13 ms·

$22B project to provide 8% of UK energy via undersea cable from North Africa

173 points by consumer451 4y ago

whalesalad 4y ago
Coming to theaters soon: An elite hacker assembles a squad of specialists to tap into the power cable and siphon electrons for mining operations.
rdiddly 4y ago
Jeez I suppose it makes sense from a "one world" perspective but as soon as you start thinking about continents, the "optics" are terrible... plundering Africa yet again for European gain!
peoplearepeople 4y ago
It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy. If they could just be self-sufficient with a load of nuclear power plants then they would have less political leverage problems
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > If they could just be self-sufficient with a load of nuclear power plants Given that most countries don't have a source of uranium, I don't see how this is any better from a geopolitical security perspective.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    From my understanding you don't need a lot of uranium to run reactors for quite a while. That's one of the reason it is such a promising lead.
    - rtkwe 4y ago
      An unfortunate part of human cognition is we're pretty bad at assessing small but widespread and constant risks/damages so the impact of pollution pales in comparison to the mental impact of singular events like the various nuclear disasters or near misses we've had between TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al. So they receive outsized push back compared to their actual reduced risk. (Also to be fair when a nuclear disaster does happen it renders an area unusable for a lot longer so the events tend to stick in people's memories) Building them is also unfortunately a many decades long endeavor so we need shorter timeline solutions to bend the curve of climate change. I think a lot of environmentalists have also been burned by long term projects that sit in planning and approval hell for years to decades then get cancelled or funding redirected when a new administration decides to try to make their mark on a project. A similar thing has hampered NASAs Moon and Mars programs where options are pursued and cancelled constantly. SLS is not the first plan for a Moon return NASA has worked on for years it's just the first one that managed to spread the pork around enough to avoid cancellation.
      - Aeolun 4y ago
        > Building them is also unfortunately a many decades long endeavor That’s only true now. We used to build them in a few years.
        rtkwe 4y ago
        That's partially a bureaucratic and political issue but also designs are also much more complex than the were during the glory years.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    You can stock it though, in case foreign countries cut supply short you're not suddendly out of power but instead have time to plan a negotiation or attempt to source it from elsewhere.
    - CTDOCodebases 4y ago
      Not so great when the foreign powers decide to bomb the nuclear reactors though.
      - demindiro 4y ago
        Or cut the cable.
      - diordiderot 4y ago
        Anyone capable of bombing a nuclear reactor in the UK would just nuke the UK so a reactor doesn't really play into it
      - throwaway742 4y ago
        I don't think that's a realistic problem.
  - cobaltoxide 4y ago
    At least uranium can be stockpiled.
  - AngusH 4y ago
    Uranium is a mineral and can be purchased from many places and stored then used as needed. 15 countries mining it currently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p... There are also more countries with estimated reserves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r... While an undersea cable requires continuous operation and the agreement from a single country where it starts. If they suddenly decide for whatever reason to turn it off (say they're short of electricity) then the supply is immediately stopped.
    - caf 4y ago
      Equally relevant only 13 countries are fabricating nuclear fuel rods. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/fuel-fabrication.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
      - preisschild 4y ago
        You could use a CANDU PHWR (Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor) if supply chain safety is that important to you, but don't want an enrichment industry. CANDU reactors can use natural Uranium.
    - belorn 4y ago
      Sweden do have uranium in the ground and could be mining it, but they created a law forbidding it.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    The UK presumably does, as it maintains nuclear weapons.
    - WJW 4y ago
      The UK does not mine its own uranium though. There used to be a uranium mine in Cornwall but it stopped mining in 1930. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country)
  - pyrale 4y ago
    If the issue is just geopolitical independence, it's easy to stockpile uranium reserves. I believe France has several years worth of uranium stockpiled, so even if relations soured with all of our providers, which are pretty diverse, we would have a few years to react.
- NKosmatos 4y ago
  I fully agree with nuclear fusion power plants, but there is so much free solar power that is currently being “wasted”. Nuclear fusion reactors are many decades away and hopefully that’s when our global power problems will be (hopefully) solved :-)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- consumer451 4y ago
  I very much dislike how these posts often result in a very predicable "but nuclear..." binary argument. Here is a crazy idea: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to do both. This project only addresses 8% of UK needs, plenty of room for other sources in the portfolio. How is this a bad thing?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    It depends. Hopefully they source say 150% of requirements and not max them out so that losing 8% takes you yo 142% and not a single led gets dimmed. Redundancy. But I also read how it is hard to stop / start generating power on demand so it might be costly to have so much redundancy.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      You just don’t scale nuclear power up and down. You run at full capacity all of the time outside of maintenance shutdowns. If you shut down or reduce power at all, you essentially have to wait two days to turn back on. There’s a decay chain of isotopes that only stick around a couple of days which are normally burned off by neutrons when the reactor is running which build up when you turn the reactor off. They eat up neutrons making the rector much harder to control until they decay naturally. In order to restart the reactor you essentially have to double the output for a while and slowly very carefully reduce it at just the right rate… and if you make mistakes the reactor melts down. This xenon poisoning was part of the Chernobyl disaster where operator actions and mistakes causing it and then their responses and mechanical failures led to the meltdown. Rectors are just not designed to do this because it’s too risky and complicated to be worth it. So when you stop the reactor it just stays stopped for a couple of days. Similar for any throttling down which I understand is done carefully in some circumstances but absolutely not continually to respond to demand.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        We have perfectly good reactor designs that can go down to half power or even lower without problems, and that's plenty of scaling. And they can scale in real time too. The biggest issue is that it increases the average cost per watt, which is not that big of an issue.
- vkou 4y ago
  This is exactly why France went all-in on nuclear in the 20th century. (That, and nuclear weapon ambitions.)
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    And learned a very expensive lesson in negative learning by doing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
    - pyrale 4y ago
      I wouldn't say the lesson was expensive for France, we've enjoyed cheap energy for decades due to this buildup. The conclusion of this study isn't that France made a costly mistake, it is that it is extremely delusional to forecast ever-increasing efficiency gains when deploying a new technology. I wouldn't be surprised if the very same lesson was learned by countries planning to go full-renewable.
      - Gwypaas 4y ago
        Either you pay on the tax bill or electricity bill. France chose tax bill.
        pyrale 4y ago
        That's an often repeated falsehood. While there are costs shouldered by the public [1][2], they are similar to what any industry gets. In the following, I compare 2013 costs with the 400TWh produced in 2013: * Research costs, which are partly funded by private companies and partly funded by the state. These projects currently don't focus on the current infrastructure but on potential new projects. Same as any domain, before a new industry can exist, there's research to be done. With about 784M€ [2] in 2013, that's just under 2€ per MWh. Spending was always within that order of magnitude ever since 1957. * The surveilance authority is publicly funded, just like any regulatory body. In 2013, it cost about 217M€ [2] which is about 0.5€ per MWh. So, as you can see, the money spent by the state on nuclear energy in 2013 barely registers compared to the power produced by nuclear plants the same year. [1] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/thematic_public_report_costs_nuclear_%20power_sector_012012.pdf https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/themat... [2] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/20140527_rapport_cout_production_electricite_nucleaire.pdf https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/201405..., p. 135-146
- frognumber 4y ago
  If I were a planner, I'd go for both. Impossible in capitalism or with modern politics, but I planning for failure makes a lot of sense to me, and I don't mind having a power grid support 2x capacity. Same for food, medicine, and general-purpose manufacturing (e.g. machine shops), for that matter.
  - diordiderot 4y ago
    The electricity actually _has to_ go _somewhere_. You could make a lot of batteries but double usage every day would build up fast
    - crote 4y ago
