'Minemouth' Plants: One Proposed Solution
Staff -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 9/1/2001
The TransAmerica Grid (TAG) has been proposed—to the public and specifically to Vice President Cheney—by the Kansas City, Mo.-based engineering firm Black & Veatch and Siemens as a possible solution to the electricity shortage.
The proposal is to build power plants at the source of fuel supply (coal), cutting transportation costs to zero, and to transmit the power generated over direct current (DC) transmission lines to reduce losses. The plan is to ease permitting problems by building "minemouth" power plants, and then reduce the disadvantages of huge losses in the transmission system by generating DC power and converting it where it's needed.
"Since the 1950s, power generation has increased ten-fold and grid transactions have increased approximately 80-fold," said Tim Leyshock, senior vice president of Siemens Power Transmission & Distribution. "Yet our spending for our power delivery infrastructure has lagged."
B&V and Siemens presented the TAG idea to Vice President Cheney and the President's Energy Task Force in April. The companies claim TAG could be operational by 2005 and fully implemented by 2010.
From Pure Power, Fall 2001.
