The world’s transmission lines are believed to have dropped approximately 1.4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity last year. That’s around 1.2 trillion metric tons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere. Though it is unlikely these loses can be eliminated in the near future, there are ways to reduce them.

Losses of 5-7% or so are the norm today in the United States, BC and Ontario.

Capgemini is one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology, outsourcing services & local professional services in over 40 countries – Photo Courtesy Capgemini

Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost consulting firms, has been working with Ontario Power Generation since 2001.

Larry Rousse, Director of Utilities at Capgemini, said, ‘The approximate amount of Transmission line losses in the Ontario system is 6.5%. Transmission losses do vary pending the demand on the system. Losses occur as a natural phenomenon when electricity is transmitted between two points. The physics of electricity means that losses rise exponentially as the current on a circuit increases. For the electricity grid, this means basically that losses are highest when power consumption or when the demand is the highest. On an Ontario system with ~29,000 km’s of transmission line losses can be over […]