5 ms·

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electric

by godmode2019 5y ago

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for those planners it might work elsewhere. People are talking about pumped hydro as batteries, that's good for storage but this is more of a on demand system. Cool idea, probably unrealistic.

walrus01 5y ago
Long distance high voltage DC inter ties are a thing (there is one running from Washington to southern california), but very costly to build. If you have a truly ridiculous amount of free or almost free photovoltaics somewhere, you could theoretically crack hydrogen from seawater and compress it into tanks, ship it elsewhere (using hydrogen powered ships, hopefully) to be run through giant proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Right now its economics are prohibitively bad. But do the math if the electricity to run the cracking process was far under 1 cent per kWh...
- mschuster91 5y ago
  With anything involving seawater, you'll run into the same issues as any desalination plant - where to put the enormous amounts of brine? Potable water is bad enough to electrolyze as there are lots of minerals in it, but salt water is a whole lot worse - and there are massive concerns about the toxicity of brine.
- yc-kraln 5y ago
  This is more-or-less what the EU will be doing along the northern coast of Africa in the future.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  In some cases even more than costly to build, they're an area of cutting edge research. The public assume that it's just a matter of building a "big wire", but the "big" here has to be so big to be effective that we're actually into the realm of new materials science. The idea of solar panels in Africa powering homes in Europe is probably unlikely to happen for a long time, and even if it did history has shown us time and again that a distributed network is far more resilient than a centralised one, and so the best solutions look a lot more like putting solar panels on every house.
binbag 5y ago
Think about it for a moment. How far would you need to transmit power for this to be useful without storage, and from what longitudinal spread of locations?
- binbag 5y ago
  Implicit in my first comment is the transmission losses...
  - _Microft 5y ago
    Losses in high-voltage direct current transmission lines are approximately 3-4% per 1000km. Wikipedia has a good article on HVDC btw.
Swenrekcah 5y ago
Another perhaps even cooler and not so unrealistic that people are actually working on it, is building the solar farms out in space and beaming the energy down to where it’s needed! Edit: OK I looked it up again and there are two stages. The one that's having actual work done is beaming energy between two places on earth, but the space one is being "explored". https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/25/electricity-can-be-transmitted-through-the-air https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/25/...
- folbec 5y ago
  And the difference between a space solar farm and a military grade space ray is ? If you are beaming serous amount of energy toward earth, you better have a good answer to that. Or you will get the visit of very serious people with no sense of humor.
  - henearkr 5y ago
    > is ? is the presence of failsafe mechanisms using lasers around the energy beam so that if any of these lasers are not anymore aligned with its receptors (or if they are interrupted by any obstacle) then the energy beam is immediately cut. It can even be implemented via optomechanical systems, to be better failure resilient.
    - vkou 5y ago
      That's not the problem. The problem is 'What assurance does the Department of State have that your space death ray is not going to be deliberately pointed at the next RNC?' and 'What assurances does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have that it is not going to be deliberately pointed at the May Day Parade?' You're incredibly unlikely to explain yourself to the satisfaction of both of those groups of people at the same time. Never mind that this is also a multiple-orders-of-magnitude-impractical means of generating energy.
      - WJW 5y ago
        Not to mention: - What assurances does the Department of Defense have that North Koreas orbital death ray will not cook the white house at any moment.
timv 5y ago
> a location east where its still light. You've got your directions backwards. 7pm in NYC is 4pm in SF, so you wanted to use solar power to provide evening energy then you generate in the West (SF) to power the East (NY).
- tomglynch 5y ago
  And if you want to provide morning energy then they are correct.
  - timv 5y ago
    In which case it wouldn't be "still light" it would be "already light"
murbard2 5y ago
This was an idea pushed by Buckminster Fuller, at the global scale. There seems to be a non profit focused on promoting this [1]. I have no idea if they are credible, and it seems they haven't updated their website [2] in a decade, but it's likely a good starting point to find more resources on the topic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Energy_Network_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Energy_Network_Institut... [2] http://www.geni.org/ http://www.geni.org/
andor 5y ago
Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night That might be true for private households, but it's not true for the average electricity consumer. For example: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 The energy required by individual households can be easily stored in a decentralized manner with batteries (e.g. Powerwall).
de6u99er 5y ago
You can store energy by e.g. pumping water up a hill during the day and using turbine generators at night, or if you don't have a hill heating up water any converting heat back to energy. Transporting electric power over long distances comes at a cost since wires are resistors unless you're using superconductors which still rrquire low temperatures to work.
- remus 5y ago
  Pumped hydro storage is great but very dependant on geography, as without some big height differences it's hard to store enough energy. This makes it infeasible in a lot of locations.
Tade0 5y ago
> Cool idea, probably unrealistic. There's a 3200km(2000 mile) long, 12GW HVDC transmission line somewhere in China that does exactly that. Its main purpose is to connect regional grids but given the sheer length of the thing the difference in solar time at each end is well over an hour - could have been better, but that would require a different angle.
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  Technically it was a UHVDC line, " As of 2020, at least thirteen UHVDC transmission lines in China have been completed" ...seems like something the US could invest in with their new infrastructure bill... "April 2010 announcement for a 2,000 MW, 64 km line between Spain and France is estimated at €700 million. This includes the cost of a tunnel through the Pyrenees" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

walrus01 5y ago

Long distance high voltage DC inter ties are a thing (there is one running from Washington to southern california), but very costly to build. If you have a truly ridiculous amount of free or almost free photovoltaics somewhere, you could theoretically crack hydrogen from seawater and compress it into tanks, ship it elsewhere (using hydrogen powered ships, hopefully) to be run through giant proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Right now its economics are prohibitively bad. But do the math if the electricity to run the cracking process was far under 1 cent per kWh...

