Energy can't be moved as easily as food. If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.

▲ bryanlarsen 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The Eastern and Western grids are interconnected.

▲ jedberg 10 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

▲ robocat 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

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jedberg 8 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	zeckalpha 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

▲ bryanlarsen 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

▲ jqpabc123 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Energy can't be moved as easily as food

It can be moved much easier. Electricity moves at the speed of light (through an ideal conductor).

If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.

Within the Eastern and Western grids, power generated anywhere can be easily sold anywhere else within the respective grids. For example, the Intermountain Power Project in Utah has historically supplied a significant portion of electricity to Southern California.

Moving power between these grids is a little more complicated --- only because the grids are not synchronized. But this too is technically possible and could be made easier if there was more demand to do so.