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Lost in Transmission
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Inside Energy
How much energy is lost along the way as electricity travels from a power plant to the plug in
your home? This question comes from Jim Barlow, a Wyoming architect, through our IE
Questions project.
To find the answer, we need to break it out step by step: first turning raw materials into
electricity, next moving that electricity to your neighborhood, and finally sending that electricity
through the walls of your home to your outlet.
Step 1: Making Electricity
Power plants – coal, natural gas, petroleum or nuclear – work on the same general principle.
Energy-dense stuff is burned to release heat, which boils water into steam, which spins a turbine,
which generates electricity. The thermodynamic limits of this process (“Damn that rising
entropy!”) mean only two-thirds of the energy in the raw materials actually make it onto the grid
in the form of electricity.
Energy lost in power plants: About 65%, or 22 quadrillion Btus in the U.S. in 2013
This graph shows the heating efficiency of different types of power plants. All types of plants
have roughly the same efficiency, with the exception of natural gas, which has seen recent
improvements in efficiency in recent years with the addition of combined cycle plants. (The coal
efficiency line is nearly identical with nuclear energy, and is swallowed up in the purple).
Most of us don’t live right next to a power plant. So we somehow have to get electricity to our
homes. This sounds like a job for powerlines.
Transmission
First, electricity travels on long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines, often miles and miles
across country. The voltage in these lines can be hundreds of thousands of volts. You don’t want
to mess with these lines.
Why so much voltage? To answer this question, we need to review some high school physics,
namely Ohm’s law. Ohm’s law describes how the amount of power in electricity and its
characteristics – voltage, current and resistance – are related. It boils down to this: Losses scale
with the square of a wire’s current. That square factor means a tiny jump in current can cause a
big bump in losses. Keeping voltage high lets us keep current, and losses, low. (For history
nerds: This is why AC won the battle of the currents. Thanks, George Westinghouse.)
Jordan Wirfs-Brock / Inside Energy
The sagginess of power lines is actually the limiting factor in their design. Engineers have to
make sure they don’t get too close to trees and buildings.
When that electricity is lost, where does it go? Heat. Electrons moving back and forth crash into
each other, and those collisions warm up power lines and the air around them.
You can actually hear those losses: That crackling sound when you stand under a transmission
tower is lost electricity. You can see the losses, too: Notice how power lines sag in the middle?
Some of that’s gravity. But the rest are electrical losses. Heat, like the kind from lost electricity,
makes metal power lines expand. When they do, they sag. Powerlines are saggier, and leakier, on
hot days.
Distribution
High-voltage transmission lines are big, tall, expensive, and potentially dangerous so we only use
them when electricity needs to travel long distances. At substations near your neighborhood,
electricity is stepped down onto smaller, lower-voltage power lines – the kind on wooden poles.
Now we’re talking tens of thousands of volts. Next, transformers (the can-shaped things sitting
on those poles) step the voltage down even more, to 120 volts, to make it safe to enter your
house.
Generally, smaller power lines mean bigger relative losses. So even though electricity may travel
much farther on high-voltage transmission lines – dozens or hundreds of miles – losses are low,
around two percent. And though your electricity may travel a few miles or less on low-voltage
distribution lines, losses are high, around four percent.
Energy lost in transmission and distribution: About 6% – 2% in transmission and 4% in
distribution – or 69 trillion Btus in the U.S. in 2013
Jordan Wirfs-Brock
This graph shows the average percent of electricity lost during transmission and distribution, by
state, from 1990 to 2013. With the exception of Idaho, the states with the lowest losses are all
rural, and the states with the highest losses are all densely populated.
Fun fact: Transmission and distribution losses tend to be lower in rural states like Wyoming and
North Dakota. Why? Less densely populated states have more high-voltage, low-loss
transmission lines and fewer lower-voltage, high-loss distribution lines. Explore the
transmission and distribution losses in your state on our interactive graphic.
