Warming Thoughts #6—Conceptualizing The Five Main Elements of the Energy Transition—B: The infrastructure to move Energy—Introduction.
James F. Lavin, CEO Electron Storage, Inc.
In Warming Thoughts # 5, I broke down stopping global warming/the energy transition into 5 tasks, the first of which was creating adequate clean primary energy and the enormous magnitude of that task. But once you have captured the energy in the form or heat or electricity, must move it. I think this is the hardest task of all and to address it is going to take more than one essay.
I have a small camping dual fuel burner that I can use with an isobutane canister or kerosene. If I carry my thin walled ½ liter kerosene container I can go to the top of a mountain, the bottom of the Grand Canyon, or into a cave and I have fuel for creating a forest fire (oops), light, or electricity if I use a thermocouple. I have enough energy to boil around 30 gallons of water. I could take the same container and fill it with uncompressed hydrogen (it is a thin container so I can’t pressurize it in any case), and I have enough energy to raise one gallon of water one degree Fahrenheit or light a small LED lamp for an hour or two.
I could take a half liter of battery and at best have around 300 Watt hours of energy. At least I would have the energy to boil almost one gallon of water. Or I could carry a handy extension cord and have access to essentially unlimited energy from a distant source. Except, copper still has resistance, it certainly has weight, and I couldn’t drag the extension cord very far. But even if I could, by the time I try to move energy at 120V a few kilometers I have no voltage left and the energy would have been converted to waste heat due to resistance of the copper.
Producing massive amounts of clean energy is mind bogglingly difficult but transporting the energy may be an even bigger challenge.
I was recently in rural Maryland for a few days with my family. Randomly, on the drive from New York, I told my wife about the energy capacity of the Colonial Pipeline, which was famous for being shut down early in 2021 by a ransomware attack. The next day we went trail running in a nature reserve that surrounds a reservoir. We came down an overgrown rutted forest road with large trees overhead, and views of the sparkling reservoir waters. Suddenly along the path we saw yellow pole marked “Colonial Pipeline.” After promising my wife this was not a set-up, it was time for some serious reflections on moving energy, particularly since we had driven past the barren rights of way under some high voltage transmission lines in the area.
The Colonial pipeline(s) carries 3 million barrels a day of refined products, at around 5 MM BTUs per gallon. Each barrel contains energy equal to around 1.5 megawatt hours, enough to power over 1,000 homes for an hour. 3 million barrels, divided by 24 hours in a day is 125,000 barrels an hour, which is equal to 187,000 megawatt hours (MWH) or 187 Gigawatt hours (GWH) of energy moved every hour. A 750 KV transmission line with a 200 ft cleared right of way moves around 2,000 MW at peak load. There were a number of these lines cutting through the countryside near where we stayed.
This is a staggering difference, the colonial pipeline, which can run discretely underground and under reservoirs can carry the energy equivalent of 100 large transmission lines which would need 4 miles of clear right of way. Incidentally, the pipeline capacity equals the maximum electrical energy output of 187 large power plants. If this seems impossible, as a reality check, 3 million barrels a day is around 3% of daily oil production and daily oil production has an energy equivalent of around 6 Terrawatt hours, so 3% of that is around 180,000 MWH, QED.
If we don’t use fossil fuels, how are we going to move energy? In what forms? How much energy will be lost in conversions from one form to another?
I will try to tackle this in part 2, including hydrogen, synthetic fuels, batteries, the critical difference between volumetric (my half liter bottle above is volumetric) and gravimetric energy density and yes, electricity. But first I may have to step back to a discussion of electric grids, transmission vs. distribution, and power plant locations and leave fuels transport to a part 3.