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It's in the article: "Why not just put down an underwater cable? That's a fine question. PowerX points out that Japan is surrounded by deep seas, and prone to
by Mizoguchi 3y ago
It's in the article:
"Why not just put down an underwater cable? That's a fine question. PowerX points out that Japan is surrounded by deep seas, and prone to earthquakes, and says in a press release that "the ship-based solution resolves issues such as long downtime from undersea cable malfunctions and repairs, as well as the high costs associated with ultra-high voltage connections and substations."
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoComing from the owners of a battery factory, also sounds a bit like a Sim City news ticker message: "Pineapple-based economy a no-brainer: President of the World Pineapple Trade Federation". Then again, they could well be right on a one-ship basis and maybe that's all they need, and this needs less capital expenses like, say, a hydrogen handling terminal at each end.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat doesn't make a ship a viable alternative by itself. And there are plenty of undersea cables within Japan, including power cables. The solution would seem to be to generate power in Japan not to transport it there by such bizarre (I agree with the title here) method. But let's reserve judgment and see how it plays out in practice, I'm going to watch this one just to see how real life matches my intuition about this project.
- nradov 3y agoOK guys hear me out. Instead of building power cables let's build giant undersea pneumatic tubes and use those to deliver charged batteries from one island to another. That idea should be worthy of a few million in funding, right?
- richardjam73 3y agoPut them in an electric catapult and deliver them by air using parachutes to slow them for landing.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoPut wheels on the capsules and make it an electric pickup truck with the batteries on the bed, make the tube 10 feet across and I think I know the company for you!
- rektide 3y agoI wonder how hard it'd be to build neutral buoyancy power cables that could float significantly above the seafloor. Of course you're still going to get wrecked by trawlers & anchors, potentially. UT man, I just have such a hard time seeing this as comparatively competitive.
- londons_explore 3y agoYou just lay the lines on the seafloor (cheapest), lay more than you need as redundancy, and then when some get broken by earthquakes you use a cable repair ship to repair them. It's pretty standard stuff, and most cables last year's between breaks.
- trashtester 3y agoAnd while the cable repair ship is repairing the cables, you can use battery ships to transfer power ;)