voltage at all but rather use low voltage all the way from power plant to the final consumer. It's this low voltage which would have entailed high transmission losses.
@@jamesmnguyen I don't think that could be practical even if you had to start from a clean slate anyway. I don't think there's a practical way to step up the voltage of DC other than to first convert it to AC so you can run it through a transformer and convert it back to DC. Basically every transformer would need to be replaced with a full converter station. I don't think that would make economic sense.
This has to be some misinformation because I saw documentaries explaining why AC power was better for long-distance power transmission. why would they lie about that? Is Wendover Productions getting the wrong information?
@@deltoid77-nick In practical terms, AC power is pretty good at long range power transmission, not because it's the best method, but because it easier to use than long range DC power. DC voltages are very hard to increase up to the levels of AC.
Wow, the "Electricity" video sounds interesting! As an outdoor enthusiast and RV lover, I highly recommend checking out the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series. With its massive capacity, versatile sockets, and waterproof technology, it's perfect for keeping your devices powered up during camping trips or in case of emergencies. Plus, its smart app control feature adds convenience. Definitely worth considering!
Being an Electrical Power Engineer, I can say Sam explained this complicated topic best one can in the easiest way. Thank you Sam for making video on my favorite topic.
Can confirm
If you guys are willing to respond, I have a question I haven't been able to get a proper answer to. I am curious what effect on the lines/power grid a sending and receiving source may have. Ie, a house that will receive electricity in the far north during short cloudy days, but also will produce electricity in the long cloudless days in the summer with solar panels on the roof. I get that AC is a thing but you figure there is some difficulty having the power and usage change possibly multiple a day.
@@route2070 actually main problem is that electricity can not be stored, it has to be consumed at the instance it is produced. Grid system is the facility that enables electric power to consumed at the user house but actually it is made far in a power plant. Now if I install a solar rooftop panel then it will produce power only at the day when the sun is on the sky and shine brightly, but others time it can not provide any electricity. At that time grid system provides the needed electricity.
Now if my solar rooftop system is large enough that it will generate more than I need, then you can actually send excess amount to the grid and get some money for that.
When you supply power to the grid then some where any other plan might get rest. Mainly gas fired power plant is operated whan peak demand occurs.
All this power flow management is a real-time challenge which is managed from any central Load Dispatch Center control room's huge computer.
I live in TX and during the Winter Storm here they mentioned that we were a few minutes away from a total grid reset. My question is, does a grid need to have a certain frequency for power plants to prevent a total grid collapse and if so, why?
@@subhajitkarmakar1 So then the house can switch between producer and user no problem. It doesn't have a negative on the power lines or anything? Also is the starting up the turbine at the natural gas facility automated, or is someone sitting there monitoring usage versus production and telling everything to start. Sorry for all the questions, and this video is great, there just seems to be a lot of minutia that are simple to think of but would require 2 minutes of video to answer each thing, so I get why Sam didn't go further.
One of the most British things I've ever heard is that the power grid has a massive spike in demand at certain periods as people boil kettles to make tea, often in ad breaks and at the end of certain shows 😂
We don’t watch that much tv anymore, so our tea kettle goes on ransomly
Not anymore I'm afraid, traditional media is slowly going the way of the dodo.
@@Sarahbryson321 Other nations drink tea too, you know.
@@beback_ And TV is likewise dying in every other country too
The Turks drink a lot more tea per capita than the Brits. If they can handle it, so can the Brits.
Nothing slaps harder than sitting down for a 20 minute video on the power grid
20 min PH videos slap pretty hard too
2x is 10 min, etc
@K A E L Y N 💋 scam
@@danielculver2209 hydro electric dams destroy the environment ,
destroys many things
1 million times more carbon foot print
I feel this on a spiritual level
As a PhD in electrical power engineering, I am amazed how this video explains the power system in such an intuitive way.
Dr Yu 👏
Why are you not working on exploiting the best forms of renewable energy which are known and not being exploited and or coming up with new ways to convert electricity? Over unity is easily possible while obeying all the laws of thermodynamics.
As a guy watching this video, I'm amazed also
@@spectrumofrealityis it possible without literal slave labor though? You need humans to mine, fabricate, transport, and maintain.
@@unlisted9494 Yes it is very easily possible. The labour and mantenance can be minimal after contruction while working on projects that will directly benefit you and yours is hardly slave labour while perhaps a labour of love.
you covered just about everything I think a general audience would need to know.
Thank you TimeBucks
Indeed. I now know were to set the explosives to cripple a entire country.
Nice undercover burn
@@Shinzon23 I think there are other very important areas that when bombed could cripple the USA, but i think power grids are quite like the veins of the country
@@ldelgg you could also argue that hitting the gas pipelines that are unguarded and cross through areas that are very easy to access as well as telecommunication infrastructure like fibre optic lines which again are also in places that are easy to get to and are also unguarded would also work
Glad to see Wendover is talking about current affairs, it's an area that has a lot of potential. And he does all this at no charge.
3 puns in 3 lines. You are a genius
Shockingly, there is still a lot of resistance to green energy in the US. Some people still need to flip the switch. But Wendover is leading the charge for a brighter future!
Ok. I'll stop with the bad puns.
@@rolandxb3581 Man u made this even better
3 terrible jokes that made me laugh
The amount of puns here is shocking
The statement that supply has to exactly match load every instant is a bit too strict, although it is true.
The saving grace of the electrical grid is all those turbines and the angular inertia they all represent. Whenever the load exceeds supply, the extra energy needed is extracted from that inertia and the turbines start to slow down. And whenever supply exceeds load, the reverse happens and the turbines start to speed up. And because there's a MASSIVE amount of inertia, the rate at which the turbines speed up, or slow down is fairly slow, giving the power companies time to adjust the amount of power they supply the turbines. So depending upon where in the world you live, the power grid has a nominal frequency of 50 or 60 Hz. But that frequency is only nominal, it starts to decrease when more loads are turned on and the power plants start to increase their output to match the load, and the frequency increases when loads are turned off and the power plants are taking time to decrease their output to match the new load.
Yes, roughly speaking.
There is always more you could say about electricity grid complexity... no shortage of complexity there :D
Yes, but when production drops, frequency drops and the allowable frequency range is quite tight. On a 60Hz system in the US, you need to keep the frequency between IIRC 59.95Hz and 60.05Hz. In loads with mostly inductive impedances, IE most loads in the US, small changes in frequency can drastically change the effective impedance and power demand.
@@nicholasdaskalakis772 As I said, due to angular momentum and inertia, the speed of the turbines changes fairly slowly when the production and load don't exactly match. If load exceeds supply, the rotational speed, and hence frequency decreases. And when supply exceeds load, the opposite occurs and hence the frequency increases. And due to inertia, the rate of change is slow enough that the power companies can compensate by changing the power supplied to the turbines and hence generators. E.g. Hydroelectric, open or close gates to increase or decrease supply of water to turbines. Gas plants, increase or decrease gas being burning in turbines, etc.
