#transmission lines

[mostlythemarsh]

Corridor

[technological-existentialism]

[gorgoph]

[pinkblanc]

Niagra Power Transmission, 1894-1897

[genderlesseltrichentity]

my aesthetics are so fried bruh this shit is beautiful

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

The Grain Belt Express, a $7 billion transmission line project that’s been more than a decade in development, has won conditional approval for a $4.9 billion federal loan guarantee.

The Grain Belt Express could enable 5 gigawatts’ worth of affordable, clean power to be developed on the windswept and sun-soaked Kansas plains and then delivered to customers in Missouri, Illinois, and broader eastern U.S. power markets. If finalized, the federal backing would help push the sorely needed transmission project over the finish line.

The proposed loan guarantee is the latest in a string of Biden administration actions aimed at bolstering the U.S. power grid. The country needs to rapidly build high-voltage transmission lines in order to accommodate new solar and wind power, reduce grid congestion that’s driving up electricity rates, and improve power system reliability in the face of extreme weather events.

Whether the Grain Belt Express will be able to make use of this financial support is unclear, however. Last week’s conditional commitment from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) may ultimately depend on whether the Trump administration decides to follow through with it.

The LPO has played a major role in the Biden administration’s clean energy agenda, announcing about $37 billion in loans and loan guarantees over the past four years. Recipients include electric vehicle and battery factories; battery mineral mining, processing, and recycling facilities; distributed solar and battery deployments; EV charging projects; makers of alternative aviation fuels; clean-hydrogen production plants;and the owner of a shuttered nuclear power plant in Michigan that hopes to restart it.

Roughly $25 billion of those commitments have yet to be finalized and contracted by the DOE, according to a late November tally from Politico. The LPO has been sprinting to complete these contracts in case the incoming Trump administration opts to freeze any in-progress loan agreements.

Many of the projects backed by the LPO are in Republican congressional districts, Politico reported. That includes the Grain Belt Express, which plans to use its conditional loan guarantee to finance the first phase of its 5-gigawatt high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line — a 578-mile stretch from southwestern Kansas to Missouri. 

[d33rdaughter]

“you get it! there’s just something about driving or walking around and seeing them high in the clouds watching over you, like they’re literally angels, but better in a way because we made them they’re so human, and especially when you aren’t religious because inanimate intimate metal structures who watch over us and communicate are my angels yk, the same way certain rays of light are inherently angelic. angels are all around us and they’re human ideas and creations. i don’t believe in gods but i believe in them and it’s beautiful. angels are machines.”

-me to my friend as we discussed transmission towers/pylons and the wonders and intimacy of personifying things | my boyfriend is a radio tower and i’m going to go kiss him soon

[countryofthecanyons]

Closeup of the electrical transmission lines. I assume these are the sort of things that spark our wildfires, so they shut off our electricity to hopefully prevent fires. I guess its not only us who can prevent forest fires.

[azukilynn]

[mostlythemarsh]

Mediate

[technological-existentialism]

created by beings of higher power. carrying messages on one linear path. are transmission towers angels?

[gorgoph]

[pinkblanc]

Thomas U-966 insulated lines on the Niagra Power Transmission, 1901

[saurabh-03]

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

The two grid operators providing power to the Midwestern U.S. are proposing to build $1.7 billion worth of new transmission lines to bridge the ​“seam” between their networks. The move could unlock huge amounts of clean power and potentially serve as a template that other parts of the country can follow to build more of the power lines the U.S. needs to meet its clean energy goals.

Last week, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP) filed plans with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking permission to undertake what SPP’s filing describes as ​“an unprecedented, innovative, and proactive collaboration” between the two grid operators.

The so-called Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue (JTIQ) process has been in the works since 2020, when MISO and SPP pledged to team up to identify transmission projects that could bring value to customers along the border separating the two grid operators’ territories.

That border stretches from Canada to Louisiana and passes through the Great Plains, the most productive part of the country for generating wind power, as well as the target for an increasing number of solar farms.

But many of those projects are languishing in the lengthy interconnection process. The five new joint transmission projects proposed as part of JTIQ, which would connect the two grid systems across the part of their border highlighted in yellow on the map [above], could help ease interconnection for 28 to 53 gigawatts’ worth of projects planned in the region, according to a joint presentation from the two grid operators.

This gap in cross-border transmission capacity is a well-known problem. And multiple studies conducted by grid operators, government agencies, universities, and independent analysts have shown that the cost of building new power lines to close that gap would be more than paid for by their long-term value to the grid: namely their ability to cut congestion and enable more cheap, clean energy to come online.