      The market will compensate for it. We might end up seeing peaker plants. We might see companies taking advantage of the price difference to cheaply run energy-intensive industry like aluminium smelting. We might see companies trying to take advantage of the price difference by building storage batteries. We might even end up incentivizing consumers to shift their usage patterns by providing cheaper electricity during low-demand periods.
    - frognumber 4y ago
      Power plants can be kept offline.
- kinnth 4y ago
  The UK in particular has a vast abundance of wind power off it's coasts. It makes more sense to double down with 22bn investment in wind! These solar projects are good to start as they could empower more african nations with cheaper electricty. We just need more electricity everywhere if were going to drop the reliance on oil.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    From what I understand, the UK actually has private companies ready and more than willing to build wind farms with their own money. The government is just inexplicably being slow at handing out the permits.
    - adaml_623 4y ago
      They've (the right wing government) underfunded the government so much there aren't sufficient staff to run the beaucracy. The recent (failed) rocket launch from the UK was massively delayed because of slow government processes
      - diordiderot 4y ago
        They also price energy in a way that props up fossil fuels
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      The market for wind in the UK is unusually profitable due to a quirk of the UK electricity market. Specifically, the power price across the UK is the same everywhere. However, there isn't infinite transmission capacity. So, if you generate power in one place, but the power network cannot transport it, you get told not to bother producing it, but you still get paid, and you get paid compensation on top. You know what's better than producing power... being paid to produce power, paid extra compensation, and then not need to actually have those wind turbines spinning (so much reduced maintenance too!). The government is delaying lots of permits till they can figure out how to change these perverse incentives... Needless to say, the wind industry isn't happy about the fact they might no longer get paid such large amounts, so they're demanding the old scheme be kept in place for existing producers for 25+ years, and having the new pricing rules only apply to new builds...
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  > It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy. Versus going across international borders for most other aspects of their economy? if the UK stopped international trade it would completely collapse anyway.
- incone123 4y ago
  This planned link is very long distance, but UK is still part of a European power grid: it's normal for power lines to cross national (or State) borders.
- nottathrowaway3 4y ago
  Some people don't like nuclear power plants and somehow that's more important to them than national/energy security. UK (and France) already have the bomb; going renewable here rather than nuclear has nothing to do with proliferation. I don't see how (for the UK) it's anything except people's feelings are hurt by nuclear power plants. For the rest of Europe maybe it's about proliferation. And maybe economies of scale make tagging along cheaper than local nuclear for Britain.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Pure cost. Paying Hinkley Point C $150/MWh for 35 years is just bonkers waste of money. Flamanville 3 is a similarly amazing project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
    - nottathrowaway3 4y ago
      Average electricity prices (edit/correction: in dense urban areas) in the U.S. are ~$250/mwh https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
      - Gwypaas 4y ago
        Which includes the transmission grid. Nuclear costs that, and then you have to build a grid.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Your chart shows residential prices for the total us average ~$140/MWh, not $250/MWh. Plus, this is the total cost including transmission and distribution, which is roughly half the retail cost. Generation costs average less than $70/MWh, including expensive peaking power in the average. You want to compare the £150/MWh to generation costs of the alternatives in the UK, which are a fraction of £150.
        4y ago
- thrashh 4y ago
  Most countries are small and have to choose between being neighborly but dependent or self-sufficient but much more modest. The UK, for example, imports nearly half of its food.
- epistasis 4y ago
  The UK has been valiantly trying to build new nuclear, but it's hard to find anybody that can do it, and it's unbelievably expensive if it even does get built. I think that there was a narrow window in time where labor costs were low enough for nuclear to make sense, but in more advanced economies, highly labor intensive energy sources, as required by nuclear construction, are no longer viable. Advanced manufacturing capabilities have eclipsed construction technology.
  - likecarter 4y ago
    On the money. Nuclear is too expensive and fragile, especially in this political environment. Also much more susceptible to sabotage in the event of a war, which is becoming a more relevant reality.
consumer451 4y ago
Project's official site: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project
whywhywhydude 4y ago
It’s insane how these articles somehow conjure up some kind of nonsensical bad for environment arguments. Putting solar panels in the desert is good for the environment. It reduces the ground temperatures and lets more plants and animals survive. It might also slow down further desertification.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  By definition, energy = transformation of the environment. The more energy we use, the more we transform our environment. Which most like isn't good for the environment, and eventually for us since we depend on this environment too.
- kinnth 4y ago
  This!
- mohamedattahri 4y ago
  I see where you're coming from, and I agree that the arguments highlighted in the article are rather unconvincing, but messing up with ecosystems ALWAYS triggers unintended consequences. Some might be good, others terrible. I wouldn't be as definitive about the "good" in it as you make it sound.
  - ajross 4y ago
    To be fair, all industry is "messing with ecosystems", and in particular the energy industry is doing so with far more per-kWh impact, and globally. This is very much like the "birds vs. windmills" arguments. Yes, it's important to recognize externalities to any decision and have a plan for mitigation where needed. But at this scale, "look-here-is-a-problem" tunnel vision just creates paralysis.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - yamazakiwi 4y ago
    There is a scale to influencing change in the environment. Any amount of change is not "messing up" with ecosystems, as you put it. Unintended consequences are possible/likely/imminent, but that doesn't mean they are always unexpected/uncontrollable/cataclysmic.
yuliyp 4y ago
I'm amazed by the NIMBYism for the middle of the desert. Yes it's not completely devoid of life and impact, but as far as places for generating solar power go, it's about as good as you're gonna get.
- uoaei 4y ago
  Well, duh. I don't think anyone thinks "sun strong -> good for solar" is bad reasoning. What is bad reasoning is ending your analysis there. What's the cost-benefit of installing heavy transmissions infrastructure for the desert? The shore? The sea and ocean? Everyone and everything who live there? How vulnerable is that infrastructure to natural and artificial disasters, and what costs do we bear to build resilience to those outcomes? Aren't surrounding communities also in need of strong consistent power? Why not move the power less distance (far less materials, less power losses) and serve a different population? The classic thought-terminating cliche of if we covered X% of the Sahara we could power the whole globe obviously ignores the act of moving that energy from one place to another, which is a huge endeavor, to say the least. Your argument is basically of the flavor "why is California still in a drought while the Mississippi river rages?"
  - desro 4y ago
    Maybe we ought to think about water pipelines running from east to west...
    - wahern 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_Development_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_D...
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    I presume the existence of this project demonstrates that the cost/benefit analysis was done and the result balanced towards “benefit”. The most recent nuclear power plant built in England produces 3200MW and costs nearly $40bn so far. This cable will carry 10,500MW and costs $22bn. The latter number doesn’t includes the solar generation, but build costs for utility-scale PV are running less than $1/watt so 10,500MW of name-plate capacity would cost only another $11bn. Even at much lower capacity factors you’re still looking at less than half the cost per MW than nuclear.
samwillis 4y ago
Extensive discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143636 "UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned" 110 points, 243 comments
blippage 4y ago
I have to say that this is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long time. Like "you have to be dropped on your head as a baby" dumb. Let's say the cable is 5000 miles long. How much power dissipation is there going to be over this distance?
- _Microft 4y ago
  According to the article, it is 2300 miles long, that is approximately 3700km. Losses for HVDC power lines are in the low single digit percent per 1000km. China already built a 12GW connection over 3000km for example. That was not a submarine cable, though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
- nl 4y ago
  > How much power dissipation is there going to be over this distance? Not much, and it should be efficient enough to make economic sense. Note that the article says it is 3700km, not 5000 miles. Ultra high voltage lines lose about 3.5% per 1000km[1] (although this is improving). In China they have multiple 3000km+ lines, eg[2]. Some estimates indicate the US could reduce generation emissions by at least 80% with better long distance transmission capacity[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current [2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-pow... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921
