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Should there be a dedicated section, in the Infrastructure Forum, for Power lines, Pipelines, Water

  • Yes

    Votes: 4 100.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

Pipelines, Power lines, Energy infrastructure, Water infrastructue

12K views 11 replies 4 participants last post by  Suburbanist 
#1 · (Edited)
I have noticed that there are often discussions considering the issues of power lines and oil or gas pipelines and other kinds of power infrastructure as well as water management infrastructure, but also power stations, mines and oil wells etc.

Those discussions take place in many different sections of the forum, as there is no dedicated section to those issues. It would be possible to establish a dedicated section if we show that there is enough interest. This should be the purpose of this thread.

If you support such a section, please don't forget to vote above!

I will supplement this post later on to outline possible structure of such a section and sketch possible interesting topics, pinpoint existing threads etc.

Structure?

Power grids, power lines and electricity generation.
- Power grids (high and low voltage)
- Power plans (Nuclear, Fossil fuels, Water, Solar, Wind, etc)
Oil and Gas pipelines and wells
- Pipelines
- Oil and gas extraction
- Refining
Communications
- Space infrastructure
- Mobile communications, mobile networks, other mobile communication grids
- Data cables infrastructure, Data centers
Water management
- Water reservoirs and water pipelines
- Water related projects, desalination
- Water waste management, drainage systems, sewage management
 
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#2 · (Edited)
What I mean are threads, discussions and posts like these:


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=118837149&postcount=28543
I've read Germany has a major problem with its grid, to get energy produced in the north to southern consumers.
Yeah, it frequently pushes the limits of the Polish and Czech power grid when it is windy in North Germany and Denmark. Too much of the electricity has to flow through the Czech Republic then to either South Germany or Austria which creates instability.

It is not so easy to block that energy once its flows. The Poles, I think, have already started building it, it is a sort of switch. The Czechs were not yet finished with it.

It is a special kind of transformer - a phase shifter.

The point is that Germans don't want to bear the costs of creating this instability. Poles were able to get them to some agreement, the Czechs did not have this luck, but I read that it in fact did not really work anyway. So it seems that only a real thread of closing the flow will make them do anything about it. Therefore those phase shifters need to be built. The Germans are not happy about it, but they installed the same phase shifters on its western borders... I think that the Dutch have also built similar transformers.


The costs of those PST would be some € 100 mil for the Czechs and should be working in 2017.

Germans are currently busy with connecting their north and south networks though. It comprises some 2800 kms of power grid worth € 10 bil.

http://www.elektrina.cz/invazi-zele...-zastavi-obri-transformatory-v-cesku-i-polsku


http://ceskapozice.lidovky.cz/cesko...pb8-/tema.aspx?c=A130520_221912_pozice_127342
http://ceskapozice.lidovky.cz/nemec...-dyc-/tema.aspx?c=A121227_112903_pozice_89081
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1770989
Amazon river in Brazil



Renato|Anápolis

South Africa utility Eskom says reserves exhausted, power outages inevitable
Reuters Excerpt
January 15, 2015 8:31 AM

JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's power reserves are all but exhausted and rolling blackouts will be an inevitable part of life in the continent's most advanced economy for up to three years, state-run power utility Eskom warned on Thursday.

South Africa has been hamstrung by power shortages, which have curtailed output and are seen as a deterrent to foreign investment. Last year it suffered its worst outages since 2008, hurt by outdated infrastructure and plant failures.

Power outages in South Africa have global market implications as it is the world's top platinum producer and a major producer and exporter of commodities such as coal and gold.

Eskom Chief Executive Tshediso Matona, who compared the situation to driving a badly maintained car which has almost no fuel left, told a news briefing that margins were razor thin and the loss of just 1,000 megawatts would trigger power outages.

South African power demand typically ranges from around 30,000 to 35,000 megawatts, so the country's reserves to keep the lights on is only around 3 percent.
 
#4 ·
There could be a thread about European (Asian, American, African, Australian) power grids.

