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I wonder if it could ever make sense to have ultra-high voltage or superconductive power transmission lines wrapping around the planet so that we could take adv
by laser 8y ago
I wonder if it could ever make sense to have ultra-high voltage or superconductive power transmission lines wrapping around the planet so that we could take advantage of the fact that it's always daytime somewhere to forgo much grid-scale storage and instead just get electricity from wherever it's daylight. Aside from the geopolitical/national security issues, I wonder if such a thing is feasible or it's ultimately going to be more efficient to store energy than transmit it half-way around the world.
- alex_duf 8y agothere's a big caveat: the pacific ocean
- nafey 8y agoIs it possible to make floating Solar panels?
- freebs 8y agoAnything is possible. We could power the entire US if we put a large collection of panels in the desert. Surprised there aren't self cleaning panels yet (maybe there are) :).
- pjc50 8y agoYes, but why? You've got all the maintenance headaches of wave power with none of the benefit.
- deftnerd 8y agoIt might be useful for above-ground water reservoirs. They sometimes float balls on their surface to reduce evaporation in hot environments (especially ones with a breeze). If you could do the same with large arrays of floating solar panels, you could reduce evaporation and get energy out of it at the same time.
- Retric 8y agoDistance from Americas to Eurasia by sea is under 55 miles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait The longest undersea power line is 580km by comparison, so that' not a huge issue.
- dougmwne 8y agoA straight path from the Mojave to the Gobi desert is 9000 km directly through the Bering Strait.
- ximeng 8y agoCircumference of the earth 40,000km Power loss .5-1.1% for 160km If we assume 200km has 1% power loss then 20,000km is around 63% power loss.
- mrfusion 8y agoHe said super conductor. So no losses. Jus the cooling costs but we could insulate it really well. High voltage dc might be another option to minimize losses.
- craftyguy 8y ago> High voltage dc I thought that was proven over a hundred years ago to not be an efficient way to carry electricity over long distances.. did something change recently?
- ahartmetz 8y agoLow voltage DC was bad. It had to be low voltage because there were only motor-generator, expensive and inefficient transformers for DC. Today, all conversions can be done in solid-state electronics. DC to AC and DC to different voltage DC are still more expensive and lossy than AC-AC, but sometimes the best option in a given situation.
- craftyguy 8y ago> DC to AC and DC to different voltage DC are still more expensive and lossy than AC-AC, but sometimes the best option in a given situation. Ok, what's a situation involving long distance transmission where DC-AC or DC-DC is best?
- cbdumas 8y agoWikipedia has a nice list[1] of existing and upcoming projects where transmission engineers judged HVDC to be the best solution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
- freebs 8y agoWhy use wires when we could possibly concentrate and beam the light across the ponds?
- yurishimo 8y agoCurious how this would work from a practical standpoint? Could planes fly through it? How high off the ground would the light be beamed? Could a boat pass through it's path? I know absolutely nothing about this area so just generally curious!
- Gravityloss 8y agoYou can power planes with lasers. You could power rockets too.
- pjc50 8y ago1) You can't beam round a curved surface and the atmosphere isn't refractive enough in the visible spectrum (only works for shortwave radio) 2) The death ray is an environmental and safety hazard 3) Atmospheric attenuation would probably be more than electrical attenuation at that distance
- nielsbot 8y agoI know HN is not for humor, but i really got a laugh out of “the death ray is an environmental and safety hazard”, listed with such seriousness.
- pjc50 8y agoThankyou - that was entirely deliberate, you can only get humour past the HN voting system if either it's totally deadpan or you explain the joke in the same comment.
- jason46 8y agoSatellite with a mirror at the apex?
- Shivetya 8y agoOriginally I always fantasized about such tech but the technology required to develop this super conductor then produce it in the volumes needed, just think of all the communication cables that have been laid just seems insurmountable. I think the best bet is finding more storage alternatives that can be replicated on a large scale and don't require any rare earth elements and localized enough to not worry abut shifting political alliances
- rsynnott 8y agoYou don't need magic superconductors for this; just high-voltage DC. The geopolitical problem remains, though.
- tomp 8y agoWhy not just beam it from space?
- greglindahl 8y agoIt's expensive to launch stuff, and it's difficult to get power down from orbit without frying birds or creating a weapon.
- lawlessone 8y ago>without frying birds or creating a weapon. The weapons part would probably be bonus for some..
- Johnny555 8y agoWith a large enough collector, you don't fry birds. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ The recommended transmission strength would be 230 W/m² in the center of the beam. This is about a quarter the strength of full sunlight, and is thought to be a safe level through which aircraft and birds can fly. At this level, our 3.6 km diameter collecting area would generate about 40 GWh of energy in a day, at an assumed reception/conversion efficiency of 70%. By comparison, a flat array of 15%-efficient PV panels occupying the same area in the Mojave Desert would generate about a fourth as much energy averaged over the year
- deftnerd 8y agoDoes the 30% lost efficiency bleed into the environment as heat energy? While it's not as damaging as greenhouse gases, we should try to avoid adding more heat to our environment if possible. Especially when considering planetary-scale space power production and transmission. I remember reading about a way to radiate heat energy from AC units directly to space. "The panels do this by emitting heat at infrared wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometers. To these waves, the Earth’s atmosphere is transparent. What’s more, the panels reflect nearly all the sunlight falling on them." [1] Perhaps the same general concept could be used to transmit energy from space to earth while lowering interaction with the atmosphere. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/efficient-airconditioning-by-beaming-heat-into-space https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/effici...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stephengillie 8y agoElectricity transmission would be a foundational part of an orbital ring around Earth. And around a dynamo like Uranus, it could be used to generate electricity too. This (long) video about orbital rings brings such things to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
- ztetranz 8y agoBuckminster Fuller thought of that long ago. http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/newsletters/1995/buckminster-fuller-on-the-global-energy-grid.shtml http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/newsletters/1995/bu...