I have always wondered about that. That's interesting, thanks
true but I think Sam was trying to prevent this from becoming week one of EE101 for 3 credits. But your points are correct
I know a guy who works for Idaho Power as an engineer and they were talking about experiments to see if they could run a small town purely off the local hydroelectric dam. They tried multiple times, but the lead-lag time was just too high for their control systems to be able to compensate. It was fun to talk to him since he had such deep insight into how our grid works.
They learned a valuable lesson from that experiment, about what it means to wield power.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 - I don't know if you deserve more internet points for a penguin avatar or the pun!
hydro electric dams destroy the environment ,
destroys many things
1 million times more carbon foot print
@@dongshengdi773 not necessarily but yes it very well could
@@dongshengdi773 It has some kind of footprint, but it's not a carbon one.
Your explanation on usage patterns was both compact and accurate. I work in wholesale/retail pricing for one of the larger independent power producers in the US and that’s one of the better “everyday” explanations I’ve heard. Explaining the differences between consumption (how much is being used overall) and demand (how much is being used at any one point in time) gets tricky.
Underground cable jointer here, mostly working on 11kV to 240/415 substations etc. Great video, you really covered a broad range of important topics concisely!
The world wouldn't exist with out cable jointers. Great people.
There is a lot more complexity than this even. I work for the electrical system operator here in Ontario and we control the price of electricity. Not only does supply have to match demand but you have to make sure everybody is getting paid fairly. Every 5 minutes an auction occurs where produces and consumers can bid on what they're willing to pay for electricity. It gets insanely complicated figuring out exactly who needs to pay who for what. For example the baseloads shouldn't get paid the same price/kwh as the natural gas plants, since the natural gas plants are what do the work to balance the supply and demand. We also provide incentives for green environmentally friendly power stations so that they can stay competitive in the market. All this goes on behind the scenes and none of the daily electricity users know about it.
I’m pretty sure electrical grids fall into the catagory of ”Natural Monopoly”.
Meaning a case where the laws of Physics and the ”laws” of economics are too often at odds with each other.
Texas got to experience this first hand recently during a cold snap.
Most of their power is Natural Gas sourced, but neither the gas pumping stations, nor the power plants were sufficiently winterized.
Some gas facilities froze up, which drove up the spot price for Nat Gas.
Power generators refused to buy gas at a loss, so they stopped producing.
This cascaded the load on the grid, and resulting brownouts and blackouts caused even more gas pumping facilities to shut down (electric powered compressors, valves, and heaters) which cascaded spot price further. You get the vicious cycle...
@@samr9408 I'm imagining a 1900s silent auction with the utility company represented by an enthusiastically fast-talking auctioneer, but that's probably not it.
why there is no larger time frame contract ? is there that much difference in pricing between low demand hour and high demand hour pricing that 5 minute auction cycle can bring enough extra to be worth the additional operation complexity. Seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of gain
Interesting. Here in Brazil, the TSO is a different entity than the chamber of commerce. The pricing is done weekly for the overall operations of the grid, and TSO centrally determines which companies (generators) have to be on at any given moment.
This gets even more complex when you try to factor in cascading hydro plants (on a same river). How do you dispatch a plant in order to not deplete the reservoir, also not financially penalizing the ones up river (which are called upon less frequently). To divide the burden of such a interconnected grid, centrally operated by an independent operator, we have to have financial and legal instruments to divy up the profits and loss between the generating companies.
It's fare to say it is insane
As someone with a weird fixation on electrical systems. This is incredibly fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
The "water in the pipes" so to speak is the collective angular momentum of all of the generators on the grid. A common misconception with electricity production: it's not the electrons we care about, it's the electromagnetic field. My other favorite thought experiment related to this: if two generators spin at 60Hz, how does one produce more power than the other? The answer is to not look at the rotation frequency, but instead to look at torque being imposed between the turbine and the generator. The more torque there is, the more electricity is being produced.
All turbines don't spin at the same speed. Depends how many poles are in the generator. But yeah once a generator is synchronized to the grid and you can't change its speed. Remove the steam it becomes a motor and uses power, full steam it doesn't speed up just makes more watts.
Technically correct, the best kind! Edited my comment for accuracy sake.
It's not actually all that much, depending -- the statistic I saw is that reactive power in the grid is about 10% of total power; which is to say, if you suddenly disconnect a generator, the whole thing just kind of goes thud within a millisecond or two. Which sounds about right, and is essentially putting a number on the response time hinted at in the video -- it's not instantaneous of course, it takes some time for power to get to customers from the generator, and this is about the figure.
What's interesting is where this statistic fails: there's still a fair amount of rotating machinery on the grid, which will keep going. But as it slows down in the process, it shifts out of phase with what the grid is supposed to run at, effectively breaking the statistic -- in essence, when power cuts, all that slowing machinery shifts out of phase with what the grid was running at, and so a simple measure of reactive power won't account for this. Put another way: on a cycle-to-cycle basis, the speed of any given rotor changes imperceptibly (ideally, not at all for 3-phase motors; 1-phase motors however get torque in pulses), not nearly enough to show up in a measure of phase shift or reactance. But change the frequency or voltage, and suddenly you can see a whole hell of a lot of reserve power, at least in the short term. Granted, that term is still probably only a second or something!
I don't understand what angular momentum is.
Veritasium has a good video about this.
"If you flip a switch in LA, that can cause a turbine in Washington to spin."
Doesn't work in Texas, though.
No but if anyone does literally anything in LA, a Texan becomes angry and chambers a cartridge. It's the equivalent of angel wings and bell-ringing.
yeah since Texas has it's own power grid while other states don't
@@bazookabulldozers In a sense. Texas has a terrible power grid because it absolutely cannot be a team player.
@@googiegress Every time a Californian eats a vegetable, an angry Texan gets an AR-15
@Mck Idyl California is one of the very worst states and ranks last in quality of life, has the most unreliable power grid, has the least educated population per capita, and the highest poverty rate per capita.
I like the idea of nuclear to cover the true baseload, and renewable+batteries to cover the swings, with renewable spikes being used to generate hydrogen or desalinate water
In France they do and not just a small percentage but a large one with hydro damn. Sometime they produce so much that they let Germany have some when their winds dont blow that strong
But that's just a dream, nuclear power plants simply take too long to build to tackle cimate crisis are expensive and are suffering from building delays annd cost overruns around the world.
@@deathgun3110 So instead of waiting 10 years for nuclear power plants, you think we should wait 100 years to solve our climate crisis? Because that's about how long it will take for batteries to cover the whole grid.
