IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 49

upergrid
A
Globe-Spanning
A Globe-SpAnninG

with a little DC wizardry
and a lot of cash,
we could swap power
across continents

Gutter credit goes here

By Clark W. Gellings

REpoRts aBounD of homEownERs
and businesses unplugging from the power
grid and opting instead to generate and store
their own electricity. Such grid defections
may make sense in places where electricity
rates are sky-high or service is spotty. But for
just about everywhere else, it's far more sensible to do the very opposite: interconnect
regional electricity networks to form a globespanning supergrid. * What makes this
idea so compelling are the major strains on
today's power grids: soaring energy demand
in fast-growing megacities; rapid expansion
of carbon-free but intermittent wind and
solar power; and the ever-increasing need
to secure grids against electronic and physical attacks. The smaller and more isolated a
power network is, the more difficult it is to
maintain the nearly instantaneous balance
between electricity supply and demand.

SPectrum.ieee.org

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north american

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aug 2015

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http://SPectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum August, 2015

IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 1
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 2
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IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 64
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover4
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