In a comment following Peter G’s 25 May 2010 post “A Coal Plant Proposal Gets Even Dirtier,” Groveton said:
“Side note to EMR … I had a chance to talk with the head of engineering at a mid-western electricity company today. I asked him about line loss. He says a good rule of thumb is 7% of electricity is lost in transport – 3% in the transmission facilities and 4% in the distribution network.
“I am not sure how you arrive at the estimate of 30% line loss in calculating location variable costs. It sounds like the number should be 3% not 30%.”
EMR could make a ‘Peter G.-like” comment about the quality of Groveton’s research but will refrain.
The latest report of DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes that of the 21 Quadrillion Btus devoted to the delivery of residential and commercial electrical energy, about 62 percent is “lost during generation, transmission and distribution.”
A utility can lower line loss by shortening distribution systems and keeping the transmission voltages high. Utilities can also cut line loss by lowering the temperature of the conductor – surrounding it with liquid nitrogen, etc – but that is not cost effective for most applications.
A smart utility would carry electrical service to big users at as high a voltage as possible to minimize line loss and that would lower the average system-wide line loss.
All that makes NO difference with respect to the 10 X Rule.
The numbers for total cost of delivering electric service in the 10 X Rule calculations — including line loss — were based on the actual cost of delivering the electricity over the actual distance required to distribute the service to 10 acre lots in a 10,000 acre area using the cost due to actual loss at the voltage used for distribution by the utility that provided the data for the specific distribution pattern in that specific location.
There is no back door. The bottom line is:
It is not possible to scatter Urban dwellings across the Countryside and provide them with electrical service – and other goods and Services – at a price that the end user would be willing to pay IF THE USER HAD TO PAY THE TRUE LOCATION-VARIABLE COSTS.
A few notes:
We suspect Groveton got an irrelevant answer because he has yet to wrap his mind around all the implications of dysfunctional geographic distribution. He was thus not able to articulate what he needed to know from the engineer.
EMR has pointed out for 37 years that FAR HIGHER efficiency can be achieved from Cluster, Neighborhood, Village and Community scale systems (including Modular Integrated Utility Systems) that capture and use the heat and generate the electricity ‘at’ the consumption site.
About 57 years ago EMR was privy to a powerful demonstration of the overwhelming economic advantage of bringing big users of electricity to the site of hydro-electric generators.
EMR is not sure where the “30 percent” figure Groveton cites came from. System wide, EMR has assumed that line loss was between 8 and 15 percent but does not recall the basis for that assumption. But again, that has nothing to do with the 10X Rule.
It is interesting to note that in EIA’s Annual Energy Review, they are specific about the waste of energy in producing electricity but not other forms of fuel. It must take energy to pump, transport, refine, transport and distribute gasoline – the ‘best’ internal combustion engines in Autonomobiles on the market today are only 30 percent efficient – but that data is not front and center as is the “loss during generation, transmission and distribution” of electricity.
Hope that helps Groveton.
EMR