Suggested Strategic Target for Army

I will argue that for the Pickens Plan to work, the top strategic target for the army should be the passage of legislation promoting the electrification of the nation's railways.

This is crucial to the Pickens Plan as a consequence of the following facts:

1) The main goal of public policy reform under the Pickens Plan is to put into place transmission lines to carry electricity from the Midwest to the coasts.

2) The main obstacle to constructing said transmission lines is the delays suffered by projects subjected to environmental impact litigation following from attempts to obtain rights of way.

3) The main motive for said environmental impact litigation is a misguided environmental movement's tendency to see any increase of capacity in the nation's energy capacity as harmful to the environment.

4) The electrification of railroads is a proven technology -- indeed the largest railroad line in the world, the Trans-Siberian, is electrified.

5) The "conservation only" environmentalists will not oppose going to electrified railroads since they already see decreasing the energy use of railways and increase of railroad utilization -- which would result from railroad electrification -- as a way of reducing the nation's energy utilization.

6) The railroads already have rights of way that approximate the topology and coverage of transmission lines under the Pickens Plan.

7) The use of cryogenic transmission lines buried under the tracks would render the transmission capacity of virtually all existing railroad rights of way enormously greater than the possible use by the railways.

I won't suggest specifics beyond this.

Tags: legislation, politics, strategy, transmission

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Lee Hart on September 7, 2008 at 10:06am: This is a process that never entered my mind till now - I find it to be plausible - are there any articles - proposals - studies done - you could refer me to? I want more clarity of exactly how this infrastructure would be installed. Next to the track? - Under track [as you say] - creating the need to reconstruct the track? Time frame? Do you consider this to be a short term answer [5-7yrs] - longer? Funded by the government FBO the railroads – who then give back to socity [in future] how? I’m not against this – I think I’m for it - & want to figure out how to benefit this concept further – or become a part of its movement. So James, help me out here. There must be others promoting & crunching numbers on this.

The idea of few objections by "conservation only" environmentalists is very appealing. The eminent domain issues of our re-tooling America are going to be brutal - for all sides. Americans like “owning our land” until we decide to sell it. But, this idea would seem to alleviate some of those “governmental land grabbing” concerns – this land was already been "grabbed" & fought over 150 years ago. I’m requesting you as a friend.
K.Lee; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 7, 2008 at 1:37pm: HTS DC cables are commercially available and the correct choice for this strategic target. The power loss, over distance, of HTS DC cables is 40% less. The superconducting cables would be well within the railroad's right of way and could be buried either directly under or under the side of the tracks depending on how the maintenance of way equipment is designed.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 7, 2008 at 2:26pm: I should add that there are about one million kilometers of superconducting wires currently in service around the world in various applications. (Note this is not the same as saying there are a million kilometers of superconducting transmission lines in service.); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Lloyd on September 7, 2008 at 10:27am: Amen to number 7.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Paul A. Curto on September 7, 2008 at 5:36pm: There's a lot more to laying cryogenic transmission lines than what you suggest. The railways are as good as any for many applications, like high-speed internet fiber optic cables, local power lines, etc. The switchgear for trains is a bit more complicated and runs at much different voltages and current specs. Cryo lines will produce enormous electromagnetic fields when carrying gigawatt loads. Tesla currents would be generated once buried. We need some R&D for this. It's not a bad idea.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 7, 2008 at 6:23pm: Actually there are no electromagnetic fields generated by direct current -- HST DC being the preferred transmission cables.

You have a point about the difficult transformation of power from HST DC cables to use by the railways. Fortunately, this difficult engineering problem is solved for existing HST DC cables in conventional power grids. See the work by American Superconductor.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Paul A. Curto on September 8, 2008 at 12:39pm: 60 million dollars for 2000 feet of cable makes no sense to me, even if it is cryogen-cooled and at 400kV. This technology is not commercially proven, and the amount of cable we need is in the tens of thousands of miles.

The whole point of superconductor transmission is to run at low voltage with high current, and still have low losses. DC transmission was replaced by AC more than a century ago because of the high line losses. Heat dissipation in a crogen line will also be a problem with very high currents.

The cryogenic cooling is the real problem, with coolers interspersed at half-mile spacings. Any failure of any node, and poof goes the line.

DC current has plenty of EM field. Why did you say there is none? I know of no research of the EM effects on humans of a modern HTS line with gigawatt level transmission.

I have seen the effects of lightning on humans, which is not pretty, but that's not quite the same, eh? Tesla ran some experiments near Boulder on transmission without wires. It might be interesting to see his notes.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 8, 2008 at 8:15pm: Electromagnetic radiation is emitted during a change in either magnetic or electric fields. Direct current, except in those instances where it is changing, emits no electromagnetic radiation. There is a magnetic field surrounding the cable and that is all. Magnetic fields fall off as the fourth power of distance so they become irrelevant outside the right of way.

While it is true that Edison was defeated by Tesla in the DC vs AC wars a century ago, DC has had a resurgence in recent decades for long distance transmission -- and a brief examination of my links will explain why this is particularly true of HST transmission cables. Clue: It is in large part to avoid electromagnetic radiative losses of power and associated heating of the coolant.

The cryogenic cooling costs taken into account still result in a 40% reduction of power loss compared to conventional conductors. Moreover, the HST DC cables are built with a fail-safe copper conductor which needs to be only thick enough to sustain an over-current long enough to allow fault handlers to kick in. No *poof*.

Your strongest argument is the cost per length but keep in mind that this is _very_ early in the industrial learning curve, and that "commercially proven" is relative to the market being served. This technology _is_ in production and is due for dramatic cost reductions logarithmically proportional to the cumulative volume produced. Taking 20% cost reduction per production doubling as a reasonable figure we can expect the $60M/2000feet which is $30k/ft, to end up costing something like $200B for 30,000 miles.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 9, 2008 at 2:33pm: Erratum:

My statement was incorrect that "Magnetic fields fall off as the fourth power of distance". I incorrectly relayed a rule of thumb of magnetic loop interactions I was given when working on automated toll roads.

The correct formula shows non-negligible magnetic field:

B = 2 * (10 ^ -7) * (I / R)

The American Semiconductor webinar reports that up to 1000MVA can be supported over one of their cables at 138kV, or:

1000MVA;138kV?A
= 7246.38 A

At the railroad right of way boundary (about 10m from the cable), this could be 1.4 gauss -- or about 3 times the Earth's magnetic field.

Nevertheless, I may be misrepresenting American Semiconductor's HTS DC cable here because I noticed they have two, coaxial, layers of HTS. As with all coaxial transmission systems, part of the reason for the coaxial conductor is to prevent leakage. In a HTS system, this tends to trap magnetic field lines between the coaxial layers resulting in high magnetic pressures but negligible magnetic field outside the outer conductor.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Lloyd on September 9, 2008 at 5:07pm: The last project I checked on was AMSC testing a short Tx line near Chicago (?) several years ago, there was a problem sustaining vacuum or something. Do you know of any more recent transmission demonstrations?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by James Bowery on September 9, 2008 at 5:13pm: There are several transmission demonstrations cited in one of the slides in the AMSC webinar -- as well as in-depth information about their Long Island demonstration.

Register for the webinar at:

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=r...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dr. Michael V. Coots on September 8, 2008 at 9:45pm: Absolutely!

Tesla had some real and tangible projects that need to be revisited! A long time overdue!; ▶ Reply to This