ADC energy. More efficient electricity transmission?

[BeyondKnowledge]

NASA has recently published a report on ADC energy transmission. It proposes the transmission of DC electricity on the regular AC electricity grid.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/2023...-Final.pdf

As shown in the paper, it does in fact eliminate the disadvantages of the losses due to energy conversion from DC to AC and then back again. The problem is this advantage is only short lived. It fails to consider that over long distances, AC is much better because it can be easily changed to much higher voltages but the low voltage DC cannot.

To transmit electrical power over a long distance, the voltage is increased to reduce the current the wire needs to handle. The voltage of the wire is dependent only on the insulation of the wire. The current of the wire is dependent on the physical diameter of the wire. This means that if a wire can handle 30 amps, it doesn't care if it is 12 volts DC, 120 volts AC, or 12,000 Volts AC.

Power is the energy that can be used and measured in electricity. It is dependent on the voltage and current available. In the voltages listed above the 120 VAC power is roughly 10 times what is available from the 12 VDC source and 1/100 of what is available from the 12,000 VAC source. The problem is all these three examples will heat the wire they are traveling through to the same amount at the same current. You either have to go up with the voltage or go up with the wire size to get the same power out of the transmission system.

The power available from the low voltage DC is not readily changeable to higher voltage DC without the lossy conversion systems the ADC transmission is proposed to eliminate.

It is still more efficient to make the low voltage DC into AC for transmission because the voltage is easily increased many fold to transmit it long distances. By long distances I am meaning more than a couple of miles. What percentage of homes and businesses are located within a couple of miles of a wind farm or solar farm? Very few.

In the paper from NASA, they have proven in a lab that ADC power distribution works in short distances. They never consulted an electrician about any distances involved in the real world.

In my opinion, this is just another case of the highly educated idiots making something look good on paper that would work better as a paper airplane. It could be useful in small niche applications but not on the general electrical power grid.

I am not saying NASA is dumb but they put electronics engineers on an electrical engineering problem an came up with a mostly useless answer.

Any discussion?

[FlyingClayDisk]

Any discussion?

Discussion?  In a word?  WOW!!

"Wow", not because I am impressed, but "Wow" because just about the time I started having some hope for humanity, then I read something like this!  Wow!

First of all, the simple fact that NASA (a government body I've worked with for decades) allowed their name to be plastered all over a piece of absolute garbage like this...cheap leftist 'advertisement' (about the only words I can think of without swearing) is shocking.  It reads like it was written by a 12 year old, or worse.  The person who wrote this should be fired, erm, put in a NASA rocket and launched into the Sun.  I don't know what purpose this paper was drafted for, but if this is something to be presented to some congressional committee then God help us all!

There's more bullsh!t in the first (5) pages of that paper than I've seen in a very long while.  I didn't even get through page #1 before I was ready to punch my monitor.  I was angry by the end of the 1st bullet point!  Candidly, it's actually difficult for me to decide where to begin; there's just so much wrong with this.  I am truly having a difficult time responding without just endless strings of expletives.  None the less, I will try.

When Obama first took office, in addition to giving people free cell phones, he gave away trillions of taxpayer dollars to flim-flam fly by night outfits for all manner of solar and wind energy.  Every carpet-bagging thief on the planet started slapping up solar arrays and wind turbines of all manner and type, virtually destroying the American landscape.  GAH!!  (pardon me while I go outside and just scream for a while)  America's IQ must have dropped into the single digits when all this took place.

The problem with all of this "renewable energy" as it is so lovingly called is that the power, often generated in DC, was being generated where the consumers of that power were NOT.  For some incomprehensible reason no one seemed to care about this 'minor' little oversight.  So, what's the problem you ask?  Well, the power distribution grid in this country isn't set up like that, for one thing.  It is not set up to move all of this 'fabulous' "free energy" from where it is being generated to where it is being consumed.  So what happened next?  Answer - The wind farms and solar arrays got 'parked' (shut down).  Trillions of dollars of taxpayer dollars got shut down and just stopped while they sat there deteriorating in the elements waiting for a power distribution grid to come to them so they could do their job.  But that grid never came.  Why?  Because it would be Biblically expensive to do so.  (pardon me while I go outside and just scream some more!).  So, upwards of 75% of all that money got flushed directly down the TOILET!  YOUR MONEY!

The lofty "ADC" proposal which we see here is a desperate attempt at bilking some more money out of this same tired and unworkable trope.  And the hell of it is...they're not even trying to hide it!!!  They come right out and say it's "Proprietary" technology (which means ONLY THEY can sell it to you), and it is aimed squarely at addressing the exact issues I point out above.  How positively vomit-worthy.

