DOE Needs to support Development of Underground Transmission

We are in desperate need of American innovation to counter the virtual ownership of HVDC technology by European and Japanese companies. I am aware of three great American Innovations that could put us back in the lead on HVDC technology. The first is cold cathode vacuum tubes, the invention of Curtis Birnbach, who I know. Curtis told me he refused to talk to Steven Chu; if that is true, congratulations to DOE for recognizing the importance of cold cathode vacuum tubes, and I'm sorry that Curtis has his own plan that does not involve DOE. 

(Curtis once threatened to sue me for mentioning his cold cathode vacuum tube patents in one of my blog posts.)

Now here is the crux issue I want to convey: DOE recognized the importance of the cold cathode vacuum tube (I claim) because it involves new material science, about which DOE has an institutional excitement. Similarly both Type 1 and Type 2 superconducting cables have gotten a lot of support because of the high tech materials & processing angle. The shadow side of this "new materials" enthusiasm at DOE is that important innovations that do NOT require new materials are neglected. My invention elpipes is just such an innovation, and it addresses an immensely important problem (how can we build an underground supergrid?) for which there are only 3 feasible generic solutions for high capacity (>10GW) power lines:

1. Superconducting Lines: Both MgB2 (the only Type 1 superconductor that can be cooled with liquid hydrogen rather than liquid helium) and Type 2 ceramic superconductors (HTS) lines have received substantial DOE funding, but neither can be voltage compatible with an HVDC supergrid that also also includes cables and overhead lines. Due to heat transfer limitations at the junctions to conventional conductors, max voltage in a superconducting line is ~130kV, so a superconducting supergrid would not be voltage compatible with current HVDC technology. Apparently, this was DOE's American Alternative to an HVDC supergrid. I hope it happens some day, but it is not ready for prime time yet. And since DOE abandoned that approach two years ago, what have they done to support development of high capacity underground conductors since then?
2. Gas Insulated Lines GIL: I have spoken extensively to Herman Koch of Siemens & Mel Hopkins of AZZ Technology about HVDC GIL (which does not exist today); particle drift and the difficulty of particle capture are two well known un-solved problems with HVDC GIL; another is that this would imply a huge increase in worldwide sulfur hexafluoride usage (SF6 is an extremely potent & long-lived greenhouse gas); and another problem: an 800kV GIL line will be ~1.5 meters in diameter. HVDC GIL technology is not proven, and would be difficult to install because of its size. DOE did support research on GIL when it first came out of MIT; the technology is in the commercial domain now for high voltage AC, and it is not receiving further DOE support to develop HVDC lines.
3. Polymer Insulated Lines: Elpipes are my version of a segmented polymer insulated line. Polymer-insulated lines comprised of sodium conductor co-extruded with a polymeric insulation have also been proposed. It is so far impossible to create a single layer polymer extrusion that can resist 800kV (which looks to be the optimum voltage for a supergrid), and elpipes enable more complex fabricated insulation. Elpipes have the distinct advantages of being modular, repairable, and even upgradable. Elpipes can also be operated so that every module is inspected & repaired or upgraded every five years; this routine maintenance capability is a unique feature of elpipes compared to any other underground or overhead transmission option.

Both superconducting lines and GIL got DOE support in the past. Both are dead ends as far as building continental-scale supergrids in the next 30 years. Elpipes have gotten zero DOE support, yet they are the only viable power line capable of carrying 30 GW while being passively cooled. I note that I applied (concept papers) twice for ARPA-E funding on elpipes; my co-applicants included Alcoa, Professors Marcus Zahn from MIT and J. Keith Nelson from Renselaer, and Isidor Sauers from ORNL among others. Why was I not encouraged after my concept papers were received by ARPA-E? To a very important degree, I think it is because elpipes looked not very sexy to the reviewers, since there was nothing really new and interesting. I counter that some of the most valuable inventions are precisely this type: combinations of known technology. And this is not going to be funded by industry, even though all the components are prior art; the risk of getting the assembly to work is a very complex endeavor and therefore too risky for industry. 

I could understand if DOE was actively backing some other concept for high capacity underground transmission, but they are not doing that. What is the alternative vision DOE has been supporting? In effect, the plan appears to be to shove a whole lot of overhead 800kV HVDC lines down the public’s throat...how is that going to work out? We NEED a way to build the supergrid based on underground conductors, and as of today, my elpipes are the best solution. This has grid security advantages as well as being the low cost way to enable a renewable energy based economy. The supergrid cannot happen politically if it is based on overhead lines. The supergrid cannot happen economically and in terms of reliability if it is based on cables. Is it that hard to see that development of elpipes or something functionally equivalent should be a national priority?

Importance of Multi-Terminal HVDC Loops for High Penetration of Renewable Electricity into the Grid

Prepared for The Energy Collective (March 27, 2013). Re-posted here on April 25, 2013. The version below is edited slightly;  if you want to read the original post, go here.

Importance of Multi-Terminal HVDC Loops for High Penetration of Renewable Electricity into the Grid

I do a lot of thinking about what practical steps are needed to break our addiction to fossil fuels, and this leads me to think that electric power transmission is the (not  very sexy) key enabler for non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar to become the basis of our energy economy. Local and especially off-grid wind and solar generators are very unreliable (because the wind and sunlight available vary so much), and if power is to be available 24/7 energy storage and/or back-up generation are required. In aggregate, the cost and environmental damage from all the storage and backup generators that would be needed to enable off-grid renewable energy-based electrical systems to replace our grid are much higher than if distant generators can share their power via a supergrid.

