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UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

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Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#151
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31144464 — The operator is picking a "bigger" battery, smaller inverters. This means they're intending to use the stored energy over a longer period of time. There are similar sized batteries with bigger inverters, when a greater need for peak power discharge (or charge) is expected.

[deleted]

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#152
post #10
post #5

Sounds inefficient How big are the loss on such a high distance connection ?

High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is much more efficient at transmission over long distances than AC. It can throw off your intuition on these things. In China, there is a 3300 km line like this moving 12GW of power. This is a little bit longer, but not by much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

The line you're talking about is part of China's UHVDC grid, which is all on land. The Chinese have invested more than $100 billion into this over the past twenty years, because they have to, all their power generation is far from their cities.

The longest submarine HVDC line today is something like 600 km. There are no UHVDC submarine lines.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#153

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…

Realistically though is the UK going to invade Morocco if Morocco gets into a war with {nearby country} and the solar plants are disabled in the fighting? Would the UK be forced to send peacekeeper forces into a former French and Spanish colony, and how would that play out? Is the UK going to invade Morocco over a 10% price hike? A 20% one?

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> which clearly need improving. Indeed, they do. So you really have no right to point fingers at "non-democratic EU bureaucracy" when at worst it's the same system as in the UK. > The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process You realise that the UK was in the EU? That it was one of its founding members? That the perceived failure to do anything about this process is shared by the UK as we…

It's not the same system. In the EU the executive dominates the legislature because only the executive can initiate the process of changing the law. The executive in turn is controlled by one person who is not selected via any democratic process or in fact any documented process at all (nobody really knows why vDL was selected as current EU Commission head).

That's why when you read about EU law changes you so often read about negotiations between the Parliament and Commission. In the UK the executive branch implements the will of the legislative branch. In the EU the Parliament is often found implementing the will of the executive. Technically it's not a Parliament at all, due to this lack of the "right of initiation".

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#155

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…

Isn’t 4 hours of battery storage much too low? How is that considered “reliable”? What am I missing?

It's very reliable compared to 0 hours of battery storage

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: what’s wrong with diversification? Isn’t that a good thing?

There isn't anything wrong with diversification, and this might even be a good idea. I'm just commenting upon the likely motivations are primarily domestic politics and geopolitics given its pretty obvious that you could achieve similar results by doing this with onshore wind and solar installations in southern Spain with lower technical and cost requirements. Its definitely true that outside of the EU we are going t…

The cable may be cheaper but what about land value?

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#157

> The Morocco-UK Power Project will be powered by a wind and solar farm, approximately 1,500km² in size I'm intrigued by how 1,500km² of partial shade will transform the Sahara ecosystem. I hope it will make more life possible in the shade.

Large wind turbines are spread out so will probably occupy much more land but not cast shadow.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#158
post #97

Oh, nice, so in case of wars a cheap submarine can just put a small and cheap charge deep in the sea and boom, 10GWp power are out of the UK national grid. How nice. My fellow humans remember a thing: a national grid is not national because of politics but because a such critical part of a country infra it's better to be self-sufficient under nation borders and hopefully self-sufficient inside those borders even in c…

This goes for all infrastructure. Destroying it is much easier than making it. But that 'cheap' submarine won't be as cheap as you think it is and it still has to do it undetected and it has to achieve some kind of objective. It also immediately gets two countries pissed off at you, one of which is in NATO and may well see an attack on its infrastructure as an overt act of war. So you better think this over long and…

Under the sea who know for sure who made what? Even an ally can do such sabotage just to generate a military response against a common enemy he want to aggress but can't do without allies and those allies are not much interested if not forced or even a simple self-inflicted damage to justify a war the public do not accept but some in the government/élites want... Did you remember just Britannia to cite something from history or the outcome of the attacks of Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan and Nice have generated?

Such attacks can even disable half a country grid just due to the big drop in frequency of the whole grid, spark enormous outrage and can also be both really damaging and really quick to fix. Life it's complicated, where no one can easy see anything can happen, design things to avoid potential attack surface is a good way to protect themselves.

We do not normally have strokes, but we put defibrillators everywhere for a reason, we do not have much car accidents but we design cars to make us survive important ones etc. A critical infra like an energy grid... Oh, sure we in the west are equally dependent on foreign supply chains for oil, uranium etc but we stockpile them a bit, months for oil, an year or two for uranium, it's not the same of electricity in a grid...

Just see how many issues are there due to some supply chain issues in south China or the "Ever given" crisis in Suez. We are already hyper-vulnerable planning even bigger vulnerabilities for the future it does not sound that smart to me.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#159
post #97

Oh, nice, so in case of wars a cheap submarine can just put a small and cheap charge deep in the sea and boom, 10GWp power are out of the UK national grid. How nice. My fellow humans remember a thing: a national grid is not national because of politics but because a such critical part of a country infra it's better to be self-sufficient under nation borders and hopefully self-sufficient inside those borders even in c…

This goes for all infrastructure. Destroying it is much easier than making it. But that 'cheap' submarine won't be as cheap as you think it is and it still has to do it undetected and it has to achieve some kind of objective. It also immediately gets two countries pissed off at you, one of which is in NATO and may well see an attack on its infrastructure as an overt act of war. So you better think this over long and…

I think it is just plowed into a trench and covered back up.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#160
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes for all infrastructure. Destroying it is much easier than making it. But that 'cheap' submarine won't be as cheap as you think it is and it still has to do it undetected and it has to achieve some kind of objective. It also immediately gets two countries pissed off at you, one of which is in NATO and may well see an attack on its infrastructure as an overt act of war. So you better think this over long and…

Under the sea who know for sure who made what? Even an ally can do such sabotage just to generate a military response against a common enemy he want to aggress but can't do without allies and those allies are not much interested if not forced or even a simple self-inflicted damage to justify a war the public do not accept but some in the government/élites want... Did you remember just Britannia to cite something from…

Conspiracy thinking isn't going to stop infrastructure projects from happening. For now. Fortunately.
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