Transmission and distribution losses vary country to country as well. Some countries, like India,
have losses pushing 30 percent. Often, this is due to electricity thieves.
Utility companies meticulously measure losses from the power plant to your meter. They have
to, because every bit they lose eats into their bottom line. But once you’ve purchased electricity
and it enters your home, we lose track of the losses.
Your house, and the wires inside your walls, are kind of a black box, and figuring how much
electricity gets lost – electricity that you’ve already paid for – is tricky. If you want to find out
how much electricity gets lost in your home you’ll either need to estimate it using a circuit
diagram of your house or measure it by putting meters on all of your appliances. Are you an
energy wonk attempting this? Let us know, we’d love to hear from you!
Energy lost in the wiring inside your walls: We don’t know! It could be negligible, or it could
be another few percent.
Grid engineers are working on technologies like superconducting materials that could essentially
reduce electricity transmission and distribution losses to zero. But for now, the cost of these
technologies is much higher than the money lost by utility companies through their existing hot,
leaky power lines.
A more economical solution to reduce transmission and distribution losses is to change how and
when we use power. Losses aren’t a constant quantity. They change every instant based on
things like the weather and power consumption. When demand is high, like when we’re all
running our ACs on hot summer days, losses are higher. When demand is low, like in the middle
of the night, losses are lower. Utilities are experimenting with ways to spread out electricity use
more evenly to minimize losses.
The same principle applies to your house, which is basically your own personal grid. You can
reduce losses in your home by spreading out your electricity use evenly throughout the day,
instead of running all your appliances at once.
Have an idea for an energy topic that could be fun in the classroom? Submit it below.
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Submit it at ask.insideenergy.org, e-mail it to us at Ask@insideenergy.org, or tweet it to
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As part of our IE Questions project, Inside Energy investigated how much energy is lost
as electricity travels from a power plant to the plug in your home. In the U.S., five to six
percent of the energy in electricity is lost during transmission and distribution, but that
varies widely state-to-state and year-to-year. See how your home state measures up.
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Electricity
Electrical Engineering
Adam Hayward
5 Answers in Electrical Engineering
Robert Mattison
104 Answers in Electricity
The best example is communication using cell phone is I think. Whatever signal is coming to
your mobile is in the form of electrical signal wirelessly. Also if you are using setup box for your
TV, that's also an the form of electrical signal.
But till now high power transmission for commercial, industrial and domestic applications is not
possibl... (more)
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Anonymous
Answered Nov 29, 2015
Actually there are many methods of tranmission of electricity but problem is efficiency as
distance increase between rx and tx the efficiency decreases so may be within 20 years we will
gonna have wireless electricity but currently it is not possible
But long distance tranmission of electricity is not a good idea reason is that anyone can use that
electricity if it is wireless you can... (more)
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Take the new developer economics survey, along with another 40,000 developers and find out!
Despite Tesla followers think it is not possible to transfer high power without a wire, the energy
flux do effectively go in the space between wires but without the wire current the magnetic flux
does not go too far.
The manetic coupling is then achieved by wire current, what can be eliminated is the transformer
as the power could be transmitted in HVDC.
65 Views
· Answer requested by Kishan Kumar Vishwakarma
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Question Stats
6 Public Followers
714 Views
Last Asked Nov 27, 2015
Edits
Top Stories from Your Feed
Question
Asked 5 years ago
Azharizal Fajar Amru Ryad
1.88
Electronics Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya
Electrical
Electrical Drives
Electrical Power Engineering
Wireless
Power Electronics
2505 Reads
5 years ago
Dharmesh Varia
Spellman High Voltage Electronics, Germany
You're welcome Azharizal Fajar Amru Ryad. I would like to tell you about Electromagnetic
Induction first. Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across the
conductor moving through a magnetic field. In this case, We would need conductor to apply
Faraday's law of induction.
