Long-Distance Power Transmission
Discussions center on the efficiency, losses, costs, and technologies like HVDC for transmitting electricity over long distances, often debating feasibility with examples from China and countering myths about high losses.
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High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is much more efficient at transmission over long distances than AC. It can throw off your intuition on these things.In China, there is a 3300 km line like this moving 12GW of power. This is a little bit longer, but not by much.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
Electricity transport losses makes that impossible.
For very long distance power transmission, losses primarily depend on voltage and AC>DC>AC conversion efficiency which have both been increasing. China just completed a 3,300 km (2,100 mi) 1,100 kV line capable of sending 12 GW at the cost of 5.9 Billion dollars.Over 1500km you can keep losses under 10%, but building infrastructure isn’t free. East to West links tend to work better because you can time shift demand and thus build fewer power plants.
US has 700,000 miles of power lines, a few HVDC can send a lot of power east/west while being a rounding error.
What makes you think that's a possibility? Power transportation over long distances is lossy and thus very expensive.
No, because of physics you lose more power the longer distance it travels. It is also very expensive and difficult to build a network that can move power great distances to where it's needed given how dense the areas that need it are (major cities).
Aren't resistive losses pretty significant for long distance transmission?
Transporting electrons is extremely difficult. Even with HVDC lines (usually more efficient than AC lines over long distances) you get around 3.5% loss per 1000km. If you tried to run a submarine cable the distance that LNG tankers travel, you'd end up losing a quarter to a half of your power just during transmission. Not to mention the cost of actually building & maintaining that infrastructure.
There are some very long transmission lines:https://www.statista.com/statistics/1305820/longest-power-tr...
From Wikipedia:> High-voltage direct current (HVDC) is used to transmit large amounts of power over long distances or for interconnections between asynchronous grids. When electrical energy is to be transmitted over very long distances, the power lost in AC transmission becomes appreciable and it is less expensive to use direct current instead of alternating current. For a very long transmission line, these lower losses (and reduced construction cost of a DC line) can offset the additional