The Significance of Aluminum and Steel

[Jacob Petersheim]

You can probably think of many reasons why aluminum and steel are important and many of their applications. But this 9 minutes describes one of the uses that may not come immediately to mind:

The electrical grids. Long lines carry power over long distances and distribute that power within regions and to communities. These rely heavily on aluminum and steel. Here is why.

Why Do Power Lines Use Aluminum Instead of Copper?

While only lightly touched upon there, watch for the term HVDC (high voltage direct current) to see more discussion in the future. Though our power generation and distribution systems have long been engineered around the many advantages of alternating current, this is gradually changing.

Most "renewable energy" sources will require vast amounts of stationary battery storage in order to manage the inherent mismatches between production and consumption. Using multiple stages of conversion between the DC produced by these sources, the AC required by existing transmission systems, the DC required by and returned from batteries, the AC needed by local transmission facilities and consumers... produces an awful lot of losses and waste heat as well as expense and reliability woes. AC frequency synchronization is just one of the problems most people wouldn't have expected.

We got a taste of the problems this year when Portugal and Spain suffered a major grid collapse.


But the point is that these two industrial metals have significance far beyond building bridges and aircraft.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Power line used to use copper wire, at least some of the older ones did. My first husband was a lineman, and when they were replacing the old power lines, they had a lot of the old copper wire. Th screw would save the old wire, load it into our pickup, and the kids and i would make a run to the salvage plant in Spokane and sell the copper wire. The crew would split the money, and pay for our gas to make the trip.
There was also copper clad wiring on some of the poles, and those did not sell for enough to make it worth the trip to Spokane (at that time, probably would now), so we used those for fencing for the horse pasture.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Yeah @Yvonne Smith the video mentions copper long-lines briefly. I think the problems were the rising cost of the copper and the strength issues under the weight of heavier and heavier copper lines with time.

EVs are becoming another issue. While we may delay the trend to them becoming common or even mandatory, it is probably going to come one way or another. Especially in the dense cities needing more and more for buses, trains, and local trucking. That's another problem: conversion losses between AC over distances vs. DC for charging batteries. The "home chargers" for EVs tend to be both slow and wasteful for that very reason. Most EVs "fast charge" using high voltage DC inputs.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I remember reading about how Elon Musk intended to set up his cross-country charging stations, several years ago; so I do not know if he has implemented that or not, or is still going to. His plan was to build the charging stations and have them work with solar power, which would truly make driving the EV car pretty much free from the power grid.
I think that most of the charging stations i have seen are not ones that Musk built, and they are at hotels and fuel stations along the freeway truck stops, and they use electricity to recharge the car battery, which pretty much negates any power savings from using an EV car.

Putting solar panels on roofs would seem to be a way that people could use the solar for their home battery charging for the EV cars; but that might not work in places that get heavy snowfall in the winter.

It was back in the 70’s when I used to take the copper wire in to the salvage yard to sell, and it was probably too heavy for the newer lines and that is why they were changing it out back then.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I don't know where Tesla might be on on-site solar powered EV charging stations. Right now I think most of his "supercharger" stations suck grid power into batteries, and charge the cars from those batteries. They need the batteries to level out the load on mains power as well as to dump charge rapidly into cars.

I think this is where HVDC power transmission comes in @Yvonne Smith . New grid buildout, DC to limit conversion losses, high voltages to limit transmission losses. You can't get enough power from stationary solar panels everywhere you'd need to recharge a car.

The ugly part is that this makes additional demand on corrosion resistance, lots of high voltage nearer to people, and DC to DC voltage converters based on more fragile technologies than simpler AC transformer systems.

But if trends (and goals) pack people more tightly together local air pollution grows in severity. So I see transport electrification coming whether the rest of us need it or not.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I looked online to see, and Tesla does have a whole lot of the charging stations across the country, and it is supposed to be free charging if you own a Tesla, if I remember right. The website says they have 70,000 across the country, and some are solar powered, some are on the power grid, at least at this time.

They also have a solar charging option for the vehicles, so that an owner can put up their own solar grid and keep the vehicle charged that way. It seems like this might be a workable option in places like the southern states, where they do not get a lot of snow in the winter.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Copper Surges 4.76%, Brass Up 2.66% | Weekly Scrap Metal Price Report (June 20–26)

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I looked online to see, and Tesla does have a whole lot of the charging stations across the country, and it is supposed to be free charging if you own a Tesla, if I remember right.

Are you sure about the free charging? I had the idea that was a promotion of 3 to 6 months or something.

I any case, while the map looks impressive above, searching locally shows a very few nearby public slow chargers and just one Tesla charger 6 miles from here. With time there will be more, but as usage rises can the grid provide and deliver enough power to them?

Meanwhile I have electricity rates structured with expensive peak and lower off-peak rates. Asking this in my area, which isn't all that dense, suggests EV demand may collide with supply.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Are you sure about the free charging? I had the idea that was a promotion of 3 to 6 months or something.

I any case, while the map looks impressive above, searching locally shows a very few nearby public slow chargers and just one Tesla charger 6 miles from here. With time there will be more, but as usage rises can the grid provide and deliver enough power to them?

Meanwhile I have electricity rates structured with expensive peak and lower off-peak rates. Asking this in my area, which isn't all that dense, suggests EV demand may collide with supply.

It looks like some still qualify and some do not. Some models were never qualified for the Supercharging; but it was apparently a sallying point early one, when Tesla was still building the Supercharging stations.

How to tell if your Tesla qualifies for free Supercharging

A detailed explanation of how Tesla's free unlimited Supercharging works and how to determine if you or your Tesla still qualify for it.

electrek.co