Deliver Clean Energy to Distant Cities - Wired

By Bryant Urstadt 03.23.09

7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now:
Power to the People


Generate Electricity Everywhere


Store Power in Super Batteries


Monitor the Electrons in Real Time


Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies


Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts

Make Conservation Simple (and Easy)

Problem

Building wind turbines and solar farms in the middle of nowhere sounds great. But it's not easy to move all that clean energy to the people. Obama just signed into law $6 billion in loan guarantees for energy projects, including new transmission lines. But constructing those lines will require the approval of landowners and city planners, who want the electricity but not the unsightly high-voltage wires strung across their property.

Solution

Go underground—or underwater. The Trans Bay Cable will link San Francisco to 400 megawatts of power—some from the Altamont Pass wind farms near Livermore, California, and the rest from other sources throughout the state. Set to open in 2010, it's a $500 million project that everyone in the area wanted built ... somewhere else. As a result, the planned route looks like the path an escaped convict would take if he wanted to minimize contact with humans, especially of the activist and bureaucratic kind.

Routing the Trans Bay Cable
Route 1
Along Public Transit Lines (rejected)
Project planners proposed running the cable—about 10 inches thick—along a light rail line. The idea was nixed due to concerns that putting a power supply near mass transit would tempt terrorists.
Route 2
Beside the Railroad Tracks (rejected)
Locating the cable next to freight train tracks would seem like an obvious choice. But there's no room along the BNSF railroad by the bay, and the Union Pacific tracks run through a protected wetland.
Route 3
Next to the Highways (rejected)
There's plenty of room along the state's freeways, but the California Department of Transportation, which likes having the flexibility to widen its roads, forbids running cables beside them.
Route 4
Under the Water (approved)
Halibut and crabs don't have NIMBY issues, so 53 miles of cable will go underwater in a trench dug by water jets. Physically complicated to build and maintain, it will be politically easy to route.

Read More http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_transport#ixzz0vg1ykBgO