They have just overlooked that China has a solar area which is comparable (or just a tad inferior to Chile's).
Gobi Desert.
It's far easier to harness solar there and then push it onto the coast than building a 15,000km submarine cable
Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
71–80 of 152 posts
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly it's kinda brilliant. With a big enough global network of overbuilt solar capacity you would avoid the problems of the duck curve and weather limitations.
It's hard to build an actual network out of DC power, which is partially why AC power took over.
It was hard to build a DC network in 1900. It's easy today with modern power electronics, which Nikola Tesla didn't have. In fact building a DC network is somewhat easier than AC now because phase-matching is unnecessary.
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#73Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's on the order of 1.5%/1,000KM, so something like 20%-25% loss. Edit: a Chinese project with a 1.5%/1,000KM loss http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0622/c90000-9474097.html
So the cost (price) of energy in the other end (china) should be 25%+ (plus the expected ROIC) to make this endeavor worthwhile
Chile is among the best places in the world for solar power, projects are being completed with power guarantees at costs under $0.03/KWh -- a 25% increase or even 50% increase would be pretty cheap power, according to the EIA still at least 1/3 cheaper than electricity from an incremental advanced nuclear plant.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#75European Commission Joint Research Center Technical Reports: HVDC Submarine Power Cables in the World https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... According to table 1, losses for 800 kilovolt HVDC systems can be as low as 3.5% per 1000 km. That comes to 52.5% loss over 15,000 km. Losses should go lower at 1100 kilovolts (the highest voltage HVDC systems running today) but I can't find detailed los…
Is ~50% retained more efficient than producing the solar power in Asia itself?
Wouldn't it be better to generate this power in the deserts of the middle east, and the wide open plains of Central Asia and transmit that over shorter distances despite producing less power per solar panel ?
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#76What percentage of power is lost to line-loss at those distances? And if you are going to cover long distances you usually push up to 750kV or more: how long before there's an insulation breakdown somewhere along your 15,000km and you get some very energetic arcing and sparking underwater? Not to mention that it makes for an interesting asset to target (though only a few nations have the "tools" to attack power cable…
One challenge will be to get enough supply of submarine power cable to make this a reality. The Morocco-UK proposal (mentioned in the bottom of the article) involves the UK company literally setting up a new factory specifically to produce more cable, doubling the global output in the process. And that project is about 4000kms or so compared to 15,000 for this one. So supply will be slow to spin up to those levels.
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#77European Commission Joint Research Center Technical Reports: HVDC Submarine Power Cables in the World https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... According to table 1, losses for 800 kilovolt HVDC systems can be as low as 3.5% per 1000 km. That comes to 52.5% loss over 15,000 km. Losses should go lower at 1100 kilovolts (the highest voltage HVDC systems running today) but I can't find detailed los…
> than making hydrogen via electrolysis i'd say synth gas would be more versatile option. Also they can like Iceland export the energy as aluminum or similar products taking a lot of energy to produce. (and a bit dreaming - i think Andes is the place to build a large rail gun style space launcher, and not just for one launch per week like, i mean large spaceport launching stuff non-stop and this is where beside launc…
The viability of synthetic gas really depends on the price of your carbon source. Direct air capture of CO2 is pretty expensive but subsidies can make it work.
Ammonia is the conventional option for long distance shipping of hydrogen. The ammonia can be used directly as the fuel or cracked at the destination for its hydrogen.
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#78European Commission Joint Research Center Technical Reports: HVDC Submarine Power Cables in the World https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... According to table 1, losses for 800 kilovolt HVDC systems can be as low as 3.5% per 1000 km. That comes to 52.5% loss over 15,000 km. Losses should go lower at 1100 kilovolts (the highest voltage HVDC systems running today) but I can't find detailed los…
Are the losses thermal? How significantly could this change the ocean temperature near the cable? 50% of 600 GW is enough to cause a 10C increase in the temperature of 10 million liters of seawater every second?
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#79European Commission Joint Research Center Technical Reports: HVDC Submarine Power Cables in the World https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... According to table 1, losses for 800 kilovolt HVDC systems can be as low as 3.5% per 1000 km. That comes to 52.5% loss over 15,000 km. Losses should go lower at 1100 kilovolts (the highest voltage HVDC systems running today) but I can't find detailed los…
I make it as (100%-3.5%)^15 ~= 58.6% retained.
Thanks, I think your calculation makes more sense. The lower losses should improve the economics.
Re: Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable
#80European Commission Joint Research Center Technical Reports: HVDC Submarine Power Cables in the World https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J... According to table 1, losses for 800 kilovolt HVDC systems can be as low as 3.5% per 1000 km. That comes to 52.5% loss over 15,000 km. Losses should go lower at 1100 kilovolts (the highest voltage HVDC systems running today) but I can't find detailed los…
Is ~50% retained more efficient than producing the solar power in Asia itself? Wouldn't it be better to generate this power in the deserts of the middle east, and the wide open plains of Central Asia and transmit that over shorter distances despite producing less power per solar panel ?
The whole point is that you can generate the power at different times. The deserts of the middle east get sunlight at a different time then South America.
If we had a worldwide spanning power grid we wouldn't need to have a grid storage solution at all.