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Would the energy cost of moving the electricity be lower than the energy cost of just transmitting it over power lines?
by RandallBrown 7y ago
Would the energy cost of moving the electricity be lower than the energy cost of just transmitting it over power lines?
- ChuckMcM 7y agoDepends almost entirely on distance. Back in one of my college physics classes in LA we analyzed moving electricity from Hoover Dam in (Nevada/Arizona) to LA. It was a lot of fun. You can raise the voltage so you need less current but then you have to raise the wires so they don't arc to the ground and separate them. As I recall (it was a while ago) we were using the Fischer-Tropsch[1] process to convert electricity into oil to transport by tanker to fossil fueled plants. You plot all the variables (voltage, current, distance) and there are regions where it is better to convert it and regions where it isn't [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...