However it is still possibilities theoretically by Electrostatic capacitive method which is the
passage of electrical energy through a dielectric. In practice it is an electric field gradient or
differential capacitance between two or more insulated terminals, plates, electrodes, or nodes that
are elevated over a conducting ground plane
5 years ago
Jaber Ebrahimi
Sahand University of Technology
the name of this technology is Witricity that is a methode to transfer the power like
electromagnatic waves in this method a transformer shuold be used and the primery winding of
transformer is connected to energy suorce like power network and the secondry winding is
connected to load on a limit distance from primery winding and the energy transfer between
windings as magnetic waves.
5 years ago
Wagdy Mansour
Benha University
yes you can, but with very low power . Researchers has found that a lamp with 40 watt can be on
wireless.
5 years ago
Dharmasa Hemadrasa
Caledonian College of Engineering, Oman
Let me have some discussion on this topic:
1.V=>electro motive force this is may be equated to mechnical force
2.I=> rate of change of charges i.e. equivalent to flow
3.f=>nunber of cycles per second, usually this usually fixed i.e 50Hz
4. If increase freq, we can transfer the power to alonger distance
5.In step 4, if freq is more,then iron loss in the core increases
6. How about the skin effect factor based on AC power
7.Optimum transferrable capacity has to be identified
8.With more volatage and more frequency it is possible to increase
9. If current carrying capacity increases then distanece will decreases
10. Magentic saturation, charge density, weather conditionsand itsimpact of humanbeing etc
plays greaerrole in the the desig of a WIRELESS BASED HIGH POWER TRANSMISSION.
Regards,
Dr Dharmasa
Energy & Computer Network Expert.
rdharmasa@gmail.com
5 years ago
Ismat Aldmour
Albaha University
In theory, yes, I would say that you can transfer power (voltage times current) wirelessly. This is
the basis of all communications systems. A TV tower will transmit the TV and Radio broadcast
at high powers of kilowatts and tens of kilowatts and makes us watch/hear the broadcast in our
homes is that a tiny amount of this broadcasted power was able to excite our antenna and was of
a level a bit greater than the threshold of detection in our Radio/TV set. What remains is to add
power from our source (amplification) plus some other operations to enable watching and
hearing the broadcast. Power in this case was transmitted in the form of electromagnetic waves,
which is a form of long distance induction. If you have very delicate instrument and can hear
small voices, probably we don't need any power source in the receiver. You can build a radio
receiver (AM) using simple components and a sensitive earphone and be able to receive the local
broadcast in your area without the need of batteries or supply, the whole receiver is operated by
the power propagated to you through air. This same idea is used nowadays to power some
sensitive electronic equipment wirelessly, one salient example are the RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification Tags) which can be powered wirelessly from a faraway device called the RFID
reader. Tese tags are replacement to bar-codes but contain electronic circuit that stores the code.
Therefore the idea is applicable
However, transmitting high powers is also possible Basically. Transformers are those power
system components that are responsible for power transfer from one of its sides to the other side
without having a common wires, the wireless case of the transformer is called induction. The
role of the transformer is to provide easy path f=for the magnetic flux from the primary to the
secondary. The problem with transmitting high powers without a magnetic core is that air has
low permeability which means that low flux and less power transfer.
5 years ago
Dharmasa Hemadrasa
Caledonian College of Engineering, Oman
I agree with Ismat i.e.The problem with transmitting high powers without a magnetic core is that
air has low permeability which means that low flux and less power transfer.What are the impact
of decrease the magnitude and incraese the frequency.
5 years ago
Sravan Kumar Padala
Cognizant Technology Solutions
It can be done through process know as Witricity where we can transfer V and I with constant
frequency and matching frequency at both receiving and sending ends.
5 years ago
Hadi Alimohammadi
Shahid Beheshti University
it is an amazing video about wireless power transfer :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsj3IkyAqEU
5 years ago
Hadi Alimohammadi
Shahid Beheshti University
I think it will be useful for you.
