Bulk carbon emissions

By
Dr. Luis Contreras
-
555

Zero-emission microgrids are the key to our future

On May 1, Executive Order 13920, Securing the U. S. Bulk-Power System says, “I find foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States’ bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life. … In light of these findings, I hereby declare a National Emergency with respect to the threat to the United States’ bulk power system.”

The restricted equipment listed in the Executive Order includes items used in power system substations, control rooms, power generating stations, including reactors, capacitors, substation transformers, current coupling capacitors, generators, and other high-ticket items.

In normal times, a national emergency would be announced with a formal address from the White House providing full information on the threat to the nation. But we are in a pandemic with a virus spreading faster than the initial assessments. There may be another reason to declare a national emergency. Here are some relevant facts:

  1. Are foreign adversaries really manufacturing weaponized equipment? This order is an attack on China.
  2. On May 3, the news had two deceptive stories. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an ABC interview said, “China has a history of infecting the world and they have a history of running substandard laboratories, these are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”

The U.S. demands compensation for damages from the economy. Trump said, “China is paying billions of dollars into the U.S. Treasury redirected to farmers hurt by China’s retaliation to U.S. import taxes.” Additional tariffs on China may be next.

  1. The first sentence in the Order, “I find foreign adversaries are increasingly …,” may be just his opinion, something Jared Kushner whispered in his ear. Who knows?
  2. Cyberattacks and other threats to the power grid are already covered by other regulations. The June 2019, Securing Energy Infrastructure Act ordered, “to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies to protect the country’s electric grid from cyberattacks.” Instead of relying on artificial intelligence, or ultra-secure encryption, power plants, and control rooms have a large red button labeled “that was easy.” March 2014 – The Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act grants “FERC to issue emergency orders to protect the electricity infrastructure.”

The bulk power system is obsolete

The monster grid dates back to 1882. It is inefficient, unaffordable, vulnerable, and hazardous. The 2018 California Camp Fire and its $30 billion lawsuits were caused by Pacific Gas and Electric transmission lines. Microgrids using solar energy plus storage, built in months to power schools, communities, and businesses are the 2020’s low cost, resilient energy solution. Silicon and electrochemistry provide long energy storage and “islanding” to disconnect before the power goes out. Investing in fossil fuels is criminal psychopath behavior.

Bulk carbon emissions

On April 30, the Fed bailed out Big Oil, changing the terms of their corporate bonds with an immediate rise in stock prices. In the afternoon trade, seven of the 10 biggest upward movers in the U.S. corporate bond market were oil and gas companies.

The U.S. Grid requires excess energy to meet variable customer demand. Peak hours during hot afternoons require quick response generators which idle 90 percent of the time. The heat energy losses at power plants, transmission lines, and distribution lines, create needless carbon emissions. The total U.S. grid losses are 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year, enough to meet the needs of 1,500 million households per year.

The grid was not designed to operate under severe weather. Overhead high voltage transmission lines and ground-level substations were built one at a time for “fair weather” conditions.

Global problems require global solutions

Like carbon emissions, deadly viruses are planetary threats that require global solutions. Blaming China is a political campaign decision. One planet, two global emergencies. This should be the time to unite all nations to fight our common enemy, not to wage wars against each other. We need honesty and compassion.

Dr. Luis Contreras

10 COMMENTS

  3. UPDATE

    May 6 – China hits back, saying Mike Pompeo has “no evidence about a virus lab leak”

    Beijing has accused the U.S. of trying to divert attention from its domestic handling of the outbreak.

    “We urge the U.S. to stop … shifting the focus to China,” Hua said.

    “It should handle its domestic affairs properly first. The most important thing now is to control the U.S.’ domestic pandemic spread and think of ways to save lives.”

    The World Health Organization has said U.S. claims about the origin of the virus were “speculative”.

    The top U.S. epidemiologist Anthony Fauci has echoed the WHO’s statement, telling National Geographic that all evidence so far “strongly indicates” a natural origin.

    But countries including the United States and Australia have called for an investigation into how the disease transformed into a global pandemic.

    Officially, China’s toll for the virus is 4,633 — but several countries have cast doubt on whether the numbers are accurate.

    China and the U.S. had only recently soothed economic tensions, with the signing of a “phase one” trade deal in January. But since then the world’s two biggest economies have been exchanging insults and accusations.