The case for a supergrid is very sensibly made by several organizations, including Global Energy Network Institute and Friends of the Supergrid for example; one of the key problems with the supergrid concept is that the full benefits are not obtained until the system is complete, because the crux idea of a continental-scale supergrid is to be able to support inter-regional transmission on a massive scale (hundreds of gigawatts, GW must be transmitted thousands of km) so that the aggregate reliability of wind and solar are greatly improved, because generators in different weather regions can share capacity. Since weather systems are typically ~2500 km (~1500 miles) across, the supergrid does not begin to fulfill its potential until it is quite large, after many billions of dollars have been invested. This factor is very much holding up practical movement towards a supergrid, and what we are currently getting instead is a patchwork of transmission upgrades that are economically inefficient point-to-point connections which will not later fit in as components of a future supergrid. The fact that all these new power lines cannot later serve as components of a supergrid actually decreases the probability that a supergrid will ultimately be built (because we will have spent so much money on the wrong technologies). I argue therefore that it is quite important to start building power system upgrades that will make sense as parts of a supergrid in the future. This implies that a common operating voltage for the supergrid must be defined (probably between 600-800kV DC), and that high capacity lines that serve multiple power taps (multi-terminal HVDC) must become the new norm.

(To consider all the options and trade-offs for creating a supergrid requires a deep dive into power transmission technology, for which I recommend reading Appendix A of my NYSERDA grant application on “Using Electric Pipelines to Create a Regional HVDC Grid.” I hope to tease out this information in a series of blog posts on this site, beginning with this post about the next logical steps towards a supergrid, but for those who are sufficiently interested, this linked document should be very helpful.)

One of the paramount properties of an electric grid is reliability. In fact, the “three R’s” of an electric grid are reliability, redundancy, and repairability. Redundancy has been formalized in a set of rules that have been accepted worldwide by both CIGRE (international standards) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC); one of the most fundamental rules is that the grid must be able to withstand the sudden outage of any given power line without experiencing a system collapse; this is known as the “n-1 rule” and limits the maximum power that can safely be carried by any single grid-connected power line. Typically, two independent connections are required before a large amount of transmission can flow between two points on the grid according to the n-1 rule. This has huge implications for the idea of incrementally building a supergrid, because the large power lines that are needed to create a practical supergrid can not carry their full rated power until enough of the supergrid is completed to provide at least two independent connections between any two major power taps (points where power is sent or received) before that much power can safely be transmitted.

At present, HVDC connections are almost exclusively point-to-point connections, which are severely limited by the n-1 redundancy rule as to how much power can be transmitted. This limitation can be relaxed if instead of power lines, we consider power loops, with on the order of six or more power taps per loop. This is because of the unique property of a power loop that it provides two independent connections between any two points on the loop: a clockwise connection and a counterclockwise connection. In order to be able to take advantage of this intrinsic redundancy, circuit breakers are needed between every next neighbor set of power taps. In the case I presented as an example in my 2009 NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) grant application Using Electric Pipes to Create a Regional HVDC Grid, I presented this map:

Which shows seven power taps at Albany, New York City. Atlanta, Saint Louis, Chicago, Akron, and Buffalo (three are within New York, because I was applying to a New York agency for funding). Logically, a loop of this size would be tied into the AC grid at far more places on the loop than shown in the map above, but that implies higher transmission capacity for the loop than I was contemplating in that 2009 document. The loop would not only link large cities, but also remote energy sites, such as wind farms, hydro power and geothermal energy sites, solar installations, pumped storage and other remote energy storage sites, and maybe also conventional power plants of various kinds that are remotely located. (What I did not consider in detail at that time was the need for DC circuit breakers between each set of power taps; you can read about that problem here.)

The importance of self-redundant loops is that they are the natural “unit cells” of the supergrid. Each loop is self redundant if there are enough circuit breakers (one for each power tap, located between the power taps). I am not alone in advocating for the importance of HVDC loops. Steve Eckroad of EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) also filed a US patent on stabilizing an urban area against a rolling blackout using HVDC multi-terminal loops. Here is an illustration from his patent:

Note that Steve only called for three main loop circuit breakers in his scheme because the available power electronic circuit breakers he envisioned at that time are lossy (~0.5% power loss in the breaker itself) as well as expensive, ~$35/kW, one fourth of the cost of a voltage source converter (VSC) for converting HVAC to HVDC or HVDC to HVAC. Since then though, ABB has announced a breakthrough on HVDC circuit breakers with much lower on state loss (~.005%), but estimated cost about the same as the power electronic circuit breakers that Steve was considering ~$35/kW. My invention that I call a Ballistic Breaker™ can I believe be developed for HVDC applications at much lower cost than ABB’s design.

Key role of Gregor Czisch in the European Supergrid

I commented today on a Yale e-360 interview with Billy Parish, founder of Mosaic, and used it as the occasion to try again to urge FOSG and Desertec to acknowledge their intellectual debt to Gregor Czisch:

Great work. Mosaic appears to be focused on project finance through lending, which escapes the SEC jurisdiction that is currently holding up crowdfunding for startups. Wefunder has been flying a holding pattern for around a year, with that target. Will Mosaic participate in that startup crowdfunding mission once the SEC rules are clear?

Ditto on the mission thing...it is so important to define a specific piece of the puzzle to focus on. Mine is DC power transmission: I have been working on the supergrid HVDC end of that problem for many years (as an inventor/ entrepreneur since 2008; before that as a political advocate). My invention there is the elpipe: a power line designed like a long train that can go underground easily; it has been impossible so far to move elpipes forward with investors or DOE. Lately, my HVDC circuit breaker invention Ballistic Breakers is having success because it is also applicable to medium voltage DC microgrids. But the idea that I burn to move forward is the elpipe; without it or another high capacity underground transmission option, like superconducting lines or sulfur hexafluoride gas insulated lines (GIL), a supergrid is politically impossible in Europe or the US because it would entail >20 new overhead HVDC lines or more than 200 land based cables. An elpipe-based supergrid enables the least costly way in aggregate to build a supergrid (using 30 GW main lines) and to thus get electricity production off of fossil fuels. A supergrid accomplishes this by creating a continental-scale electricity market. (I hope there will be something posted on the supergrid soon on e-360.) This is perhaps most clearly shown in the Ph.D. dissertation of Gregor Czisch (Kassels University, 2005) which lead to the formation of Desertec Consortium and Friends of the Supergrid.

