Making use of your capacity for "genius" ideas:
I assume you have made an informed estimate of the voltage drop, impact of current carrying capacity, size of cables required, cost of installation and trenching (needed to avoid damage) all of which are related to distance.
Your starting point may be the interconnects between France and UK which are ~50 mile long and carry a total of 1-2GW - a small part (3-5%) of UK demand when needed.
Scale it up for trans Atlantic power cables - or possibly Aussie solar panels which can fill in the gaps when the UK is dark. Then let me know how much it will cost, and how to make it secure against threats from a rampant Putin etc.
I'm not a genius - I was adopting a persona of irony/sarcasm/facetiousness - take your pick. I was trying to
lead you to a certain Eureka moment of epiphany, but sadly, it missed the mark - maybe too subtle?
How do I know I'm not a genius? It's because I am aware (however superficial my awareness is) that these electricity power supply connections already exist. There is an image shared by Sachakins on this very thread that displays the "
IMPORT" power requirement in purple area - I'll reproduce it below.
There has also been recent research into electricity transfer to UK from as far afield as Morocco. Let's get realistic, just for a moment, shall we, about Solar power and fossil fuel power costs, inputs and outputs, etc.
Groundwork:
-It is very, very clear to me that gas powered electricity production is not "cheap". It requires not only a generation plant (££s) but also raw materials (££s) and a great deal of
active management (£s). Some of that control and management is automated, but there is still a highly skilled workforce payroll to satisfy.
-It is also very, very clear to me that Solar Power is cheap. Of course there's the cost of land to house it, but land in a desert, let's say is not expensive... Then there's the cost of the solar generation plant (££s). After this, there is no raw material requirement - it's basically free energy input... A skilled workforce is required to maintain, I agree, however, the cost of generation/running is extremely low compared to fossil fuel, due to having no raw material requirement.
-It is equally very clear to me that this Morocco-to-UK electricity supply is deemed viable by those that understand it. I trust
the experts in their field, even if the (self-confessed) "free thinker iconoclasts" spout some drivel about "Argument from Authority" or other such bovine excrement.
-Finally, it is pretty obvious to me that since the generation of solar is basically FREE, then voltage drop becomes of little relevance, because you're not trying to minimise loss in order to maximise profit. Pretty much ANY power supplied off the generating capacity counts as profit.
The only real down-side to this explicit Morocco plan is that Morocco is at a similar longitude to the UK and therefore night is the same in both locations. However, if this serves only as a proof of concept (long distance power transfer), then there's no reason why we can't anticipate power transfer of cheap electricity (including free wind - since it won't be limited to domestic power draw requirements) across the globe from time zone to time zone.
There is one potential pitfall in all of this - and no it isn't Putin - multiple transfer routes could easily mitigate that and would only be vulnerable of a massive
overt attack, where Putin only really deals in
covert and unattributable attacks - the real threat to this becoming reality is, in my view, the fossil fuel industry, who will naturally try every dirty trick in their arsenal to minimise the uptake of renewables in order to maintain their profit stream and to keep their investments making money in the long term. Switching off fossil fuel company profit - when they have functioning generation supply chains that have been invested in for long term income will be the most difficult challenge to overcome. Tufton Street Ghouls will continue to lobby and to hoodwink the general populace of dumb fools that renewables are "more expensive" for many years to come (look at the imaginary and disprovable ideas that people like Tony have immovably wedded themselves to already - despite the facts proving otherwise.) The head of Octopus was on BBC Question Time 3 weeks ago and it was refreshing to see someone on MSM tell the truth that "we have crossed the rubicon - renewables are already cheaper". But holy hell - the non experts on the panel still continued to push back against his established expertise, despite him saying that he "bought more energy than anyone else in the room" <teehee>
So, no, I'm not a genius and am very much aware of that, but I do try to put in some leg work of my own to make up for it.
One can very easily see the little ideological cliques here. I'm reminded of that column in Private Eye decades ago where the more grotesque examples of the artistic "luvvies" fawning over each other were reproduced for the enjoyment of the reader.
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