@@specialopsdave yeah as much as nuclear won’t solve the climate crisis, it would definitely help
@@deathgun3110 those are all solvable problems, though. the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago, but we can still start construction now and see a salvageable future alongside the help of carbon capture and disaster mitigation. and we have plenty of money to fund them, the only reason why we can't right now is because the climate crisis is politicized. genuinely all we need to do is put on our big kid pants and get to work.
Growing up in Canada where there’s lots of hydro-electric production, including gigantic amounts in Quebec (99% of their domestic power production) and British Columbia (97% of B.C’s production), I’ve grown up with the idea of production being really far from demand. Great video, it was insightful to learn more about how we got from where we started to where we are now.
Here in France, while nuclear power plants still are our baseline, they are also capable of load tracking, (ramping up or down according to demand) and represent around 75% of the electric mix. In fact, because there isn't enough battery capacity to make Germany's very renewable-heavy mix a controllable system, they import our nuclear electricity when the wind doesn't blow.
We also have large hydroelectric dams basically everywhere we could build them, and use some of them as reversible dams to store excess electricity.
The marginal cost of a hydroelectric dam is the salary of the guy opening the valves. So not much. The marginal cost of nuclear is also very low, because it's basically the cost of salaries you'd pay anyway, and uranium, a by definition extremely dense energy source.
Because both our dams and our nuclear power plants are pretty old, the initial investment has been completely written off multiple times over.
Yeah, his representation here was pretty disingenuous. While it can take one or more days for a nuclear plant to turn off and on, largely due to Xenon poisoning, they are entirly capable of changing their power output marginally by a few percent almost instantly, and tens of percents over the course of an hour - keep in mind that a percent of a single reactor is still ~10MWe.
Nuclear plants are quite capable of load following - their 100% baseline is driven prettymuch entirely by the economic considerations.
It also peeves me a bit when he says hydro is "green, like wind and solar". ...and Nuclear too? Nuclear produces 3x less co2 per kwh than solar, and 10x if you're running a CANDU.
Dunno what it is in the rest of the world, but 2/3 of Canadians think Nuclear produces as much CO2 as burning oil. Small wonder why when it arbitrarily gets excluded from the 'green' category
Worth pointing out the Germany’s grid is overall more reliable than France, and also exports to France
@@the1barbarian781 wut ?
France is self sufficient, with a mix of nuclear ands dams, where germany get a lot of coal in his energy mix
I cannot see how germany energetical mix could be better
@@Xylos144 I’m pretty sure since he already stated that hydroelectric plants generate a non-significant amount of carbon pollution, when he said “green” he was referring more towards renewability than actual carbon emissions
@@kint87 I'm talking strictly in terms of grid reliability and both countries import and export plenty of energy. If I recall correctly Germany has the second most reliable grid behind Denmark. I agree Germany's current coal use is high but the good news is that it's decreasing
I feel you've missed an opportunity to talk about Hydro-Québec; which is only second to China and Brazil in terms of total hydro-electric capacity despite being a state-corporation representing only about 8 million people. Nearly 100% of the electricity of Quebec is supplied by hydro-electric dams, with the majority of them being thousands of kms away in the North of the province. Its pretty much a full case-study of a fully hydro-powered economy and its drawbacks, like the potential damage to the environment. It also relates to the US given there are plans to massively increase the transfer capacity to the Northeast states.
here in plattsburgh NY which is 40 from montreal we have the cheapest electricity in either the country or state because we get our power from hydro quebec. I even think Hydro quebec even sends some power to NYC.
@@ELYELYELroy Does Renewable mean cheaper in the U.S? I’m from Scotland. We meet 100% of our needs from renewables (mostly from onshore wind and hydro) and produce enough electricity to power the country twice over. Under construction are 2 massive offshore wind farms at 4.1GW and 1.1GW each respectively, a large under water tidal farm and 2 large hydro pumped storage schemes and tbh there hasn’t been reduction in prices.
Could probably also throw in Manitoba hydro which also is nearly pure hydro electric.
@@scottwhitley3392 not necessarily. But Hydro damns are cheap to run once constructed and, as long as the water keeps running, run forever. So hydroelectric is cheap in areas where there are lots of rivers, like Northern Quebec. Things like solar or wind vary on cost effectiveness based on the design and location.
Comment spotter un québécois
me, a lebanese person:
that's the neat part, it doesn't!
I can’t get over how good your videos are. I feel like I’ve learned more about how the world works from your channel over anything else I’ve read or watched since I got done with school.
These videos do make me feel schools could do better...
In Italy, like most of Europe, we abandoned nuclear power after what happened at Chernobyl.
But the politicians who made these decisions ignore the fact that Chernobyl was poorly maintained and that the reason that the damage was as major a it was is because the USSR was more worried covering up the incident to preserve their already tainted reputation.
Wendover explaining power grid perfectly gives me hope that he covers Smart Grids in the Future
The technology isn't economically viable enough yet for widespread adoption but it has been one of the fields that aim to better manage load on a power grid
hey sam do you think you could talk more about the drought here in Colorado? I'm sure you have also been DEEPLY concerned with the impacts of this incredibly warm winter we're having right now. also I want more Colorado content and you make the best.
Give me about four weeks
@@Wendoverproductions look at this madlad ^^
@@Wendoverproductions the snow in Aspen sucked over thanksgiving weekend if it weren’t for that 7in. we got the day before.
@@Wendoverproductions Also if you’re looking to do a video on micro grids and need an example from the Valley, I believe they’re looking to connect the Aspen Airport, the RFTA hub, and other public utilities so they operate independently after the vandalism that shut down the gas lines around New Years.
Should be glad you're not freezing your asterisk off.
This focus on Colorado, especially the mountain cities like Glenwood springs and grand junction is really cool lol, hearing about your state makes it extra interesting :)
I live only 20 miles from Glenwood, imagine how I feel 😊
He has a fixation with CO for some reason, I have a feeling he lives here. For example, his Amazon video and ski resort video also used Colorado as an example
yeah I'm pretty sure he does live there
@@emilioalban1234 he does
I live in Glenwood as well as I am working on getting my pilot’s license so his videos are absolutely insane sometimes lol
In South Australia, and soon Western Australia, new legislation is stating that all roof top solar panels need to have the ability to be disconnected from the grid by the grid provider remotely to level out the grid. This is to make sure that the system can cope with any fluctuations during the day.
I see in Queensland that they are testing localised batteries to soak up that excess. I will bet SA is trialling that too.
Wrong on the wind turbines are free once installed. They have a pretty good annual maintenance cost. $42,000 to $48,000 per year per turbine. So yeah, they're not free. Plus that is a lot of plastic to landfill once their short service life of 20 years is over. Love your channel. Have been watching lots of the videos. Very well done. Fun and entertaining. Cheers!
