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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

by mixdup8 hours ago|

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every step in the chain loses power. You lose power just in the power lines. Every trip through a transformer adds some more loss

Reducing the number of transformers, raising the high side of system voltage, and increasing conductor sizes are all ways to reduce the transmission losses. of course each of those requires investments so that's why it can be variable and also something to brag about

by bluGill8 hours ago|

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Correct. As I recall the did a customer survey and customers didn't like (among other things) the number of power outages. The main goal was fixing that, and several side effects of that resulting in less line loss.

by dopa423657 hours ago|

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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).

by bluGill6 hours ago|

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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.