quickthrower2 4y ago
Can anyone comment on how sane this is for energy security? Probably OK if this is not required energy but is used with local redundancy.
- prawn 4y ago
  You're on the right site. Lots of anyones! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088086
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Oh I should have said any experts :-)
seanalltogether 4y ago
> The cost of the proposed 10,500-megawatt Xlinks project is expected to be $22 billion, half for the solar and wind energy farms and half for the cables. I thought the UK had too much wind energy as is, why would they be importing more?
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  It is all about correlation between sources. The wind power where it connects to is more weakly correlated to UK's existing wind compared to for example Danish.
- diordiderot 4y ago
  The wind blows consistently at night and infrequently during the day in that region. Solar during the day and wind at night for, relatively to solar, steady energy generation
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Maybe the cable enables export of excess at night time?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
8jy89hui 4y ago
This sounds like the output of a LLM. No actual reasoning or thought.
nl 4y ago
For those who aren't aware, there is already a 3200km transmission line operating in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  There are similar plans to power Singapore with Australian solar. And Norway is exporting hydro to Europe via underseas cables. And the UK and Norway are planning to exchange wind and hydro both ways. Connections by cable are a game changer. Easy to understand and proven technology. It's an often overlooked factor in renewable energy. Yes intermittency seasonality is a thing. But it's a local effect that you can compensate for by connecting to other intermittent sources of energy. They won't all fail at the same time on average. And if you interconnect enough different sources, the system as a whole gets more predictable and resilient. It's not all going to fail at the same time everywhere.
  - martinald 4y ago
    Unfortunately not true, at least for wind energy in europe. It tends to fall (or blow) all over europe at the same time. And, even worse, the wind tends to stop blowing in winter when it is extremely cold (highest demand days) and there is virtually no solar. It's becoming a serious problem in Northern Europe.
    - nl 4y ago
      This is only true is you look at Northern Europe. Southern Europe is more windy in winter as can be seen by wind power generation in Spain, where the highest generation is November-February: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1289540/monthly-wind-power-generation-spain/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1289540/monthly-wind-pow... Edit: actually in the UK there is usually more wind power generated in December and January too: https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dti... (pg 3)
diordiderot 4y ago
An excellent video on this project from YouTube's "Just have a think" https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578 https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578
moralestapia 4y ago
~$300 for each person living there. That's a bit steep, honestly.
- tootie 4y ago
  $300 amortized over the lifetime of the infrastructure, so not really.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    Photovoltaic cells generally last for about 30 years, so about $10/person/year. The tradeoff is that the alternative is fossil fuels that release gigatons of CO2 every year.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
I wonder when are we starting to lay cables across longitude so you get solar power when it's night time. Thinking this out loud now - lower night time loads get covered by wind and other renewables.
andrewstuart 4y ago
Sounds like an major national security vulnerability.
- mohamedattahri 4y ago
  The goal is to provide 10% of the country's energy, so I don't think it's that risky. In the vast majority of cases, win/win deals create stability because neither party has any interest in the deal stopping. If you think Russia is a counter-example, consider that Europe chose to ignore every single red flag and every American intelligence report for about a decade.
WatchDog 4y ago
Singapore is building a similar project, a large solar array in Australia connected by undersea cable[0]. I think it makes a lot more sense for a city state like Singapore, with very limited space to build their own power infrastructure. But for a country like the UK, just the energy security risk alone seems dangerous, especially after what we have seen with the Russian gas pipelines. These cables can easily be attacked, any country with a semi-competent navy could probably pull it off covertly, which would make attribution difficult. Although I guess the US could have been a little more covert about their efforts[1]. [0]: https://suncable.energy/ https://suncable.energy/ [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/ftaz-f09.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/ftaz-f09.html
- stephen_g 4y ago
  Well, we'll see... That project has been in the news for some funding difficulty recently, potentially the project might collapse.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Control-F: "NordStream" nothing So if an adversary can cut off 8% of your energy just by blowing up the pipeline at any of its more vulnerable spots, what prevents them? Should we call this the Full Employment for the Royal Navy Act?
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  We are moving towards an interconnected world. One connection and it is a weak spot. A multitude and you take it in stride. NorthStream is the perfect example of this. Did Europe collapse? No. Would we have liked to not have to deal with it? Yes.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    Not yet. They are now paying 500% the price for methane. They had reserves in tanks but those may be much depleted come next winter.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Depleted? Why this negative outlook? Germany filled all storage last winter, and are still at ~70%. The next winter will be easier as we adapt to the new reality. https://i.redd.it/zv0bh84l3xia1.png https://i.redd.it/zv0bh84l3xia1.png
      - kornhole 4y ago
        If Germany can reduce its gas usage, it will certainly help the situation. I hear that BASF is exploring moves of operations to locations with better access to cheaper gas such as China. Some energy use could switch to coal and other sources. I do not have enough visibility to predict actual outcomes.
perihelions 4y ago
- "Most controversially, the two other sites mentioned by Bouaida — Mahbes and Lemsid — are in the neighboring disputed territory of Western Sahara, which Morocco has claimed as its own for almost half a century, in defiance of the UN, which does not recognize the claim and lists Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory." Absolute madness to lead the article with lessons learned from Russian energy dependence, and segue into "let's put our eggs into this civil war basket-case". Never mind the moral arguments of investing in power plants on illegally annexed territory with no sovereign government. As a practical matter: what happens when conflicts break out again, and the keys to your high-value industrial economy are in some third-world warzone?
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Well, as was answered elsewhere about the NordStream pipeline incident: (paraphrasing) "It's an interconnected world. We'll just take it in our stride!" There. Do you feel better now?
- nashashmi 4y ago
  I just visited Morocco. And I asked the tour driver about Western Sahara being a different country. He immediately said it is not a different country but Morocco. Morocco ended up in the web of French and Spanish Colonialism. It lost some land during independence, some of which ended up in formerly French Algeria after the French left up. Western Sahara was one of those territories where the King of Morocco had 350k people march into the land and tell the colonialists of the Sahara whose land it really was. It is just bonkers that the UN does not recognize Western Sahara that Morocco has exercised sovereignty over for so long as part of Morocco. It just feeds into the idea that the UN is nothing more than a central conglomerated vasal of colonialist rule.
  - harperlee 4y ago
    Surprising that the moroccan tour driver was of the opinion that Morocco is right!
swamp40 4y ago
> 2,300 miles Why would you put a solar cell 2,300 miles away from the energy usage point? Who even thinks that way? Since solar can be easily distributed, why not break it up into 50,000 local arrays?
- delecti 4y ago
  The UK is rather far north, and an infamously cloudy place. For comparison, London has a bit over half the average sunlight as Rabat (the capital of Morocco, the country mentioned in the article). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Climate
- crote 4y ago
  The UK is quite northerly. It is at about the same latitude as Alberta, Canada. Morocco and the Western Sahara are at the same latitude as Florida. In the UK you have a yearly irradiation of about 1000 kWh / m2. In Morocco it is closer to 2450 kWh / m2. This means that the same panels produce over twice as much power. Once you are planning utility-scale solar, it becomes a bit of a no-brainer. Besides, the vast majority of solar is already located in large arrays due to economies of scale. 50.000 local arrays isn't even an option for utilities. And even if you were to build 50.000 local arrays, each of those arrays would have to be 210 kW - that's close to 600 panels per array!
  - swamp40 4y ago
    > if you were to build 50.000 local arrays, each of those arrays would have to be 210 kW - that's close to 600 panels per array Why is that a problem? I also don't see why just because your power output is half, why it is a "no brainer" to boost the voltage way up, run 2,300 miles of underwater cable, reduce the voltage again and then distribute it to the exact same places the local arrays would put it.