Wind turbines and photo-voltaic arrays generate DC power.  Okay, so then what?  Well, that power either has to be stored (batteries like that are unimaginably expensive and short lived), OR it has to be converted to AC for transmission across our power grid.  Yes, it could be transmitted in its direct current form, but only for short distances (very).  Why?  Because the DC voltages generated are very low comparatively speaking, and DC is notorious for voltage drop across distance.  The only way to avoid this problem is to convert this DC power to extremely high DC voltages (something we already do on some high voltage cross-country transmission lines) (not all power distribution is AC, BTW).  Voltages far higher than any of these devices can generate.  The problem there is, these conversion systems are astronomically expensive (something NASA should know a thing or two about, being the space wizards they are).  This is why there are very few of these systems in the US.  In fact, I can count them on one hand; that's how few of them there are, and that's how expensive they are.  This "ADC" solution is a "Smoke & Mirrors" attempt to solve this problem.  It is a desperate and feeble attempt by the leftist "green" community to SAVE FACE and redeem themselves after the debacle which fleeced America once already, by fleecing them a second time!  GAWD DAMMIT!!!

I am sorry.  I simply cannot go on here.  I'm just too angry to continue.  Not only has my intelligence been severely insulted, no "assaulted" is a better word, but so too has everyone else's wallet who believes in garbage like this.

Please forgive me.  I think I'll just go cry.

[Waterglass]

Discussion?  In a word?  WOW!!

"Wow", not because I am impressed, but "Wow" because just about the time I started having some hope for humanity, then I read something like this!  Wow!

First of all, the simple fact that NASA (a government body I've worked with for decades) allowed their name to be plastered all over a piece of absolute garbage like this...cheap leftist 'advertisement' (about the only words I can think of without swearing) is shocking.  It reads like it was written by a 12 year old, or worse.  The person who wrote this should be fired, erm, put in a NASA rocket and launched into the Sun.  I don't know what purpose this paper was drafted for, but if this is something to be presented to some congressional committee then God help us all!

There's more bullsh!t in the first (5) pages of that paper than I've seen in a very long while.  I didn't even get through page #1 before I was ready to punch my monitor.  I was angry by the end of the 1st bullet point!  Candidly, it's actually difficult for me to decide where to begin; there's just so much wrong with this.  I am truly having a difficult time responding without just endless strings of expletives.  None the less, I will try.

When Obama first took office, in addition to giving people free cell phones, he gave away trillions of taxpayer dollars to flim-flam fly by night outfits for all manner of solar and wind energy.  Every carpet-bagging thief on the planet started slapping up solar arrays and wind turbines of all manner and type, virtually destroying the American landscape.  GAH!!  (pardon me while I go outside and just scream for a while)  America's IQ must have dropped into the single digits when all this took place.

The problem with all of this "renewable energy" as it is so lovingly called is that the power, often generated in DC, was being generated where the consumers of that power were NOT.  For some incomprehensible reason no one seemed to care about this 'minor' little oversight.  So, what's the problem you ask?  Well, the power distribution grid in this country isn't set up like that, for one thing.  It is not set up to move all of this 'fabulous' "free energy" from where it is being generated to where it is being consumed.  So what happened next?  Answer - The wind farms and solar arrays got 'parked' (shut down).  Trillions of dollars of taxpayer dollars got shut down and just stopped while they sat there deteriorating in the elements waiting for a power distribution grid to come to them so they could do their job.  But that grid never came.  Why?  Because it would be Biblically expensive to do so.  (pardon me while I go outside and just scream some more!).  So, upwards of 75% of all that money got flushed directly down the TOILET!  YOUR MONEY!

The lofty "ADC" proposal which we see here is a desperate attempt at bilking some more money out of this same tired and unworkable trope.  And the hell of it is...they're not even trying to hide it!!!  They come right out and say it's "Proprietary" technology (which means ONLY THEY can sell it to you), and it is aimed squarely at addressing the exact issues I point out above.  How positively vomit-worthy.

Wind turbines and photo-voltaic arrays generate DC power.  Okay, so then what?  Well, that power either has to be stored (batteries like that are unimaginably expensive and short lived), OR it has to be converted to AC for transmission across our power grid.  Yes, it could be transmitted in its direct current form, but only for short distances (very).  Why?  Because the DC voltages generated are very low comparatively speaking, and DC is notorious for voltage drop across distance.  The only way to avoid this problem is to convert this DC power to extremely high DC voltages (something we already do on some high voltage cross-country transmission lines) (not all power distribution is AC, BTW).  Voltages far higher than any of these devices can generate.  The problem there is, these conversion systems are astronomically expensive (something NASA should know a thing or two about, being the space wizards they are).  This is why there are very few of these systems in the US.  In fact, I can count them on one hand; that's how few of them there are, and that's how expensive they are.  This "ADC" solution is a "Smoke & Mirrors" attempt to solve this problem.  It is a desperate and feeble attempt by the leftist "green" community to SAVE FACE and redeem themselves after the debacle which fleeced America once already, by fleecing them a second time!  GAWD DAMMIT!!!

