In the turbine hall at Drax, a power plant in the English county of Yorkshire, sit six monsters of angular momentum. They are massive—2,800 tonnes each—and complex, composed of 28 turbine sub-assemblies. And they spin on their axes 3,000 times per minute. Place your hand on the blue metal casing around one of them and your whole body thrums in harmony. The hall’s floor hums a flattened A three octaves below middle C that numbs the soles of your feet.

在英国约克郡德拉克斯发电厂的汽轮机房里，坐落着六台角动量庞然大物。它们体积庞大——每台重达2800吨——结构复杂，由28个汽轮机组件构成，每分钟绕轴旋转3000次。把你的手放在其中一台的蓝色金属外壳上，整个身体会感受到嗡嗡的轰鸣，机房的地板上回荡着比中央C音低三个八度的降A音，震得你脚底发麻。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The turbines are driven by high-pressure steam produced in vast boilers that hang from the ceiling. The boilers’ walls are meticulously insulated, but you can still feel the heat of their 1,100°C (2,000°F) bellies at 20 paces. For most of Drax’s life those flames have been fed by a steady stream of coal, tens of thousands of tonnes of it pulverised and blasted into the blaze every day.

汽轮机由通向屋顶的巨大锅炉产生的高压蒸汽驱动。炉壁经过精心的隔热处理，但你站在20步开外，仍然可以感受到1100°C（2000°F）的炉膛散发出的热气。通常情况下，德拉克斯发电厂由源源不断的煤炭来维持燃烧，每天有数万吨的煤被粉碎后吹到锅炉中。

Today, in a sign of the times, most of Drax’s boilers burn biomass instead. The shift is part of the move towards renewables taking place around the world. Removing fossil fuels from electricity generation is universally seen as a necessary, but not sufficient, step towards stabilising the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The attractions are clear: much of the world already runs on electricity; there are many sources of non-fossil-fuel energy available, some very cheap; and increasing electricity’s share of total energy use by encouraging use of electric vehicles, heat pumps and the like looks comparatively easy.

作为当今时代的标志，德拉克斯发电厂的大多数锅炉转而燃烧生物质，这一转变是全球向可再生能源转型的一部分。为了稳定大气中温室气体的浓度，人们普遍认为避免使用化石燃料发电是必要的措施，但仅此还不够。吸引力是显而易见的：世界上大部分地区已经用上电力，世界上有许多可供使用的非化石燃料能源，有的非常便宜；通过鼓励人们使用电动汽车、热泵及其他方式来增加电力在总能源消耗量中的比例，这看起来比较容易。

To abandon mines and oilfields in favour of energy from sunshine and thin air is not merely good climate policy. It has the appealing feeling, as electrification always has, of progress through dematerialisation. The thrilling, visceral sense of immensities in harness provided by the sights, sounds and vibrations of a turbine hall will become increasingly archaic. But if the production of electricity through motionless glass panels and blades turned by the wind seems effortless and futuristic, getting the gigawatts to the consumer will remain a very physical process.

放弃矿山和油田，转而使用阳光和稀薄空气产生能源，这不仅是有益的气候政策，而且正如电气化一样，非物质化总是给人一种有吸引力的进步感。汽轮机房的景象、声音、振动所带来激动人心的磅礴感将变得越来越过时。但是，如果利用静止的玻璃面板和风力带动叶片来发电看起来毫不费力且充满未来感，那么将千兆瓦电力输送给消费者仍将是一个非常物质化的过程。

Within Drax, energy flows from fuel to flame to steam to spin; but to serve the world beyond the walls a last transformation is needed. The turbines’ driveshafts spin powerful magnets which are encircled by the copper wires of an electric generator. As the spinning magnets’ poles point first this way then that, their magnetic field pushes and pulls at the electrons in the generator’s wires, setting them aquiver with energy. This electromagnetic coupling bleeds off the turbine’s kinetic energy at exactly the same rate as the high-pressure steam replenishes it, thus making that energy available to anything connected to the generator in an electric circuit.

