Reply To: Repowering the electric utility industry

[Tim1]

I live in the northeastern US which influences my perspective, but here is why I think that large grids will become obsolete.

I am not saying that that you would want to have FF devices deployed in ones and twos, but the way the grid is currently structured, electric power is frequently sent over hundreds of miles over high voltage lines. My guess is that if focus fusion takes off, that most generating stations would be local and have from 20 to 100 FF devices, or 100 to 500 MW. This would vastly simplify the grid and boost it’s reliability. This would mean very short transmission lines in all but sparsely populated areas.

My power bill gets itemized with things like transmission, distribution, and the actual cost of the generated electricity split out: (All numbers are dollars per Kwh.)

.02240 Transmission
.06169 Distribution
.09379 Generation (The thing that Focus Fusion does.)
.00853 Other

If the generation cost goes down to 0.005, my bill only gets cut in half. You would have to radically change the grid to make a significant impact on the rest of my power bill.

Cities like New York and areas like Long Island draw power from hundreds of miles away, as far as eastern Canada and the mid-western US. This has caused several major blackouts. The New York City, Long island area depend on about a dozen 345KV power lines for much of their electricity. Each line is capable of supplying over 600MW of power. Most of the lines run for hundreds of miles and cost about a million dollars per mile to build. They both increase the cost of power and cause reliability problems like the prospect of more blackouts. At a minimum most if not all of these lines would be replaced with local generation. Although New York is an extreme example, most large cities in the US are dependent on remotely generated electricity and would abandon power from long transmission lines in favor of locally generated electricity if Focus Fusion were available.

In addition to having the grid evolve to be more city scale rather than regional scale, most institutions that are big enough to have a campus rather than a single building would probably be able to operate a few Focus Fusion devices to eliminate any distribution or transmission charges from their electricity bill, in addition to being able to use waste heat for heating and cooling. These institutions would include universities, hospitals and manufacturers. All of them already have significant staff that manages their heating cooling and electrical systems.