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To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

economist.com

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Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#11

Post by iaaamatrumb »

hunglee2 wrote: post #3

Ultra High Voltage transmission lines are a key component to load balancing the grid. Currently (no pun intended...) very expensive because so few countries do it (China (of course), then I think only Brazil?) but it means that power surges from renewables can be channeled to places which need to use it, without having to try and put the energy into storage. If team humanity can find the maturity to connect grids aro…

China is big on UHV (1000kV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

> In 2015, State Grid Corporation of China proposed the Global Energy Interconnection, a long-term proposal to develop globally integrated smart grids and ultra high voltage transmission networks to connect over 80 countries.[10]: 92–93 The idea is supported by President Xi Jinping and China in attempting to develop support in various internal forums, including UN bodies.[10]: 92

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#13

Post by markus_zhang »

hunglee2 wrote: post #3

Ultra High Voltage transmission lines are a key component to load balancing the grid. Currently (no pun intended...) very expensive because so few countries do it (China (of course), then I think only Brazil?) but it means that power surges from renewables can be channeled to places which need to use it, without having to try and put the energy into storage. If team humanity can find the maturity to connect grids aro…

Team humanity is too segmented at the moment. Unless the next Pan-whatever happens, it's just politically impossible.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#14

Post by ip26 »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #5

Time and time again, from one industry to another, the bottleneck in progress remains human, or political, or social organization (whatever you wish to call it). No matter our technological progress since the Industrial Revolution this failure point appears to persist. As my gardening instructor would tell our class: it’s not the features themselves that matter, but the relationships between features that define the…

That feels like a tilted assessment. The technical solutions can break down enormous walls, and very quickly. There are just some walls they can't - political, social, etc - and once the other walls have been leveled, we tend to get focused on those & lament.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#15

Post by ta1243 »

Symbiote wrote: post #9
stop50 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe uses them to transfer energy in states and between states. Mostly with AC but there are some DC connections.

Ultra-High Voltage seems to mean over 500kV. AC lines of this voltage in Europe are only in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/ — there's a legend if you click the button, but navy is > 500kV AC, and magenta is DC.

There's half a dozen lines over 500kV DC in operation and as many again under development and construction

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#16

Post by [deleted] »

hunglee2 wrote: post #3

Ultra High Voltage transmission lines are a key component to load balancing the grid. Currently (no pun intended...) very expensive because so few countries do it (China (of course), then I think only Brazil?) but it means that power surges from renewables can be channeled to places which need to use it, without having to try and put the energy into storage. If team humanity can find the maturity to connect grids aro…

[deleted]

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#17

Post by hkt »

euroderf wrote: post #12

Extend the European synchronised grid to Northern Africa. Then you can think about deploying solar on a massive scale to parts of the Sahara.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Powe...

tl;dr this is already proposed

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#18

Post by jeffreygoesto »

ta1243 wrote: post #15
Symbiote wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultra-High Voltage seems to mean over 500kV. AC lines of this voltage in Europe are only in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/ — there's a legend if you click the button, but navy is > 500kV AC, and magenta is DC.

There's half a dozen lines over 500kV DC in operation and as many again under development and construction

I heard one of the problems is that since countries want to run the lines submerged, which is too expensive and/or challenging for other reasons (fields,...) for high voltage DC.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#20

Post by spockz »

hunglee2 wrote: post #3

Ultra High Voltage transmission lines are a key component to load balancing the grid. Currently (no pun intended...) very expensive because so few countries do it (China (of course), then I think only Brazil?) but it means that power surges from renewables can be channeled to places which need to use it, without having to try and put the energy into storage. If team humanity can find the maturity to connect grids aro…

It seems that in our country (The Netherlands) the bigger blocker is more the interconnections between local regions as opposed to transferring between larger regions such as countries. We have varying production from solar and wind. Now that means that each local connection to the main grid needs to be almost as heavy as the main grid whereas it used to be just one direction with very predictable usage.
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