The automation vendor ABB has filled a longtime electricity technology gap and paved the way for the integration of solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources into large-scale power grids.
The company, according to a press release on its website, has designed the first circuit breaker for high-voltage direct current -- HVDC, or just DC for short -- which allows for the interruption of power flows equivalent to the output of a large power station within five milliseconds. If you're wondering how fast that is, imagine something 30 times faster than the blink of an eye, the company said.
ABB says the development of its Hybrid HVCD breaker solves a 100-year-old problem: the development of DC transmission grids to transport power over long distances. Such grids would have an advantage over AC transmission grids, which tend to lose lots of power when they must cover long distances. DC, on the other hand, is more reliable and can be deployed underground or underwater, providing alternatives to over-ground transmission cables, where new lines are difficult to install.
ABB engineers test high-voltage direct current at a company test site. The automation company has designed the first circuit breaker for HVDC, paving the way for uninterrupted power flow over longer distances. (Source: ABB)
All this means using DC transmission lines can allow for connections between large wind farms and solar power grids from different places (such as different countries in Europe) to be plugged into the traditional power grid. These lines can also improve grid reliability and enhance alternating current (AC) networks, according to ABB.
"In terms of significance, this breaker is a 'game changer,' " Magnus Callavik, technology manager for ABB's grid systems business, wrote in a blog post on his company's website. "It removes a significant stumbling block in the development of HVDC transmission grids where planning can start now."
These grids will enable "interconnection and load balancing between HVDC power superhighways integrating renewables and transporting bulk power across long distances with minimal losses," he wrote. "DC grids will enable sharing of resources like lines and converter stations that provides reliability and redundancy in a power network in an economically viable manner with minimal losses."
What this means in layperson's terms is that the new breaker will allow for the uninterrupted flow of power across all these different lines, even if one of them fails.
The new breaker was years in the making for ABB, according to the company, which invests $1 billion a year in research. Now the company is seeking utility partners to pilot the use of the technology.
Advancements in automation appear to be the way forward for making renewable energy sources, not only a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional power sources, but also to create hybrid grids that can support different energy sources seamlessly.
We reported this fall on another advancement in automating renewable energy sources: a robotic solar panel system designed by the Silicon Valley startup Qbotix that uses an intelligent monorail system to tilt panels toward the sun.
It must be a good article because now I have more questions about a DC transmission grid. There's certainly advantages over AC, but how do they step down the high voltage?
The new high voltage circuit breaker is indeed be a valuable and needed element in the DC distribution network, but there are other considerations. DC does indeed provide a mode that does not suffer from all of those capacitive and inductive losses, which does allow for much closer conductor spacing. But that is only half of the picture.
High voltage transport over relatively longer distances needs to use as high a voltage as possible in order to minimize the current relative to the transmitted power. That part is obvious and beyond argument. The downside is that at the user end of the transmission we need a much lower voltage, after all, even 16kV requires a lot of extra effort in order to distribute and control it. For AC power, transformers have been doing a very good job for many years, and getting better all the time. But the details of converting 30kV DC down to something to run our lights and laptops is a bit more complex. Even taking it down to 480 volts, 3 phases, is a task that is quite challenging. Therein lies the very bigg problem, which is mostly the step down for distribution process. The hardware to do the stepdown is presently far more complex than a large transformer, and quite a bit more expensive, as well. That has been, and probably still remains as, the chief obstacle in the path of HVDC power transport. Even more daunting is the fact that the conversion system will need to be more efficient, end to end, than the present transformer technology.
Unfortunately there don't seem to be a lot of sources for this hardware, not because it is not needed, but because it is just plain a hard thing to do. So while the circuit breaker is a needed element in the system, it is not the maajor part of the solution. So the real game changer will be the 98% efficient step-down inverter.
This is a great achievement and can offer large energy savings in the transportation of power from renewable energy sources. In the infancy of energy distribution, controlling the power was everything, because some people realized there was huge money to be made by a giant grid of power, keeping everyone reliant on the utility for power and enslaved to a utility bill. DC did not work for this model, because of the long distance transmission problem. While this is very exiting, in order to be really energy independant and efficient, we need to concentrate on making more DC power devices for our homes to couple with the renewable power generators at hand, focusing on more of localized energy creation than trying to fix the flawed and antiquated power grid we have now in this country. The grid makes us vulnerable to terrorist attacks and widespread outages that we can not control, not to mention keeping us enslaved to a utility bill and power generaration from sources we can not control. This invention will certainly save a lot of power and increase the financial feasablility of renewable energy sources.
Wow, this is fantastic, and an incredible breakthrough. The applications are self-evident. What's not so obvious is why ABB managed to achieve this, and how. Elizabeth, what did they say about the technology that made this possible?
It is exciting, but it is also historically interesting. The first electric generation and distribution systems were DC. These were developed by Thomas A. Edison. They were considered inefficient compared to Nikola Tesla's AC system, specifically for long distance transmission. To be able to transmit over long distances you need to operate at high voltages (otherwise the wire required is too large). On the other hand, most of the applications we have are DC. We then use transformers to get DC to power, for example, the laptop I am using right now.
The other issue is still storage. I don't think that DC helps there.
This is the kind of technology that really excites me in terms of making renewable energy more viable for large-scale deployment, and helping people become less dependent on the traditional grid. It also shows companies really thinking about the problem and trying to solve barriers that have existed to this type of energy for years. That is really forward-thinking, and that is good news for energy production.
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