ETH_start 4y ago
Assuming the economic projections are accurate, the amount of good the energy would do, not least of which from the reduced CO2 emissions and reduced poverty, absolutely dwarfs the environmental damage caused by the placement of solar panels in the relatively small area of sparsely populated desert ecosystems that would be required. This absurdly short-sighted environmental obstructionism reminds me of how it ended up being the Green parties, and environmental groups like Greenpeace, that were the biggest impediment to the expansion of nuclear power - which is far and away the most promising substitute for fossil fuels - over the last four decades, and consequently and farcically, it was the environmental movement that ended up becoming perhaps the single biggest contributor to CO2 emissions since 1970.
Havoc 4y ago
They're laying an actual cable AROUND the EU instead of wheeling power through the EU grid and beefing up the weak links?!?
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Brexit.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  They do need more capacity to/from EU, but it's not a bad idea to add extra path diversity to increase reliability of the system. A direct undersea HVDC cable is going to have far less conversion losses than converting to AC, going through Spain, and then another HVDC conversion to hop over to the UK... Even more so given most of the current and proposed cables are via France.
  - avar 4y ago
    Electricity is fungible, it would make no sense to transfer the electrons being generated in Morocco to the UK via the mainland. Instead you'd have Spain use them, then Spain might transfer excess power from its north to France, which in turn would transfer more power to the UK. That it isn't being done like that is interesting in itself. I wonder what the mix of technical and political reasons is. To a sibling comment saying "Brexit", that's clearly not the case, as a graph in this article shows: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/industry-insights/britain-hits-power-imports-record/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/industry-insights/britai...
    - _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
      That project definitely has a taste of Brexit to it. If it was decided on pure technical reasons one wouldn't run the cable around the EU.
washmyelbows 4y ago
is there energy loss with transferring power 2300 miles? how significant?
ksajadi 4y ago
Am I being crazy thinking depending on 8% of your electricity with cables that can be damaged by sabotage and are from a politically useable region is not very wise?
hkt 4y ago
Leaving aside the bizarre arguments in the article, it blows my mind that we are doing this but onshore wind has been dumped on for a decade and there's no subsidy for rooftop solar.
ianburrell 4y ago
The dumb part is running the cable 2300mi from Morocco to UK. It would make a lot more sense to run the cable across Straits of Gibraltar. Could even run it to territory of UK. And then spend the rest of the money improving transmission lines across Europe. Power and money are fungible. Or use the money to run multiple lines to Europe. Solar in Sahara for Europe makes a lot of sense. The article mentions a couple of projects.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  On land there are huge issues with people not wanting power lines in their backyard. It has stopped a lot of German new green energy projects. If you take the ocean route, there is no more NIMBYsm, and especially not across 2 different countries.
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    They are going to have to accept new power lines. Improved grid is big part of green energy. For example, solar in Spain going to cities and north will be important. Same with wind from UK at night. The advantage of connecting Morocco to Spain and Spain to UK is get lots more flexibility and efficiency in distributing power.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  It would probably actually be a good idea to do both (since the UK also has some other proposed HVDC links to Europe). That creates redundancy, having different paths, as well as opening the generation up to a wider market. It's actually not a bad idea to run a long HVDC through the ocean - they're very low-loss and it's frankly easier than running transmission over land given all the property rights etc. you need.
JanisErdmanis 4y ago
I would never have thought an undersea cable from the UK to North Africa to be realistic as the voltage is limited, meaning one needs to use more copper for the same efficiency. But since the price tag is already out, I am eager to see how this plays out. Perhaps instead of energy storage, we will see an intercontinental electric grid.
tarkin2 4y ago
Why not do this in Spain? Spain should be politically more reliable... unless Gibraltar flares up again, which I guess it might post Brexit
credit_guy 4y ago
Overall I like this project. It's a win-win for both the UK and Morocco. The only problem is the security of the cable. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the blowup of the Nordstream pipelines, you can't take this security for granted. I think it would make more sense to ship liquefied hydrogen rather than send the electricity via cables.
Jerry2 4y ago
According to NYTimes [1] Die Zeit [2] and Financial Times, a rogue billionaire with a yacht and a team of 6 people can blow up natural gas pipelines that were hardened under concrete. So how on Earth do you expect to secure such a massive length of cable? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-p... [2] https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukraine-anschlag https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukr...
- zaroth 4y ago
  There’s a 0% chance the Nordstream pipelines were disabled by a few scuba divers in a sailboat. I sail a 45’ boat. It would not be in any way possible to deploy 500kg of explosives over 100s of kilometers to a depth of 80m from my boat, even if I was given ample time to retrofit with specialized equipment to support the operation. And this fable claims they merely chartered a vessel! Complete lunacy.
  - Jerry2 4y ago
    >Complete lunacy. Exactly. I was being sarcastic. Yet this is what passes as intelligence these days. After Sy Hersh's exposé on what happened to those pipelines [1], they had to come up with an alternative theory and that's the best they could do. This wouldn't pass the second reading of a B-movie plot. My point was that undersea cables and undersea pipes are now a "fair game" and in the future we will see these kinds of infrastructures suffer all kinds of incidents. It's lunacy to go forward in today's geopolitical climate with massive projects that have an attack surface that's thousand miles long. [1] https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...
buildbot 4y ago
Dumb question: Why can't we do this with reactors and repurposed oil rigs out in the middle of the ocean? If it sinks or melts down yeah that sucks, but water is exceptionally good at shielding radiation so just chuck it over a trench and call it a day?
- sph 4y ago
  Dumb answer: salt water is very very corrosive. You don't want to build something expensive and relatively toxic for the environment in the middle of salt water. And then there's the problem of nasty weather which is quite frequent in the middle of the sea.
smel 4y ago
This is really sad for an university publication got written by freelance journalist with clearly biased views on issues beyond his shallow understanding
exabrial 4y ago
What does a Westinghouse ap1000 cost these days?
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
So 8% of UK loses power for an extended period of time when a Russian fishing vessel decides to cast a net in just the right place?
michaelteter 4y ago
The (strong?) electromagnetic fields from these cables must have some impact on marine systems, and I bet we don't well understand what that impact will be. Years or decades later we may trace some significant change in marine systems back to this source, and then we may decide that the cost was much greater than the benefit. We have a habit of making decisions for short term gain and intentionally downplaying the potential risks... Even short term, I wouldn't be surprised if Portugal felt the impact within one decade, as they are very dependent on fishing along their coast.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  If you have a coaxial cable, with the shield at ground potential, there are effectively no external fields, as they cancel out. There are obviously going to be some tangential impacts, but submarine cables have been around for more than a century.
- ourlordcaffeine 4y ago
  I've heard that some species of crab get dazzled by the magnetic field around DC cables
  - michaelteter 4y ago
    Yes I don't remember the article, but I think it appeared here on HN. There was a marked change in sea life behavior because of some undersea cable. Now I'm imagining this on a much bigger scale since it would be a power delivery cable...
moremetadata 4y ago
[dead]
nickdothutton 4y ago
Ah yes, the Europeans stealing the African's photons. I wont say much as there are already so many comments. This proposed cable and the solar farms that would drive it are not going to be owned by the British government. They are not some extractive colonial endeavour. The African governments should tax the generation, re-invest the tax revenue, and build-out their local infrastructure. I'm aware of the resource curse. As I think Bob Geldof said once "the only thing Africa really needs is a better class of African leader".
mikewarot 4y ago
>Noor spreads across some 12 square miles of desert and requires more than 2,000 acre-feet of scarce desert water each year. That's the smaller existing project, where is all the water for this project going to come from? You put a big batch of mirrors and or solar panels in the desert, you have to clean them periodically.
bearmode 4y ago
The fact that the UK is resorting to this instead of massively ramping up tidal power is crazy. We're one of the most tidally active areas of the world, and yet we only get 2% of our power from tidal, with seemingly no appetite to increase it.
rswskg 4y ago
Or you know, build some nuclear power stations.