I have taken it on as a personal mission to see that Desertec and Friends of the Supergrid (FOSG) mention the critical role Gregor Czisch played in the inception of the supergrid concept in Europe. These organizations have nothing to lose through attribution, other than possibly finding it harder to justify to not be willing to talk to Gregor. I get riled up about all kinds of injustice, but this is especially important to me because the bad karma and deceitful nature of denying Gregor credit where credit is due is holding up development of the supergrid. Gregor would have been a great panelist or even keynote speaker at one of FOSG or Desertec's conclaves, and his unique perspective would have helped the advocacy process greatly. Because he is not motivated primarily by profit, as are most FOSG members (I am less familiar with Desertec and MedGrid), he is a more credible political advocate; yet he has been pushed aside by FOSG and Desertec.

Peter Meisen, founder of Global Energy Network Institute has been actively advocating for supergrids since 1991, about the same time I was first active in pursuing elpipes politically in Wisconsin, and about the same time Gregor Czisch decided to do his Ph.D. dissertation on a European supergrid. Desertec and FOSG came later, and they got the idea from Gregor; why not just say so? Both Peter Meisen and I came to the supergrid idea through Buckminster Fuller, but Gregor had never heard of Buckminster Fuller; that whole Europen branch of the supergrid sprouted in Gregor's head.

Friends of the Supergrid and Desertec are falsely claiming that no new technologies are needed for a supergrid

I sent this note to Eddie O'Connor today, in response to his April 8 blog post on the UK Feed in Tariff. I like his thinking on that issue, but I think his supergrid advocacy has been trying to sweep a few inconvenient truths under the carpet, as you can see from the comment I posted to Eddie's blog today:


Thanks for the clarity of this post. You see the financial issues very clearly. I have concerns about your supergrid vision however. 

Through FOSG, you have been saying there are no technical reasons that a supergrid could not be built starting today. I do not think that is correct.and you saying that is actually slowing the approach of the day when a supergrid will be built. We need three things we don't have today to build a supergrid:

1) underground conductors that are capable of rapid repair, and can carry 30 GW;
2) HVDC circuit breakers capable of working on these lines;
3) voltage standardization

As you know Eddie, I have really out-of-the box ideas on 30 GW rapidly repairable underground conductors, elpipes (www.elpipe.com) which combine features of a pipeline, a train and a power line. More recently I invented a novel electromechanical HVDC circuit breaker (www.ballisticbreaker.com) which will be capable of protecting a 30 GW elpipe. In order for a supergrid to be built, we need such high capacity circuit breakers to be cheap enough to install hundreds of them for a European Supergrid. Low-loss DC circuit breakers that are also less expensive than ABB's approach to create a hybrid breaker based on power electronics will be needed, whether the supergrid is based on overhead lines, gas insulated lines (GIL) or elpipes. 

By saying that all  technical problems have been solved, you are suppressing vital research that can solve the last remaining technical problems (the ones I have been focusing on). I have presented my technologies to the world in my two PCT patent applications. I have found some backing for the medium voltage DC version of my Ballistic Breaker, but none so far for the HVDC application. So, I'll be able to build a growing company that will eventually be able to make my voice heard by Prime Ministers, as yours is heard today. But that is inefficient for our shared goal of having a viable supergrid in 50 years. I can deliver a workable elpipe in five years for $35 million, but the starting point for that research has been delayed by two years since I first brought my elpipe concept to you. For God's sake man, can you not see the importance of my idea? talk to me.

This is my latest attempt to reach out to Eddie O'Connor. I find it odd that he has never acknowledged any of my attempts to communicate with him. It is similarly odd that Eddie has never acknowledged the link of his supergrid vision back to Gragor Czisch; instead, in one of his speeches  he mentions that the idea "came out of Kassels University." That was Gregor; still a living breathing supergrid activist who you have never agreed to meet. And so too is it with me! Why Eddie? Are you more concerned with creating the Supergrid, or with being the "Father of the Supergrid?" Tease those drives apart; they are incompatible.

When FOSG was founded, I made this public plea for FOSG to work with Peter Meisen of Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) and with Gregor Czisch. Later on, I suggested a Eurasia-Africa supergrid, again suggesting that FOSG work with others and criticizing FOSG, Desertec and others for putting out misleading European Supergrid sketches, showing far fewer connections than would actually be needed with current transmission technology: Subsea cables have a maximum capacity of 2.2 GW, and are very expensive compared to overhead lines or elpipes, and are very difficult and expensive to repair. Overhead lines are strongly opposed politically. The sooner we begin prototype development on elpipes, the sooner we can have a supergrid. Will you help or hinder this, Eddie?

Intermittency of Wind Power & the Supergrid

Any honest conversation of the potential of wind ought to mention the intermittency issue. I believe high wind penetration REQUIRES a supergrid. A weather system is typically ~2500 km across, and to get aggregate reliability from pooled wind generators, the grid must AT LEAST access wind turbines in two major weather systems. Such a large grid can also more easily access remote sites where pumped storage or hydropower with variable output is feasible too. In both North America and Europe, the main hydropower potential is in the north; to balance wind with hydro in both Eurasia and North America will require supergrids that reach far up into the north, and which span several weather systems at any one time.

Letter to Senator Al Franken

Will you be taking any initiatives on clean energy? I know you will be generally supportive, but is there anything you will co-sponsor? I think your influence would be maximized if you bring up something that is really important but which is missing from the current debate. That way, your words drop into a new pool, with a smooth surface where the little ripples are visible. Something co-sponsored by a Republican perhaps? I have my favorite issue, outlined below:

Americans care about both renewable energy and overhead powerlines. We need new powerlines to allow renewable energy to displace fossil fuel. The utilities keep saying they cannot be put underground. This is only true because the utilities nor DOE does anything to develop or study underground options, like elpipes. A little pressure on this could have huge effects by de-bottlenecking remote energy site development across the US.