    Trump and his administration angered Beijing by repeatedly referring to “the Chinese virus” when discussing the COVID-19 outbreak.

    A foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing later suggested it may have been the U.S. military which brought the virus to Wuhan, and China has sought to distance itself from the virus.

    Hua said Wednesday that there had been “many reports” suggesting that there were coronavirus cases discovered in the U.S. or France last year, and said that this suggests the “sources (of the virus) are very diverse.”

    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/06/world/china-mike-pompeo-wuhan-lab/#.XrMq6i-z01I

  4. Is Trump afraid of Chinese transformers designed to fail? Electric Power experts say that is highly unlikely,

    Large transformers are custom built with a lead time of over 2 years and a price over $10 million dollars. The math needed to design large transformers is nasty, you can’t get the answer using your cellphone calculator. We have few Transmission Power experts and zero manufacturing facilities.

    The problem is the grid …

    The grid is not just poles and wires, there are many interconnection issues.

    People expect the lights to come on at the flip of a switch. One light bulb is not a problem but an aluminum smelter or a steel mill are massive loads.

    There are several interconnections in North America, not a single grid.

    Attempts to tie these interconnections have failed. Like telephone systems it is better to have small grids (microgrids).

    Distributed energy resources and microgrids are able to counter generation issues.

    Here is a reference:
    May 1, 2020 – “With more threats to the distribution grid, strategically placing generation resources or energy storage on the distribution system may be the most cost-efficient option in some cases; particularly in remote locations where transmission and distribution lines are difficult to build or maintain,”

    https://microgridknowledge.com/naruc-ders-microgrids-resilience/

  5. Pompeo told ABC News’s “This Week” that there was “enormous evidence” that the strain of the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

    When pressed for evidence, he claimed he was “not allowed” to say more. He later tweeted about China’s supposed “history of infecting the world.”

    The rhetoric is in keeping with Pompeo’s aggressive anti-Beijing posture. In late January, Pompeo said during a speech in London that “the Chinese Communist Party is the central threat of our times.”

    In the weeks that followed, as the outbreak that emerged in China morphed into a global pandemic, Pompeo maintained a hard line, spoiling a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations with his insistence on branding it the “Wuhan virus” in the group’s joint statement.

    Why are Trump and Pompeo not allowed to provide details?

    Pompeo may be under orders from Trump, but Trump said he has absolute power, like Kim Jong Un.

    Is China going to compensate the U.S. for full damages to the economy, or is China going to take care only of large corporations?

    What do you think?

    https://s2.washingtonpost.com/2900287/5eb0e598fe1ff654c2d2fd4a/ZG9jY29udHJlcmFzQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ%3D%3D/10/64/297834e786285453d6ac0b9293bdb585

  6. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatened harsh retaliation if China pulls back from its promise to buy an additional $50 billion of agricultural products from the United States, a condition it seems unlikely to meet.

    “I have every reason to expect that they honor this agreement, and if they don’t, there will be very significant consequences in the relationship and in the global economy as to how people would do business with them,” Mnuchin told Fox on Monday.

    Mnuchin is not playing games … is he?

  8. Trump steps-up effort to blame China for coronavirus

    May 4 – The Trump administration is escalating an effort to blame China for the novel coronavirus pandemic as global pressure grows on Beijing to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of the outbreak.

    President Trump, who has endured consistent scrutiny for his own lagged response to the virus domestically, has accused China of covering up the outbreak and suggested that the virus wouldn’t have spread globally if Beijing had been more transparent to begin with.

    http://click1.news.thehill.com/bfcbvsdkzppynsnpyjgzzybbzdympdpttqzkscmbqzbdz_hqfhsfmhzvcmmwqhcmf.html

  9. Zero-emission microgrids are the key to our future

    After hurricane power outages, Alaska chooses microgrids. The utility looked around for a solution, and it found a European company, ABB, that offered a new kind of energy storage: flywheels.

    There are two here now. From the outside, they look like a couple of white trailers behind a chain-link fence. But inside, they’re cutting edge sci fi. In the corner of each trailer is a six and a half ton of spinning mass, in a frictionless vacuum chamber hovered by magnets.

    https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558103413/after-hurricane-power-outages-looking-to-alaskas-microgrids-for-a-better-way

Comments are closed.