Experimento-de-energia-inalambrica.pdf
2.74 MB
5 years ago
Gopal Ji
Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, India
i agree with Ismat, yes it is possible for low voltage but for high voltage very high power
required by the transmitter which is would be totally loss case.......'PROVIDE LARGE INPUT
VOLTAGE TO TRANSMITTER TO GENERATE HIGH POWER CONTAINING
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE WHICH WILL HAVE SOME LOSS TO THE DIELECTRIC
AND PROVIDE LESS OUTPUT TO THE RECEIVER.'
5 years ago
Azharizal Fajar Amru Ryad
Electronics Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya
i got it, actually i have some trouble for finding some components that could resist for high
voltage, using normally components isn't enough, i think this project is POSSIBLE TO DO, but
need some MUCH RESOURCES.
what do you think?
5 years ago
Ismat Aldmour
Albaha University
Try repeating the experiment described in the following link:
http://www.uv.mx/personal/hvazquez/files/2011/01/Experimento-de-energia-inalambrica.pdf it
describes how to utilize the resonance concept to achieve maximum wireless energy transfer
using simple coils. You can find a number of you tube videos describing the coils,...etc. Also, get
more information on the subject from: http://www.mit.edu/~soljacic/wireless_power.html .
Thanks. @Aldmour
5 years ago
Abdul Aziz Sangi
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
All power received by earth from sun is electromagetic wave and crosses the space without wire.
TV Towers, Radio Anteenas all transmit power wirelessly. Drones can also be powered using
wireless. Main issues economic. It is not feasible economically to transmit power over long
distances using wireless.
4 years ago
Tolga Soyata
University at Albany, The State University of New York
Hi, what you really mean is : HOW TO TRANSFER ENERGY WIRELESSLY I assume. There
are two major ways to transfer ENERGY from one point to another : 1) ELECTRICALLY
through copper (or other metal) wires, b) MAGNETICALLY through the air, since air conducts
magnetic energy.
(b) is the answer to your question. INTEL has conducted experiments and were able to light up a
60W bulb without any wires. A few other examples :
*** The electronics circuit elements called TRANSFORMERs completely work by transferring
energy from their primary winding to the secondary winding magnetically. There is no electrical
connection between the two ...
*** The Braun brand electric tooth brush has a charger that the electric tooth brush sits in. No
COPPER connection. The energy is transferred from the charger to the tooth brush through a
transformer completely wirelessly.
4 years ago
Mohamad Makky
SNC Lavalin
Suppose we overcome technological and technical barriers for high energry wireless transfer, the
biggest challenge will be related to Health, Safety and Environmental protection (HSE) as today
the existing Extra High Voltage (EHV) transmission lines are still controversial when it comes to
HSE (effects of induced emf on biota).
4 years ago
Rakesh Kumar Srivastava
Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi
M.I.T. Patent is there. It needs high voltage high frequency power non contact power transfer to
moving vehicle. The system works on the principle of two winding transformer.
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Long-distance Wireless Power
The Stationary High Altitude Relay Platform (SHARP) unmanned plane could run off power beamed
from the Earth.
Whether or not it incorporates resonance, induction generally sends power over relatively short
distances. But some plans for wireless power involve moving electricity over a span of miles. A
few proposals even involve sending power to the Earth from space.
In the 1980s, Canada's Communications Research Centre created a small airplane that could run
off power beamed from the Earth. The unmanned plane, called the Stationary High Altitude
Relay Platform (SHARP), was designed as a communications relay. Rather flying from point to
point, the SHARP could fly in circles two kilometers in diameter at an altitude of about 13 miles
(21 kilometers). Most importantly, the aircraft could fly for months at a time.
The secret to the SHARP's long flight time was a large, ground-based microwave transmitter.