Also, has anyone mentioned you sound a little like Rob Lowe?? :)
In Wendovers perfect world Electricity is transported by airplanes.
also: Quark, the best of what Germans do best that's not beer.
One interesting reason why a greener grid might _not_ include lots of long-distance transmission lines comes down to two other things mentioned in the video: HV lines are expensive, and renewables are cheap (and getting cheaper as we speak).
For example, the U.S. northwest has less solar and wind energy available to it than the southeast and midwest respectively, so it's often suggested that they build large HV lines to draw power from new renewable construction in those areas. However, considering the price of such high-capacity HV lines, it can actually be cheaper just to build double or triple the renewable+storage capacity in situ to make up for its 1/2 or 1/3 efficiency.
Of course, this all comes down to economics - if HV lines see significant price reduction due to economies of scale, they might become more competitive - but right now, it's surprisingly close, and renewables are getting cheaper faster than transmission systems. It feels weird that building three times as much power generation might be the _cheaper_ option, but it just might end up being the case.
HV lines are likely to get more expensive with scale, since copper is an expensive, limited resource, and hence will lead to substitution with less efficient aluminum. Also, the more HV lines you have the more likely they will get push back from NIMBY attitudes, and the more likely folks will want to route them through more desirable areas (folks backyards and wildernesses). HV lines are eyesores to most folks!
@@richdobbs6595 NIMBY arguments are made against HV lines just as often as they are against solar and especially wind power plants. Considering that you will need more resources for more power plants than for HV lines the solution is most likely to build both a more decentralized grid and more HV interconnections. That's at least the most environmentally friendly solution, it may not be the most economical solution.
@@richdobbs6595 aluminum isn't less efficient, for the same resistance, you just need a thicker gauge
Large scale grid storage will have very little impact on distance and our current lines. Literally as seen in the video, whether power is coming from a plant or storage, it goes through the same lines to the same end locations. Actually what having a large grid will do is allow a bunch of small storage locations all over the place to feed into one central network and therefore lower cost and raise efficiency by spreading out the storage. Sure if energy storage in montana starts getting depleted to send electricity to colorado, there will be major losses, but the idea is that there would be a bunch of smaller storage solutions all across colorado, so power can be pulled from the nearest one, and then generators charge up the storage.
Not to mention electric storage is the answer to making nuclear go from providing only a base level, to being able to fully supply on its own.
It will be a bit of both. Renewables are cheap, which means its really cost effective to overbuild capacity, to guarantee enough supply... but that means at some times, there will be more being generated than is needed. It effectively means some solar farms or wind farms need to be switched off, which is a bit of a waste. Big interconnectors to other regions means that this produced electricity can be diverted somewhere else.
Of course batteries or pumped hydro are also an option for this excess energy, but if you connect enough regions it reduces the need to store it at all.
The amount of energy consumption per household in the US is mindblowing to me
MOAR PAWA!!
US is good at consuming.
If everybody consumed at that rate the planet would die
Energy consumption and electric usage are two different things. When considering all sources of energy (natural gas, wood, coal, electricity of course, etc) the US per capita numbers don't stand out as much. A lot of the extra household electric usage in the US is tied to air conditioning and heating. The size of the average US house does not help when it comes to that. I would also suggest US residents don't allow for colder homes in the winter and hotter in the summer due to the low cost of electricity in large portions of the US. I don't know for a fact what other countries do (I live in the US but my travels abroad are limited and therefore limit my assumptions on the habits of other countries) but if you can run an AC all day for pennies why suffer?
I don't understand how they do it.
Never had an interest in looking up how the power grid worked, and clicked on your video out of boredom this morning while drinking coffee. I'm glad I did. I learned something today I never knew, and appreciate the information and time put into making this video. Kudos!
Human civilization never ceases to amaze me. Thank you for another great video Sam!
Before Streaming Services become big, so only about 10 years ago. The Engineers at the UKs power grid would be told everyday what time EastEnders should finish (often inaccurate) and so they also watch it to prepare, and as it gets to the cliff hanger "Doff Doffs" they quickly activate a powerful water damn in Wales
as the demand massively peaks due to millions of homes turning on Kettles to make cups of tea.
sports games, too, used to cause big headaches for the grid, because they're not predictable
Not that this really matters, but why does it always feel like the example cities/towns are in Colorado? I guess it doesn't matter, it's just kinda funny. Love the video regardless!
he lives there
best state
That's crazy I didn't know that. Colorado is my home state too.
Colorado slaps bro
Colorado is just better
Technology Connections has a video showing another good idea. His house is really well insulated and surrounded by trees, so he programmed his thermostat to cool to 66F overnight when electricity is cheap, then go to the upper 70s during the day. But the house doesn’t ever get that warm, so the AC doesn’t turn back on until electricity cost goes down and the thermostat goes back to 66. This effectively turns his house into a battery during the summer.
I also watched that video, and realized that we could use our stomachs as batteries by going to an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch and not eating anything else until the next day. Sure it's a little uncomfortable but it's a small price to pay!
Although I'm a cold-weather mammal and I'm most comfortable around 67F anyway. So when he was describing his house as chilly at night I was like ~orly~
I've been thinking about that video for a while now - solar panels are becoming absolutely dirt cheap, you can get up to 600W panels for like $300 (Canadian Solar, if I'm not mistaken). Slap together 10 of those, get a 7kw pure sine wave inverter, and you have a rather enormous amount of free electricity for a surprisingly small upfront investment.
It only gets expensive when you actually try to store that energy - batteries are expensive, and can be a massive pain to manage. But if you just pumped that 6kw straight into your air conditioning, and/or your electric water heater, you could heat your water and cool your house virtually for free. You don't need that power around the clock, 7-10 hours a day should be plenty.
@@gabrielfraser2109 And in most places you can pump excess back into the grid and the utility credits you. In Tacoma, WA for example it's actually valued the same as power you pull down from the grid, so you get a cash payout at the end of the year if your account is still positive. Other places still want to charge you a surcharge for each kWh that flows into your house, so you'd need a battery bank in order to avoid that, and of course there's a base monthly charge at 0 kWh usage for the connection.
@@gabrielfraser2109 if you have enough space for it you could build a small water tower and setup your own pumped hydro storage from the excess
@@googiegress This is called "intermittent fasting" and it works.
One interesting concept is reducing peak demand. I know the local power company was experimenting with subsidized HVAC systems that could be centrally adjusted to smooth out peaks.
Long distance transmission also made me wonder if it would be viable to transmit power from one area during non peak times and vice versa. There is a 3 hour offset between 7 am on each coast.
Technology Connections has a really interesting video series on home electrification that talks about smart circuit breakers as a way to reduce peak usage on a household level.
Maybe automated conservation is a way forward.