Concise description of why elpipes can be both reliable and economical

I came close to a deal with ABB on elpipes in September 2010; I needed 3 ABB vice presidents to say yes, and I got 2; was shot down by Willi Paul (ABB Corporate Research; story details and a picture is in this pdf). Willi admitted that ABB will need something to underground a short bit of 800kV lines in order to be able to build them in Europe or the Eastern US, but he said GIL will be easier to develop for 800 kVDC than elpipes, and the ability to reclose quickly will be important. That motivated me to look deeply into GIL.

I sought out Hermann Koch of Siemens, arguably the leading expert on GIL; I met him for 3 hours at the PES General Assembly in July 2011. Hermann does not think GIL at 800kV is workable in Europe, because the 4kV/mm voltage withstand means that at 800kV, GIL needs to be 1.5 meters in diameter. A 12 GW elpipe can be half as large radially (75 cm) as 800kV GIL. Hermann loved the elpipe idea, and tried to help me get a deal with Siemens. Unfortunately, this effort was contemporaneous with the firing of the general manager of the HVDC unit Wilfried Breuer, and just before he was fired, he said no. He was fired for a cost overrun on the cost of developing offshore HVDC for wind farms.

Elpipes follow a new paradigm. They are mass manufactured cars that snap together quickly, and roll under their own power into a conduit, which is identical in its appearance and installation to a gas pipeline (making no sharp corners, like a train track). Elpipes stand on the shoulders of several well-established industries, including metal forming, polymer fabrication, robotic manufacturing, mine trains (for extracting ore from deep inside the earth), high voltage bushings, and the gas pipeline industry. Installing elpipes inside essentially conventional gas pipelines lowers costs because the technologies used are quite mature. Using conventional installation technology also reduces the uncertainty of installation cost. The segments of an elpipe train snap-fit together, then a solder or liquid metal is injected into the conductive splice, and a pressurized dielectric grease is injected into the insulating portion of the snap fit connector. Said grease can of course be designed to crosslink or polymerize, but for the sake of rapid repairability, I think it is best if the joining grease does not cure. I did a paper for the IEEE 2011 Electrical Insulation Conference with Professor Erling Ildstad of NTNU in Trondheim, Norway showing that a special spirally-wound insulation can greatly improve voltage withstand of the insulation, allowing thinner insulation and therefore improved capacity of an elpipe to shed waste heat through the electrical insulation. That paper also showed that 12 GW elpipe can be buried up to two meters deep and still be able to shed its waste heat to the environment.

One key thing I must challenge is the prevalent view among high voltage experts that it is impossible to get the extremely low flaw rate that is needed to allow an elpipe with 50 splices per km to be reliable. The level of reliability needed (flaws in less than 1 in 10^8 joints) is routinely obtained in aircraft, and also in some makes of cars. Who has ever applied the principles of mass manufacturing to HV splices? I propose to transfer splice quality from being workmanship dependent to being addressable by modern factory automation and QC methods. 

All the joints are made and tested at one end of the line, even if the segment is 2000 km long; this means high tech inspection methods can be deployed. In addition, each segment has a brain, and all the brains are connected via an intranet to a controller. Diagnostic software attempts to predict failure, and the movable nature of the elpipe affords an opportunity at least once a day usually, to take half the elpipe out of service for a few hours to swap out any segment showing signs of impending failure. (When one pole is de-energized for maintenance, the other pole remains active with an emergency near ground potential return; one pole can deliver nearly half the power of the bipole, though with double the resistive loss.)

The elpipe train even allows for upgrading transmission capacity over a year or two, by swapping out elpipe segment modules for higher capacity modules in periods of low transmission demand, without ever having to interrupt regular service.

In order for elpipes to move forward, and I believe this to be a critical step for moving away from fossil fuel dependence, the elpipe concept needs a push from people outside the utility industry. This is for multiple reasons, but partly because the utility industry is so risk averse. This is a BIG STEP in an industry most comfortable with small, evolutionary steps.

Comment posted to The Ecomomist story on ABB's new HVDC circuit breaker

This was posted as a comment to this story:

http://ballisticbreaker.blogspot.com/2012/11/abb-announces-worlds-first-circuit.html

A continental scale supergrid must be DC, in that I agree. The option that gets most of the press in the US are superconducting lines, which have a maximum feasible voltage of ~130kV; this limitation is due to the difficulty of electrically insulating the transition back to conventional wires that is necessary to get power onto and off of the superconducting system. Because of the voltage limitation on superconducting lines, any superconducting system must be an entirely new system; it cannot "play in the same sandbox: as HVDC. The reason superconductivity gets all the press in the US is that there are powerful advocates in the US Department of Energy, American Superconductor, and SuperPower for example. Most of the attention has gone to type II superconductors "high temperature superconductors" (HTS), which are generally ceramics that are barely conductive at all above their curie temperature; HTS has the advantage that it can be cooled in liquid nitrogen rather than liquid helium (as is required for most Type I metallic superconductors). These entities always point to the steep decline in cost of HTS superconducting cables and claim that cost parity is right around the corner. This conveniently ignores the fact that cost parity in terms of cable cost/kW-km is only one of the critical factors, and not the most difficult one either. Not being able to adopt a common voltage with conventional HVDC is another problem, and the other two are real killers: any high value transmission asset should be highly reliable and readily repairable; in these critical properties, superconducting lines are worse even than underground HVDC cables, which are themselves much worse than overhead lines. The three R's of electrical transmission are reliability, redundancy, and repairability. Both superconductors and underground or undersea HVDC cables suffer from poor repairability.

