Comment Centralised vs Distributed (Score 2, Insightful) 389
A Global power grid makes a lot of sense, power requirements vary greatly during the day and distributing a grid across a large number of time zones would even things out. If you studied the power usage you would see changes in the flow as what would ordinarily be peak time moves across Asia then Europe and onto the American continents (You would get some drop of during peak time over the pacific, not a lot of people their at the moment).
Of course a fully distributed power network makes a whole lot of sense as well, anyone looking at the recent power blackout could tell you that. If a connected system is poorly designed a breakdown in one place affects everywhere. A distributed power generation and/or storage system solves this but at increased cost.
The critical facts are:
Storing power always costs and always will, it's way better to use it when you generate it.
Overly redundant generation capacity to handle peaks costs
In the aftermath of the big blackout it was inevitable we would see loads of "solutions" appear to the problem but nothing I've seen really address these underlying issues. We want power cheaper and widespread linkup of our grids is the way to do it.
There is no perfect solution, if a power station goes down someone is probably going to loose power, limiting the affect is a matter of good design, lets not rebuild the world because of a 24hr blackout.
Of course a fully distributed power network makes a whole lot of sense as well, anyone looking at the recent power blackout could tell you that. If a connected system is poorly designed a breakdown in one place affects everywhere. A distributed power generation and/or storage system solves this but at increased cost.
The critical facts are:
Storing power always costs and always will, it's way better to use it when you generate it.
Overly redundant generation capacity to handle peaks costs
In the aftermath of the big blackout it was inevitable we would see loads of "solutions" appear to the problem but nothing I've seen really address these underlying issues. We want power cheaper and widespread linkup of our grids is the way to do it.
There is no perfect solution, if a power station goes down someone is probably going to loose power, limiting the affect is a matter of good design, lets not rebuild the world because of a 24hr blackout.