If you’re a military base or a business putting in on-site energy storage, you’re not just enjoying a long-term cost savings, you’re also ruggedizing your site against power outages. If I ran a military, or a large company, I’d be ALL over that for all my key sites.
Here in Québec, 99% of our electricity comes from the massive Hydro dams thousands of km north, thanks to our network of 735kV power lines. It helps that all of our electricity has been nationalised in the 1970s, so we have one big intelligent network and single main supplier that's state-owned so all of the profits go back into universal health care and social programs. ;-)
Any Americans who chew you out about this are just jealous ;)
It helps that Quebec is like 4 times as large as Colorado, gets huge amounts of precipitation relative to Colorado, and only has a population about 40% greater. You guys are playing on the easy setting compared to most of the world.
@@richdobbs6595 Yes and no, we do have a huge area that's mostly unihabitable; our southern 200 miles is about as dense and urbanised as Ohio, while the northern 90% is more like Alaska...
Historically, we started as a sparsely populated French colony that ended up conquered by the Brits (paying for it led to the Boston Tea Party BTW), but they let us keep our catholic civil code and french language so we would'nt join the US...
We still ended up under the english economic boot surrounded by the brittish crown loyalists that fled New England and formed Canada without our consent (Québec never signed the constitution, between the two referendums for independance)...
Let's just say thar we pretty much stagnated as 2nd class citisens and cheap labor for New Hampshire and NewYork factories, until WW2's baby boom electorate quietly overthrew our theocracy overnight into the modern socialist Québec province that's the main reason Canada is leaning left. 😅
It's not all down to luck; for instance Alberta has huge hydro potential but is cursed by tar sands oil that stiffles economic diversity.
@@richdobbs6595 And btw, Colorado has about the same electricity price we have, the difference is that it is dispersed in many private pockets without a unified plan, while we leveraged the nationalisation of electricity as a way to diversify our economy, develop our engineering expertise, and as state revenue to afford a very interventionist state. Pretty much the only way we weathered the 2008 crisis better than the rest of North America.
Heck, we have labor shortages even despite Covid. 😅
You're welcome to immigrate if you're willing to learn french. 😉
I'm in Tasmania, Australia, and our system sounds similar - we have a 100 year old network of hydro stations, built by the government, running the state! Emission free electricity before it was cool!
Thought the title was “How Electricity Gets You” and I started to get scared
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It’s shooting lasers at your eyes!
What makes me proud is that I just finished an energy management course and I understood everything you said! That makes me really happy, makes me know that I am retaining my knowledge! :D
This is by far the best explanation of the electrical grid that I've seen. Well done.
Nice video. As someone who designs transmission lines, I'd say you covered just about everything I would think a general audience would need to know.
The UK has extra stations just to handle boiling water for afternoon tea and otherwise stay off.
Electricitea stations?
@@mmclerran17 lolzzz
@@mmclerran17 electrical, yes
I work for National Grid. This is simply not true
@@SecularSynthesis He's probably referring to the phenomenon called "TV pickup" causing surges in demand. That phenomenon is real even if he's exaggerating how much it requires preparing for.
I really appreciate how you manage to bring the video home by coming back to a seemingly random point like the public library
It's the perfect sort of example where you understand how it ties in to real life.
This video is brought to you by the electric grid
12:13 a town called “Rifle” is the most american thing I’ve ever seen
Somewhat tangent to the topic of the electric grid but interesting to me when learning this factoid about Extra High Voltage EHV electric transmission lines. EHV lines are often rated to operate at a temperature of 242 degrees or so. Current through the wires heat the lines causing the lines to sag to no more than a designed amount. Stand under a EHV transmission line on a humid day and you will hear a crackling noise. That noise is humidity vaporizing due to the high temperature of the wire.
8:20 Fun fact: the Ford lightning can already do this. If your power goes out and you have the system set up correctly and the truck plugged in, it can be used as a battery bank for up to 4 days Worth of power
The cost to set it up can be as much as $7K. The Tesla Roadster in 2009 had V2G but not many used it. I see that changing now that people are more familiar with V2G.
Chademo is the only standard that implemented V2G early. Most of the world don't use chademo though.
That also means that driving a car for 100km uses the same amount of energy as the average austrian uses in a day, which is kind of crazy to me. I know plenty of people who drive that much or even twice that much every day.
Considering how much Sam talks about Colorado, I feel like he is probably from Colorado.
Theres a town called Wendover in Colorado
@@aespa690 Damn I guess we finally figured it out.
Crazy to see how electricity usage peaks in US in July, because of air conditioners. A lot of countries in Europe peak in winter and summer is the trough.
Edit: yes, it's because it's hotter in a lot of the US, that's the point. Especially more than 'gay paris' yes..
Well depending on where you live, it gets hot as hell in summer. Just yesterday on December 1st it was near 90°F at my house
Tends to get A LOT hotter in summer in Phoenix than in gay Paris.
@@jr2904 in a way it's worse in the UK when it gets very hot. Because we don't have aircon and our houses are built for warmth in winter. We also have higher humidity. I've had 100F in LA and 90F in London and LA is much more preferable even ignoring the air con.
But yeah my point was because it's hotter.
It peaks in Dec/Jan in Australia- but not because it's cold, because it's damn hot.
@@m2heavyindustries378 that’s right I always forget your upside down
I'll give you an immense amount of credit.... Even in describing for all of us that don't know, you even open a door to a discussion (see all the below) that absolutely COULD NOT BE BETTER..... not only for our nation, but for the world [read, exposing/exploring/discussing the myriad other ways and possibilities]. Thank you for such a golden moment/opportunity here.
Flipping a home light switch in LA will not start a turbine in Washington. Though the control of the Grid is complex, at its simplest it is a matter of the system frequency. When the demand increases and the frequency drops by a predetermined amount, additional generation will be added to the system. However, flipping a light switch will result is such a miniscule reduction in the frequency as to be unmeasurable, and, as a result will not affect the Grid at all. However, at 5pm when thousand of people return home from work and turn on thousands of lights, not to mention stoves and air conditioners, additional generation will most likely be called for. And it might kick on the turbine in WA.
7:16 "While such a system can make economic sense for large complexes that can invest in infrastructure that won't pay off for more than a decade, it's just not practical grid-wide"
What is he talking about? How is a country's entire grid not the perfect example of a large complex?
Go and rewatch the video, figure it out yourself. Keyword starts with B
because the entire country involves multiple parties, and so keeping electrical costs low is much more important. a "single large complex" involves just a single party who accepts the additional upfront cost ahead of time ie they are their own customer.
Because we value upholding the religion of capitalism more than we value results.