I am sorry.  I simply cannot go on here.  I'm just too angry to continue.  Not only has my intelligence been severely insulted, no "assaulted" is a better word, but so too has everyone else's wallet who believes in garbage like this.

Please forgive me.  I think I'll just go cry.

Clay:

"The problem with all of this "renewable energy" as it is so lovingly called is that the power, often generated in DC, was being generated where the consumers of that power were NOT.  For some incomprehensible reason no one seemed to care about this 'minor' little oversight." 

I never thought twice about commercial solar and wind DC power as I though all had some type of commerical grade Inverter for the electricity to be transferred to the grid. Same for solar that is generated by a residential home and sent back to the grid when not needed? This paper addresses the inefficiency of the current setup. 

So your write are you claiming that said electricity from both Wind and Solar commercial "farms" being dumped into the electrical grid as DC in 2024? I think not. 

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-...acturers/#

Have I read you correctly as were all about Deny Ignorance here along with a side woo woo sauce.

[FlyingClayDisk]

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When all the 'free money' grants ran out, all these carpet-bagging thieves vanished into the woodwork like the carpet-bagging thieves they are!  So now...even if people wanted to try to repair some of this aging infrastructure, they can't.  Why?  Because the companies who manufacture the parts for all  this stuff have all disappeared (probably also on the taxpayer nickel), declared bankruptcy, and abandoned the cash cow federal government like a bunch of rats from a sinking ship!

The amount of theft and graft which happened through all of this is almost unimaginable!  Trillions upon trillions of dollars wasted.  Right...down...the...toilet.

And who's going to clean all this stuff up?  This blight on the entire American countryside?  Guess who?  YOU ARE!  Get out your checkbook...and bend over!  They aren't even going to take the sand out of the vaseline this time!  You'll be lucky if they use vaseline at all!

If there's even one single positive thing to be found in this ADC concept (and it's microscopic), I will give somebody credit for at least recognizing the colossal blunder that is 'renewable energy' in this country and putting forth a proposal, fatally flawed as it is, to do something about it.  Aside from that, my hope for humanity has been severely dashed and left mortally wounded.

Folks, I've not only seen this take place, I've been an unwilling participant in this unimaginable charade.  I've lived it.  I know of what I speak.

---

Clay:

"The problem with all of this "renewable energy" as it is so lovingly called is that the power, often generated in DC, was being generated where the consumers of that power were NOT.  For some incomprehensible reason no one seemed to care about this 'minor' little oversight." 

I never thought twice about commercial solar and wind DC power as I though all had some type of commerical grade Inverter for the electricity to be transferred to the grid. Same for solar that is generated by a residential home and sent back to the grid when not needed? This paper addresses the inefficiency of the current setup. 

So your write are you claiming that said electricity from both Wind and Solar commercial "farms" being dumped into the electrical grid as DC in 2024? I think not. 

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/u-...acturers/#

Have I read you correctly as were all about Deny Ignorance here along with a side woo woo sauce.

It's NOT being dumped into the electrical grid, and that's the point.  It can't be!  That's the whole point.

The systems you refer to are residential stuff (more smoke & mirrors for different post).  The stuff I'm talking about is the monster commercial solar arrays and wind farms.  Much different proposition.

[Waterglass]

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When all the 'free money' grants ran out, all these carpet-bagging thieves vanished into the woodwork like the carpet-bagging thieves they are!  So now...even if people wanted to try to repair some of this aging infrastructure, they can't.  Why?  Because the companies who manufacture the parts for all  this stuff have all disappeared (probably also on the taxpayer nickel), declared bankruptcy, and abandoned the cash cow federal government like a bunch of rats from a sinking ship!

The amount of theft and graft which happened through all of this is almost unimaginable!  Trillions upon trillions of dollars wasted.  Right...down...the...toilet.

And who's going to clean all this stuff up?  This blight on the entire American countryside?  Guess who?  YOU ARE!  Get out your checkbook...and bend over!  They aren't even going to take the sand out of the vaseline this time!  You'll be lucky if they use vaseline at all!

