Quote:
Originally Posted by raymo
Regarding Gary's references to possible international transmission of power,
the U.K. and mainland Europe have their peak demand periods at different times, so Europe exports power to the U.k. to help cover their peak, and
later in the evening it is reversed to help cover Europe's peak.
If solar became huge around the world, places where it is daytime could
export to night time countries, thus avoiding the main drawback to solar.
raymo
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Hi Raymo,
Thanks for the post.
It is a concept that is being actively studied by engineering professionals
at the moment.
For example, as I recently reported elsewhere in IceInSpace, the U.S.
Department of Energy have been leading an international team in
performing simulations of HVDC links interconnecting North America
and Europe.
We already move power over continents. So just as we went from the
era of the first telegraph line under the Atlantic Ocean to the Internet today,
some of the big power distribution design companies and individual
electrical engineers are proposing a global power grid.
See
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the...bal-power-grid
Particularly when you look at interconnecting sites with vastly different
time zones, you could circumvent the day-night cycle for solar.
China and Europe are both moving rapidly with HVDC deployment.
I would like to think most of us engineers are cup half full type of people.
Where many of the lay public view the current crossroads the world
is at with regards power generation with anxiety, engineers tend
to be more stoic and look at it as a potential opportunity.
Whereas it has been self-evident to all that Australia is lucky in that it
is a continent with a vast area lending itself to making solar and wind
generation easier than in some other countries, I don't think most of the
lay public have become aware yet of the potential export opportunities
there could be if you were to combine vast renewable generation with HVDC.
We understand how countries like Saudi Arabia became wealthy exporting
oil out of a place that is essentially just a big desert, yet you could
pull off a similar trick by just pushing electrons through submarine
cables to other parts of the world.
And HVDC might prove to be a win-win technology in that it helps
improve power grid stability when you have a large mix of renewables,
plus it helps contribute to reducing CO2 emissions plus it could
provide an export revenue stream for net producers of power.
HVDC is still a relatively expensive technology but the costs are coming down
and as I noted above with the types of research going on, the learning
curve is going up.
As noted in this Jan 14th 2017 article in "The Economist", entitled
"China’s embrace of a new electricity-transmission technology holds
lessons for others", we could do worse than learn from their experience
as they deploy vast amounts of HVDC/UHVDC.
https://www.economist.com/news/leade...as-embrace-new
If the financials add up, as a cup half full kind of guy, I'd rather see
Australian solar and wind powering, say, Singapore, rather than China
turning out smarter and beating us to the punch.