America’s Aging Power Grids Essay

(Our History, n.d.) -With this increase, the TVA decided to build coal-fired steam plants and by 1955, coal became the TVA source of power over the hydroelectric dams. The TVA needed to build more plants and to keep up and went back to Washington to secure federal funding to issue bonds. -The 1960s brought low electric rates and these rates were about the lowest in that nation and the TVA brought even more power with larger and more generating power units. -A new option came about in 1966 with the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Browns Ferry, Alabama. (Our History, n.d.) The first unit at Browns Ferry was completed in 1974 and the building of two more units would continue on and unit 2 completed in 1975 and unit 3 completed in 1977. (Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, Alabama, USA, n.d.) -In addition to building the units at the nuclear plant, the country was at a high with the oil embargo of 1973. The TVA needed to become more competitive and to do so they look at becoming more efficient and improving the productivity with needed costs cut. -With the help of Marvin Runyon, chairman, laid down a foundation that would provide stability of rates that would end of lasting for the next decade. (Our History, n.d.)-The 1990s brought more change within the organization relating to energy and power.

generated at power plants is carried by power lines to users, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

Today, most people take electricity for granted, especially in the United States and other developed countries of the world. According to Walter Moss in his book, An Age of Progress?, Clashing Twentieth-Century Global Forces, during the twentieth century, perhaps no other technological advancement, even the automobile, affected the people of the world more than electricity. Electricity would become the foundation for the development of new technological advancements in industries such as agriculture, health and science, environment, and technology. Production and consumption in all these industries would continue to rise throughout the century with reliance on electricity to flourish.

GIS is critical to the utilities industry in the US. It allows them to perform mundane tasks that they are required to perform with new levels of ROI (return on investment), safety, and man-hour efficiency. It also allows them to save the taxpayer a substantial sum of money yearly, and also the ability to remain profitable while billing for less. In this paper, I will first discuss some of the basic ways that the utilities industry in the US is using GIS to achieving all of these things, then into each part of the electrical utilities industry and then delve into some of the more technical items used by the industry and their function within the industry as a whole. Geography, as defined in the Cambridge dictionary is “ the study of features and systems of the earth’s surface, including continents, mountains, seas, weather, and plant life, and of the ways in which countries and people organize life within an area.”(3) Therefore, I think it is important to define the history of electricity to give perspective, and its physical properties on a smaller scale to help understand larger concepts from a power engineering perspective. Unfortunately, there is a lot of relevant information to cover before GIS is brought into fruition.

In 1989, during our most recent solar maximum, currents induced by a geomagnetic storm brought down the power grid that supplies Canada's Quebec province. The next solar maximum expected in the year 2000 have the capacity of even greater damage. Our society has even greater dependence on electronic modes of communication as well as power sources (grids), which are enormous and interconnected, (in order to save money). This also increases the vulnerability to power outages. If, there were extended power outages in the heat of the summer, or during a cold wave, the losses would not only be financial, but would also include a large human toll.

In this report, I will be looking at theories and frameworks to critically evaluate the upcoming ‘Powerlines Undergrounding Project’.

of all the United States electric power grids brought the attention of the White House a couple

By the late 1800s, the world’s first coal powered electric generator was made, the world’s first electric light was used, and the world’s first hydroelectric plant was utilized. A few years later a new type of fuel was becoming well-known, petroleum. Initially it had been an inconvenience for polluting water but by the end of the century oil, turned into gasoline, powered up engines. With the spread of economical gas cars and electricity, society’s energy use rapidly increased. Power plants became massive and power lines stretched out from hundreds of miles between cities, even during The Great Depression. After World War II, the use of energy was quickly doubling every 10 years and it concerned no one.

The electricity market will be analyzed taking electricity retailers in the state of Victoria as players. The key buyers will be taken as industrial, commercial and individual consumers. The key suppliers will be taken as Electricity generators, generating electricity from conventional and unconventional sources of energy.

National Grid is one of the many electric power transmission network and gas companies that serve customers and businesses by using the most reliable and efficiently clean energy for which millions of customers benefit and depend on. The Company has its foundation in the UK and Northeastern US. Its objective is to provide the best performance and reliability to the customers, expand and growth the services throughout many states in the United States. As a whole the company is striving for success by using and developing the talents within the within the organization, new skills and capabilities to compete with others electric companies.

The request of force is heightened in the realm of power. This development of interest triggers a need of more power generation. DG utilizes smaller sized generators than does the ordinary central station plant. Distributed generators are little scale generators found near purchasers; regularly Distributed Generators are of 1 kW to 100 MW [1].

Electricity is a problematic commodity. Unlike other goods and services—be those vaccines, education or tennis rackets—the life of electricity is transient and without technology capable of storing it, supply must meet demand instantaneously. Due to the inherently unreliable nature of demand forecasts (e.g. an unexpected cold front leads to a demand spike as people turn on their heaters), the grid must also have the capacity to reach peak demand at all times. In addition to these complicated physical problems, the location of New Zealand’s largest demand centres compared largest generation centres means there are several infrastructural issues as well. This essay will briefly examine the industry’s regulatory history and discern how the Commerce Act 1986 fits into this regulatory context. The ability of Part 2 to control generators in net-pivotal situations will also be briefly scrutinized.

The energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but it can be converted from one form to another. Electrical energy is widely used in day to day life in various applications. The generation of as electrical energy is nothing but the conversion of various other forms of energy into electrical energy. This generated energy is demanded by the consumers. There are three main parts of power system network: Generation, Transmission and Distribution.

Electric power transmission or "high-voltage electric transmission" is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to substations located near population centers. This is distinct from the local wiring between high-voltage substations and customers, which is typically referred to as electric power distribution. Transmission lines, when interconnected with each other, become high-voltage transmission networks. In the US, these are typically referred to as "power grids" or just "the grid", while in the UK the network is

The revenue generated from providing a unit of electricity to the average end consumer varies by region. The