I have been working on a new, deceptively simple technology for continental scale transmission, elpipes. Elpipes are literally HVDC electricity pipelines (www.elpipe.com) which answer several critical problems; first, elpipes allow much higher transmission capacity of ~30 GW than either overhead lines (for which maximum capacity is ~9 GW/circuit), subsea cables (for which maximum capacity is ~2 GW/cable pair), or land-based HVDC cables (for which maximum capacity is only ~0.2 GW/cable pair). There is no magic here; elpipes do that by using a lot more conductor than can be used in an overhead line.

Elpipes combine features of a powerline, a pipeline, and a train. In effect, an elpipe is a slow train that is also a powerline, and runs inside a pipeline which is in effect the track. The ability of the elpipe to move makes it conveniently repairable and one can also do preventive maintenance, which is utterly impossible for a cable. The movable feature also allows all the critical electrical joints between the rigid "cars" of the train to be made in a controlled clean room environment at one end of the line; not having to make any field splices is expected to improve electrical joint reliability tremendously (this is needed, because the segmented nature of an elpipe implies far more electrical joints than are needed in a cable). The fact that elpipes are installed in conduits that are essentially identical to gas pipelines de-risks the cost of installation compared to overhead lines, which are often delayed due to public opposition. The conduit cost shrinks to small part of total cost for large elpipes > 6 GW capacity. The resistance of elpipes/meter is at least ten times lower than the largest prior powerlines, which enables continental scale transmission.

At present, the elpipe languishes in patent pending status, due to a lack of investment. Meanwhile, a tremendous investment has flowed into development of HVDC and HTS superconducting cables, neither of which is capable of matching the economics and rapid repairability of overhead lines. There is a prejudice at the US Department of Energy in favor of "sexy" solutions like HTS superconducting lines, and the major players in power transmission are too conservative to take such a leap. What is needed here is a powerful visionary; elpipes are the last missing piece of the puzzle needed to enable a supergrid.

Why we are doing almost nothing to move towards a supergrid

Here is a presentation about the back story of why we are so stuck in getting on with a credible response to climate change. I presented a version of these slides to one group at ABB, during my meeting with ABB in September 2010. This particular version was for my presentation to the Claverton Energy Conference in April 2012.

Why is it that governments are willing to spend billions on measuring climate change, but do not have a strategic investment plan to make a supergrid possible, since the supergrid is the most important piece of the needed response? Essentially, I think the supergrid is getting low priority in research because it is not understood by most decision-makers to be as important as it is, and is not perceived as easy by research insiders at DOE (for example). Compared to hot fusion, on which DOE has spent many billions of dollars, creating the needed technology for a supergrid is a piece of cake.

Perhaps DOE's woefully inadequate efforts on the supergrid is also due to the influence of the companies that have a lock on HVDC outside of Japan today (ABB, Siemens, and Alstom). I'm quite sure that it is not in these companies' interest for DOE to back transformational research on elpipes (which make it feasible to build a repairable underground supergrid), Ballistic Breakers (which make it feasible to have cost effective circuit breakers for the main trunk lines of a supergrid, which may carry 30 GW of power), or cold cathode vacuum tubes (which could lower the cost of voltage source converters "VSCs" significantly) for example. It is however in the US national interest to prevent these foreign companies from being the only source for HVDC equipment; perhaps someone at DOE will eventually realize that!

Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Elpipes and Ballistic Breakers

My inter-related inventions on high capacity HVDC transmission are key enablers for a supergrid. And a supergrid is the key to developing an energy economy based on aggregating numerous non-dispatchable generation resources (wind, solar, tidal). Both inventions are simple and seem obvious once you hear of them, yet both are revolutionary innovations. These innovations could make it practical to share hundreds of gigawatts (GW) of power across Europe, Asia, or North America, for example (this is the order of magnitude of new transmission needed to create a renewable energy economy).

Elpipes combine a gas pipeline with a high capacity power line which has features of a train. An elpipe is a very heavy high voltage DC (HVDC) power line that can carry more power than any overhead power line, with lower transmission loss. To do this, elpipes use more than 10 times as much conductor as the largest overhead lines; an elpipe is made up of heavy rigid conductors that are effectively the rail cars of an elpipe train. The elpipe train can run on conventional rails, or it can be designed to run inside a pipeline. An elpipe train could be thousands of kilometers long, yet the entire elpipe would be fabricated at one location, then rolled into the conduit like a very long, low speed electric train. This method of installation splits the project into three parts: building the conduit, which is either a rail line or a gas pipeline; fabrication of the “elpipe cars” in a factory process; and assembly of the “elpipe cars” into a train at one single point of assembly (in a clean room environment, with sophisticated quality control inspection equipment deployed). This is very good for both cost of the elpipe and for reliability of the splices.

The movable nature of the elpipe makes it possible to repair and maintain it without digging it up. The preferred installation option is inside a pipeline that is essentially identical to a gas pipeline. This de-risks the cost of installation: the cost to install a gas pipeline can be estimated very well compared to an overhead power line, which often faces vociferous opposition and resultant delays and cost overruns. Another intriguing possibility is to install the elpipe on conventional rail lines that are otherwise going to be taken out of service. An elpipe line could be made to look like a fence for example, if installed in this way; it would not need to be any more than one meter high.

The other missing piece of the puzzle for enabling a supergrid is a very high capacity low cost circuit breaker for HVDC power. The power electronic HVDC circuit breakers being offered by ABB are too expensive and too lossy to work at the scale needed in development of a supergrid. Ballistic Breakers are my second surprisingly simple innovation: these devices enable DC circuit breakers to be developed at any voltage and power level.

My innovations are truly disruptive, and very much needed right now. I have so far decided to
"play nice" with the utilities, since the easiest way to move this forward would be if the utilities realized that they need the supergrid, and that elpipes and Ballistic Breakers are critical enabling technologies. If American Electric Power (AEP), Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), or HydroQuebec realized how important my inventions can be to the future of centralized utility companies, they would back EPC; however, this has not happened, and all the utilities keep repeating their misleading mantra, that:

"Underground power lines are 10 times as expensive as overhead lines." 