173 points by consumer451 4y ago

Coming to theaters soon: An elite hacker assembles a squad of specialists to tap into the power cable and siphon electrons for mining operations.

rdiddly 4y ago

Jeez I suppose it makes sense from a "one world" perspective but as soon as you start thinking about continents, the "optics" are terrible... plundering Africa yet again for European gain!

peoplearepeople 4y ago

It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy. If they could just be self-sufficient with a load of nuclear power plants then they would have less political leverage problems

nicoburns 4y ago
> If they could just be self-sufficient with a load of nuclear power plants Given that most countries don't have a source of uranium, I don't see how this is any better from a geopolitical security perspective.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  From my understanding you don't need a lot of uranium to run reactors for quite a while. That's one of the reason it is such a promising lead.
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    An unfortunate part of human cognition is we're pretty bad at assessing small but widespread and constant risks/damages so the impact of pollution pales in comparison to the mental impact of singular events like the various nuclear disasters or near misses we've had between TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al. So they receive outsized push back compared to their actual reduced risk. (Also to be fair when a nuclear disaster does happen it renders an area unusable for a lot longer so the events tend to stick in people's memories) Building them is also unfortunately a many decades long endeavor so we need shorter timeline solutions to bend the curve of climate change. I think a lot of environmentalists have also been burned by long term projects that sit in planning and approval hell for years to decades then get cancelled or funding redirected when a new administration decides to try to make their mark on a project. A similar thing has hampered NASAs Moon and Mars programs where options are pursued and cancelled constantly. SLS is not the first plan for a Moon return NASA has worked on for years it's just the first one that managed to spread the pork around enough to avoid cancellation.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      > Building them is also unfortunately a many decades long endeavor That’s only true now. We used to build them in a few years.
      - rtkwe 4y ago
        That's partially a bureaucratic and political issue but also designs are also much more complex than the were during the glory years.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  You can stock it though, in case foreign countries cut supply short you're not suddendly out of power but instead have time to plan a negotiation or attempt to source it from elsewhere.
  - CTDOCodebases 4y ago
    Not so great when the foreign powers decide to bomb the nuclear reactors though.
    - demindiro 4y ago
      Or cut the cable.
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      Anyone capable of bombing a nuclear reactor in the UK would just nuke the UK so a reactor doesn't really play into it
    - throwaway742 4y ago
      I don't think that's a realistic problem.
- cobaltoxide 4y ago
  At least uranium can be stockpiled.
- AngusH 4y ago
  Uranium is a mineral and can be purchased from many places and stored then used as needed. 15 countries mining it currently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p... There are also more countries with estimated reserves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_reserves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r... While an undersea cable requires continuous operation and the agreement from a single country where it starts. If they suddenly decide for whatever reason to turn it off (say they're short of electricity) then the supply is immediately stopped.
  - caf 4y ago
    Equally relevant only 13 countries are fabricating nuclear fuel rods. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/fuel-fabrication.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
    - preisschild 4y ago
      You could use a CANDU PHWR (Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor) if supply chain safety is that important to you, but don't want an enrichment industry. CANDU reactors can use natural Uranium.
  - belorn 4y ago
    Sweden do have uranium in the ground and could be mining it, but they created a law forbidding it.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  The UK presumably does, as it maintains nuclear weapons.
  - WJW 4y ago
    The UK does not mine its own uranium though. There used to be a uranium mine in Cornwall but it stopped mining in 1930. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country)
- pyrale 4y ago
  If the issue is just geopolitical independence, it's easy to stockpile uranium reserves. I believe France has several years worth of uranium stockpiled, so even if relations soured with all of our providers, which are pretty diverse, we would have a few years to react.
NKosmatos 4y ago
I fully agree with nuclear fusion power plants, but there is so much free solar power that is currently being “wasted”. Nuclear fusion reactors are many decades away and hopefully that’s when our global power problems will be (hopefully) solved :-)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
consumer451 4y ago
I very much dislike how these posts often result in a very predicable "but nuclear..." binary argument. Here is a crazy idea: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to do both. This project only addresses 8% of UK needs, plenty of room for other sources in the portfolio. How is this a bad thing?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  It depends. Hopefully they source say 150% of requirements and not max them out so that losing 8% takes you yo 142% and not a single led gets dimmed. Redundancy. But I also read how it is hard to stop / start generating power on demand so it might be costly to have so much redundancy.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    You just don’t scale nuclear power up and down. You run at full capacity all of the time outside of maintenance shutdowns. If you shut down or reduce power at all, you essentially have to wait two days to turn back on. There’s a decay chain of isotopes that only stick around a couple of days which are normally burned off by neutrons when the reactor is running which build up when you turn the reactor off. They eat up neutrons making the rector much harder to control until they decay naturally. In order to restart the reactor you essentially have to double the output for a while and slowly very carefully reduce it at just the right rate… and if you make mistakes the reactor melts down. This xenon poisoning was part of the Chernobyl disaster where operator actions and mistakes causing it and then their responses and mechanical failures led to the meltdown. Rectors are just not designed to do this because it’s too risky and complicated to be worth it. So when you stop the reactor it just stays stopped for a couple of days. Similar for any throttling down which I understand is done carefully in some circumstances but absolutely not continually to respond to demand.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      We have perfectly good reactor designs that can go down to half power or even lower without problems, and that's plenty of scaling. And they can scale in real time too. The biggest issue is that it increases the average cost per watt, which is not that big of an issue.
vkou 4y ago
This is exactly why France went all-in on nuclear in the 20th century. (That, and nuclear weapon ambitions.)
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  And learned a very expensive lesson in negative learning by doing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
  - pyrale 4y ago
    I wouldn't say the lesson was expensive for France, we've enjoyed cheap energy for decades due to this buildup. The conclusion of this study isn't that France made a costly mistake, it is that it is extremely delusional to forecast ever-increasing efficiency gains when deploying a new technology. I wouldn't be surprised if the very same lesson was learned by countries planning to go full-renewable.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Either you pay on the tax bill or electricity bill. France chose tax bill.
      - pyrale 4y ago
        That's an often repeated falsehood. While there are costs shouldered by the public [1][2], they are similar to what any industry gets. In the following, I compare 2013 costs with the 400TWh produced in 2013: * Research costs, which are partly funded by private companies and partly funded by the state. These projects currently don't focus on the current infrastructure but on potential new projects. Same as any domain, before a new industry can exist, there's research to be done. With about 784M€ [2] in 2013, that's just under 2€ per MWh. Spending was always within that order of magnitude ever since 1957. * The surveilance authority is publicly funded, just like any regulatory body. In 2013, it cost about 217M€ [2] which is about 0.5€ per MWh. So, as you can see, the money spent by the state on nuclear energy in 2013 barely registers compared to the power produced by nuclear plants the same year. [1] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/thematic_public_report_costs_nuclear_%20power_sector_012012.pdf https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/themat... [2] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/20140527_rapport_cout_production_electricite_nucleaire.pdf https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/201405..., p. 135-146
frognumber 4y ago
If I were a planner, I'd go for both. Impossible in capitalism or with modern politics, but I planning for failure makes a lot of sense to me, and I don't mind having a power grid support 2x capacity. Same for food, medicine, and general-purpose manufacturing (e.g. machine shops), for that matter.
- diordiderot 4y ago
  The electricity actually _has to_ go _somewhere_. You could make a lot of batteries but double usage every day would build up fast
  - crote 4y ago
    The market will compensate for it. We might end up seeing peaker plants. We might see companies taking advantage of the price difference to cheaply run energy-intensive industry like aluminium smelting. We might see companies trying to take advantage of the price difference by building storage batteries. We might even end up incentivizing consumers to shift their usage patterns by providing cheaper electricity during low-demand periods.
  - frognumber 4y ago
    Power plants can be kept offline.
kinnth 4y ago
The UK in particular has a vast abundance of wind power off it's coasts. It makes more sense to double down with 22bn investment in wind! These solar projects are good to start as they could empower more african nations with cheaper electricty. We just need more electricity everywhere if were going to drop the reliance on oil.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  From what I understand, the UK actually has private companies ready and more than willing to build wind farms with their own money. The government is just inexplicably being slow at handing out the permits.
  - adaml_623 4y ago
    They've (the right wing government) underfunded the government so much there aren't sufficient staff to run the beaucracy. The recent (failed) rocket launch from the UK was massively delayed because of slow government processes
    - diordiderot 4y ago
      They also price energy in a way that props up fossil fuels
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    The market for wind in the UK is unusually profitable due to a quirk of the UK electricity market. Specifically, the power price across the UK is the same everywhere. However, there isn't infinite transmission capacity. So, if you generate power in one place, but the power network cannot transport it, you get told not to bother producing it, but you still get paid, and you get paid compensation on top. You know what's better than producing power... being paid to produce power, paid extra compensation, and then not need to actually have those wind turbines spinning (so much reduced maintenance too!). The government is delaying lots of permits till they can figure out how to change these perverse incentives... Needless to say, the wind industry isn't happy about the fact they might no longer get paid such large amounts, so they're demanding the old scheme be kept in place for existing producers for 25+ years, and having the new pricing rules only apply to new builds...
micromacrofoot 4y ago
> It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy. Versus going across international borders for most other aspects of their economy? if the UK stopped international trade it would completely collapse anyway.
incone123 4y ago
This planned link is very long distance, but UK is still part of a European power grid: it's normal for power lines to cross national (or State) borders.
nottathrowaway3 4y ago
Some people don't like nuclear power plants and somehow that's more important to them than national/energy security. UK (and France) already have the bomb; going renewable here rather than nuclear has nothing to do with proliferation. I don't see how (for the UK) it's anything except people's feelings are hurt by nuclear power plants. For the rest of Europe maybe it's about proliferation. And maybe economies of scale make tagging along cheaper than local nuclear for Britain.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Pure cost. Paying Hinkley Point C $150/MWh for 35 years is just bonkers waste of money. Flamanville 3 is a similarly amazing project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
  - nottathrowaway3 4y ago
    Average electricity prices (edit/correction: in dense urban areas) in the U.S. are ~$250/mwh https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Which includes the transmission grid. Nuclear costs that, and then you have to build a grid.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Your chart shows residential prices for the total us average ~$140/MWh, not $250/MWh. Plus, this is the total cost including transmission and distribution, which is roughly half the retail cost. Generation costs average less than $70/MWh, including expensive peaking power in the average. You want to compare the £150/MWh to generation costs of the alternatives in the UK, which are a fraction of £150.
      - 4y ago
thrashh 4y ago
Most countries are small and have to choose between being neighborly but dependent or self-sufficient but much more modest. The UK, for example, imports nearly half of its food.
epistasis 4y ago
The UK has been valiantly trying to build new nuclear, but it's hard to find anybody that can do it, and it's unbelievably expensive if it even does get built. I think that there was a narrow window in time where labor costs were low enough for nuclear to make sense, but in more advanced economies, highly labor intensive energy sources, as required by nuclear construction, are no longer viable. Advanced manufacturing capabilities have eclipsed construction technology.
- likecarter 4y ago
  On the money. Nuclear is too expensive and fragile, especially in this political environment. Also much more susceptible to sabotage in the event of a war, which is becoming a more relevant reality.