If there's even one single positive thing to be found in this ADC concept (and it's microscopic), I will give somebody credit for at least recognizing the colossal blunder that is 'renewable energy' in this country and putting forth a proposal, fatally flawed as it is, to do something about it.  Aside from that, my hope for humanity has been severely dashed and left mortally wounded.

Folks, I've not only seen this take place, I've been an unwilling participant in this unimaginable charade.  I've lived it.  I know of what I speak.

---

It's NOT being dumped into the electrical grid, and that's the point.  It can't be!  That's the whole point.

The systems you refer to are residential stuff (more smoke & mirrors for different post).  The stuff I'm talking about is the monster commercial solar arrays and wind farms.  Much different proposition.

Commercial Farms along with Residential use Inverters. NASA is pointing out their inefficiencies along with dirty electricity [noise] from same.

[FlyingClayDisk]

Commercial Farms along with Residential use Inverters. NASA is pointing out their inefficiencies along with dirty electricity [noise] from same.

I understand this.  But that's not the larger picture...if you read the entire paper.

BTW - "NASA" isn't pointing out anything in this paper.  "NASA" just allowed their name to be put on an advertisement from ADC Energy, to lend it an air of credibility.

edit - Yes, the paper does talk about harmonic noise, but that is secondary to the main thrust which is DC power being carried on AC distribution infrastructure.

edit II - And yes, I also realize that inverters are used on commercial solar and wind farms.  This doesn't change the fact that the distribution grids where this power is being generated are not suitable for transporting this power to where it is being consumed.  These inverters aren't transforming this power into distribution grade AC, and that's the point.  Yes, they convert to AC, but they don't convert the power to anywhere near the voltages required for distribution.  Why?  Because it's too expensive. 

The argument being presented here is that this power can be left in its native DC state and then traverse the same infrastructure as the AC distribution grid to avoid this problem.  ...but only if we buy their fancy, and proprietary, ADC widget.

And yes, ...all about Denying Ignorance.

Trust me, I've been involved in the engineering and construction of some of the largest solar arrays in the western United States (as much as I hate to even admit this, and am shamed by it).  I know exactly how it all works.  Exactly.  I also know how and where it all fails...and why.  Exactly.

[FlyingClayDisk]

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You know, I grew up in the great State of Wyoming, a place with absolutely majestic vistas in every direction for hundreds of miles.  A place where there is more wildlife than about any other place in the US save for maybe Alaska or Montana.  Well, that's how it was before all this "renewable energy" came along.

Now that once majestic landscape has been DECIMATED by wind farms as far as the eye can see.  Every hilltop has thousands of wind turbines blighting the once beautiful landscape.  And you know what is the most frustrating thing of all???  They're all "parked".  Not a turbine spinning, and do you know why?  Because of exactly what I'm talking about here.  It would be one thing if all these thousands of wind turbines were saving America, and stomping out the lefties precious "carbon footprint", if they were contributing to some good for this farce of "Climate Change", that would be one thing.  BUT THEY AREN'T...THEY'RE ALL JUST STOPPED.  They are stopped because there is nowhere to send the power they generate.  They can't.  So they pin them in place so they won't spin, and they just sit there idle in the sun, and wind, and snow and rain...forever.  They've been like this for over a decade now.

And if all this wasn't bad enough, do you think they'd stop building more???  NOPE!  They still build more of these damn things!  It's absolutely incomprehensible, the stupidity is just off the end of the stupid scale!

And why is all of this?  One...simple...reason.  Because there is no cost effective way to get all the power these things generate from where they are to where the people are who consume all this energy.  Places like California, Chicago, New York, and even where I live in Colorado just 100 miles away.

It's all just window dressing, but with a price tag which would bring even God himself to his knees.  And, it's sad.  Very sad.

Am I mad?  Damn straight I'm mad!  I'm HOPPIN" MAD about it, and I'm  smart enough to tell people about it too!

If you search biased search engines like Google you'll find all sorts of glowing reports about wind turbine generation in Wyoming.  Even if you ask the question "why are none of them turning?".  Every single search result will refuse to answer this question and instead tell you all about their "capacity".  This 'capacity' is IRRELEVANT if they're not doing anything (insert multiple expletives here!)!!!

These companies were all supposed to have de-commissioning plans, but none of them did before most of these were built.  How convenient!!  So now, WE all paid for all these things, and they never generated one watt of power, and now WE taxpayers are going to have to pay to tear them all down...only to turn around and PAY to build new ones.  Why?  Just look it up!  Because most of these systems were built by companies which are no longer in business so there are no replacement parts to refurbish them.

It's almost too unimaginable to believe, isn't it?  Sadly though, it's all true.