在德拉克斯发电厂，能源的传递顺序依次为燃料、火焰、蒸汽、旋转；但向外界传输电力还需要最后一个转换环节。汽轮机的传动轴旋转强大的磁铁，磁铁被发电机的铜线所缠绕。当磁极在旋转中变换方向时，磁场就会推拉发电机铜线中的电子，使它们产生能量。这种电磁耦合作用以高压蒸汽补充动能的速度来释放汽轮机的动能，从而使能量可用于电路中连接到发电机的任何东西。

For Drax, that circuit is Britain’s national grid. The 50 cycles a second (50hz) alternating current (ac) power available from pretty much every socket in the country is a national expression of the vibrating floors in Drax and other powerhouses. Its pulsations unite the spinning generators which feed it and all the devices plugged into it into a single vast machine.

对于德拉克斯发电厂来说，该电路是英国的国家电网。英国几乎每个插座都能提供每秒50次周期性变化（50hz）的交流电，这是德拉克斯和其他发电厂的振动地板在全国的体现。它的脉冲将旋转的发电机和与其连接的所有设备整合为一台巨大的机器。

In the early days of mains electricity, customers were supplied with power by a generator devoted to their factory or from a single nearby power station. But the advantages of pooling resources soon became apparent. Generator frequencies were synchronised to 50hz (60hz in the United States and a few other places) so that high-voltage lines could combine currents from different generators. As high voltages are not good for consumers, transformers—a technology which only works in ac systems—were developed to step those high voltages down to lower domestic ones. The familiar architecture of pylons and substations housing transformers began to appear.

在使用市电的早期，消费者的电力是由工厂专用的发电机或附近的单座发电厂提供的，但集中资源的优势很快就显现出来。发电机频率被同步到50hz（在美国等少数国家是60hz），这样高压电线可以将来自不同发电机的电流合并到一起。由于高压电对消费者不利，所以研发出变压器（这项技术只适用于交流电系统），将高压电降为家用的低压电。人们熟悉的装有变压器的输电铁塔和变电站开始出现。

That physical infrastructure made electricity supply look solid and static, part of the industrial furniture. That appearance can and does deceive. The grid is oddly immaterial and highly dynamic. Its conditions are endlessly subject to change because of a fundamental truth about electrical-power systems: supply has to match demand in real time.

这种物质性基础设施使电力供应看起来坚固而静止，使它成为一种工业装置。这种表象可能而且确实具有欺骗性，电网具有奇怪的非物质性的和高度动态性，它的状况在不断发生变化，因为电力系统存在一个基本事实：电力的供应与需求必须实时匹配。

At any given time the amount of power being drawn out of the grid to do work—the load—has to be matched by what is going in. The amount of power being used by washing machines, lights, smart speakers, air conditioners, heart monitors, fan-assisted ovens and all the other components of modern life has to be the same as the amount being generated. This means that, as the electromagnetic drive train of a machine in which movement at one end—a spinning turbine—and movement at the other—a dishwasher, say—the grid is in constant flux. And so it needs constant supervision lest some sort of imbalance causes it to crash.

在任何时候，电网输出的做功电量（即负荷）必须与输入电量相匹配。洗衣机、电灯、智能音箱、空调、心脏检测器、风扇辅助烤箱以及现代生活中的所有元器件的耗电量必须与发电量相同。这就好比一台装置里的电磁传动系，一端是旋转的汽轮机，另一端比方说是运转的洗碗机，电网的状况是不断变化的，所以这需要不断的监控，以免某种不平衡导致电网崩溃。

This machine kills carbon

该装置能除碳

This complexity made increasing the size of grids a challenging task. But the benefits were seen as worth it. Patterns of use among a million users are statistically reliable in the way that the patterns within a single household are not. More predictable demand can be met by bigger, more efficient generators. Bigger grids allow bigger loads. It was the grids which allowed the smelting of aluminium, and thus the building of planes, on a new scale that made America the second world war’s “arsenal of democracy”. They allow economies of scale and geography in generation, too. By the 1960s it made sense to build behemoths like Drax next to Yorkshire’s coal field and distribute their power around the country.

