An idea that looks good on paper but can be disastrous in reality. Interconnected systems increase exposure to cyber threats.
Not just cyber threats. Just ask Estonia how much electricity they are currently importing from Finland.
To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
31–40 of 106 posts
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#32Ultra 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.
Nationalism is often one-sided within individual countries. Their opponents have a lot in common across borders and should be more easily coordinated.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#33Connecting the world sounds pretty utopian when the broader interconnectivity, like trade, that we do have is fraying at the edges and starting to crumble.
The main issue with everyone agreeing is the one who disagrees often gains the advantage, especially if the control something they perceived more valuable then they are getting from being agreeable.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#34Time 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…
Could be a bottleneck some ways. In other ways its an accelerant (think space race).
Like most things in nature you probably get the most out of "progress" (kind of a slippery word in itself) through some type of equilibrium rather than an absolute everyone must work together.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#35There is no way to make this idea work, or for that matter describe any plausible way to impliment it.
Its physicaly impossible to span the pacific and atlantic oceans. Other north south bottlenecks occur and then many of the ereas that could host grid scale solar, are poor, and therefore exporting there light,which is only going to bring 11 fully temporary part time jobs per
100000 inhabitents, who go home to huts, with no electricity, is not a good look anymore.
The real nitty gritty is rights of way for transmission lines.
India, Pakistan, Afganistan, Iran,
all in a nice neat row, you have my personal permission to build anything you want! and as an as an added bonus I will put in a word with China ,Russia, and Khazakistan, then quick climb up the pole, twist a few wires together and gzzzzzzzzitz*
and zam London to Bieging at the speed of light.
VS, distributed solar, wind, water, geothermal, power that serves local grids, just fine. Battery storage will get much cheaper, and the generating equipment is only getting more efficient and cheaper. The world grid will have to wait until we have some kind of fusion power and a super conducting grid, where power is in fact too cheap to meter and has demonstrably less impact than any other source.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#36Extend 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
I hope they plan to trench that cable if they actually go ahead with it.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#37Does anyone remember the 2003 blackout [0] that left 55 million people in 2 countries without power for up to 3 days?
With a worldwide grid we could make one a hundred times larger.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#38Does anyone remember the 2003 blackout [0] that left 55 million people in 2 countries without power for up to 3 days? With a worldwide grid we could make one a hundred times larger. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
This not a necessary outcome of connected grids though. Technology has advanced a lot in the past two decades.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#39Does anyone remember the 2003 blackout [0] that left 55 million people in 2 countries without power for up to 3 days? With a worldwide grid we could make one a hundred times larger. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
“Connect” doesn’t have to mean “operate as a closely coupled synchronized grid”.
Using HVDC (which is more efficient over long distances anyway), adjacent grids basically appear as just another power plant to yours (and some early HVDC connections literally consisted of a motor coupled to a generator!), and grids ought to be able to stomach the sudden outage of one.
Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids
#40An idea that looks good on paper but can be disastrous in reality. Interconnected systems increase exposure to cyber threats.
Don't put your infrastructure on the internet.