Forget Wires: Why We Need a New Way to Transfer Electricity
Since the advent of electricity, it has been transmitted through electrical wire, powering the world. Since the time of the emergence of the first arc lamps, the world has transitioned power generation from heavy pollutants like coal to environmentally friendly, renewable and sustainable sources like hydro, wind and solar. The question is, if we’ve made so much progress on the generation side of the equation, why hasn’t transmission kept up?
High Maintenance Costs
One of the largest problems with wired electricity transmission is the sheer amount of maintenance needed to ensure all pylons and wires are functioning safely and correctly. North America is estimated to have over 150 million utility poles stretching out across the continent, a number which is expected to rise as new infrastructure projects are completed. As can be expected with such sheer volume, utility companies simply do not have the time, capital or manpower to properly inspect and maintain each individual pole, which leads to deadly consequences.
The Camp fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in Californian history, killed 85 civilians, destroyed 18,804 structures, and burned 153,336 acres. The cause? A faulty C-hook, responsible for holding up an electric wire, had ground against its metal holder and snapped in a windstorm. PG&E, the utility company that owned the power line, knew that this was a recurring problem yet failed to respond. They conducted visual inspection from the ground and from the air, yet failed to rectify the problem before it caused this disaster. And these are just the power lines we know about.
It’s clear to see that despite the negligence of the utility company, wired electricity requires intricate inspection, which is expensive and involves workers scaling towers to inspect individual components. Utilities seek a more cost effective work-around that doesn’t catch the problem, and disaster strikes.
Susceptible to External Interference
Another key concern with wired electricity is its susceptibility to weather events and natural interference. Snow, wind, temperature variations, and thunderstorms can all have an immediate effect on the grid. If a power line comes into contact with anything, whether it be a fallen tree or a bunch of balloons, it could lead to entire transmission lines being taken out of commission. Despite best efforts of engineers and city planners to install breakers, substations, and other preventative measures, major outages still occur for many communities.
Take the August 14th, 2003 blackout. Due to a hot day, many people in the Northeast were running air conditioners to keep themselves cool. This created a huge need for electricity in places like Cleveland, which drew electricity in from surrounding power plants on Lake Erie and further south. Due to a series of trees coming into contact with high-voltage power lines bringing electricity into the area, and a computer malfunction rendering electricity controllers oblivious to this fact, the load placed on the system was unsustainable and breakers across the grid kicked in to stop electricity flow. Within 3 minutes, an electricity island greater than the size of Iran was created. More than 50 million people were left without electricity, ranging from Detroit to Toronto to New York. The blackout caused mass boil-water advisories, knocked out cells service, and created chaos on the streets and highways of the affected municipalities. It contributed to nearly 100 deaths.
Development Issues
Wired electricity transmission projects are also notoriously hard to set up, especially in developed countries where there are various parties to be consulted in the erection of a project. In the United States or Canada, for example, new energy projects would require the permission of local and municipal governments, provincial and state government, private landowners, energy oversight boards, First Nations Band Councils, and various other stakeholders. In the U.S., voters in Maine held a referendum and rejected a new high-voltage line that would usher in clean hydropower from Canada. Mainers just didn’t want more, obstructive power lines. The Portland Press Herald dubbed it as ‘one of the most divisive and expensive environmental battles in Maine history.’ In Kenya, land owners opposed to electricity lines running through their property caused significant construction delays to several 240 kV and 404kV lines.
In 2011, when President Barack Obama tried to accelerate the construction of seven major power lines to bolster the vision of a national economy, only two succeeded in being built. In fact, over 75% of proposed sustainable energy projects never make it to market. This is due to the cost and impact of new high-voltage infrastructure needed to get renewable energies from the rural areas where they are abundant to major urban centers.
Case Study: Africa
Take Africa, for example. As solar and wind technologies experience 60% drops in price over the 2010’s, they become the most logical choice for extra power to fuel the region’s rapidly growing economies. Home to the world’s largest concentrated solar farm, the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, more than a third of Morocco’s electricity is powered by renewable sources. Significant investment funds are being created by the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank to inject capital into local economies to encourage the growth of sustainable electricity. These projects work to extend abundant electricity to the over 597,000,000 Africans still living in the dark.
To power everyone, the continent requires and efficient method for transferring power over large distances, ideally one that doesn’t come with many of the drawbacks sustained with wired electricity.
But do people really require electricity? The answer is a resounding yes. Energy access has long been the most important factor in economic growth of a country. The more electricity was available, the more people could get done. The unprecedented growth in living standards in many Western countries was largely driven by technological innovation made possible through the abundant electricity that flowed through the power grids. Electricity brought about accessible and affordable means of modernizing homes, enabling everything from electric refrigeration to illumination.
Currently, sustainable energy models in Africa are often limited in size to small micro-grids and single-home solar systems. The home solar systems only provide power to customers while the sun is up, charging a battery that might power three lightbulbs and a radio through the night. While this is a definite improvement over no electricity access at all, this is still categorized a as energy poverty. There needs to be a significant increase to the amount of electricity available to communities to enable them to adopt the technological innovations introduced over the last century to thrive. Instead of a few lights and a radio, we give people access to electric machinery, refrigeration, and the internet.
Why don’t we just give them electricity through power lines? As if the reasons mentioned above weren’t enough, power lines are also expensive for developing governments to build and maintain. The reality of the situation is that governments are simply not willing to construct hundreds of kilometers of utility poles just to power a few hundred people in a remote village. There are also geographical challenges when traversing remote areas, meaning dense jungle, deserts, mountains, and lakes must be factored in to the costs of constructing electrical grids. All of these factors combine to make electrical infrastructure prohibitively expensive to construct.
If power lines are no longer a viable solution, what is there left to do? How do we get people in developing nations adequate amounts of power, while reducing transmission costs and encouraging new renewable electricity growth?
I’m currently working on this problem, creating a way for people to get electricity access at a fraction of the cost wirelessly at jointungsten.com. Feel free to check it out. If you’re interested, contact me: alexanderyevchenko@gmail.com and @alex_yevchenko on Twitter.