这种复杂性使扩大电网成为一项具有挑战性的任务，但带来的益处还是值得的。百万用户的用电模式在统计上是可靠的，而单个家庭的用电模式则不然。更大、更高效的发电机可以满足更易预测的用电需求，更大的电网承载更大的负荷，正是这种电网实现了铝的冶炼，使飞机的制造达到了新的规模，美国由此成为二战时期的“民主军火库”。它们还能实现规模经济和形成地理环境，20世纪60年代，英国在约克郡的煤田附近建造德拉克斯这种巨大的发电厂，将电力输送到全国各地是有道理的。

Now things have to change. At present, 62% of the energy delivered as electricity comes from fossil fuels; that has to come down to more or less zero. A lot of its replacement will be in the form of cheap wind and solar, and that presents a serious challenge to grid operators. It means a lot of new connections, which are troublesome. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that renewable installations typically generate less power than steam turbines do. That means more connections per unit of capacity.

现在情况必须改变。目前62%的电能来自化石燃料，这一比例必须要降为零。大量的替代能源将以廉价的风能和太阳能的形式出现，这对电网运营商构成了严峻的挑战，这意味着需要新增大量的接入，这很麻烦。可再生能源设备的发电量往往低于蒸汽涡轮机，使该问题变得更加严重，这意味着单位容量需要更多的接入。

As well as adding a great many new connections, grids will also have to change shape. The places best suited to the generation of renewable energy in very large amounts are often not the places where today’s generation is concentrated. So new transmission lines will be needed. And because grids are complicated things, some of those expansions will require compensating changes elsewhere as bits of the grid become congested.

除了新增大量的接入，电网还必须改变形态。最适合大量生产可再生能源的地区往往不是现在发电集中的地区，所以需要增加新的输电线路。由于电网很复杂，部分扩建需要对其他地区进行补偿性改造，因为电网的某些部分会变得阻塞。

Renewables are also intermittent. An obvious way to lessen this problem is to expand grids so that they can access renewable resources over larger areas. Even if this is done, though, grids in which renewables play a large role will require connections to a lot of new energy storage. Some will be located alongside the renewables; some will not, complicating things further. To ease the storage challenge grids will also need access to demand-management systems through which they can reduce demand on various different time scales.

可再生能源还有间歇性问题。缓解该问题的显著办法是扩大电网，从而获取广大地区的可再生资源。但即使这样做，以可再生能源为主的电网还需要接入大量的新储能。有些储能位于可再生能源的附近，有些则不然，这使情况变得更加复杂。为了缓解储能的挑战，电网还需要接入需求管理系统来减少不同时段的电力需求。

Last of all, various ways in which grids are controlled and balanced today are physically rooted in the way steam turbines generate power. They will need to be rethought. In the long run this is a welcome opportunity to make the system cheaper and more reliable. In the short term it is a requirement for yet more investment.

最后，当今调节和平衡电网的各种方式实际上是基于蒸汽轮机的发电方式，这方面有待于重新思考。从长远来看，这是一个让电网变得更便宜、更可靠的好机会。从短期来看，这需要更多的投资。

And in the midst of all this change, grids will also have to grow in capacity at a rate the developed world has not seen for many decades. As a lot of the things fossil fuels are used for—such as powering vehicles or heating houses—become electrified, demand will shoot up (see chart). Electricity makes up just 20% of the world’s energy consumption today, but in the future it “will be the backbone of the entire energy system”, says Gerhard Salge, chief technology officer of Hitachi Energy, one of the key suppliers of grid equipment. His firm estimates that by 2050 the world will need four times as much electricity generation as it has today, and three times as much transmission capacity.

