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To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

economist.com

81–90 of 106 posts

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#81
post #69

I cannot help but wonder what the answers are to these points: > Norwegians are forgetting that domestically produced power is not always cheaper. Whenever the current in the cables flows towards them, it helps reduce high prices. Norway could add some diodes to the cables so that it only imports and does not export. > And even though Norway exports more power than it imports, that is fantastic for domestic energy pr…

The Economist did address these, their basic argument is that trade is a win-win.

Usually when these win-wins go wrong they have the gains filtered off by a middleman or monopolist but in this case it seems the government uses the money earned to subsidize household bills which means they do get the benefit of trade.

Stopping the trade therefore means higher prices for domestic consumers. This is the basic point the article makes repeatedly.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#82
post #41

Beware of talk about benefits without mention of drawbacks. Connecting grids could significantly increase the fragility of the system resulting in higher risk of large-scale power outages. Some of you might have experienced the 2003 blackout in northeast North American ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 ), which luckily happened in the summer. Tail risks should not be swept under the rug. Even…

Blackouts & instability can happen on isolated grids too - if not easier given less options. See the texas grid drama.

It does seem sensible to beef up resilience on large interconnects though agreed to mitigate cascading risk.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#83
Europe and large parts of ASEAN already are pretty connected. Aside from connecting the three US grids next step would surely need to be connecting continents?

Quick google says it should be feasible. London to DC is about 5k km. Longest UHV DC seems to be just over 3k built in 2018 (over land) so maybe?

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#84
post #41

Beware of talk about benefits without mention of drawbacks. Connecting grids could significantly increase the fragility of the system resulting in higher risk of large-scale power outages. Some of you might have experienced the 2003 blackout in northeast North American ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 ), which luckily happened in the summer. Tail risks should not be swept under the rug. Even…

In 2003 they didn’t have grid scale batteries.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#85
post #63
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is never going to be viable. Even existing short undersea cables are difficult (impossible?) to protect from sabotage, let alone one that would span an ocean.

Longer cables need to be thicker if you want resistance to be fixed. If you want 1Ω then by coincidence a 40,000 km cable has a cross section of almost exactly one square meter. If you're putting a significant fraction of global power through that at any sane voltage, you can't use most cutting tools (or indeed electrical motors) near it because the magnetic field is too strong. China is making enough aluminium that…

The tool of choice for cutting undersea cables & pipelines seems to currently be tankers dragging anchors across the seafloor. There's no economically viable protection able to withstand forces like that.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#87
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longer cables need to be thicker if you want resistance to be fixed. If you want 1Ω then by coincidence a 40,000 km cable has a cross section of almost exactly one square meter. If you're putting a significant fraction of global power through that at any sane voltage, you can't use most cutting tools (or indeed electrical motors) near it because the magnetic field is too strong. China is making enough aluminium that…

Ok, you have the resistance for the cable. Now we need the expansion and contraction due to temperature, and also current, and gravity acting on downward upward sections. Then there is the minor issue of lowering 40km sections to the ocean floor, be a nice boat to work that! Exactly how much arc we gona put in the cable? as we drop it strait down the edge of the continental shelf. And then there are undersea quakes a…

A project like this will have many considerations that don't fit into a Hacker News comment. I'd be surprised if a full analysis was less than 200 pages of detailed hard work, including performing actual research to answer questions such as "what exactly is the impact of a surface magnetic field of 0.34 teslas on the local water flow?" and "is marine life impacted by the local magnetic field exceeding Earth's natural field within about 10 km?"

I would be surprised if the very slow shift to Earth's poles has any impact, but yes, that too, even if only to rule it out.

Temperature, however, isn't one of those questions. Deep water has a near-constant temperature, and even if it didn't, solving for this is already well-studied for continuously welded railways.

Likewise, because it's underwater, we can make them in neutrally buoyant sections. Could even make them as two parallel and closely-spaced tracks, so it can built as an underwater railway that delivers its own power and transport during its own construction.

> due to the very real possibilty of another technology bieng adopted and implimented first.

Not hugely likely, IMO.

Long term I can see an argument for doing this as an orbital ring — basically the same idea but make it about π*200km longer so it can be 100km above ground everywhere, spin it so fast it's slightly above orbital speed, magnetically levitate hoops around it that are tethered to the ground and transmit power.

Buuuuut orbital rings are only at technology readiness level 2, so nowhere near ready to consider:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

(For example, an orbital ring has to be build by thickening rather than lengthening to be affordable: it was conceived as a non-rocket launch mechanism, and bootstrapping it by having a thin version lift the material for making it thicker and stronger was a big part of the pricing when it was originally conceived).

Whereas a big fat metal wire is at the level of "do sufficient geological and biological surveys to make sure there's an actual route, and accept that the answer may in fact be 'no'" — we *definitely* know how to build a big fat wire (or many smaller wires). We just don't know if we *should*.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#88
post #85
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longer cables need to be thicker if you want resistance to be fixed. If you want 1Ω then by coincidence a 40,000 km cable has a cross section of almost exactly one square meter. If you're putting a significant fraction of global power through that at any sane voltage, you can't use most cutting tools (or indeed electrical motors) near it because the magnetic field is too strong. China is making enough aluminium that…

The tool of choice for cutting undersea cables & pipelines seems to currently be tankers dragging anchors across the seafloor. There's no economically viable protection able to withstand forces like that.

This is reportedly the largest anchor in the world (not my domain, I wouldn't know):

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/hxnyf0/w...

Eyeballing it, the cable I'm suggesting has a metal part about four times that anchor's cross section, let alone the chain's cross section. Even if it was bare metal (in the ocean, which would be madness all by itself), the anchor or the chain would break well before the power cable.

With a moderate layer of, say, concrete, that anchor wouldn't even be able to hook onto the cable as the arms don't go out far enough.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#89
post #24

It's risky to connect your grid to another country's. ex: Canada's grid is connected to the USA, but now the USA is being hostile to Canada.

Three countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are disconnecting from Russia literally in 2 weeks for that specific reason, so it's an horrible idea to interconnect everything in the current world.

Wouldn't it be best to leave the connections open just in case? I get not wanting to give the Kremlin a big button that says "black out Estonia" but as long as they can also get juice from the EU grid too, what's the problem? I suppose it's an issue of grid synchronization? If so, DC links could be used on politically tenuous connections on the global power network.

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#90
Heh, author of this should try living in south Sweden that allows Germany to suck them dry when the wind turbines stand still over there.

Quote: Summary of Thursday’s Electricity Prices:

Electricity areas 3 & 4 (Southern Sweden): SEK 2.5-3.6 average price per kWh, peak at SEK 8.

Electricity areas 1 & 2 (Northern Sweden): 17 öre and 9 öre per kWh, respectively.

[source| https://www.timber.exchange/news/details/in-depth/electricit....]

Denmark is trying to do to Norway what Germany has done do the Swedish in that respect. I fully understand that the Norwegians want to cut the cable to the south.

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