Linemen Needed
Robert Bryce reviews a national electrification plan from the New York Times and finds it wanting. The proposals are unrealistic, he explains, and bear no resemblance to the way the existing electric power grid works, how it is built, and how it has evolved over the past century. Worst of all, the newspaper has no idea of how scarce the inputs are, especially essential grid components.
Says Bryce:
The U.S. has about 240,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. A 57% increase in the size of that network would require building 136,800 miles of new lines. Thus, at the current rate of expansion (1,700 miles per year), it will take 80 years to achieve the target being promoted by the Times and [U.S. Department of Energy].
In addition to the permitting and land-use issues, any major expansion of the grid will have to grapple with the global supply-chain crunch, including the ongoing shortage of electric transformers, an issue I covered in a March 31 piece, called “Untransformed.” Delivery times for distribution transformers, like the ones you see on power poles in your neighborhood, are now a year or more.
The consultancy Deloitte foresees similar problems resulting from resource scarcity.
As electric power companies continue to announce decarbonization goals, many will seek to build new renewable energy projects to fulfill them. […] But building clean energy technologies such as solar and wind generally requires more minerals, including rare earth elements, than traditional fossil-fuel technologies.13 Our analysis shows that about 31 million tons of key minerals/materials are required to support solar and wind demand in the United States by 2050 (figure 4). With high reliance on imports for most of these materials—and competing demand from other industries for the same minerals—there’s an imminent mismatch between US climate goals and the availability of critical minerals essential to meet them.
We are going to need more mining around the globe for the raw materials. Even with heavy industry mechanization, warm bodies are still in demand with the training and experience to do the mineral extraction. Skilled tradesmen and -women are required for the highly specialized work of spanning high-voltage transmission lines across the country. In these sectors (as in so many others), young workers are needed to replace those entering retirement. But trainees are hard to come by. Says Bryce:
Over the past month or so, I’ve talked to utility leaders in South Dakota, Florida, Texas, and Iowa. All of them told me the same thing: there aren’t enough linemen. One of them said that thinking we can quickly string tens of thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission within a decade or so is “batshit crazy.”
Policymakers don’t “understand how hard it is to get a transmission project built,” said the executive, who recently retired from a large utility and asked not to be named. Even if a given project has all the permits, the utility sector doesn’t have enough linemen. “You can’t train them fast enough...It takes about seven years to train a high-voltage transmission lineman,” to the journeyman level. And as soon as lineman gets to the journeyman level, said the executive, they often leave in search of better pay.
If the objective is so urgent—saving the planet—why aren’t our political, cultural, and intellectual leaders exhorting the youth into entering these careers? Instead, we get endless political culture wars resembling reality TV escaped from the idiot box. If we’re going to dismantle the infrastructure for providing electricity to homes and petroleum fuels for mobility, there should be a real and concerted effort underway to train the people meant to erect the replacements.
My dryer is making a funny noise and we can't figure out what it is....all I need is an expensive repair, or even worse have to replace the dryer, it wasn't cheap when I bought it and it is probably a lot more now...sigh
Interesting, my ex started out as a meter reader , then lineman, and he eventually ran the whole utility , and had his Electrical Engineer degree( municipal utility that generated their own power).
Afternoon all....busy today