The SHARP's circular flight path kept it in range of this transmitter. A large, disc-shaped
rectifying antenna, or rectenna, just behind the plane's wings changed the microwave energy
from the transmitter into direct-current (DC) electricity. Because of the microwaves' interaction
with the rectenna, the SHARP had a constant power supply as long as it was in range of a
functioning microwave array.
Rectifying antennae are central to many wireless power transmission theories. They are usually
made an array of dipole antennae, which have positive and negative poles. These antennae
connect to semiconductor diodes. Here's what happens:
1. Microwaves, which are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, reach the dipole antennae.
2. The antennae collect the microwave energy and transmit it to the diodes.
3. The diodes act like switches that are open or closed as well as turnstiles that let electrons flow in
only one direction. They direct the electrons to the rectenna's circuitry.
4. The circuitry routes the electrons to the parts and systems that need them.
Other, longer-range power transmission ideas also rely on rectennae. David Criswell of the
University of Houston has proposed the use of microwaves to transmit electricity to Earth from
solar power stations on the moon. Tens of thousands of receivers on Earth would capture this
energy, and rectennae would convert it to electricity.
Stations on Earth can receive energy from the moon via microwaves.
Microwaves pass through the atmosphere easily, and rectennae rectify microwaves into
electricity very efficiently. In addition, Earth-based rectennae could be constructed with a mesh-
like framework, allowing the sun and rain to reach the ground underneath and minimizing the
environmental impact. Such a setup could provide a clean source of power. However, it does
have some drawbacks:
The solar power stations on the moon would require supervision and maintenance. In other
words, the project would require sustainable, manned moon bases.
Only part of the earth has a direct line of sight to the moon at any given time. To make sure the
whole planet had a steady power supply, a network of satellites would have to re-direct the
microwave energy.
Many people would resist the idea of being constantly bathed in microwaves from space, even if
the risk were relatively low.
While scientists have built working prototypes of aircraft that run on wireless power, larger-
scale applications, like power stations on the moon, are still theoretical. As the Earth's population
continues to grow, however, the demand for electricity could outpace the ability to produce it
and move it around. Eventually, wireless power may become a necessity rather than just an
interesting idea.
Read on for lots more information about electricity, wireless power and related topics.
Thank You
Thank you to Josh Senecal for his assistance with this article.
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IMS
News Feature | October 11, 2016
A wireless power transmitting array used in a test in Japan in 2015. Image courtesy Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries
Long-distance wireless charging may be something of a holy grail for gadgets, devices and
electric vehicles, but Japanese researchers are a step closer toward making it reality, making
wireless power reception antennas that draw power from space-based solar arrays.
Man-made satellites have long since been able to harness solar energy for electrical power. For
instance, the International Space Station has four solar arrays to power its systems. But
redirecting stored solar energy down to Earth, with its unpredictable weather, is technically
daunting.
According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), microwaves would work even if
the weather is bad, and the agency last year worked with Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi on
an experiment that successfully transmitted 1.8 kilowatts “with pinpoint accuracy” to a receiving
antenna (rectenna) 55 meters away using carefully directed microwaves, reported IEEE
Spectrum.
At the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) show held recently near
Tokyo, Japan Space Systems (J Space Systems) showed off its "rectenna" technology. These are
flat, wireless power reception antennas tuned to the 5.8GHz frequency, which has successfully
managed to transmit power over a distance of about 50 meters. It successfully delivered 1.8
kilowatts into an antenna that measured 1.2 meters square and managed to harvest 340 watts out
from a receiver antenna that was 2.6 meters by 2.3 meters, according to a report from CIO.
The rectenna arrays shown at CEATEC are part of ground wireless power transmission (WPT)
laboratory testing being conducted by J Space Systems for an ambitious project called Space
Solar Power System (SSPS). J Space Systems, over the past few years, has been developing
SSPS as an alternative future energy resource with the support of the Japanese government's
METI (The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry) and JAXA. When built, the SSPS solar
arrays are designed to consist of "a large power generation/transmission panel suspended by
multi-tether wires from a bus system above the panel. The upper surface of the
generation/transmission panel is covered with solar cells, and the lower surface mounts
transmitting phased array antenna elements and solar cells," according to J Space Systems.
