Green New Deal could break parts of the US power system

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Scaling up wind and solar power would require replacing hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines with high voltage wire, in addition to outfitting the infrastructure with sensors to create a smart grid.

O’Sullivan said the United States is “nowhere near” implementing a national smart grid, and he is skeptical the country could stand one up in 10 years. Building out that infrastructure is a tortuous process that entails navigating a thicket of stakeholders, from local landowners to federal regulators.

In 2011 the Electric Power Research Institute estimated the cost of a national smart grid, including storage, at $338 billion to $476 billion. EPRI said the grid would create $1.3 trillion to $2 trillion in economic benefits and cut emissions by nearly 60 percent from 2005 levels. EPRI is mostly funded by utilities.

Even at today’s modest levels, rapid deployment of renewables has created technical and market complications, said O’Sullivan. California solar and wind farms have curtailed large amounts of supply because they were generating more power than could be used or stored at times. The spike in renewable power also drove prices down to levels that create problems in power markets.

These complexities “are surmountable, but they are not surmountable in unrealistic time frames — in time frames that just do not mesh with the overall inertia of the system,” O’Sullivan said.



Source : CNBC