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UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

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Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#221
post #209
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remarkably, all of those assertions are wrong.

Try and back up what your saying. What do you think happens if you build a 100GW solar panel farm without talking with the local electric utility?

That wasn't the topic. At issue is whether putting storage at one end or other of a massive transmission line makes any difference. Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line will be extremely common, worldwide, because a transmission line is the conventional backup for local storage, and is also how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus.

In fact, as this particular transmission line will be feeding into the UK national grid, its normal role will be backup for offshore wind.

That somebody else at the end of a different transmission line might want access to the battery would be a good reason to site it where those lines meet. Another might be that you need to minimize fluctuations on power going through your transmission line. But whatever the reasons, they certainly will not be trivial, and might be revelatory. Trivially dismissing the question adds no light.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#222
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That something happened once doesn't mean you need to jump at every shadow or that you need to assume that every thing that we do needs to be hardened against every eventuality. Fortunately - for now - idiots in real life are still in relatively short supply. Contrasted with the internet where they are plentiful, witness the dumb attacks on mobile phone infrastructure once the crazies start to influence each other be…

> That something happened once doesn't mean you need to jump at every shadow or that you need to assume that every thing that we do needs to be hardened against every eventuality. Hardened? No. Design to minimize unpleasant events? Yes. Just for instance did you lock your hose door? It's pointless since thief can still going in and locked or not the chance of being stolen it's not that much. Even that we still produc…

> Sorry for keeping such rude tone up

You're not really sorry. And you won't be re-doing anything, all you will do is write longish comments about your worldview.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#223
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That something happened once doesn't mean you need to jump at every shadow or that you need to assume that every thing that we do needs to be hardened against every eventuality. Hardened? No. Design to minimize unpleasant events? Yes. Just for instance did you lock your hose door? It's pointless since thief can still going in and locked or not the chance of being stolen it's not that much. Even that we still produc…

> Sorry for keeping such rude tone up You're not really sorry. And you won't be re-doing anything, all you will do is write longish comments about your worldview.

As you do, but the length, anyway I explain my view, giving examples, on your side do you have any valid counter-example?

For instance can you state that there is no such polemics about low quality/dangerous buildings, more or less across the entire world with few tragic examples here and there (like skyscraper fires)?

Can you state why since we veeeeeery rarely, at least in the west world, have a puncture/flat a car tire we still have or a spare wheel or something to try repairing the aforementioned puncture?

Can you state why the entire world after the supply chain crisis start talk about resilience, the yesterday just-in-time Toyota-system mania now is depicted as crazy, "we need stocks" etc?

Just for few samples. I'm really curious to here them. Oh, of course, I agree that such disruptive events are very rare! I just counter the fact that we can ignore them in designing such infra because they are so rare.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#224
post #208
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a border isn't a claim. (France and Spain share a border - which one has a claim as a result?) Every border is a result of "taken from them at gunpoint." (It's not hard to find folks who had large pieces of Spain taken from them at gunpoint.) Dependency isn't a claim. It is, however, a tool for taking.

You're misrepresenting the situation. Gibraltar was Spanish for a few centuries ( after the Reconquista), and after it lost a war the UK annexed it. It's not some colony far away, for Spain, it's a part of the Iberian peninsula, and is entirely dependent on Spain. It's like Hong Kong, in a sense. Land the UK took because it could from a weaker country due to its strategic location, but which is mostly integrated with…

Yes, Spain lost Gibraltar in a war. Pretty much every border was decided by war, so why is that border different? ("we had it a long time" isn't a difference.)

Yes, Gibraltar is dependent on Spain for services. As I pointed out, that's a tool for changing the border. (Blockades are an act of war, so that would be "at gunpoint.")

However, that dependence isn't an argument that the border is "wrong".

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#225
post #197
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tankage for what? Tanks for things like compressed air might be cheaper, but round trip energy efficiency is much lower (50%ish) than batteries. It will be interesting to see how sodium ion batteries will compete since their alkali metal is far more abundant than lithium, especially in stationary applications that don't need high energy/mass or energy/volume.

Tankage is for anything: Liquified ammonia (stored at environment temperature under light compression. Liquified hydrogen. Liquified nitrogen. Gaseous hydrogen, underground, where geology favors it. Maybe liquified methane or kerosene, if you can synthesize that. Perhaps surprisingly, round-trip efficiency matters a lot less than other things, for storage not drawn down often. And, it matters a lot less everywhere th…

> Saying tankage is cheap is to note that there is no upper limit on the amount of tankage you can have, and the watt-hours you can bank; your bottleneck is only the conversion rate.