Japanese scientists continue to develop more efficient arrays with minimal transmission losses.
Orbiting solar arrays, like the SSPS spacecraft, could be many years down the line due to several
technical and financial hurdles.
"It will take significant time and effort to overcome the many hurdles on the pathway to the
realization of the solar space power system," says Japan's space agency, according to CIO.
But even the incremental technologies – such as "rectennas" – supporting that grand vision,
could prove useful sooner.
These microwave antennas or similar advanced technology could be used "at short range to send
power around factories, enabling machines, sensors, and workstations to be easily reconfigured
without having to run new power cables," writes CIO's Martyn Williams. "Another potential
application sees balloons being used to send power down to areas hit by natural disasters where
electric power is out, while the technology could also be used to send power up from the ground
to a drone or similar object to keep it in the air."
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Comments (13)
+1
The idea the use long distance high efficiency microwave based power transmission is very old. There
was the SPS (solar power satellite project idea about 40 years ago and this was mainly killed by cost
issues, lack of free slots in a geostationary orbit and the fact that the spurious and harmonics (both
emitted and generated in the ionosphere) would be a serious problem for radio-astronomy. Some of
those arguments are still valid today and of course many people would not like to live close to such a
square kilometer size receiving rectenna on the ground (that's why present ideas go towards the
direction to use an artificial island.) some 25 years ago there was even the idea that ICELAND would like
to sell their electricity via some microwave link to possible consumers..somewhere on earth. I do not see
that using balloons to send down electric power would be cost efficient. However having small electric
planes circling in high altitude (>15000 meter) which basically operate from solar power taken from the
upper side of their wings AND in addition (to better cover the night) microwave power from below may
be realistic and could serve as communication relay centers, possibly for underdeveloped
countries.(fritz.Caspers@cern.ch)
Reply
So, over 50 meters, the efficiency is claimed to be 18.8 per cent, or 7.25 dB loss. From the Moon, over
200 dB can be expected at 5.8 GHz. Why ever caon one talk about a reasonable efficiency?!
Reply
0
SMF · 59 weeks ago
Take a look at the the 1975 Nasa JPL work which managed 34 kW at 1500 m with >80% efficiency.
Reply
200 dB to the moon is only valid without antenna directivity and gain.
Reply
From the Moon, over 200 dB can be expected at 5.8 GHz. Great!! from cover body mobil terbaik
Reply
Reply
Reply
Keep it up.........
Reply
+1
I wish more people would post valuable content like this. This is the first time I've been on your website,
but after this, I doubt it will be the last time.
Reply
+1
During wireless power transmission huge amount of power loss occurs, is there any methods to controll
the power loss???
Reply
+1
Best part of wireless transmissions using microwaves is that the weather will not affect it. This is
specially useful in rural areas, nice read.
Reply
0
Solar · 7 weeks ago
Every 24 hours, enough sunlight touches the Earth to provide the energy for the entire planet for 24
years. The sun is simply one big battery for us.
"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait til
oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison, 1931
Reply
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In-flight testing of the results of ESA-funded research into and development of combined
solar arrays and antennas commenced on 27 October, when an experimental device was
launched into low Earth orbit. The ability to implement these two spacecraft components
as a single unit will offer substantial mass and cost savings for future missions...
The KDD Research Institute teamed up with the University of Kagoshima to use wireless
LAN technology to send and receive 2.4 GHz signals between two islands 11.3 km
apart...
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. recently announced that it has built a prototype wireless unit
incorporating inter-subarray coding technology, which makes it possible to achieve high-
speed transmissions, in excess of 10 Gbps, for 5G mobile wireless base stations and
access points.
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