6 ms·

Global energy grid?

gruez 6y ago
You really want to be dependent on other countries for your vital infrastructure? Imagine if we go to war with china/russia, and they shut down energy exports to the US causing rolling blackouts everywhere.
- simongr3dal 6y ago
  Then get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. The point of a global energy grid would be that there's always sun and wind somewhere on the planet and you would smooth out time-of-day differences in usage. The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production.
  - gruez 6y ago
    > Then get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. Ah yes, because the other countries will magically have the spare capacity (both in terms of generation and transmission)? We already see this play out in Europe: nobody there wants to do anything about russia because they control the natural gas supply. >The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production. Maybe, but the effects are the same. If you can't produce enough electricity to make it through the night, that puts you in very vulurable position. Even if it doesn't completely shut down the country, it might cause enough unrest to topple the current administration (eg. if they're only leading in the polls by a few percentage points and there's an election in a few months).
    - ben_w 6y ago
      > Ah yes, because the other countries will magically have the spare capacity (both in terms of generation and transmission)? I believe simongr3dal’s argument is the invisible hand of the free market, not magic. Optimistically, solar resources are more evenly distributed than oil and gas, so no country can act like Russia; pessimistically, Russia isn’t the first country to exert influence by threatening to cease supply of its resources, and it won’t be the last; the optimistic response to which is that there are many ways to solve seasonal issues, for example the UK (personal familiarity, no other reason for this example) could plan 18-hours local storage and enough local production for winter rather than summer.
  - red75prime 6y ago
    Magnetic field of power cables is easily detectable and you can't realistically defend thousands miles of them.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  The obvious solution would be not to go to war with china/russia unless they shut down energy exports. And of course they wouldn't, as they depend on selling and also importing electricity at times. We even have practical experiences with that. Germany for many decades got their natural gas from the sovjet union and russia. Despite of the cold war, and it indeed was just short of a war state, gas supplies never were cut. Because cutting gas supply to Germany would have been a simple way to apply pressure, but not a cheap one. It would either have triggered a war or at minimum that after recovering from the cut, Germany would have been permanentely lost as a trading partner. So there was never a supply cut in many decades.
pan69 6y ago
So that North Americas energy can come from China during the night? The sun is always shining somewhere but this does doesn't sound feasible simply due to geo-political and infrastructure reasons. Have any serious plans been put forward for this idea?
bregma 6y ago
Running a power cable across the Pacific is going to be rife with expensive engineering problems, but sure, you could send electrons from Three Gorges to Google at some cost. I wouldn't call it cheaper, though.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  In the spirit of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I wonder if shipping big piles of fully charged batteries around has any chance of being a practical power distribution method?
  - jpollock 6y ago
    The value of the electricity can be measured by comparing it to the value of a petroleum product. transportable energy can be made using from CO2 in the air using Fischer-Tropsch. It's energy intensive, and uneconomic - which is why people are stringing HVDC links across bodies of water - Denmark/Sweden, Australia/Tasmania, NZ North/South Islands instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
  - chartpath 6y ago
    Sneakernet 4.0
  - sremani 6y ago
    Batteries are heavy - unless you are sending these station wagons downhill, its probably not such a great idea.
  - gruez 6y ago
    I highly doubt this. According to wikipedia[1], three high voltage towers can transmit 7079 MW of power. To beat that with lipo batteries you'd need to move 26,713 metric tons worth of batteries per hour[2], and that's not even including time to charge. I don't think any sort of freight transportation method can do that cheaper than some transmission towers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=7079+MWh+%2F+265Wh%2Fkg https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=7079+MWh+%2F+265Wh%2Fk...

Global energy grid?

You really want to be dependent on other countries for your vital infrastructure? Imagine if we go to war with china/russia, and they shut down energy exports to the US causing rolling blackouts everywhere.

simongr3dal 6y ago
Then get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. The point of a global energy grid would be that there's always sun and wind somewhere on the planet and you would smooth out time-of-day differences in usage. The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production.
- gruez 6y ago
  > Then get your electricity nationaly, or from france, or from germany, or from saudi arabia, or from australia, or from argentina. Ah yes, because the other countries will magically have the spare capacity (both in terms of generation and transmission)? We already see this play out in Europe: nobody there wants to do anything about russia because they control the natural gas supply. >The point is NOT to outsource your country's entire electricity production. Maybe, but the effects are the same. If you can't produce enough electricity to make it through the night, that puts you in very vulurable position. Even if it doesn't completely shut down the country, it might cause enough unrest to topple the current administration (eg. if they're only leading in the polls by a few percentage points and there's an election in a few months).
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > Ah yes, because the other countries will magically have the spare capacity (both in terms of generation and transmission)? I believe simongr3dal’s argument is the invisible hand of the free market, not magic. Optimistically, solar resources are more evenly distributed than oil and gas, so no country can act like Russia; pessimistically, Russia isn’t the first country to exert influence by threatening to cease supply of its resources, and it won’t be the last; the optimistic response to which is that there are many ways to solve seasonal issues, for example the UK (personal familiarity, no other reason for this example) could plan 18-hours local storage and enough local production for winter rather than summer.
- red75prime 6y ago
  Magnetic field of power cables is easily detectable and you can't realistically defend thousands miles of them.
_ph_ 6y ago
The obvious solution would be not to go to war with china/russia unless they shut down energy exports. And of course they wouldn't, as they depend on selling and also importing electricity at times. We even have practical experiences with that. Germany for many decades got their natural gas from the sovjet union and russia. Despite of the cold war, and it indeed was just short of a war state, gas supplies never were cut. Because cutting gas supply to Germany would have been a simple way to apply pressure, but not a cheap one. It would either have triggered a war or at minimum that after recovering from the cut, Germany would have been permanentely lost as a trading partner. So there was never a supply cut in many decades.

pan69 6y ago

So that North Americas energy can come from China during the night? The sun is always shining somewhere but this does doesn't sound feasible simply due to geo-political and infrastructure reasons. Have any serious plans been put forward for this idea?

bregma 6y ago

Running a power cable across the Pacific is going to be rife with expensive engineering problems, but sure, you could send electrons from Three Gorges to Google at some cost. I wouldn't call it cheaper, though.

BurningFrog 6y ago
In the spirit of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I wonder if shipping big piles of fully charged batteries around has any chance of being a practical power distribution method?
- jpollock 6y ago
  The value of the electricity can be measured by comparing it to the value of a petroleum product. transportable energy can be made using from CO2 in the air using Fischer-Tropsch. It's energy intensive, and uneconomic - which is why people are stringing HVDC links across bodies of water - Denmark/Sweden, Australia/Tasmania, NZ North/South Islands instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
- chartpath 6y ago
  Sneakernet 4.0
- sremani 6y ago
  Batteries are heavy - unless you are sending these station wagons downhill, its probably not such a great idea.
- gruez 6y ago
  I highly doubt this. According to wikipedia[1], three high voltage towers can transmit 7079 MW of power. To beat that with lipo batteries you'd need to move 26,713 metric tons worth of batteries per hour[2], and that's not even including time to charge. I don't think any sort of freight transportation method can do that cheaper than some transmission towers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=7079+MWh+%2F+265Wh%2Fkg https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=7079+MWh+%2F+265Wh%2Fk...