European Super Grid
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European Super Grid
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: European Super Grid
#2Now dam the med for hydro.
Re: European Super Grid
#3On one of the diagrams on this page, there are locations for proposed projects of different types, and all the photovoltaic projects are in western Europe. Why would you not want some of these in north Africa, if there are going to be links across the Mediterranean?
Re: European Super Grid
#4Transnational electricity transmission doesn’t get enough credit - right now I suspect the ROI is an order of magnitude beyond that of utility scale storage.
Re: European Super Grid
#5On one of the diagrams on this page, there are locations for proposed projects of different types, and all the photovoltaic projects are in western Europe. Why would you not want some of these in north Africa, if there are going to be links across the Mediterranean?
Given the conditions in North Africa, you'd rather have the higher efficiency solar power of the "solar thermal power plant" rather than the lower efficiency photovoltaics.
Re: European Super Grid
#6On one of the diagrams on this page, there are locations for proposed projects of different types, and all the photovoltaic projects are in western Europe. Why would you not want some of these in north Africa, if there are going to be links across the Mediterranean?
Given the conditions in North Africa, you'd rather have the higher efficiency solar power of the "solar thermal power plant" rather than the lower efficiency photovoltaics.
It's also more environment friendly that photovoltaics panels, which are almost impossible to reuse.
Re: European Super Grid
#7Now dam the med for hydro.
Re: European Super Grid
#8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Interconnector
Looking forward to this coming online. Very beneficial for Ireland after Brexit.
Re: European Super Grid
#9> allow wide sharing of the total European hydro power resource, which is about 6 weeks of full load European output
I'm surprised it's this big. This sounds like enough grid scale storage/dispatch to do 100% renewables. Particularly if some of this hydro can be converted to also pumped storage in summer just to shift energy during the day.
I'm in Portugal and was surprised to find out our grid is a net exporter in winter (wind+hydro) and net importer in summer (a lot of fossil and very little solar yet)[1]. Getting to 100% renewables should be easy for us. Solar works very well here and is being ramped up fast and the hydro solves the grid scale storage/dispatch problem. Our total hydro is 14 weeks of full load, which is 2x but I was expecting it to be a much bigger difference.
[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UTUjhrBF04MP38b4WlQx...
Re: European Super Grid
#10On one of the diagrams on this page, there are locations for proposed projects of different types, and all the photovoltaic projects are in western Europe. Why would you not want some of these in north Africa, if there are going to be links across the Mediterranean?
Given the conditions in North Africa, you'd rather have the higher efficiency solar power of the "solar thermal power plant" rather than the lower efficiency photovoltaics.
Solar thermal is more efficient than photovoltaics in terms of energy captured per unit of surface/land area. However, photovoltaics are significantly cheaper per unit of energy generated. So, solar thermal makes more sense in space-constrained environments rather than vast deserts.
Solar thermal also makes more sense where you're directly utilising the heat generated, eg: for industrial processes. If you're just using that heat to spin turbines to make electricity, you're adding a layer of inefficiency.