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UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

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Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#101

Post by sudosysgen »

Grimburger wrote: post #95
jodrellblank wrote: post #62

UK is currently generating 30GW from all sources[1], so 10GW is a third of the national power requirement. Germany has just had a hard lesson in having significant energy dependency on Russia. Morocco is UK's 61st largest trading partner[2]. Morocco isn't Russia, but handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country in a less stable world region with limited history of partnership (European colo…

> handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country As horrible as it sounds, Morocco isn't a nuclear power and would be crushed in an afternoon by UK armed forces while western media across the planet creates a hundred different justifications and the world's diplomats send their congratulations for neutralising the energy terrorists because they couldn't care less what happens to them. This is…

That is not true. The UK doesn't have the force projection capability to do that to Morocco, which is a US ally. The UK would get hammered in an attempt to terrorise Morocco.

The only remotely conceivable way that the UK would have of projecting significant power onto the Moroccan mainland is by trying to foment a civil war. Otherwise they would not get anything out of it.

If the US even allowed the UK to do such a foolish thing, it would be disastrous long-term for the whole of Europe. Completely alienating and breaking off with North Africa means that Europe is now completely surrounded with unfriendly countries.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#102

Post by samwillis »

This is really interesting in the context of what is happening locally to my home, we are about two miles from what is planned to be the UK largest domestic solar farm [0,1]. It will output 350MW, so the one proposed in Morocco will be about 28 times the size.

There has been a significant push back against the project locally and so I suspect it won’t be built to the scale proposed. The main criticism is that the land is particularly fertile.

0: https://www.mallardpasssolar.co.uk/

1: https://www.stamfordmercury.co.uk/news/amp/clock-is-ticking-...

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#103

Post by gizajob »

toper-centage wrote: post #42
KarlKemp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU does not think of the UK in that way. In fact it tends not to think of the UK at all, these days. As to being "fair game": that's true, in the sense that the EU will place the interests of member states over those of the UK. That dynamic must be among the least surprising developments of history, considering it is both obvious and formed the core of every serious prediction in the run-up to Brexit. There was p…

The UK playing victim is the reason Brexit happened in the first place. No wonder their residents continue being brainwashed in that sense.

Maybe many of the residents of the UK see the creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU for what it is, and it's single-speed forward into the future federal state of Europe wasn't something they wanted to be a part of. This isn't brainwashing, but people feeling more need for control and action on a local level, not their national parliaments being subsumed and subverted by Brussels, and the diverse peoples of the continent being treated as if they were all one thing.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#104

Post by gizajob »

KarlKemp wrote: post #38
nbevans wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The last couple years has really let the mask slip on what the EU stands for and they've made it expressly clear how they intend to treat the UK going forward - despite the UK's best efforts to forge a genuinely strong relationship, this has been rebuffed at every opportunity. We are "fair game" to them now. So it makes complete sense to design future energy projects with sovereignty in mind.

The EU does not think of the UK in that way. In fact it tends not to think of the UK at all, these days. As to being "fair game": that's true, in the sense that the EU will place the interests of member states over those of the UK. That dynamic must be among the least surprising developments of history, considering it is both obvious and formed the core of every serious prediction in the run-up to Brexit. There was p…

This doesn't seem like a harebrained scheme, but a challenging one of moving renewable energy from where it is abundant to where it is required. An example of a harebrained scheme would be Germany's reliance on Russian oil and gas.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#105

Post by mike_hearn »

arinlen wrote: post #76
mike_hearn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The reason to go direct to Morocco are that transmission through regular AC grids would lose virtually all the power before it gets anywhere near the UK. 10GW is a hell of a load and you can't just pretend a grid is a bathtub at these scales. But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakt…

> Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The point of mentioning Brexit is to stress that the physics alone makes this sort of project hard to justify on technical grounds, specially when there is a wealth of renewable energy projects right around Britain's corner. You need to be specially motivated to circumvent any of the low-hanging fruit proje…

I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious - solar power requires lots of sunshine and land that isn't being used for anything. The UK doesn't have that, the Sahara desert does.

If it's an idea obvious enough to occur to a teenager 20 years ago it hardly requires politics to explain why it comes up now, does it? At the time I gave up on the idea because either I didn't find out about HVDC or it wasn't as effective as it is now. Transmission losses seemed to kill the idea. Now apparently that's more or less solved and other issues dominate like manufacturing costs and mineral availability.

