Prime Movers Lab Webinar Recap: Opportunities for the Electric Grid
Highlights from our conversation with three experts on electricity transmission and grid technologies.
Last week, Brad Pruente and I had the pleasure of hosting regulatory expert (who is also our amazing grid fellow) Liza Reed, utility planning & climate impact expert Anna Brockway, and the CTO of VEIR Tim Heidel. (VEIR is a startup spun out of MIT’s The Engine, applying high-temperature superconductor materials to modernize the electric grid.) A huge thank you to our amazing panelists and to our audience for their engaging questions!
US Electric Grid 101
Liza shared that the United States power grid has over 700,000 miles of transmission lines. (Transmission lines are defined as high voltage, greater than 100,000 Volts. What goes to homes is the distribution grid, which is stepped-down lower-voltage power lines.)
In the past, grid planners assumed generation would occur in large central locations and the electricity would flow into the distribution network. The grid of the future will need to handle the flow of electricity in both directions. Critically, to reach decarbonization goals, Tim shared that the grid will need to double or triple in capacity over the next 25 to 30 years!
How are utilities planning to modernize the grid and support future projected demand today? Anna shared that industry planning models for new infrastructure are based on historical assumptions for demand growth and for operating conditions. We learned that electric transmission capacity decreases in hotter environmental conditions. Increased temperatures from climate change are decreasing the carrying capacity of the grid right when we need it most.
Beyond the infrastructure planning and investment challenges, one of the harder problems to solve is the regulatory environment.
Regulatory
Liza shared that transmission lines are under STATE purview. States decide what gets built, and they legally are often obligated to consider impacts only for themselves. This creates tension because regionally important projects for transmission may help neighbor states more, yet the local state may not be incentivized to build. Tim mentioned that greenfield transmission projects are particularly unpopular. Focusing on existing right-of-ways can shave 8–10 years of project development time! Anna shared that utilities are trying to figure out new models for demand prediction ahead of the industry standards.
Tech: VEIR’s High-Temperature Superconductors
VEIR is building a whole system approach to next-generation transmission. They have a novel cooling technology for long-distance high-temperature superconducting materials. VEIR is focused on overhead transmission in the near term, due to the higher costs and increased project risk associated with underground development. Their technology allows for a substantial increase in the capacity of transmission lines — a technology solution for grid modernization to help meet future demands.
Sidebar: superconductors typically operate close to absolute zero. The material VEIR uses can operate at 77K, and is actively cooled by liquid nitrogen. This enables them to have far greater carrying capacity that is constant (not impacted by the outside environment).
“Cold Beer and Hot Showers”
“All consumers really care about is easy access to cold beer and hot showers.” This statement set off a fantastic discussion on programs for shifting consumer demand (e.g., appliance usage times). There is no easy way to delay home use today. Anna shared there is new tech being discussed to do load managment on the consumer side, but the pure economist view would be enabling real-time pricing. She also highlighted the equity issue that well-off homeowners can adopt and upgrade much more easily than apartment dwellers.
Tim shared his perspective on how diffuse the value is for the electric market and why we haven’t seen better/broader adoption of consumer technologies to modulate demand. The value of any individual customer is relatively small, yet in aggregate the value is huge. People have been trying for 4 decades to do efficiency upgrades and demand-side managment upgrades. The cost of customer acquisition is just too high.
Energy Abundance vs Managed Decline
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A tale of two radically different approaches can be seen by comparing China’s mass deployments of renewables coupled with their project to build a super grid versus West London’s 10-year ban on new housing because of their electric infrastructure being unable to support the subsequent increased demand.
At Prime Movers Lab, we believe strongly in the importance of a future with abundant energy. (For background on why energy abundance is critical to a prosperous future for all, see this paper from our advisor Eli Dourado.) Yet it feels like the US could just as easily find itself in a situation similar to the UK, especially given Tim’s prior warnings about capacity shortages in the future. (For more on the US electric grid, see this great overview from Reuters.)
This led Liza to share details about Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) as part of the solution space. She defines VPPs as software and grid management to pull together different resources and present them as power to the energy market. This is a combination of distributed power like rooftop solar and demand side mgmt. It’s an opportunity to change the demands on the grid. Nobody is responsible for the grid end-to-end in the US. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered that energy markets have to create a way for VPPs to participate in the grid. Yet major utility providers are saying they won’t be ready for that until 2030!
Please watch the whole webinar if you want to learn about the segments I left out, like business models, incentives for states to attract industrial players via cheap renewable power and robust transmission lines, and discussion around national security implications for the grid!
Again, a huge THANK YOU to our amazing panelists for your time joining us and for all the work you do to create a future with abundant energy accessible for all.
Panelists:
Tim Heidel is the co-founder and CTO of VEIR, a startup developing high-temperature superconducting wires to dramatically reduce electricity transmission losses. Tim has served in energy technology leadership roles in a variety of domains, with 15+ years of experience across academic (MIT), government (U.S. DOE ARPA-E), trade association (NRECA), and private investment (Breakthrough Energy Ventures). He brings a depth of hardware and software experience in utility grid technologies, power electronics, power semiconductor devices, and photovoltaics. He holds BS, MEng, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Technology Policy from MIT.
Anna Brockway is an advisor for Climate Adaptation & Resilience Planning at Southern California Edison. Anna studies how electric power systems are changing — and how they must change — in response to existing and emerging stressors. Her work has focused on stressors to conventional power system operation including climate change, renewable energy, electrification, and public scrutiny. Previously, Anna was a SunShot Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. DOE, where her focus was on expanding opportunities for solar energy and access to renewables through shared solar and community-oriented deployment models. She holds a PhD in Energy & Resources from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Haverford College.
Liza Reed is the research manager for electricity transmission at the Niskanen Center and is an expert in High Voltage Direct Current, electricity transmission, and technology innovation. Liza has worked on energy funding at the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University, wireless communication technology development at inmobly, and business analysis at Capital One Finance. She holds a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy and a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.
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