There are some options for handling variations in load that you didn't mention. Liquid metal batteries and redox flow batteries are both cheaper alternatives to lithium ion that are good for stationary applications like grid-scale storage. Also, there are other types of potential energy storage besides pumped hydro. These include liquid air, compressed air, and molten salt. Lastly, there is a future base-load capability that will also be load-following: motlen chloride fast reactors. Due to the nature of the reaction, when load is high they produce more power, but when load is low they're output tapers off. (A side benefit is that they can use existing nuclear waste as fuel, leaving a much smaller quantity of short half-life waste afterward.) These still await regulatory approval.
None of these options exists at a grid scale. If they ever exist in the future, Meanwhile, there's li-ion batteries operating grid scale right now. Think he focused mostly on what's on right now.
You also gotta think about having to have 4x the footprint for the same capacity as Li-Ion, it usually is more economic to go Li-Ion which still isn't that economically friendly yet
Thank you for the video. I'm an electrical engineer and working with energy markets. I know about the energy balance of my country so it's interesting to compare to the energy situation in USA. I used to make forecasts of electricity usage in different grids so I was especially interested in 1:10-3:00.
Excellent presentation. I am an electrical engineer and worked in process control for 20 years and much of it in the power industry.
"a fraction of a second ago" the wave travels that fast but the actual electrons themselves are much slower.
2:32 Fun fact: British electric companies have to prepare for national and international soccer games, as if the British team loses, the viewers immediately turn on their kettles and causes a massive spike
I never realized how complex the electrical grid really is Awesome job Wendover
Awesome video! Hearing you talk about the logistics of electricity is as enthralling as any other topic you've covered. Great work!
Since two years ago, the transition to renewable energy continues to accelerate. Of particular note are solar and storage. What is developing is a decentralized grid with more generation at the local level. A long time concern (and criticism) of renewables has been the question of sufficient base load. Not mentioned in this video are developments being made in enhanced geothermal electrical generation. The fact is that the core of the earth is very hot. This heat comes from radioactive decay. A deep enough well can tap this heat. I also recently learned that back filling deep geothermal wells can then become a sort of storage battery.
This excellent piece is worthy of more visibility, as it points to both the long term value of sustainable energy, while making it clear the transition requires a lot of infrastructure change and time. I also like that you touched on the complexity of trade-offs around water impoundments: great for storage of water and indirectly, energy, but at the expense of healthy land, flora, and fauna. These are complex problems which under any policy will continually need tough management and optimization.
We should use more Nuclear, it would be better for the environment.
15:58 Nice.
Good video ,. But one thing. 0:33 it is not true to say they have absolutely "zero slack". Frequency can drift a little. In the UK we have a target frequency of 50hz BUT it can and dose go as high as 50.2hz and as low as 49.8hz with no real problems at all.
Wow, lots of slack
@lfeng15 not lots, but some
0.8% range.
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Here are the key takeaways from the video "How Electricity Gets to You":
1. Electricity is produced hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it's consumed, and the grid has to instantly match supply and demand.
2. Electricity demand has significant variability across time - daily peaks in the morning and evening, seasonal peaks in winter and summer.
3. Utilities use a mix of generation sources to meet this variable demand, with nuclear and coal providing baseload, natural gas for peaking, and renewables like wind/solar becoming more prevalent.
4. Storing electricity at scale is challenging and expensive, but electric vehicles could potentially help by acting as distributed batteries.
5. Hydroelectric dams can act like giant batteries, pumping water uphill when electricity is cheap and generating when it's expensive.
6. High-voltage, long-distance transmission is crucial to bring electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed, with AC and DC transmission options.
7. Substations and transformers step down the voltage as electricity gets distributed to local areas and individual buildings.
The overall theme is the complexity of the electricity grid and the various technological and engineering solutions required to reliably deliver power to end users.
It would be very interesting to hear about the difference between how much power"should" be lost, and how much actually is lost in the"real world" application
Makes things here seem even more out of touch. All my towns power comes from a coal power plant that's about 10 miles away. I can see the exhaust trails from my house depending on weather. It gets it's coal from a relatively small open pit mine operated right on the site of the power plant. Course the worlds 1st and 6th largest coal mines are also just outside of town to along with several other large coal mines. Several oil and natural gas fields in the area as well. Talking about renewables, clean energy, or going green here is a good way to get dirty looks and possibly lose a person their job.
This just emphasizes how much the government and private business needs to step in and help smooth the transition to renewable energy, so we don't have 900k US oil and coal workers suddenly left out in the cold.
But it's not an argument to slow renewables, because 13 million on the coast will lose their homes, jobs, everything and be displaced - not to mention everyone affected by permafrost melt, glacial retreat, ocean acidification, etc. The locals in coal country just don't care about those people as much as they care about themselves. And admittedly, those other people care less about coal folks than they care about themselves. It just so happens if everyone voted on it based purely on the self-interest of survival (and anyone not losing a job or home over it just shut up) the fossil folks would be outnumbered 20:1. So ignoring the potential for all the world's economies and cultures to crash, and ruin the oceans and atmosphere, etc. then the pure democracy of Americans voting for their livelihoods would be an incredibly solid and unequivocal "down with fossil fuels".
We need to get those 900k folks solid support in getting out of the industry.
Just wait 10 years. You will get cancelled (thankfully!) even for suggesting that coal is a solution. Society and technology moves forward.
@@markusklyver6277 Though by the time it gets to that point here there may not be anyone left to be discussing it. Without fossil fuels a few ranchs would be about all the economic activity left in the region.
You could be correct in saying all the power to your town comes from that particular power plant but that is probably not the case. Depending upon the size of your town there may be multiple electric substations with multiple distribution circuits in each. Each substation may likely have more than one distribution circuit. Each substation may likely have more than one sub transmission line and possibly one or more transmission lines feeding into one or more power transformers. The power coming into the substation comes from the grid. The grid is like a water reservoir fed by multiple streams. Multiple power generation sources feed into the grid through the mesh of transmission lines. The power to your home cannot be attributed to a particular power generation sources any more than water into your home from a reservoir can be attributed to a particular stream feeding that reservoir.
@@jerryswink8812 It's a small town, though not as small as the nearby ones I grew up in
Fantastic video! That said, I think it's time that you and your fellow edutubers make the switch to listing metric numbers first (and in writing) and imperial numbers second (without caption).
You guys have a lot of power to increase the support for and literacy of the metric system in the United States- you should use it!
The power grid is something we all just take for granted.
That our water heaters, water pumps, furnaces, air conditioners, washer/dryers, fridges, freezers, lights, and electrical outlets always have power 24/7, in our homes. Also, there's the power plants, substations, power lines, and all the wiring in our houses that has been built, too.