I think there are a lot of use cases for those fuels that don't even require a lot of long term storage, my current favorite being hydrogen fuel cell powered semi trucks that already burn a lot of diesel crossing places that have a lot of renewable electricity potential but not enough transmission (i.e. wind in the Great Plains and sun in the desert Southwest). This would get around the issues with batteries eating into truck weight limits.

Also, the idea of freight trucks "sailing" across the country on wind power is just an appealing narrative.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#226

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…

How's that for energy independence! Wohoo

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#227
post #221
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try and back up what your saying. What do you think happens if you build a 100GW solar panel farm without talking with the local electric utility?

That wasn't the topic. At issue is whether putting storage at one end or other of a massive transmission line makes any difference. Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line will be extremely common, worldwide, because a transmission line is the conventional backup for local storage, and is also how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus. In fact, as this particula…

> Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line

Require vast investments to add the capacity to handle storage and would be less efficient.

Your proposal is basically to spend 20% to 30% more money, loses and extra 4-7% electricity every charge discharge cycle and gains effectively nothing which is why nobody is doing it.

> how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus.

Peak + filling storage requires extra transmission capacity which costs money to build and energy to use.

> At the end of a different transmission line.

Transmission lines work in either direction and are generally set up as an interconnected mesh. You want redundancy from the solar power plant to customers, but you also want redundancy from batteries to customers.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#228
post #225
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tankage is for anything: Liquified ammonia (stored at environment temperature under light compression. Liquified hydrogen. Liquified nitrogen. Gaseous hydrogen, underground, where geology favors it. Maybe liquified methane or kerosene, if you can synthesize that. Perhaps surprisingly, round-trip efficiency matters a lot less than other things, for storage not drawn down often. And, it matters a lot less everywhere th…

> Saying tankage is cheap is to note that there is no upper limit on the amount of tankage you can have, and the watt-hours you can bank; your bottleneck is only the conversion rate. I think there are a lot of use cases for those fuels that don't even require a lot of long term storage, my current favorite being hydrogen fuel cell powered semi trucks that already burn a lot of diesel crossing places that have a lot o…

Once people get used to electrical synthesis of ammonia, those wide-open spaces will be making their own fertilizer and tractor fuel.

They might sell the excess to nearby truck stops. Ammonia is not quite as dense as diesel, but trucks typically have enough room for it. Advantage is trucks (like farm tractors) can be cheaply retrofitted to burn ammonia.

I see reports about a problem of UK farmers who make more from dedicated solar, per hectare, than they were making growing. The problem may be self-limiting: they may end up unable to compete with farmers doing double- or triple-use, with solar, wind, and cultivation in the same field. Then, farmers not doing it will end up needing to, as prices decline.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#229
post #227
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the topic. At issue is whether putting storage at one end or other of a massive transmission line makes any difference. Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line will be extremely common, worldwide, because a transmission line is the conventional backup for local storage, and is also how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus. In fact, as this particula…

> Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line Require vast investments to add the capacity to handle storage and would be less efficient. Your proposal is basically to spend 20% to 30% more money, loses and extra 4-7% electricity every charge discharge cycle and gains effectively nothing which is why nobody is doing it. > how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus. P…

I.e., you did not read what I wrote, and just made shit up, instead. Goodbye.

Re: UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned

#230
post #229
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Storage at the receiving end of a transmission line Require vast investments to add the capacity to handle storage and would be less efficient. Your proposal is basically to spend 20% to 30% more money, loses and extra 4-7% electricity every charge discharge cycle and gains effectively nothing which is why nobody is doing it. > how you top up local storage during supply peaks when you haven't got a local surplus. P…

I.e., you did not read what I wrote, and just made shit up, instead. Goodbye.

O I read it, it’s just clear you don’t understand the topic at all. Which makes picking just a few things to correct hard.

Ex: “you need to minimize fluctuations on power going through your transmission line.” That sounds reasonable, yes you need to maintain grid frequency etc, but it’s got almost nothing to do with transmission lines. Further there is equipment to deal with various transitory issues that is much cheaper than a giant battery + required equipment to connect those batteries to the electric grid.

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