consumer451 4y ago

Project's official site: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project

whywhywhydude 4y ago

It’s insane how these articles somehow conjure up some kind of nonsensical bad for environment arguments. Putting solar panels in the desert is good for the environment. It reduces the ground temperatures and lets more plants and animals survive. It might also slow down further desertification.

yodsanklai 4y ago
By definition, energy = transformation of the environment. The more energy we use, the more we transform our environment. Which most like isn't good for the environment, and eventually for us since we depend on this environment too.
kinnth 4y ago
This!
mohamedattahri 4y ago
I see where you're coming from, and I agree that the arguments highlighted in the article are rather unconvincing, but messing up with ecosystems ALWAYS triggers unintended consequences. Some might be good, others terrible. I wouldn't be as definitive about the "good" in it as you make it sound.
- ajross 4y ago
  To be fair, all industry is "messing with ecosystems", and in particular the energy industry is doing so with far more per-kWh impact, and globally. This is very much like the "birds vs. windmills" arguments. Yes, it's important to recognize externalities to any decision and have a plan for mitigation where needed. But at this scale, "look-here-is-a-problem" tunnel vision just creates paralysis.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- yamazakiwi 4y ago
  There is a scale to influencing change in the environment. Any amount of change is not "messing up" with ecosystems, as you put it. Unintended consequences are possible/likely/imminent, but that doesn't mean they are always unexpected/uncontrollable/cataclysmic.

yuliyp 4y ago

I'm amazed by the NIMBYism for the middle of the desert. Yes it's not completely devoid of life and impact, but as far as places for generating solar power go, it's about as good as you're gonna get.

uoaei 4y ago
Well, duh. I don't think anyone thinks "sun strong -> good for solar" is bad reasoning. What is bad reasoning is ending your analysis there. What's the cost-benefit of installing heavy transmissions infrastructure for the desert? The shore? The sea and ocean? Everyone and everything who live there? How vulnerable is that infrastructure to natural and artificial disasters, and what costs do we bear to build resilience to those outcomes? Aren't surrounding communities also in need of strong consistent power? Why not move the power less distance (far less materials, less power losses) and serve a different population? The classic thought-terminating cliche of if we covered X% of the Sahara we could power the whole globe obviously ignores the act of moving that energy from one place to another, which is a huge endeavor, to say the least. Your argument is basically of the flavor "why is California still in a drought while the Mississippi river rages?"
- desro 4y ago
  Maybe we ought to think about water pipelines running from east to west...
  - wahern 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_Development_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recycling_and_Northern_D...
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I presume the existence of this project demonstrates that the cost/benefit analysis was done and the result balanced towards “benefit”. The most recent nuclear power plant built in England produces 3200MW and costs nearly $40bn so far. This cable will carry 10,500MW and costs $22bn. The latter number doesn’t includes the solar generation, but build costs for utility-scale PV are running less than $1/watt so 10,500MW of name-plate capacity would cost only another $11bn. Even at much lower capacity factors you’re still looking at less than half the cost per MW than nuclear.

samwillis 4y ago

Extensive discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31143636 "UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned" 110 points, 243 comments

blippage 4y ago

I have to say that this is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long time. Like "you have to be dropped on your head as a baby" dumb. Let's say the cable is 5000 miles long. How much power dissipation is there going to be over this distance?

_Microft 4y ago
According to the article, it is 2300 miles long, that is approximately 3700km. Losses for HVDC power lines are in the low single digit percent per 1000km. China already built a 12GW connection over 3000km for example. That was not a submarine cable, though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
nl 4y ago
> How much power dissipation is there going to be over this distance? Not much, and it should be efficient enough to make economic sense. Note that the article says it is 3700km, not 5000 miles. Ultra high voltage lines lose about 3.5% per 1000km[1] (although this is improving). In China they have multiple 3000km+ lines, eg[2]. Some estimates indicate the US could reduce generation emissions by at least 80% with better long distance transmission capacity[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current [2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-power-transmission-records https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-state-grid-corp-crushes-pow... [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921

quickthrower2 4y ago

Can anyone comment on how sane this is for energy security? Probably OK if this is not required energy but is used with local redundancy.

prawn 4y ago
You're on the right site. Lots of anyones! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35087957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088086
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Oh I should have said any experts :-)

seanalltogether 4y ago

> The cost of the proposed 10,500-megawatt Xlinks project is expected to be $22 billion, half for the solar and wind energy farms and half for the cables. I thought the UK had too much wind energy as is, why would they be importing more?

