Future infrastructure for residential electric service?

[mike stenson]

It was about 40 years ago two words, "deferred maintenance" became popular. This took a few years to catch on in the world of utilities.

From my experience in working for a public utility in California a few things were learned. One of them was how the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) adjusted rates. The simple explanation was a utility was able to charge a set percentage above operating costs. This included maintenance.

When electric utility deregulation came to California almost 30 years ago a lot of the maintenance became a drain on the balance sheets. Guess what got cut from the budget to improve profits.

jtk

Yea, the problem with deferred maintenance is that it simply costs more money in the end. In orders of magnitude.

[Monte Milanuk]

about 40 years ago two words, "deferred maintenance" became popular.

...also known as "burn-down" maintenance, around where I worked for a while (public utility in western Nebraska). The idea was it was cheaper to just let things go til something burned down (literally, in some cases) rather than do scheduled maintenance, and maintain the personnel with the training and experience to do so. Luckily the company I worked for was not one of those - they preferred to be able to control the timing of outages as much as possible... but I did plenty of contract work for smaller utilities around us that hadn't figured that out yet.

[George Yetka]

Locally I see a lot of main roads replacing their standard power poles and wire for poles that are 30' taller and carrying a lot more power. Efficiency's are up on most things but with EV's, places like California and NY banning natural gas use, and the push to shut coal and Cogen plant in favor of Green. It may get ugly. A nuke can take 10-25 years to commission so they should start a bunch now.

[roger wiegand]

I think there will be many changes to the grid required, primarily a shift from point generation to distributed generation, not vasty increased central power plants. We'll need bigger and better storage options, preferably deployed locally (a place where a lot of those car batteries that are no longer good enough to be used in a car to be employed for another decade or two?), and much more sophisticated management of a two-way flow of electrons.
I'f I were a VC I'd be all over the small companies that are going to come up with new and interesting ways to solve these problems. I think it's very unlikely that the solutions will come from government or the utility companies, they are all way too fossilized in their thinking.

[Doug Garson]

Yea, the problem with deferred maintenance is that it simply costs more money in the end. In orders of magnitude.

And the guy making the decisions today is trying to maximize profit so he can get his annual bonus, he'll be long gone in twenty years when the sh*t hits the fan.

[Doug Garson]

I think there will be many changes to the grid required, primarily a shift from point generation to distributed generation, not vasty increased central power plants. We'll need bigger and better storage options, preferably deployed locally (a place where a lot of those car batteries that are no longer good enough to be used in a car to be employed for another decade or two?), and much more sophisticated management of a two-way flow of electrons.
I'f I were a VC I'd be all over the small companies that are going to come up with new and interesting ways to solve these problems. I think it's very unlikely that the solutions will come from government or the utility companies, they are all way too fossilized in their thinking.

And this plays well with the move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Instead of 500MW coal fired power plants with hundreds of miles of power lines, you can have thousands of houses and office buildings, retail buildings etc with rooftop solar panels feeding a local grid.

[Doug Garson]

What is steam but hot water? (Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier veteran.)

Technically, the reactor water doesn't boil. Boiling is the last thing you want. It's under pressure so it doesn't boil.

The Soviets used a liquid metal reactor in one of their submarines. But even that was used to make hot water/steam.

Correction: OK, I've learned some commercial nuclear reactors boil the water in the reactor side. And yeah, the steam is made on the turbine side by boiling water.

I wasn't aware that navy nuclear reactors were not pressurized, my experience is in steam and power in the fossil utility and industrial side, my nuclear knowledge is limited. There is a big difference between hot water and steam though. At atmospheric pressure water at 212F contains 180 BTUs per pound. To go from 212F water to low pressure steam requires another 970 BTUs per pound. Increasing the pressure increases the temperature of the phase change, and increases the amount of energy the water/steam can carry.

[Monte Milanuk]

I wasn't aware that navy nuclear reactors were not pressurized

They very much are. The main difference is that some (pressurized water reactors, aka PWR) heat water that is then ran thru a boiler to generate steam. Boiling water reactors (BWR) heat the water to create steam directly. It's still happening at greater than standard atmo pressures.

[Doug Garson]

They very much are. The main difference is that some (pressurized water reactors, aka PWR) heat water that is then ran thru a boiler to generate steam. Boiling water reactors (BWR) heat the water to create steam directly. It's still happening at greater than standard atmo pressures.

Sorry, I should have said " don't generate steam, only hot pressurized water".

[Bill Dufour]

Non-alternative power plants are what are needed. Nuclear

My Mom worked at Oak Ridge during ww2 enriching uranium to make the bombs. they used 100% of the electricity from Norris dam run by the TVA. (126 megawatts)The TVA dams is why it was built in Tennessee. They also took a good percentage of power from other dams as well. They also built some enrichment plants in Washington near Grand Coulee dam.
Bill D

[Stan Calow]

It's the very high capital costs that are keeping nuclear plants from being built, not the environmental issues. Utilities cant raise the billions it costs, multiple years in advance. Regulators wont let them raise rates on existing users to pay for it, and the projects are too big to rely on the unstable bond market.

[Brian Elfert]

Yea, the problem with deferred maintenance is that it simply costs more money in the end. In orders of magnitude.

My employer stopped paying for support and upgrades on several IT systems to save cash during the great recession. We wanted to upgrade five or six years later. None of the vendors would simply reinstate support and upgrades without back paying for the five or six years we didn't have support. Most also had a penalty on top of that. It would have cost us less money to simply keep paying for support. In at least one case we bought the product over again because it was less than the penalties for dropping support.

[Malcolm McLeod]

Only about 20% of the power from the US electrical grid is used by residential homes and apartments. It's the commercial sector that commands most of the power from the grid.

... crypto miners, ...

Scatter-shooting....
Commercial usage is very likely going to increase dramatically, as many companies shift from traditional (non-PC?) energy sources to electric. My company is one - and we are busy converting NG powered processes to grid sources. We have such confidence in the 'growth' of the utility grid that we are also busy with a feasibility study for private SMRs to meet our needs. "Green' is going to require a lot of 'green'.

In my operating area, 'crypto' is building server farms as fast as excess power comes online. So, EV owners may very well have to get spendy for PV ownership too. (I mentioned looking at a package like this ...$$$... you can review the contrarian opinions in another (locked) thread.)

Old news, but last report I read, TX has more installed wind power potential than next 3 states combined, but we nearly hit the (power) wall a week or so ago, as the sun inconveniently set and the wind wasn't blowing in the right spots. ...Clearly, no one saw that coming.

[George Yetka]

I watched a hospital decide water treatment for their heating and cooling systems was a waste couldnt have been more than 30k a year but probably half that. Fast forward 10 years their piping is in desperate need of complete replacement. My guess would be $20 million job. we have been called to trace and replace sections in the past but it costs too much so they switched to non union companies.

[mike stenson]

My employer stopped paying for support and upgrades on several IT systems to save cash during the great recession. We wanted to upgrade five or six years later. None of the vendors would simply reinstate support and upgrades without back paying for the five or six years we didn't have support. Most also had a penalty on top of that. It would have cost us less money to simply keep paying for support. In at least one case we bought the product over again because it was less than the penalties for dropping support.

AKA stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime.