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 To move large amounts
of electricity from the windy places in the midwest and the sunny places in the
southwest will require an expansion of the National energy grid. The chart
at the left from a recent
Rand Corporation study demonstrates the feasibility of building the new grid
out of HTS ( High Temperature Superconducting) cable. In a
superconducting cable, no energy losses are directly related to the
transmission of power, but a less amount of electricity is required to
refrigerate the line. The chart shows the payback time for the added
cost of using HTS wire instead of conventional copper transmission line at two
different prices for electricity. The lifetime of the HTS cables is
considered to be 40 years, so it makes sense to build the new lines out of HTS.
According to the chart, the current cost of transmitting 120 kV electricity is
$200 per kAm, or $200 per 120 MWm, or $320,000 per 120 MWmile, or $320 million
per 120 GWmile. A 1500 mile main line between the midwest and the southwest with
a 100 GW capacity would cost $400 billion. With similar length lines of
200 GW capacity from the midwest to the northeast and southeast. and a similar
length line to the Northwest with 50 GW capacity, the total cost at $200 per kAm
would be $2.2 trillion. The $200 per kAm is current price for buried
cable. Most of these lines would not need to be buried, and placed
on rail or pipeline right of way, and with massive scale production and
technical development, a reasonable estimate for such a new national
electricity grid backbone is $1 trillion.
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