As for renewables being abundant near by - where? UK already built tons of windmills. You can't get baseload-level renewable power from adding more of those because there are days when the wind stops blowing. As for solar in Europe, land is at a premium there and they're already wanting to use available resources for their own needs, rightly so. Also worth considering - for unclear reasons global wind speeds have been slowing down over time. Long term wind projects need to factor that in to their economic calculations. Solar doesn't have that issue.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#106

Post by gizajob »

wewxjfq wrote: post #98
jodrellblank wrote: post #62

UK is currently generating 30GW from all sources[1], so 10GW is a third of the national power requirement. Germany has just had a hard lesson in having significant energy dependency on Russia. Morocco is UK's 61st largest trading partner[2]. Morocco isn't Russia, but handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country in a less stable world region with limited history of partnership (European colo…

> Germany has just had a hard lesson in having significant energy dependency on Russia. The UK can't quit Russian oil, coal, and gas any faster than Germany - that should teach you a lesson.

The UK isn't dependent on Russian gas though and isn't connected to it. It's reliance on Russian oil is very limited outside of a source of Diesel. Can't imagine it takes a great deal of Russian coal either, given its large coal fields it doesn't bother to use.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#107

Post by bdauvergne »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #65
bdauvergne wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK which of course never used unrelated subject like fishing rights or immigration as a political leverage. \s Every country in the EU submit to the majority law, that's the idea of an union, even France or Germany do not have everything to their liking every time.

The point wasn’t “the UK is better than Spain” but rather, “energy dependence on Spain is not in the UK’s best interest”.

Without any argument apart "there seem to be rules to follow inside the EU" it seems unsubstantiated.

A better argument would be that digging or laying 3000Km 12GW terrestrial electric line through Spain and France would be expensive and especially difficult to sell to them, even if they could benefit from the energy.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#108

Post by mike_hearn »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #45
mike_hearn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The reason to go direct to Morocco are that transmission through regular AC grids would lose virtually all the power before it gets anywhere near the UK. 10GW is a hell of a load and you can't just pretend a grid is a bathtub at these scales. But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakt…

"Securing Britain's energy supply by diversifying from EU interconnectors" Also, it's kind of funny how you say it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit and immediately jump into an anti-EU rant, probably not the smoothest transition :D

I don't see that as an anti-EU rant but more like a neutral description of the situation. The EU has been completely open that its ideal scenario now is that the UK would agree to implement all EU rules and laws as before, but without being a member. It has been willing to enforce trade sanctions on the financial system in order to try and get what it wants in unrelated areas like immigration law. And the EU did nothing when one of its two most powerful members asserted its intention to use electricity supply cutoffs to gain leverage in fishing rights disputes.

These things are all matters of fact. From the EU's perspective these things are not "negative" exactly, but merely the way they play the game. Everything is connected to everything else and any inter-dependency may become leverage in any unrelated area of cooperation at any time.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#109

Post by mrlonglong »

mike_hearn wrote: post #32
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #6

This sounds like brexiteer project. Doubt this will actually happen. 3800 km of undersea HVDC cable just to circumvent the EU. 3800 km is the distance from St.Petersburg to Marocco.

Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The reason to go direct to Morocco are that transmission through regular AC grids would lose virtually all the power before it gets anywhere near the UK. 10GW is a hell of a load and you can't just pretend a grid is a bathtub at these scales. But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakt…

No post body was provided.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#110

Post by cptcobalt »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #78
cptcobalt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, if we're assuming that they'll charge during the day to discharge at full power at night, it won't cover all of overnight use, but with the current composition of grids typically it's what you need to cover after sundown until most go to sleep (and energy use reduces). A project like this doesn't need to reduce base load, but there surely needs to be renewable (or nuclear) energy projects to replace base load…

Interesting, but does this assume Morocco won’t have a cloudy week or something (I understand that Morocco’s climate is almost always sunny, but even still)? I always assumed the threshold for “reliable renewable energy” began at a week’s worth of storage.

This project also includes wind, which doesn't require sun.

"A week's worth of storage" feels somewhat like an armchair simplification. It roughly sounds on target if we're moving toward the march of nines for real-time zero-carbon power supply, but...that honestly doesn't need to be the target expectation for today. Long term goal, yes. Today's targets really should be to get to 90-95% renewable, since chasing the last 5% will be the hardest and most expensive—and that's probably where we can acceptably use some dirtier backup sources. With the state of the grid today, there's lots and lots of power sources that can be replaced for cheaper and cleaner before we need to chase the long tail of 100% renewable at all hours during every season.

The reality though, is that all of these requirements are modeled, and the operator surely has their install min/maxed for typical use.

At the risk of being off topic, I personally have what energy-wonks could consider a "three hour" system (10kW solar, 15kW/43.5kWh battery, my typical daily energy use is between 25-50kWh, higher if I need to charge the car) and have done two weeks fully off-grid last summer, which included some cloudy weather. (True off-grid: the utility breaker was open to hard disconnect from the grid). While I could probably live full-time off grid in the summer, I definitely feel its better to have my system help clean up the grid where possible. So there's really a lot of flexibility to be had depending on the system's requirements.

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