That’s quite the achievement. Though a side note of comparison I can’t believe France and Belgium suffer power losses in the 5 to 6% range. Unless I’m misunderstanding what that means, it seems excessive for a modern economy.
30 years ago my local electric co-op was bragging they got transmission losses down to 4%, when the rest of US was 8% (I'm not sure if that is average or some other statistical term).
But yes, transmission losses exist and are surprisingly large
It's mostly about the distance, isn't it? Iirc even with the most modern ultra high voltage lines, it's about 3% per 1000km. Which honestly doesn't sound too bad, even for really long distances (like solar power from some desert to where people actually live).
Distance is a factor. I do not know what they were measuring (the main power plant was about 1000km away, but I don't know if they counted that or if that was ignored because someone else owned those lines). They were a fairly rural utility with most of the area belonging to farmers (but they do have a couple suburbs and a few small towns).
I don't know the real details, but my educated guess is they raised the voltage, and also they used 3x as many wires (running 3 phase past every house even though almost everybody only used 1 phase). That is I can visually see their insulators on the power posts are larger than neighboring utilities which allows for higher voltage (but may or may not mean higher voltages were used). Likewise I can see the 3 lines on each power pole while neighboring utilities only used one. It is hard to tell from the ground but I suspect they used thicker wires as well.
mc32 · · focus · HN ↗
anarazel · · focus · HN ↗
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
But yes, transmission losses exist and are surprisingly large
dopa42365 · · focus · HN ↗
bluGill · · focus · HN ↗
I don't know the real details, but my educated guess is they raised the voltage, and also they used 3x as many wires (running 3 phase past every house even though almost everybody only used 1 phase). That is I can visually see their insulators on the power posts are larger than neighboring utilities which allows for higher voltage (but may or may not mean higher voltages were used). Likewise I can see the 3 lines on each power pole while neighboring utilities only used one. It is hard to tell from the ground but I suspect they used thicker wires as well.