Comment by idiotsecant
2 days ago
This is quite definitely not just a problem China has. We desperately need more transmission in the US.
2 days ago
This is quite definitely not just a problem China has. We desperately need more transmission in the US.
Yes. The US wind belt is from the Texas panhandle north to Canada.[1] But there's no good connectivity to anywhere with a load. Some east-west EHV lines from that area would be a big win. There's opposition from oil interests. Just trying to connect East Texas to Mississippi has been stalled for over a decade.[2]
Don't need anything as exotic as the 14MV the original poster proposes. 1MV at 1000 amps, which is a gigawatt, has been done many times in China. One right of way can have several such lines. It would be best to have at least two distant rights of way, for redundancy. California's total load is around 13GW, so the number of 1GW lines needed is not large.
Undergrounding high powered lines is a huge headache, but possible. Here's an overview.[3]
[1] https://unitedstatesmaps.org/us-wind-map/
[2] https://www.texaspolicy.com/proposed-transmission-line-in-ea...
[3] https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/res3/Undergroundin...