Which is real nonsense; it is only true sometimes because viable alternatives have been actively suppressed. I am now ready to work with citizen's groups opposing power lines around the country, as that seems to be one of the only ways forward to move heavy power infrastructure underground in the US. The other possibility is crowdfunding, which I will also try (see below).

I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Induced currents in an HVDC loop due to solar magnetic disturbances

I recently calculated the induced currents in an HVDC loop due to past (and therefore expected future) solar magnetic disturbances. This is important for me to consider because I have been loudly advocating the desirability of HVDC loops as the unit cell of a future supergrid, due to the intrinsic redundancy of such a loop (as long as there are circuit breakers between each next-neighbor pair of power taps on the loop). The loop morphology favors redundancy, but also makes the system prone to induced DC currents, as could occur due to EMP from nuclear detonations in space or due to "space weather." I reported on this in more detail on this in my presentation to HST 2012 recently (see especially slides #23-31).

I calculated the inductance of a simplified system comprising a 1000 km diameter elpipe HVDC loop where two continuous conductive loops (one +, one -) form the circuit (there would be 10-20 power taps on this loop system connecting it to the AC grid). I used the vacuum magnetic permeability within the loop to make my estimate (not a bad estimate for a subcontinental scale HVDC loop that would make sense as a component part of a supergrid), and at first I used the worst case superconductive loop (this implies complete exclusion of magnetic effects within the loop, no ground currents: all the changing magnetic field is cancelled by the induced loop current). I looked at the worst historical solar magnetic disturbance (1859 Carrington event) which is estimated to have involved a 2.0 microtesla geomagnetic field change over about an hour. What I calculated was ~one trillion amps current induced in the two loops. I was astounded by this worst case calculation. I was amazed that the loop current due to a geomagnetic storm could be that large, even in the case of a superconducting loop. Magnetic storms that are one tenth as intense as the 1859 event are fairly common, so there is clearly a need for a mechanism in the HVDC loop design to quench the induced currents. It turns out that this is actually not a problem for a real HVDC loop.

A real loop of wire will have less induced amperage because part of the induced current will circulate in the Earth, and because the loop current will decay as an ordinary resistive inductor would decay, proportional to exp[-t(R/L)] (so the inductor loop current is constantly decaying as the magnetic field changes, which takes around an hour typically, at the least). For a 24 GW elpipe loop that is 1000 km in diameter:

R = 1.67 ohms (circumferential resistance)

L = 9.9 henries

R/L = 0.17/second (that means the induced current decays to 1/e its original value in 5.93 seconds)

Therefore the current cannot build up as it would in the case of a superconducting loop. The loop current would be substantial during the height of a magnetic storm as severe as 1859 (about 17 kA), but not enough to damage or overheat the conductors per se.

New York Times post based on this discussion (March 19, 2013):
The disturbance at the Earth's surface is far to weak to harm auto electronics, I think. The grid effects come about because of small local changes in the local magnetic field that are amplified because of the great distances involved. The changing magnetic field induces currents to flow in both metallic loops (pipelines as well as the grid) and in the Earth as well. The flowing current in the earth causes the local ground potential to change with position, which causes most of the damage.

In principle, a region can be protected by a superconductive loop around the region (this implies complete exclusion of magnetic effects within the loop, no ground currents: all the changing magnetic field is cancelled by the induced loop current). The 1859 Carrington event is estimated to have involved a 2.0 microtesla geomagnetic field change (out of a total field of ~65 microteslas in the normal gweomagnetic field), over about an hour. What I calculated for the induced current on a 1000 km diameter superconducting loop is ~one trillion amps induced in the loop. This is not practical, but it gives an idea about how much magnetic energy is sloshing around in such an event.

Confronting the Status Quo

Thank you Susan Krumdieck for your amazing video presentation on the limits of growth. In general I agree. It was very amusing to see you try to educate business people to very basic facts of nature.



I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Wefunder "Crowdsource" Funding for Elpipes

I confess to being very frustrated in my efforts to address global warming/climate change in a sensible but technological way. The arguments in favor of a supergrid as the logical way forward to de-carbonize our energy system are very sound; I have chosen to focus on the "missing pieces of the puzzle" to make a supergrid feasible: high capacity underground power transmission (elpipes) and an economical HVDC circuit breaker (Ballistic Breakers: see www.ballisticbreaker.com). I have been giving this my full attention for four years, but I have received scant support. The investor community is too risk averse to lift a finger. Leave it to ABB and Siemens seems to be the strategy at DOE as well. 

I feel we are facing a crisis that WILL result in trillions of dollars being invested. Most of that money will likely go to short-sighted disaster relief, sea walls, etc. My extremely practical innovations would make a huge difference, but do not seem to be making headway...at least not in re a supergrid, which is my primary motivation. There is interest in the Ballistic breaker for MVDC microgrids...that is something at least. As a result, I think that Ballistic Breakers can be successful in their own right, but at a slow pace, stepping up to HVDC power levels slowly. Elpipes on the other hand require a different approach, and I want to go for crowdsource funding on these. Please help me to move this agenda forward if you see the need I am addressing as critical. I need help with my lame websites, among other things!

I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Response to "The Engineer" article on grid-scale storage

I attempted to post this response to this article on The Engineer, a UK-based Energy website, but it failed, so I'm posting it here.


First, the article reverses power and energy in this excerpt quote:
"This removes the link between the power density and the energy density of the system; the power density is determined by the size of the storage tanks, and the energy density by the size of the reactor."

Second, it is not nonsense to consider multiweek storage schemes. Aggregated wind output from entire regions...such as North America or all of Europe, varies on about a three-week cycle. In current thinking, the remainder that cannot be balanced by pumped storage will have to be made up by dispatchable generators.

