Underwater Transmission Could be the Solution to Get a Renewable Wind-Powered USA

March 17th, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

Generating 20 percent of America’s electricity with wind, which is crucial to our future safety, growth and prosperity, would require building up to 22,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines.

But how to get renewable energy from the empty windy plains far from population centers, when nobody ever wants to see any more transmission line built anywhere near anybody? Ever?

[social_buttons]

Here’s one novel solution. Transmission cables placed out of sight under water provide an apparently uncontroversial way to send renewable electricity from the isolated and desolate areas of the nation that are abundant in wind – to where we live, inside heavy cables down the coasts under the ocean, or along riverbeds or along the floors of lakes.

To put it another way: “The fish don’t vote,” as Edward M. Stern of PowerBridge, one company that is now working on laying underwater cable to send power down the Atlantic coast, told Mathew Wald of The New York Times.Stern’s company has already succeeded in building a 65-mile offshore cable from New Jersey to Long Island and is now working another that would bring wind power from Maine along the Atlantic coast into Boston. Not a peep out of the opposition.

Because you can’t see underwater cables carrying electrical power, they engender little of the opposition that land based transmission does. Underwater transmission lines for electricity could make off-shore wind power easier for bringing wind from the plains states to the coasts where most of the US population is, down the Missouri River and other rivers that traverse the USA.

A Canadian underwater transmission company, Transmission Developers proposes putting in a 370-mile line along the bottom of Lake Champlain from Canada, down the Hudson River past New York and down the coast to Connecticut; in one of the longest submarine power cables in the world, and will bring Canadian hydroelectric power to New York.

Underwater transmission involves cables unrolled from giant reels, and some help from gravity lays them down into place. Currently they cost more, mostly for transforming the electricity to direct current needed for underwater cable, and because the technology is not yet widely used.

But in general direct current is getting a new look, because over long distances from likely renewable energy sources, it has lower line losses. It is increasingly being considered for the much needed overhaul of the central grids.

New technology offered by two European companies, Siemens and ABB, has lowered the cost for some direct current projects, and shrunk the size of the terminals where alternating current is converted to direct current and back, a crucial consideration in urban projects.

Underwater cable still costs more than twice as much as the tower type. Standard lines hung on towers run up to $4 million a mile, depending on terrain and other factors. But PowerBridge’s 65 mile cable cost about $600 million, or a bit over $9 million a mile.

However, quibbling over the cost of something that is practically impossible to get built, compared with something that can be and is being built is a bit silly. As the CEO of Transmission Developers puts it:

“If you can’t get them built, because the communities you want to serve don’t want them, then in our opinion they are infinitely expensive.”

Image: Wikipedia

Source: The New York Times

More susan/” target=”_blank”>Cleantechnica from Susan Kraemer: Journalists on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/dotcommodity" target="_blank

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: direct current, Grid, NIMBY, PowerBridge, Transmission Developers, underwater transmission, Utilities

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Aubrey Wisor

I can just reccomand everyone to read this posts , and enjoy them all this guy knows what he is writing about!
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Um, this “guy”?
Aubrey Wisor

I can just reccomand everyone to read this posts , and enjoy them all this guy knows what he is writing about!
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Um, this “guy”?
Graig Baseley

Geez, everytime I see blogs this good I just want mine to be there already! Great work.
Graig Baseley

Geez, everytime I see blogs this good I just want mine to be there already! Great work.
gametheoryman

The significant change here over using high voltage transmission towers is the use of direct current rather than alternating current. As soon as you decide to go DC, the cables go underground or underwater, either of which is out of sight.

The choice between underground or underwater depends upon local geography. Underground is cheaper if the land can be disturbed temporarily without high cost, such as across farm or ranch lands; underwater is cheaper if not.

The technology for both is quite old. DC is quite expensive for low voltages and because of the high cost of converting DC to AC. It’s good for high voltage transmission over long distances. An example is the DC line from hydropower resources in the northwest to southern California.

Wind power from large wind farms in the Plains states or in west Texas are likely to use DC lines buried underground. The problem now is the expense and, because of the high voltage requirement, the necessity for investing in something like 1000 huge wind towers all at once along with the DC line; “gradually” adding 100 at a time won’t do. The expense for both is above $2B.
gametheoryman

The significant change here over using high voltage transmission towers is the use of direct current rather than alternating current. As soon as you decide to go DC, the cables go underground or underwater, either of which is out of sight.

The choice between underground or underwater depends upon local geography. Underground is cheaper if the land can be disturbed temporarily without high cost, such as across farm or ranch lands; underwater is cheaper if not.

The technology for both is quite old. DC is quite expensive for low voltages and because of the high cost of converting DC to AC. It’s good for high voltage transmission over long distances. An example is the DC line from hydropower resources in the northwest to southern California.

Wind power from large wind farms in the Plains states or in west Texas are likely to use DC lines buried underground. The problem now is the expense and, because of the high voltage requirement, the necessity for investing in something like 1000 huge wind towers all at once along with the DC line; “gradually” adding 100 at a time won’t do. The expense for both is above $2B.
William Coffin

There’s a major electricity line under the English Channel between Britain and France, allowing one to export electricity to the other. Whether these riverbed cables are of a similar design I don’t know. I do hope a proper environmental analysis has been done though. Burning fossil fuels is irresponsible, but we’ve seen that some alternatives can be about as bad: biofuels spring to mind.
William Coffin

There’s a major electricity line under the English Channel between Britain and France, allowing one to export electricity to the other. Whether these riverbed cables are of a similar design I don’t know. I do hope a proper environmental analysis has been done though. Burning fossil fuels is irresponsible, but we’ve seen that some alternatives can be about as bad: biofuels spring to mind.
http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

I think it is irresponsible to not find a solution to getting off dangerous irresponsible fossil fuels that are not just a security threat, but are causing health problems now and will cause massive changes in the earth’s environment over time.

If it had problems we’d know about it, by now.

We’ve used Trans-Atlantic cable for the telegraph from the end of the 19th century, then from the 50’s for telephone and then in the 80’s for fiber optic cables, all went across the Atlantic along the sea floor.

Europe already has underwater cable from all the off-shore wind farms off the coast of Europe, and Sweden directly imports Russian electricity using the technology.
http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

I think it is irresponsible to not find a solution to getting off dangerous irresponsible fossil fuels that are not just a security threat, but are causing health problems now and will cause massive changes in the earth’s environment over time.

If it had problems we’d know about it, by now.

We’ve used Trans-Atlantic cable for the telegraph from the end of the 19th century, then from the 50’s for telephone and then in the 80’s for fiber optic cables, all went across the Atlantic along the sea floor.

Europe already has underwater cable from all the off-shore wind farms off the coast of Europe, and Sweden directly imports Russian electricity using the technology.
sidewinder

“To put it another way: “The fish don’t vote,” says Edward M. Stern of PowerBridge…”

OK – this is the first sign that this idea may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

In other words, this sounds like it could be damaging to the environment, but in a way that no one is resisting … yet.

Not what I would call a responsible way to solve the problem.
sidewinder

“To put it another way: “The fish don’t vote,” says Edward M. Stern of PowerBridge…”

OK – this is the first sign that this idea may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

In other words, this sounds like it could be damaging to the environment, but in a way that no one is resisting … yet.

Not what I would call a responsible way to solve the problem.