In a video game called dig or die, you can make a dam to power your base at night and solar to power it during the day. Once i had excess power in the day from making many solar panels, i used the excess power to operate a pump that moved the water that was just used in the generator back into the reservoir, albeit very slowly. With multiple pumps and enough time, it was almost self sustaining to where i had constant Max power electricity available for my base, until the monsters destroyed the walls of my reservoirs and rendered the pumps useless 😢
*Doesn't apply to the state of Texas.
*doesn't apply to Quebec or Newfoundland and Labrador
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the NSA's massive electricity usage and how the decisions they make about locating and expanding facilities is so dependent on the availability of power.
Snoopers gonna Snoop
Lots of TH-camrs, Veritasium included, are covering electricity right now. Is this a hot topic right now?
It can be shockingly hot, but it's also well-grounded.
electric cost are going up all over the country right now and the Biden administration extended the 26% discount for solar into 2022. We'll see about additional years. I'm in Washington DC and I'm paying .0701 cents per kWh. My power company has already received approval to raise it to .0750 for 2022 from DC and is seeking approval to raise it to .0790 in 2023. They've publically said they likely will need to be at or above .09 by 2025 to cover upgrades. My cousin lives in Maryland on the Eastern shore and he's paying .1407 kWh as of Dec 2021.
Electricity is a hot topic at the moment, due to (of course) climate change, and renewed interest in nuclear power.
Also the price of electricity has SKYROCKETED in Europe. I'm currently playing 1000-1500% more in electricity bills this winter compared to last year, and places like Norway, prices are up to almost 2000% of what it was last year... We need to start building nuclear power now, these prices are unsustainable.
@@betterwithrum So little? In the Seattle area we pay about 11 cents per kWh, less than the national average of about 14 cents . I looked up DC and it says average 12.6 cents?
A worldwide blackout will soon happen.... within the next two months
3:35 Wikipedia: Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station was built as Colorado's first and only nuclear power plant, which operated from 1979 until 1989... 6:43 4 Colorado battery storage systems. 8:48 hydro plants. 9:51 Cabin Creek pumped hydro. 11:43 higher voltage = less transmission loss. 13:54 Pacific DC Intertie (Path 65) between The Dalles, Oregon to LA.
The transmission part is kinda similar to how Network packets reach the end user, that were stored in a database somewhere across the internet.
Amazed to see such correlations exist !
8:30 yeahno. battery degredation compensation of those cars should be included in those payments. But they won't even come close to breaking even.
and since the beneficiary is a company that now doesn't need to invest into batteries, but instead have small regular payouts... the benefit is for the COMPANY even IF the payouts "break even" for the user ("hey this payout also include the value of my time being wasted more often because of replacement batteries needing to be installed, right?")
even if the math works out to be an actual benefit to the Tesla owner, it's still a better deal for the companies dodging the issue by pawning it off on us.
Several unanswered questions: 1-Although solar energy has peaks in production during day but the production demand is exactly in the demand peak of the hot time of day when the air conditioners are working so why cant they be seen as stabilizers? 2-Why Nothing is said about the geothermal plants which have a constant and steady supply and can be shut down and started easily too? Fro example in Yellowstone park of USA there is a ultra huge potential to generate geothermic electricity which even scientists say can help reduce the energy, impact and harm of any future eruption. 3-Why nothing is mentioned about other possible sources of energy like electricity obtained from sea tide and underwater currents?
This video is mostly about the electricity grid in its current form. Energy sources that aren't wide spread yet are outside of the video's scope.
Not a lot of tides and underwater currents here in Colorado!
1 - Solar is heavily variable due to clouds, and peak heat lags behind peak sun
2/3 - Geothermal and tidal are currently insignificant contributors to the US power mix.
I think Solar doesn't meet consumer demand because a majority of people use large building AC during the day and later, when solar production is lower, go home and turn on AC for their own homes. I'm assuming large AC units are more efficient than small houses.
@@jamesmnguyen More efficient, yes, but also the commercial spaces have better insulation etc. Also the interior sections of the building aren't taking in heat through an outer wall or windows, so they're effectively insulated by the exterior rooms, and it's easier to keep them cool.
Re: AC in general, people can also program their AC at home to run at certain times. If you chill your home during off-peak times, then stop the AC during peak hours, you return home to cool air. I just wish refrigerators would pump their waste heat outdoors instead of into your kitchen which makes your AC cool the air down again.
Storage options like liquid metal batteries or solid state hydrogen can fix the variability issues with renewables, but they also will allow consistent power sources like nuclear to load follow as lowering the cost of electricity even further.
That's a big issue because renewables have been causing nuclear to lose money when they're operating. The video doesn't touch on this, but that's because when solar panels, just for example, get pumping at noon on a sunny day, dumping their power onto the grid at zero marginal cost, that the electricity supply exceeds demand and the cost of electricity becomes negative for consumers, with revenue turning negative for producers that can't vary their own output, like nuclear (as they're basically paying someone just to take their electricity and get it off the grid).
Cheap energy storage would let nuclear plants bank the power they generate when renewables are going strong for 2-3 hours a day rather than just eat the loss. Nuclear plants could also bank the power they generated in the middle of the night or during periods of lower electricity demand like the fall and spring, allowing them to really match energy demand and production.
Cheap energy storage would allow nuclear to have A LOT more power available at any given point in the day and thus be able to provide power to a lot more consumers without impacting prices at all.
Cheap energy storage could also lower the cost of electricity from nuclear plants a fair amount. That's because they produce power pretty much at a steady state continuously, with the same cost to produce power at 2am as to produce at 3pm. In markets where a nuclear plant is the primary source of electricity, it's likely that the plant is either 1) operating at a loss at a non-peak time of the day like 2am (as power production exceeds demand), 2) or the plant produces at a level that never exceeds demand and instead it employs peaker plants (like natural gas) to make up for the difference between the power supplied by the nuclear plant and the power demanded by consumers. In case #1, the plant must price it's power such that revenue generated during peak hours will offset the operating losses incurred during non-peak hours. In case #2, the nuclear plant will additional costs from operating the natural gas peaker plant, labor, fuel costs, capital costs, etc. What's more, natural gas peaker plants, which rev-up and down power production in line with demand, operate less efficiently and wear out more quickly than natural gas plants which operate continuously (like nuclear plants do) for the same reason that your car gets lower gas mileage (and suffer more wear and tear) from city miles than it does from highway miles. If nuclear had access to cheap storage, Case #1: the nuclear plant wouldn't have to sell electricity in non-peak hours at a loss and thus wouldn't have to price electricity such that revenue generated during peak hours offset losses generated during non-peak hours, Case #2: the plant could build up power during non-peak hours which would fill the gap between demand and production during peak hours, eliminating the need for natural gas peaker plants.