There are a few potential pumped storage sites around the world that can store energy over multiweek periods, such as the Lake Erie-Lake Ontario system in the US, which can store 1300 GW-hours of energy if one allows the lake level of the smaller lake (Lake Ontario) to shift only 30 cm/cycle. I presented a paper on this to the Energy Storage Association in May 2009; there is no chance of implementation any time soon, but also no doubt it will work. There are also no comparable lakes in Great Britain.

There are also three particular sites in Africa that allow for the possibility of high capacity pumped storage operating between the ocean and a depression that is below sea level: the Qattara depression in Egypt, the Danakil depression in Eritrea, Ethiopia and at Lake Assal and the surrounding Afal depression area in Djibouti. I have a blog post on this that might interest some of you:
http://www.elpipes.com/2011/01/pumped-storage-at-danakil-depression-in.html

Japan has built a sea water-based pumped storage system with an elevated upper reservoir, which I also did not see mentioned in the article. The advantage of such a system is that one needs only one reservoir, though the need for corrosion resistance increases equipment cost.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Atlantic Wind Connection

I believe the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) will henceforth set a precedent for how wind farms and solar farms should be hooked up, on a multi-terminal HVDC system. In this, AWC is a ground-breaking project. It makes a lot of sense to hook up remote wind farms and pumped storage sites along a single HVDC line that also ties in to several major power nodes in the AC grid. The Atlantic Wind Connection does only part of what is needed: it ties together multiple high power nodes of the existing AC grid on the East Coast with around ten offshore wind farms (if all goes as expected), but it is not self-redundant, and it cannot support anything close to its full rated capacity from one end of the project (in Virginia) to the other end of the project (in New Jersey). Unfortunately, the AWC falls short of its potential as a worldwide precedent-setting proof of concept design in three ways:

1. The AWC per se is not redundant; if however, a land-based HVDC link connected the two ends of the AWC, then it becomes self-redundant if there are enough main loop circuit breakers on the system to isolate any fault on the main line. (Power line loops are intrinsically self-redundant insofar as power between two nodes on the loop always flows in two directions, clockwise and counter-clockwise).
2. At present, the AWC does not plan to place DC breakers along each segment of the main line from Virginia to New Jersey. That effectively means that the entire line could be blacked out by a short anywhere on the main line. I expect that at least one Circuit Breaker will be installed along the main line by the time the project is commissioned; this could be the type of power electronic  HVDC circuit breaker recently announced by ABB, or it could be a purely electromechanical Ballistic Breaker, which is significantly less expensive per kW of transmitted power.
3. From a national energy policy point of view, the biggest flaw of the AWC is that it is highly limited in end-to-end transmission capacity. Although the AWC website, and their PR statements point out the 7GW total transmission capacity, that is a misleading statistic, in that this refers to the total capacity to deliver or receive power from the shore. This flow is constrained by the transmission capacity of the cable, and the actual end-to-end power transmission capacity is much less; my guess is 2.2GW (I was not able to find any discussion of this on the AWC website).

The AWC could be an extremely transformative project if it were based on elpipes with 10 GW capacity from end to end, with Ballistic Breakers between each set of next neighbour power taps. Coupling this with a land-based underground elpipe following rail rights-of-way that connects the northern terminus of the AWC in NJ to the southern AWC terminus in Virginia would create the first self-redunsant HVDC loop in the world; this would take a giant step towards a future supergrid. This is a worthy goal for the AWC to at least examine.

I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder:
https://wefunder.com/elpipes in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced).

I'll be presenting two papers at EUEC 2013

I will be presenting two papers in Segment D3. ENERGY POLICY (Tuesday, Jabuary 29):


D3.4 ELPIPES AND BALLISTIC BREAKERS AS ENABLERS FOR AN UNDERGROUND SUPERGRID
Roger Faulkner, Founder & President, Electric Pipeline Corporation

and

D3.6 ELPIPES TO CREATE HIGH CAPACITY IRELAND-UK POWER LINKAGE
Joe Corbett, Head of Technical Services, mainstream Renewable Power ltd.; Roger
Faulkner, Electric Pipeline Corporation


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

I made a presentation at the IEEE Homeland Security Conference

I prepared my presentation after the paper I submitted for the "HST 2012" conference. After the DOE Transmission workshop (reported in an earlier post) I began to wonder whether a multi-terminal HVDC loop could actually protect the region inside the loop from magnetic storm effects, and I added this consideration into my HST 2012 presentation. I thought that perhaps a large conductive loop would be able to counter the effect of a geo-solar magnetic storm because the current induced by the changing magnetic field would counter the effect, so I did some calculations. I was surprised that my calculations showed what an immense current can be generated in a conductive loop by a fairly small change in the geomagmetic field. To be specific, I did a worst-case scenario calculation of a 2.0 microtesla change in the average magnetic field (a bit worse than the estimated magnetic field change during the 1859 solar magnetic storm, the worst in recent history) through a 1000 km diameter superconducting loop (though a pair of elpipe loops are not properly superconductors, their resistance is quite low, and this is a reasonable upper bound scenario): the calculated induced current is one trillion amps! It is thus obvious that some other means of coping with a geomagnetic storm is needed.

Elpipe loops with HVDC circuit breakers between each next neighbor pair of power taps are great for grid stability in numerous other ways (severe weather resistance, terrorism resistance, general resillience of the grid).


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

I attended the DOE Grid Integration Workshop

The Grid Integration Workshop was an attempt by DOE to solicit input from industry insiders on what should be R&D priorities over the next few years. I made some great connections, and raised the profile of both elpipes and Ballistic Breakers.