ENTSOE European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Electricity-Transmission-Grids/
In Europe, the power transmission system operating body ENTSO-E, comprising 41 TSOs from 34 countries, has assessed the ability of Europe's grid networks to become a single internal energy market. This will require some $128 billion in new and upgraded power lines on order to meet the EU's renewables and energy market integration goals. It identified 100 power bottlenecks standing in the way, with 80% of them relating to the challenge of integrating renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power into national grids. One goal (set in 2002) is to have a level of interconnection for each country at lest equivalent to 10% of its generating capacity, to achieve trans-EU electricity infrastructure. This is far from being achieved in 2013, but the above investment will bring it about for all EU countries except Spain.

Germany is a prime example of the need for increased transmission capacity, having its traditional fossil fuel and nuclear power generation plants in the south, with lines spreading from there to the rest of the country, while wind power sources are along its northern Baltic coast. Hence its existing north-to-south to lines have become bottlenecks, incapable of transmitting sufficient wind-generated power from the north to replace closed capacity in the south.

Much of the European investment needs to be on refurbishment or construction of about 51,000 km of extra high voltage power lines and cables, to be clustered into 100 major investment projects dealing with the main bottlenecks. "The fast and massive development of renewable energy sources drives larger, more volatile, power flows over longer distances across Europe and is responsible for 80 out of 100 identified bottlenecks," according to ENTSO-E’s 2012 Ten-Year Network Development Plan.
Baltic Energy Market Interconnector Plan



The planned Visaginas nuclear plant is envisaged as the cornerstone of the Baltic Energy Market Interconnector Plan (BEMIP) linking to Poland, Finland and Sweden. A high-voltage (400 kV) 1000 MW DC southwest interconnection – PowerBridge or LitPol Link – costing €250-300 million, to improve transmission capacity between Lithuania and Poland is to be built, with 500 MW by 2015 and another 500 MW by 2020. Much of the funding is from the European Union (EU), and work is ahead of schedule.

This follows inauguration of an interconnector between Estonia and Finland to the north – Estlink-1, a 150 kV, 350 MW HVDC cable costing €110 million and also supported by EU funding. The 170 km 450 kV HVDC Estlink-2 further east and now under construction will provide a further 650 MW early in 2014. The project is budgeted to cost around €320 million, which will be divided between TSOs Finngrid and Elering (Estonia), with €100 million to be provided by the EU as part of the EU’s extensive economy recovery package. Both will be operated by the two TSOs.

Another major transmission link westward under the Baltic Sea, the 700 MWe NordBalt 300 or 400 kV HVDC project, is planned between Klaipeda in Lithuania and Nybro in Sweden (400 km), by Svenska Kraftnat and LitGrid. The €550 million project is expected to be completed by 2016. (The Baltic states and Belarus have good interconnection of grids from the Soviet era, but this did not extend to Poland, let alone to Germany. Kaliningrad gets all of its electricity from Russia, via the Lithuanian grid.)
 
#5 ·
China - Tibet development in power grids.


Published on Aug 23, 2014

Over the past twenty years, developing Tibet has been a top priority for the Chinese government. Provinces across the country were designated a particular assistance task to support Tibet’s development. One of the main projects was building a power grid network and connecting it to the rest of the country. In recent years, power supplies have improved in the region, but still some areas in Tibet don’t have adequate access to electricity. This March, the Sichuan-Tibet grid connection project kicked off, which is expected to ease power shortages and improve living standards in the region.


China West East power project, since 2000
http://wilsoncenter.org/wilsonweekly/chinas-west-east-electricity-transfer-project.html
http://claudearpi.blogspot.nl/2014/11/power-from-mainland-to-roof-of-world.html


The project’s second, ongoing component is the construction of three electricity-transmission corridors, which are essentially three vast networks of electrical transmission lines that connect newly built generation capacity in the North, Central and South to China’s electricity-hungry coast (see arrows on map). Each of the corridors is expected to exceed 40 gigawatts (GW) in capacity by 2020—a combined capacity equivalent to 60 Hoover Dams. The seven recipient provinces — Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong — together consume nearly 40 percent of China’s electricity.
 
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