在这些变化中，电网还必须以发达国家几十年来前所未有的速度扩大容量。随着化石燃料的许多用途——比如驱动汽车或房屋供暖——实现电气化，电力需求将急剧上升。目前电力仅占全球能源消耗的20%，但在未来“将成为整个能源体系的支柱”，电网设备的主要供应商“日立能源”的首席技术官Gerhard Salge说道。该公司预测到2050年，世界需要的发电量将是现在的四倍，输电容量将是现在的三倍。

The technologies to meet these challenges are for the most part already available, as this report will explain. A revolution in the application of solid-state electronics to power systems, combined with improved technology for building high-voltage direct-current circuits, is easing the connection of far-flung renewables to grids, helping to reduce congestion and making interconnections between grids easier to set up. These technologies should also provide ways of keeping grids stable as many of the huge turbines they have relied on as their pacemakers are retired.

正如本报道要阐述的，应对这些挑战的大部分技术都已存在。固态电子技术在电力系统中的革命性应用，以及高压直流电路的制造工艺得到改进，便于边远地区的可再生能源接入电网，有助于减少阻塞，使电网之间更容易建立互联。这些技术还应该设法维持电网的稳定，因为作为电网起搏器的许多巨大汽轮机会被废弃。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


But fielding them requires a huge amount of investment. A recent study by the Energy Transitions Commission, a coalition of companies and financial institutions, found that $1.1trn must be spent on the grid every year until 2050 if the world is to reach its net-zero goal. That is on top of the cost of new generating capacity.

但是，部署这些技术需要大量的投资。由企业和金融机构组成的能源转型委员会最近的一项研究发现，如果世界要实现净零排放目标，到2050年之前，每年必须向电网投入1.1万亿美元，这还不算新增的发电装机容量的成本。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


It also requires a level of executive determination unprecedented outside times of all-out war. Steve Brick of the Clean Air Task Force, an American ngo, used to work in grid regulation. When he looks at maps showing the expansion of American transmission infrastructure which a decarbonised system is said to require, he says, “I put on my practical hat…and I say that’s not gonna happen.” Local opposition to new infrastructure may be the largest obstacle. It will not be the only one. If he is right, and the grid cannot expand at the rate needed to decarbonise the economy, there will either be a massive move towards decentralised systems, a failure to reduce emissions fast enough, or both.

另外还需要只有在全面战争时期才有的执行决心。美国非政府组织“净化空气任务组织”的史蒂夫·布里克曾经从事电网监管工作。当他从地图上看到美国输电基础设施的扩建方案时（据说需要脱碳系统）他说：“实事求是地讲，这是办不到的”。当地居民反对新建基础设施可能是最大的障碍，但不是唯一的障碍。如果如他所说的，电网的扩建速度达不到经济脱碳的需求，那么要么向去中心化电力系统进行大规模转型，并且无法快速减排，要么两种情况共存。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


A degree of decentralisation in some markets is inevitable and will often be welcome. Roughly 1bn people, a large majority of them in Africa, currently lack any access to electricity. Local renewables can bring them some of its advantages more quickly than grid connections will. But there is good reason to think that modern grids moving copious energy over long distances will bring more energy to more of those who need it.

在某些市场中，一定程度的去中心化是不可避免的，而且往往受到欢迎。目前，全球约有10亿人用不上电，其中绝大多数都在非洲。与接入电网相比，当地的可再生能源可以更快地给他们带来一些优势。但我们有充分理由相信，现代电网通过远程输送丰富的能源，将给更多需要的人带来更多的能源。

If, that is, energy can be delivered to the grid in the first place. Connecting new resources to the grid is a tricky technical matter; it is also a procedure that is vulnerable to delays stemming from regulation, speculation, politics and protest. This is the problem we turn to first.

也就是说，要是从一开始将能源接入电网就好了。新能源接入电网是个技术难题，而且这一环节容易受到监管、投机、政治和抗议等因素的延误，这正是我们首先要探讨的问题。