So, while it is true that cheap energy storage will solve the variability issue of renewables, I think the real impact will be from its impact on nuclear. That's because even if you address the short term variability of renewables, that won't address long-term variability, like long-term rain and wind droughts which can last for months to years. You're also taking the power you generated over a relatively short period, most being generated over just a few hours, and then trying to spread that over the ENTIRE day or more. Nuclear is constant and reliable and isn't vulnerable to changes in the weather. I just think it'll be easier to match a consistent power source to demand than an inconsistent one.
That electric vehicle grid share concept is absolute fantasy.
Why?
Excellent video. I like the decision to look at a broad range of factors and technologies in the electric grid, from renewables to ev-stabilized grids to hydro storage etc, instead of just focusing on one particular aspect, something which many have done. At the same time, the focus on variable demand as an economic and practical driver is a unique and very important perspective. This is an excellent resource for what electricity and the grid will look like over the next decades.
2:14 - Load is not measured in GWh, but GW. However, if that's an hourly chart, we can slip it off under the carpet. However at 8:47, battery capacity is not measured in MW, but MWh. This is not good. It's like the most basic mistake people make when talking about electricity. It would be worth to fix that....
"He plots the same battery twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different units. I mean, what are we, to believe this is some sort of a, magic battery or something?"
Though to be fair, this is a little less light-hearted than a cartoon. Alas, proofreading isn't foolproof, it happens.
"battery capacity is not measured in MW, but MWh"
Maybe the figure is for the maximum charge/discharge rate?
@@seneca983 That is possible, but then let's not call it capacity...
@7:11 "It's expected to save the army half a million dollors in electricity costs."
Do you guys realize how little that actually is compared to their budget? Their yearly budget just for that one base is probably close to a billion dollars. We've essentially saved the equivalent of someone who makes $100,000 a year just one dollar.
As an American taxpayer, it's still nice to hear that the government somehow managed to SAVE half a million dollars for a change...
@@cameronkohlmann5496 Yeah, they saved itself half a million dollars by switching to Geico.
Great video... I did find it weird using the rivian as an example of powering a house when the lightning is being marketed as something that can actually do that
Ford hasn't revealed the battery capacity of the lightning yet. So we don't know how many days it can power a home.
Ya exactly, as soon as he mentioned vehicle to house power I thought of the ford lightning.
@@alexzz1234 they said up to 10 days if you're conservative
Thanks for using Glenwood Springs as the example. I live down the street from the library. You just explained the power grid better than any tutorial I've watched. Fascinating subject but hard to explain.
This is the most concise and layman explanation of the power industry that I've seen. Hope there is a sequel explaining how the electricity spot market works.
Carbon Impact is near zero for hydro? The millions of TONS of concrete poured would make me think otherwise. In fact 600 Kg of concrete is released for every ton of concrete poured. Hydro is not "green".
It never only black or white with energy & carbon emissions, for that fact :D
Good or bad, green or dirty are categories that in the real world are often more like graphs, spectres, of continuous transitions, with many many shades of grey ^^
Nothing is fully green. Hydro, nuclear, wind and solar are all quite good emissions-wise.
"The millions of TONS of concrete poured would make me think otherwise."
I would think the emissions coming from this are not high per kWh produced.
Carbon impact from coal power stations only includes actually burning the coal, it never includes the energy and materials needed to build the power station. Weird how the goal posts seem to move whenever renewables are being discussed.
@@CharlesGregory In the IPCC reports as well?
I love that Wendover covers topics like with WITHOUT a huge political slant. Just gorgeous video, and bountiful information, love it!
8:15 Pretty sure you got that backwards. EVs would charge during the day when renewables perform well and then give some of that power back at night when renewables (especially solar) don't provide power. Only works for cars that have time to charge during the day, of course.
When I toured Rocketdyne as a 15 year old, they were making the shuttle engines. They showed us also what looked like a 2 story tower that had the shuttle engine and a turbine mounted with it. The idea was that it could be transported where needed, then lit off and generate huge amounts of electrical power on demand. I don't know if they ever used it.
The rapid proliferation of home and utility scale batteries and the rapid evolution of new battery chemistries have been spectacular. And, wind and solar are the least expensive technologies we humans have ever developed for generating electricity. High voltage electrical transmission is hugely expensive. So, in the near future, small towns and rural residences and businesses will be powered by wind and solar backed up by batteries.
Watching this, while the power is out is a different story
Or in South Africa's case how it doesn't 😭
Load shedding be like:
This is a very long video for the sentence, “There are these great new things called cables”
Mate it got posted 5 minutes ago lol - how've you watched all 17 minutes!?
@@greg_nicholls 3x speed
He tends to bloviate. Talks like0bama trying to hypnotize me.
my dad was an electric engineer and used to tell me about the reservoir - electricity conversion plant when I was in elementary school. now seeing WP doing it is soo satisfying.
In the 1950s a power station was dug into a mountain in Scotland.
This was the Loch Sloy power station and it was several hundred feet below Loch Sloy and connected to Loch Lomond.
The purpose was Pumped Storage. Make electricity with Loch Sloy water to even out demand and pump it back up from Loch Lomond when there was more than adequate electricity production.
Interesting, I always thought AC power is best for long range power transfer and that's why it won over DC.
@@youtubegremlin3915 It'd be kind cool to see a future where the whole electric grid ran on DC (except turbine generation) from the source, all the way to the consumer. But that would mean a massive overhaul of the current system. Down to the electric appliances themselves.
"I always thought AC power is best for long range power transfer and that's why it won over DC."
AC won over Edison's DC idea which was to not step up or down the voltage at all but rather use low voltage all the way from power plant to the final consumer. It's this low voltage which would have entailed high transmission losses.
@@jamesmnguyen I don't think that could be practical even if you had to start from a clean slate anyway. I don't think there's a practical way to step up the voltage of DC other than to first convert it to AC so you can run it through a transformer and convert it back to DC. Basically every transformer would need to be replaced with a full converter station. I don't think that would make economic sense.
This has to be some misinformation because I saw documentaries explaining why AC power was better for long-distance power transmission.
why would they lie about that?
Is Wendover Productions getting the wrong information?
@@deltoid77-nick In practical terms, AC power is pretty good at long range power transmission, not because it's the best method, but because it easier to use than long range DC power. DC voltages are very hard to increase up to the levels of AC.
You should do a video called “the insane complexity of finding a girlfriend”
It's not about airplanes though.
@@googiegress unfortunately 😓
Right on topic for those freaks who put wayy too many Christmas lights up
Well hopefully one day they can plug those lights into their EV battery (just don't drive off without unplugging them first ;-)
The shot at 5:51 is just marvelous. Great video!
Wow, the "Electricity" video sounds interesting! As an outdoor enthusiast and RV lover, I highly recommend checking out the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series. With its massive capacity, versatile sockets, and waterproof technology, it's perfect for keeping your devices powered up during camping trips or in case of emergencies. Plus, its smart app control feature adds convenience. Definitely worth considering!