There was a dearth of new ideas at the workshop, in my opinion. Though everyone seems to realize that the grid and transmission must change, the results of the breakout sessions was mostly the :same old, same old..." It drives me crazy to see all that horsepower focused on smart grid...better data...data security...pulling in weather forecasting...the need for better models. all that is important, and it is already happening! Except for a few ideas I managed to inject, such as the need to consider HVDC loops (because of their intrinsic redundancy), and elpipes (because how are we ever going to build the infrastructure we need overhead?) there was little that was out of the box.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Meeting with my Patent Law Firm in China

I have retained a leading patent law firm in China, Liu & Shen to prosecute the national phase patent application on elpipes there. This is a picture from our luncheon on September 18.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Leaving for China

Actually, we will spend a few days in Seoul first, with my friend Robert French. He has opened a lot of doors for me and for elpipes around the world. The trip to China is a mix of business and family; I will be meeting my future in-laws in China, and attending the i-Grid conference in Taiyuan, plus meeting my patent attorneys and a few select companies.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Homeland Security Conference Paper, Revised

I made a few small changes, and submitted this paper to the IEEE Homeland Security Conference today.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Synergism of Elpipes and Ballistic Breakers for the Supergrid

Two critically needed technologies for a supergrid are a means to carry high voltage DC (HVDC) power at multi-gigawatt (GW) power levels underground, and economical, low-loss HVDC circuit breakers. I have two intertwined inventions, elpipes and Ballistic Breakers that together enable a large cost reduction for the supergrid, while simultaneously moving it underground. 

Elpipes are robust repairable underground HVDC lines based on polymer insulated aluminum or magnesium conductors, and joined through flexible couplings. Elpipes use  powered, controlled wheels that run inside a conduit that is similar to a gas pipeline. This de-risks the cost of installation, since gas pipelines are very well known. The elpipe rolls into the conduit after it is completed and tested.

Elpipes combine features of a power line and a train; the train-like features enable efficient installation, rapid repair, and maintenance without digging up the elpipe. No field splices are needed, which is expected to greatly improve reliability. Elpipes enable a continental scale supergrid via underground lines that can carry up to 30 GW per elpipe pair, while being passively cooled. A supergrid also will require an economical HVDC circuit breaker that also has very low on-state losses. The Ballistic Breaker™ is a unique scalable electromechanical design that operates by commutating power through a series of paths with increasing resistance to provide a “soft” circuit opening. Together elpipes and Ballistic Breakers make an underground HVDC supergrid feasible.

I will be presenting a series of three papers on this synergism, starting with the i-Grid conference in Tianjin, China (I will chair a panel on September 25, 2012). Next is the IEEE Homeland Security Conference, to which I have already submitted a paper on "Underground HVDC Transmissionvia Elpipes for Grid Security;" however, this paper will probably be modified before the conference. Finally, I will present a paper at EUEC 2013 in Phoenix, for which this is the abstract:

Elpipes and Ballistic Breakers as Enablers for an Underground Supergrid

Two critically needed technologies for a supergrid are a means to carry high voltage DC (HVDC) power at multi-gigawatt (GW) power levels underground, and economical, low-loss HVDC circuit breakers. Elpipes are robust repairable underground HVDC lines based on polymer insulated aluminum conductors, on wheels, and joined through flexible couplings. Elpipes run on wheels inside a conduit that is similar to a gas pipeline. Elpipes combine features of a power line and a train; the train-like features enable efficient installation, rapid repair, and maintenance without digging up the elpipe. No field splices are needed, which is expected to greatly improve reliability. Elpipes enable a continental scale supergrid via underground lines that can carry up to 30 GW per elpipe pair, while being passively cooled. A supergrid also will require an economical HVDC circuit breaker that also has very low on-state losses. The Ballistic Breaker™ is a unique scalable electromechanical design that operates by commutating power through a series of paths with increasing resistance to provide a “soft” circuit opening. Together elpipes and Ballistic Breakers make an underground HVDC supergrid feasible.

I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 

in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Homeland Security Conference Paper

I submitted a paper to the IEEE Homeland Security Conference "Underground HVDC Transmission via Elpipes for Grid Security" on July 18; I do not yet know if my draft submission will be accepted, but I plan to use the time around this conference to pull together a private planning meeting on how to move the elpipe supergrid vision forward. I now think that both Ballistic Breakers and elpipes are essential for building a supergrid; Gregor Czisch recently challenged me to create a one page document on this synergism, Continental-scale HVDC Supergrid Enabled by Elpipesand Ballistic Breakers; it is the best yet one-page summary.



I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

Executive Summary: Supergrid Enabled by Elpipes and Ballistic Breakers

Both Ballistic Breakers and elpipes are essential for building a supergrid; Gregor Czisch recently challenged me to create a one page document on this synergism, Continental-scale HVDC Supergrid Enabled by Elpipes and Ballistic Breakers; it is the best yet one-page summary that discusses both ideas, and shows how they twine together.


I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 
in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced). 

I will chair a session on Smart Materials for the Smart Grid at the i-Grid Conference in China

I have been invited to chair a session at the i-grid conference in China http://www.bitcongress.com/i-Grid2012/ September 23-26: 

发件人： Roger Faulkner

发送时间： 2012-05-03  04:14:03

收件人： wendygong@bitpetrobio.com

抄送： Matt Koenig; Ron Todd; li

主题： Re: Reply from WCIG-2012

I accept your invitation to chair Session 208,  Smart Materials for the Smart Grid.

I propose this title for my talk:

Underground High Capacity Elpipes for a Secure, Repairable Supergrid.

I believe the invitation was based on this paper that appeared in the November 2011 edition of the Chinese Journal of High Voltage Engineering.

I have so far found that US-based venture capital investors will not take an interest in the elpipe because it is "too big, too long term." I have therefore put my startup Electric Pipeline Corporation onto Wefunder: https://wefunder.com/elpipes 

in hopes that I can get started on this important (and expensive) development soon. It would help me move this forward if you will "follow" me on Wefunder; I expect the US Securities and Exchange Commission will be issuing rules by May that will allow me to raise funds though Wefunder (this is not legal yet, but by following EPC, you will help move me to the front of the queue when the final rules are announced).