3 ms·

That’s for AC thought right? Ultra high voltage direct current is pretty efficient for transmission I thought

• zdragnar 3y ago
  Per 1000km (670 miles) AC's efficiency tops out at 6.7% losses, and DC 3.5%. The earth's circumference is 40,000 km, or 24,000 miles. Even if hurricanes and monsoon seasons weren't a problem, you're still looking at obscene transmission losses to get energy to NYC in the middle of the night- say 55% or worse... and that's not even counting the fact that the lines can't hug the earth's surface, they need to run along the bottom of the ocean floors to avoid damage by storms, boats and currents.
  • kgabis 3y ago
    Do we even have enough copper to pull that off?
    • onethought 3y ago
      We’ve used 700m metric tons thus far. There is a further known deposits of 2.1b metric tons still in the ground. So yes, we do.
      • zdragnar 3y ago
        The emissions we would create to produce that much aluminum, steel and concrete would almost certainly make things far worse far faster than if we were to gradually adopt more renewables and build nuclear, and skip the global grid altogether. I recall the register running the numbers on the idea several years back, and it wasn't pretty.
        • onethought 3y ago
          Shifted goalposts again. What if you produced the aluminium and steel with solar energy? Could an arc furnace get hot enough? Concrete… I don’t know how much we are talking, you mean for foundations? There isn’t a way to make carbon neutral concrete?