What Everyone Needs to Understand About the Power Grid
If you're following energy, here's the constraints
This is written specifically for Colorado but likely holds in most places. These are the basic constraints utilities and regulators face as they try to figure out what to do over the next 10 - 20 years.
We want our electricity to be inexpensive, reliable, & carbon free. Pick two.
We have no idea what the demand for electricity will be in 5, much less 20 years. It may level out (recession), it may increase 30%/year (heavy AI use), or somewhere in between.
Over-build and rates go way up, to no benefit.
Under-build and economic growth stalls.
Electrify everything1 means a significant build-out of distribution and transmission lines.
In Colorado Xcel is estimating $80 billion over the next 20 years.2
Primarily wind + solar + batteries is prohibitively expensive.
You need to produce 3 - 4 times peak power at full use. That is a lot of wind turbines & solar panels. Affordable but expensive.
You need batteries that can provide 100% of power needs for 3 days. We can’t afford this.3
You need to retain gas power for 100% of power needs for the 1 - 2 times/year the wind/solar isn’t generating for periods longer than 3 days.
Providing pseudo-inertia will likely be expensive.4
Nuclear is probably less expensive than wind + solar.
But no one knows with certainty what it will cost to build an APR-1400 in Colorado.5
As you read about rate negotiations, maybe discuss or even comment to the PUC on them, keep the above constraints in mind. These are the major trade-offs we face. And the answer is not clear (unless you can predict the future).
Heat pumps, electric stoves, electric water heaters, electric cars.
Some of this is replacing old lines, but increased need is the lion’s share.
Not it would be very expensive - this would mean electric bills so high that most companies & farms would go out of business and most individuals would not be able to pay their bill.
A lot of the time/cost is dependent on reducing the million roadblocks in the permitting process.
First, I want to compliment you on your work. It is one of the most succinct and readable analysis of evolving the grid. I invariably learn a lot and find this post to be a fantastic synopsis. Of course, there is always a but.
Carbon free can be even more ambitious since it is potentially encompassing NetZero which requires de-carbonization of other aspects of our energy usage. Have you ever written about the effect on grid size to replace fossil fuels in areas such as home heating, transportation and industry? Not being from Colorado I'm unsure the kinds of industries that might need to be retooled.
Even your numbers are overly optimistic
1) Transmission and distribution costs are very high.
2) "You need to produce 3 - 4 times peak power at full use." More like 5X, but some people say 10-20X. Answer - we don't really know because no one has been dumb enough to try. Germany now has 82 GW of solar and 64 GW of wind. In theory that would generate 1.2 million GWH of energy per year, if they produced energy 24/7. Their annual demand is 109,000 Gwh. That is about 10X overbuild, by one measure, right? Yet they are nowhere near 100% wind and solar. Also, soalr and wind generation was down 31% on the year. This was the lowest wind power output in Germany since 2017—despite a 30% surge in wind turbine installations in the years since then. So, they keep building more and getting less for it. There are complex statistical reasons why this happens but suffice it to say they didn't think things out. It only has to happen once in a while for the whole system to go bankrupt.
3) "You need batteries that can provide 100% of power needs for 3 days. We can’t afford this." 10 days is more likely. Again, it depends on how frequent you want to have power outages. 10 days gets you to the same level of reliability we currently enjoy.