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What about a global power grid? Whichever side is receiving sunlight would power the other side of the Earth. We've already got communication cables running wor
by winter_blue 10y ago
What about a global power grid? Whichever side is receiving sunlight would power the other side of the Earth. We've already got communication cables running worldwide, couldn't we add cables for transmitting power? Perhaps, electric cables will weigh orders of magnitude than optic fiber comm links, but would it be infeasible?
- kevinnk 10y agoYou can't transport power that far without massive transmission losses. Communications cables use repeaters and fiber optics, so they don't have nearly the same problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#...
- WJW 10y agoWhy not use superconducting cables? https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182278-the-worlds-first-superconducting-power-line-paves-the-way-for-billions-of-dollars-in-savings https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/182278-the-worlds-first-...
- pjc50 10y agoBecause they're very expensive and require liquid nitrogen cooling? Which itself represents energy consumption, so instead of losing energy as resistive losses you're spending it on cooling. What's more likely is some form of energy-to-liquid-fuels process that runs during times and places of excess energy. The fuel can then be stored, pumped, trucked etc to other locations. This already exists, it's just not price-competitive with fossil fuels.
- XorNot 10y agoCooling benefits from insulation - the energy loss does not scale as an exponential factor, and levels off very dramatically (the deep sea is already very cold).
- rjvs 10y agoWe're trying to avoid the deep sea getting hot, remember?
- lighttower 10y agoWhat about electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen during the day?
- patrickk 10y agoThere's also the political issues to consider. You'd have to really, really trust the other countries you're relying on for the supply of electricity not to do something to mess with your economy. I could imagine it working politically in an area like the EU[1] or between the US and Canada, but across Asia or the Middle East there's likely to be too little trust. An example with pipelines, Russia turned off gas pipelines into Ukraine in 2009 in winter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_ga... [1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4486_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4486_en.htm
- cesarb 10y agohttp://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-a-global-power-grid http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-...
- winter_blue 10y agoWow, that was an amazing article. I learned a lot reading it. Thanks.