Gwypaas 4y ago
It is all about correlation between sources. The wind power where it connects to is more weakly correlated to UK's existing wind compared to for example Danish.
diordiderot 4y ago
The wind blows consistently at night and infrequently during the day in that region. Solar during the day and wind at night for, relatively to solar, steady energy generation
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Maybe the cable enables export of excess at night time?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

8jy89hui 4y ago

This sounds like the output of a LLM. No actual reasoning or thought.

nl 4y ago

For those who aren't aware, there is already a 3200km transmission line operating in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

jillesvangurp 4y ago
There are similar plans to power Singapore with Australian solar. And Norway is exporting hydro to Europe via underseas cables. And the UK and Norway are planning to exchange wind and hydro both ways. Connections by cable are a game changer. Easy to understand and proven technology. It's an often overlooked factor in renewable energy. Yes intermittency seasonality is a thing. But it's a local effect that you can compensate for by connecting to other intermittent sources of energy. They won't all fail at the same time on average. And if you interconnect enough different sources, the system as a whole gets more predictable and resilient. It's not all going to fail at the same time everywhere.
- martinald 4y ago
  Unfortunately not true, at least for wind energy in europe. It tends to fall (or blow) all over europe at the same time. And, even worse, the wind tends to stop blowing in winter when it is extremely cold (highest demand days) and there is virtually no solar. It's becoming a serious problem in Northern Europe.
  - nl 4y ago
    This is only true is you look at Northern Europe. Southern Europe is more windy in winter as can be seen by wind power generation in Spain, where the highest generation is November-February: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1289540/monthly-wind-power-generation-spain/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1289540/monthly-wind-pow... Edit: actually in the UK there is usually more wind power generated in December and January too: https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden05-dti... (pg 3)

diordiderot 4y ago

An excellent video on this project from YouTube's "Just have a think" https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578 https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578

moralestapia 4y ago

~$300 for each person living there. That's a bit steep, honestly.

tootie 4y ago
$300 amortized over the lifetime of the infrastructure, so not really.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Photovoltaic cells generally last for about 30 years, so about $10/person/year. The tradeoff is that the alternative is fossil fuels that release gigatons of CO2 every year.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

I wonder when are we starting to lay cables across longitude so you get solar power when it's night time. Thinking this out loud now - lower night time loads get covered by wind and other renewables.

andrewstuart 4y ago

Sounds like an major national security vulnerability.

mohamedattahri 4y ago
The goal is to provide 10% of the country's energy, so I don't think it's that risky. In the vast majority of cases, win/win deals create stability because neither party has any interest in the deal stopping. If you think Russia is a counter-example, consider that Europe chose to ignore every single red flag and every American intelligence report for about a decade.

WatchDog 4y ago

Singapore is building a similar project, a large solar array in Australia connected by undersea cable[0]. I think it makes a lot more sense for a city state like Singapore, with very limited space to build their own power infrastructure. But for a country like the UK, just the energy security risk alone seems dangerous, especially after what we have seen with the Russian gas pipelines. These cables can easily be attacked, any country with a semi-competent navy could probably pull it off covertly, which would make attribution difficult. Although I guess the US could have been a little more covert about their efforts[1]. [0]: https://suncable.energy/ https://suncable.energy/ [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/ftaz-f09.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/ftaz-f09.html

stephen_g 4y ago
Well, we'll see... That project has been in the news for some funding difficulty recently, potentially the project might collapse.

AlbertCory 4y ago

Control-F: "NordStream" nothing So if an adversary can cut off 8% of your energy just by blowing up the pipeline at any of its more vulnerable spots, what prevents them? Should we call this the Full Employment for the Royal Navy Act?

Gwypaas 4y ago
We are moving towards an interconnected world. One connection and it is a weak spot. A multitude and you take it in stride. NorthStream is the perfect example of this. Did Europe collapse? No. Would we have liked to not have to deal with it? Yes.
- kornhole 4y ago
  Not yet. They are now paying 500% the price for methane. They had reserves in tanks but those may be much depleted come next winter.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Depleted? Why this negative outlook? Germany filled all storage last winter, and are still at ~70%. The next winter will be easier as we adapt to the new reality. https://i.redd.it/zv0bh84l3xia1.png https://i.redd.it/zv0bh84l3xia1.png
    - kornhole 4y ago
      If Germany can reduce its gas usage, it will certainly help the situation. I hear that BASF is exploring moves of operations to locations with better access to cheaper gas such as China. Some energy use could switch to coal and other sources. I do not have enough visibility to predict actual outcomes.

perihelions 4y ago

- "Most controversially, the two other sites mentioned by Bouaida — Mahbes and Lemsid — are in the neighboring disputed territory of Western Sahara, which Morocco has claimed as its own for almost half a century, in defiance of the UN, which does not recognize the claim and lists Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory." Absolute madness to lead the article with lessons learned from Russian energy dependence, and segue into "let's put our eggs into this civil war basket-case". Never mind the moral arguments of investing in power plants on illegally annexed territory with no sovereign government. As a practical matter: what happens when conflicts break out again, and the keys to your high-value industrial economy are in some third-world warzone?

AlbertCory 4y ago
Well, as was answered elsewhere about the NordStream pipeline incident: (paraphrasing) "It's an interconnected world. We'll just take it in our stride!" There. Do you feel better now?
nashashmi 4y ago
I just visited Morocco. And I asked the tour driver about Western Sahara being a different country. He immediately said it is not a different country but Morocco. Morocco ended up in the web of French and Spanish Colonialism. It lost some land during independence, some of which ended up in formerly French Algeria after the French left up. Western Sahara was one of those territories where the King of Morocco had 350k people march into the land and tell the colonialists of the Sahara whose land it really was. It is just bonkers that the UN does not recognize Western Sahara that Morocco has exercised sovereignty over for so long as part of Morocco. It just feeds into the idea that the UN is nothing more than a central conglomerated vasal of colonialist rule.
- harperlee 4y ago
  Surprising that the moroccan tour driver was of the opinion that Morocco is right!

swamp40 4y ago

> 2,300 miles Why would you put a solar cell 2,300 miles away from the energy usage point? Who even thinks that way? Since solar can be easily distributed, why not break it up into 50,000 local arrays?

delecti 4y ago
The UK is rather far north, and an infamously cloudy place. For comparison, London has a bit over half the average sunlight as Rabat (the capital of Morocco, the country mentioned in the article). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabat#Climate
crote 4y ago
The UK is quite northerly. It is at about the same latitude as Alberta, Canada. Morocco and the Western Sahara are at the same latitude as Florida. In the UK you have a yearly irradiation of about 1000 kWh / m2. In Morocco it is closer to 2450 kWh / m2. This means that the same panels produce over twice as much power. Once you are planning utility-scale solar, it becomes a bit of a no-brainer. Besides, the vast majority of solar is already located in large arrays due to economies of scale. 50.000 local arrays isn't even an option for utilities. And even if you were to build 50.000 local arrays, each of those arrays would have to be 210 kW - that's close to 600 panels per array!
- swamp40 4y ago
  > if you were to build 50.000 local arrays, each of those arrays would have to be 210 kW - that's close to 600 panels per array Why is that a problem? I also don't see why just because your power output is half, why it is a "no brainer" to boost the voltage way up, run 2,300 miles of underwater cable, reduce the voltage again and then distribute it to the exact same places the local arrays would put it.

