> I did see a proposal to build out solar in Africa and pipe it undersea to Europe. That seemed wild, and, predictably, it got canned for its impracticality. T

> I did see a proposal to build out solar in Africa and pipe it undersea to Europe. That seemed wild, and, predictably, it got canned for its impracticality. That doesn't seem _that_ wild? The Strait of Gibraltar is only about 15km wide. There are far longer HVDC undersea lines than that in Europe (longest is nearly 800km), and in China there's a 3,000km land-based HVDC line. The real challenge here (besides the "it will be cheaper if you wait another year" problem that kinda haunts big solar/battery/HVDC projects at the moment; costs are falling fast enough that sometimes the economics are to wait) is political. Do we want to be in a situation where the European grid is dependent on, say, Algeria? Probably not; been there, done that with Russia.