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UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

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Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#131

Post by masklinn »

justincormack wrote: post #114
masklinn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’d be stupid to run a cable straight through the EU, as well, yes. Politically, maybe. Technically and financially, not at all. There’s 3GW of interconnection between france and the UK with a 4th under construction, and france is a broker / hub between germany, italy, spain, and the UK (as well as its own production).

France won’t let solar from Spain into their grid as it undermines their nuclear financing. So from Morocco is off the table. A Spain UK connection was planned and seems sensible.

> France won’t let solar from Spain into their grid as it undermines their nuclear financing.

Complete nonsense. France buys renewable electricity from neighbours all the time, both for itself and to sell to other neighbours. France also sells its own electricity.

A new interconnect between france and Spain is under construction (the biscay bay line), in order to bring the exchange capacity between them up to 5GW.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#134

Post by throwaway894345 »

bdauvergne wrote: post #107
throwaway894345 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s already been clearly substantiated: running the cable through Spain or France would give leverage to those countries regarding (among other things) territorial disputes. This has nothing to do with the EU except in the tangential sense that Spain and France are both member states.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#135

Post by gizajob »

dmitriid wrote: post #129
gizajob wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU > need for control and action on a local level Ah you mean that local control and democracy when the party with 13% of the votes gets 0.2% seats in the parliament", right? [1] [1] Great CGP Grey video on the 2015 General Election in the UK: https://youtu.be/r9rGX91rq5I

I haven't got time for a deep-dive into statistics or methods of representation right now, which clearly need improving. The fact of the matter is that more people in the UK voted to leave the EU than even bothered to vote in the election of EU representatives in the election before. The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process, and rested content in its level of power existing despite this failure to reach people with its electoral process, and 51% of the electorate of the UK saw fit to remove themselves from the EU when given the opportunity to. My main suprise was caused by the UK doing this probably some 15-20 years before it really became a pressing question, but it was a case of "now or never" and swathes of people in the UK decided they didn't want to be involved (all seemingly for an individual set of personal reasons that are hard to form any consensus toward).

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#136

Post by blibble »

petr_tik wrote: post #112
_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.

> This sounds like brexiteer project. Given that the UK has left the EU, couldn't you call every trade deal or cultural exchange with a non-EU country a Brexit project? Even if it is, what is wrong with that? The people of Britain voted for Brexit and now need their elected officials to deliver, which motivates projects like these Edit: to clarify, i live in London and i didn't vote for Brexit. Regardless of the outc…

> The people of Britain voted for Brexit and now need their elected officials to deliver

the desired position of many is that the UK should crawl off into a corner and almost die, then will have to come crawling back to the EU to show that is indispensable

projects like this work counter to that narrative

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#137

Post by redeyedtreefrog »

So if it goes ahead it will generate 10.5GW, but deliver 3.6GW for "20+ hours a day". I guess the 10.5GW figure is peak generation during the day with lots of wind + sun, then by using batteries it will be able to consistently deliver approx 1/3 of that, or 8% of current UK demand (from the article). Makes sense, but the headline used by the submission is a bit misleading.

At the same time, the electrification of heating + transport is predicted to approximately double UK electricity demand by 2050. So even if this goes ahead and works as intended, it will end up providing something like 4% of the UK's needs.

A whole bunch of comments here comparing this idea negatively to wind, nuclear or tankers filled with hydrogen (?!). Even if it goes ahead, there need to be like a dozen other new projects of similar scale just to meet demand on these small islands. If you also want to provide carbon free electricity to the other 10 billion people likely to be living on this planet by that 2050, then you need to multiply that dozen projects by a factor of at least 100.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#138

Post by dmitriid »

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…

> The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons

You mean, the UK was one of the three largest powers in the EU with all the power to influence its policy and direction which it did.

Instead, the UK adopted the attitude of "we are a superpower, you owe us everything, we owe you nothing" to which the planet's largest economic union and one of the planet's largest markets calmly responded, "u wot mate?"

About a year into the whole Brexit brouhaha the EU said, look, here are the various agreements and levels of agreements we have with all the countries [1] (taking from the amazing short overview here [2]). You don't want Norway style because "it's EU with extra steps", you don't want Switzerland-style because "same thing", you don't want Ukraine or Turkey-style because you don't want to be bound by EU trade agreements etc.

At every step of the way UK's reaction was "these Brussels democrats are smothering our great independent nation, they must give us everything we want". That's not how negotiations work. Especially not with an economic block of ~450 million people who are your biggest trading partners.

And after all that puffing and chest-beating, almost seven years into the whole Brexit ordeal UK also "suddenly" discovered the whole Northern Ireland border issue. Which tells you a lot about the competence of your government.

So, no. UK went from being the country with the largest influence on EU policy to an outside country that has to deal with the EU on the same terms as every other country from outside the EU.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/m2e5PGa.png

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#139

Post by BurningFrog »

sofixa wrote: post #56
cptcobalt wrote: post #44

This is rad. > Alongside the consistent output from its solar panels and wind turbines, an onsite 20GWh/5GW battery facility provide sufficient storage to reliably deliver each and every day Four hour battery storage for renewables. The way of the future. > This “first of a kind” project will generate 10.5GW of zero carbon electricity from the sun and wind to deliver 3.6GW of reliable energy for an average of 20+ hou…

> Four hour battery storage for renewables. The way of the future. Only the beginning of the way i hope. 4 hours isn't even close to being enough for "reliable" electricity generation.

Adding battery power for v2 should be one of the easier upgrades.

I assume batteries in 10 years will be vastly better/cheaper.

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