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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

The Eastern and Western grids are interconnected.

Yes, but you can't just inject 100s of megawatts into the middle and hope it magically gets to the coasts. There are a lot of losses on the transmission lines and each step has a max capacity.

Sure, it's not a trivial exercise, but neither is food transport. That's a much harder problem that's been solved because we had to. The main reason we don't have a continental grid is because we don't need one.

Talking about losses is a sign of ignorance. Generally a comment making that point can be ignored. Losses are a point that people repeat: maybe because it "makes sense".

  operating at median loads, transmission losses over a distance of 1,000 miles generally range between 6% and 15%

Other constraints are what matter - especially if any links are close to their capacity.

IAAEE

Yes, that's why I mentioned the capacity issue as well. While losses aren't significant, they do matter. Especially when we are talking about a 1600 mile distance.

No one electron goes the 1600 mile distance. An increase of cheap energy supply in one place lowers likelihood of production elsewhere, but it is more diffuse than selling Iowan energy in California.

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