Here's Quora link for your reading pleasure.  You will see lots of apologists and excuse makers defending this colossal waste here too, but it hits at the heart of the issue.  You'll see words like "lack of distribution", "obsolete", "lack of maintenance", and on and on.  These companies took the money, built the turbines and left (with the money).  Not one of these firms, not a single one, gave flying fuck about "renewable" ANYTHING!!  All they cared about was "FREE MONEY!!!"  Now they got their money, the bank accounts ran dry...and THEY'RE GONE!  Nowhere to be found. 

Bueller?  Bueller???  (that might actually have been funny if it wasn't so evil and twisted, so sad...and so TRUE!)

P.S. - And don't even get me started on solar, and/or solar arrays!!!  That would be a post so long that the hosting servers would explode!!!

---

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How's that for some 'discussion', OP?  LOL!!

BTW - I agree with you.  Just in case it wasn't clear.

[MykeNukem]

NASA has recently published a report on ADC energy transmission. It proposes the transmission of DC electricity on the regular AC electricity grid.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/2023...-Final.pdf

As shown in the paper, it does in fact eliminate the disadvantages of the losses due to energy conversion from DC to AC and then back again. The problem is this advantage is only short lived. It fails to consider that over long distances, AC is much better because it can be easily changed to much higher voltages but the low voltage DC cannot.

To transmit electrical power over a long distance, the voltage is increased to reduce the current the wire needs to handle. The voltage of the wire is dependent only on the insulation of the wire. The current of the wire is dependent on the physical diameter of the wire. This means that if a wire can handle 30 amps, it doesn't care if it is 12 volts DC, 120 volts AC, or 12,000 Volts AC.

Power is the energy that can be used and measured in electricity. It is dependent on the voltage and current available. In the voltages listed above the 120 VAC power is roughly 10 times what is available from the 12 VDC source and 1/100 of what is available from the 12,000 VAC source. The problem is all these three examples will heat the wire they are traveling through to the same amount at the same current. You either have to go up with the voltage or go up with the wire size to get the same power out of the transmission system.

The power available from the low voltage DC is not readily changeable to higher voltage DC without the lossy conversion systems the ADC transmission is proposed to eliminate.

It is still more efficient to make the low voltage DC into AC for transmission because the voltage is easily increased many fold to transmit it long distances. By long distances I am meaning more than a couple of miles. What percentage of homes and businesses are located within a couple of miles of a wind farm or solar farm? Very few.

In the paper from NASA, they have proven in a lab that ADC power distribution works in short distances. They never consulted an electrician about any distances involved in the real world.

In my opinion, this is just another case of the highly educated idiots making something look good on paper that would work better as a paper airplane. It could be useful in small niche applications but not on the general electrical power grid.

I am not saying NASA is dumb but they put electronics engineers on an electrical engineering problem an came up with a mostly useless answer.

Any discussion?

My first thoughts on this:

I thought this was already hashed out between Tesla and Edison?

Nothing has changed with the physics.

 

[FlyingClayDisk]

My first thoughts on this:

I thought this was already hashed out between Tesla and Edison?

Nothing has changed with the physics.

 

Yep, And a very interesting chapter in history this was too, when you look back at the history of it all.  At the time, Edison prevailed, but maybe not for the reasons he should have.  That's not to say it wasn't the correct decision, in retrospect.  But Tesla had a pretty compelling case back in the day and it really could have gone either way.  Edison had a lot more 'stroke' than Tesla did, and Tesla had a lot of other more kooky fringe ideas which negatively affected his reputation.  On the municipal power front, Edison came off as the 'scientist' and Tesla came off as the 'mad scientist', and ultimately this is why AC was chosen over Tesla's favored DC solution.  Remember, at the time, neither type of commercial power existed at all.

And you're right, nothing has changed with the physics.

[MykeNukem]

Yep, And a very interesting chapter in history this was too, when you look back at the history of it all.  At the time, Edison prevailed, but maybe not for the reasons he should have.  That's not to say it wasn't the correct decision, in retrospect.  But Tesla had a pretty compelling case back in the day and it really could have gone either way.  Edison had a lot more 'stroke' than Tesla did, and Tesla had a lot of other more kooky fringe ideas which negatively affected his reputation.  On the municipal power front, Edison came off as the 'scientist' and Tesla came off as the 'mad scientist', and ultimately this is why AC was chosen over Tesla's favored DC solution.  Remember, at the time, neither type of commercial power existed at all.

And you're right, nothing has changed with the physics.

Tesla and Westinghouse won with AC.

Not Edison who was promoting DC.

War of the Currents