ETH_start 4y ago

Assuming the economic projections are accurate, the amount of good the energy would do, not least of which from the reduced CO2 emissions and reduced poverty, absolutely dwarfs the environmental damage caused by the placement of solar panels in the relatively small area of sparsely populated desert ecosystems that would be required. This absurdly short-sighted environmental obstructionism reminds me of how it ended up being the Green parties, and environmental groups like Greenpeace, that were the biggest impediment to the expansion of nuclear power - which is far and away the most promising substitute for fossil fuels - over the last four decades, and consequently and farcically, it was the environmental movement that ended up becoming perhaps the single biggest contributor to CO2 emissions since 1970.

Havoc 4y ago

They're laying an actual cable AROUND the EU instead of wheeling power through the EU grid and beefing up the weak links?!?

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Brexit.
stephen_g 4y ago
They do need more capacity to/from EU, but it's not a bad idea to add extra path diversity to increase reliability of the system. A direct undersea HVDC cable is going to have far less conversion losses than converting to AC, going through Spain, and then another HVDC conversion to hop over to the UK... Even more so given most of the current and proposed cables are via France.
- avar 4y ago
  Electricity is fungible, it would make no sense to transfer the electrons being generated in Morocco to the UK via the mainland. Instead you'd have Spain use them, then Spain might transfer excess power from its north to France, which in turn would transfer more power to the UK. That it isn't being done like that is interesting in itself. I wonder what the mix of technical and political reasons is. To a sibling comment saying "Brexit", that's clearly not the case, as a graph in this article shows: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/industry-insights/britain-hits-power-imports-record/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/industry-insights/britai...
  - _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
    That project definitely has a taste of Brexit to it. If it was decided on pure technical reasons one wouldn't run the cable around the EU.

washmyelbows 4y ago

is there energy loss with transferring power 2300 miles? how significant?

ksajadi 4y ago

Am I being crazy thinking depending on 8% of your electricity with cables that can be damaged by sabotage and are from a politically useable region is not very wise?

hkt 4y ago

Leaving aside the bizarre arguments in the article, it blows my mind that we are doing this but onshore wind has been dumped on for a decade and there's no subsidy for rooftop solar.

ianburrell 4y ago

The dumb part is running the cable 2300mi from Morocco to UK. It would make a lot more sense to run the cable across Straits of Gibraltar. Could even run it to territory of UK. And then spend the rest of the money improving transmission lines across Europe. Power and money are fungible. Or use the money to run multiple lines to Europe. Solar in Sahara for Europe makes a lot of sense. The article mentions a couple of projects.

flavius29663 4y ago
On land there are huge issues with people not wanting power lines in their backyard. It has stopped a lot of German new green energy projects. If you take the ocean route, there is no more NIMBYsm, and especially not across 2 different countries.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  They are going to have to accept new power lines. Improved grid is big part of green energy. For example, solar in Spain going to cities and north will be important. Same with wind from UK at night. The advantage of connecting Morocco to Spain and Spain to UK is get lots more flexibility and efficiency in distributing power.
stephen_g 4y ago
It would probably actually be a good idea to do both (since the UK also has some other proposed HVDC links to Europe). That creates redundancy, having different paths, as well as opening the generation up to a wider market. It's actually not a bad idea to run a long HVDC through the ocean - they're very low-loss and it's frankly easier than running transmission over land given all the property rights etc. you need.

JanisErdmanis 4y ago

I would never have thought an undersea cable from the UK to North Africa to be realistic as the voltage is limited, meaning one needs to use more copper for the same efficiency. But since the price tag is already out, I am eager to see how this plays out. Perhaps instead of energy storage, we will see an intercontinental electric grid.

tarkin2 4y ago

Why not do this in Spain? Spain should be politically more reliable... unless Gibraltar flares up again, which I guess it might post Brexit

credit_guy 4y ago

Overall I like this project. It's a win-win for both the UK and Morocco. The only problem is the security of the cable. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the blowup of the Nordstream pipelines, you can't take this security for granted. I think it would make more sense to ship liquefied hydrogen rather than send the electricity via cables.

Jerry2 4y ago

According to NYTimes [1] Die Zeit [2] and Financial Times, a rogue billionaire with a yacht and a team of 6 people can blow up natural gas pipelines that were hardened under concrete. So how on Earth do you expect to secure such a massive length of cable? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-p... [2] https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukraine-anschlag https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukr...

zaroth 4y ago
There’s a 0% chance the Nordstream pipelines were disabled by a few scuba divers in a sailboat. I sail a 45’ boat. It would not be in any way possible to deploy 500kg of explosives over 100s of kilometers to a depth of 80m from my boat, even if I was given ample time to retrofit with specialized equipment to support the operation. And this fable claims they merely chartered a vessel! Complete lunacy.
- Jerry2 4y ago
  >Complete lunacy. Exactly. I was being sarcastic. Yet this is what passes as intelligence these days. After Sy Hersh's exposé on what happened to those pipelines [1], they had to come up with an alternative theory and that's the best they could do. This wouldn't pass the second reading of a B-movie plot. My point was that undersea cables and undersea pipes are now a "fair game" and in the future we will see these kinds of infrastructures suffer all kinds of incidents. It's lunacy to go forward in today's geopolitical climate with massive projects that have an attack surface that's thousand miles long. [1] https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...

buildbot 4y ago

Dumb question: Why can't we do this with reactors and repurposed oil rigs out in the middle of the ocean? If it sinks or melts down yeah that sucks, but water is exceptionally good at shielding radiation so just chuck it over a trench and call it a day?

sph 4y ago
Dumb answer: salt water is very very corrosive. You don't want to build something expensive and relatively toxic for the environment in the middle of salt water. And then there's the problem of nasty weather which is quite frequent in the middle of the sea.

smel 4y ago

This is really sad for an university publication got written by freelance journalist with clearly biased views on issues beyond his shallow understanding

exabrial 4y ago

What does a Westinghouse ap1000 cost these days?

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

So 8% of UK loses power for an extended period of time when a Russian fishing vessel decides to cast a net in just the right place?

michaelteter 4y ago

The (strong?) electromagnetic fields from these cables must have some impact on marine systems, and I bet we don't well understand what that impact will be. Years or decades later we may trace some significant change in marine systems back to this source, and then we may decide that the cost was much greater than the benefit. We have a habit of making decisions for short term gain and intentionally downplaying the potential risks... Even short term, I wouldn't be surprised if Portugal felt the impact within one decade, as they are very dependent on fishing along their coast.

mikewarot 4y ago
If you have a coaxial cable, with the shield at ground potential, there are effectively no external fields, as they cancel out. There are obviously going to be some tangential impacts, but submarine cables have been around for more than a century.
ourlordcaffeine 4y ago
I've heard that some species of crab get dazzled by the magnetic field around DC cables
- michaelteter 4y ago
  Yes I don't remember the article, but I think it appeared here on HN. There was a marked change in sea life behavior because of some undersea cable. Now I'm imagining this on a much bigger scale since it would be a power delivery cable...

moremetadata 4y ago

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nickdothutton 4y ago

Ah yes, the Europeans stealing the African's photons. I wont say much as there are already so many comments. This proposed cable and the solar farms that would drive it are not going to be owned by the British government. They are not some extractive colonial endeavour. The African governments should tax the generation, re-invest the tax revenue, and build-out their local infrastructure. I'm aware of the resource curse. As I think Bob Geldof said once "the only thing Africa really needs is a better class of African leader".

mikewarot 4y ago

>Noor spreads across some 12 square miles of desert and requires more than 2,000 acre-feet of scarce desert water each year. That's the smaller existing project, where is all the water for this project going to come from? You put a big batch of mirrors and or solar panels in the desert, you have to clean them periodically.

bearmode 4y ago

The fact that the UK is resorting to this instead of massively ramping up tidal power is crazy. We're one of the most tidally active areas of the world, and yet we only get 2% of our power from tidal, with seemingly no appetite to increase it.

rswskg 4y ago

Or you know, build some nuclear power stations.