mschuster91 5y ago
With anything involving seawater, you'll run into the same issues as any desalination plant - where to put the enormous amounts of brine? Potable water is bad enough to electrolyze as there are lots of minerals in it, but salt water is a whole lot worse - and there are massive concerns about the toxicity of brine.
yc-kraln 5y ago
This is more-or-less what the EU will be doing along the northern coast of Africa in the future.
danpalmer 5y ago
In some cases even more than costly to build, they're an area of cutting edge research. The public assume that it's just a matter of building a "big wire", but the "big" here has to be so big to be effective that we're actually into the realm of new materials science. The idea of solar panels in Africa powering homes in Europe is probably unlikely to happen for a long time, and even if it did history has shown us time and again that a distributed network is far more resilient than a centralised one, and so the best solutions look a lot more like putting solar panels on every house.

binbag 5y ago

Think about it for a moment. How far would you need to transmit power for this to be useful without storage, and from what longitudinal spread of locations?

binbag 5y ago
Implicit in my first comment is the transmission losses...
- _Microft 5y ago
  Losses in high-voltage direct current transmission lines are approximately 3-4% per 1000km. Wikipedia has a good article on HVDC btw.

Swenrekcah 5y ago

Another perhaps even cooler and not so unrealistic that people are actually working on it, is building the solar farms out in space and beaming the energy down to where it’s needed! Edit: OK I looked it up again and there are two stages. The one that's having actual work done is beaming energy between two places on earth, but the space one is being "explored". https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/25/electricity-can-be-transmitted-through-the-air https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/25/...

folbec 5y ago
And the difference between a space solar farm and a military grade space ray is ? If you are beaming serous amount of energy toward earth, you better have a good answer to that. Or you will get the visit of very serious people with no sense of humor.
- henearkr 5y ago
  > is ? is the presence of failsafe mechanisms using lasers around the energy beam so that if any of these lasers are not anymore aligned with its receptors (or if they are interrupted by any obstacle) then the energy beam is immediately cut. It can even be implemented via optomechanical systems, to be better failure resilient.
  - vkou 5y ago
    That's not the problem. The problem is 'What assurance does the Department of State have that your space death ray is not going to be deliberately pointed at the next RNC?' and 'What assurances does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have that it is not going to be deliberately pointed at the May Day Parade?' You're incredibly unlikely to explain yourself to the satisfaction of both of those groups of people at the same time. Never mind that this is also a multiple-orders-of-magnitude-impractical means of generating energy.
    - WJW 5y ago
      Not to mention: - What assurances does the Department of Defense have that North Koreas orbital death ray will not cook the white house at any moment.

timv 5y ago

> a location east where its still light. You've got your directions backwards. 7pm in NYC is 4pm in SF, so you wanted to use solar power to provide evening energy then you generate in the West (SF) to power the East (NY).

tomglynch 5y ago
And if you want to provide morning energy then they are correct.
- timv 5y ago
  In which case it wouldn't be "still light" it would be "already light"

murbard2 5y ago

This was an idea pushed by Buckminster Fuller, at the global scale. There seems to be a non profit focused on promoting this [1]. I have no idea if they are credible, and it seems they haven't updated their website [2] in a decade, but it's likely a good starting point to find more resources on the topic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Energy_Network_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Energy_Network_Institut... [2] http://www.geni.org/ http://www.geni.org/

andor 5y ago

Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night That might be true for private households, but it's not true for the average electricity consumer. For example: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 The energy required by individual households can be easily stored in a decentralized manner with batteries (e.g. Powerwall).

de6u99er 5y ago

You can store energy by e.g. pumping water up a hill during the day and using turbine generators at night, or if you don't have a hill heating up water any converting heat back to energy. Transporting electric power over long distances comes at a cost since wires are resistors unless you're using superconductors which still rrquire low temperatures to work.

remus 5y ago
Pumped hydro storage is great but very dependant on geography, as without some big height differences it's hard to store enough energy. This makes it infeasible in a lot of locations.

Tade0 5y ago

> Cool idea, probably unrealistic. There's a 3200km(2000 mile) long, 12GW HVDC transmission line somewhere in China that does exactly that. Its main purpose is to connect regional grids but given the sheer length of the thing the difference in solar time at each end is well over an hour - could have been better, but that would require a different angle.

ratsforhorses 5y ago
Technically it was a UHVDC line, " As of 2020, at least thirteen UHVDC transmission lines in China have been completed" ...seems like something the US could invest in with their new infrastructure bill... "April 2010 announcement for a 2,000 MW, 64 km line between Spain and France is estimated at €700 million. This includes the cost of a tunnel through the Pyrenees" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current