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353 points dmazin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jillesvangurp ◴[] No.44518778[source]
The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine.

That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized. They are designed to have enough capacity so that the grid continues to function at peak demand. Off peak, there is a lot of under utilized cable capacity. An obvious use for that would be transporting power to wherever batteries need to be re-charged from wherever there is excess solar/wind power. And cables can work both ways. So import when there's a shortage, export when there's a surplus.

And that includes the rapidly growing stock of batteries that are just sitting there with an average charge state close to more or less fully charged most of the time. We're talking terawatt hours of power. All you need to get at that is cables.

Long distance cables will start moving non trivial amounts of renewable power around as we start executing on plans to e.g. connect Moroccan solar with the UK, Australian solar with Singapore, east coast US to Europe, etc. There are lots of cable projects stuck in planning pipelines around the world. Cables can compensate for some of the localized variations in energy productions caused by seasonal effects, weather, or day/night cycles.

For the rest, we have nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and a rapidly growing stock of obsolete gas plants that we might still turn on on a rainy day. I think anyone still investing in gas plants will need a reality check: mothballed gas plant aren't going to be very profitable. But we'll keep some around for decades to come anyway.

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kragen ◴[] No.44518839[source]
Plausible alternatives to cables include ships full of synthetic diesel, ships full of iron, ships full of aluminum, or ships full of magnesium. Inside China HVDC cables are indeed carrying solar power across the continent, but the Netherlands have not managed to erect any yet. Cables provide efficient JIT power delivery, but they're vulnerable to precision-guided missiles, which Ukrainians are 3-D printing in their basements by the million, so the aluminum-air battery may return to commercial use.
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Gravityloss ◴[] No.44518977[source]
There's at least one HVDC cable connected to Netherlands, Norned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed .

As probably everyone knows, Netherlands is very flat and Norway very mountaneous. Norways is also very rainy. So it's a match made in heaven - Norway's mountain reservoirs can act as balancers for dutch wind power.

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hydrogen7800 ◴[] No.44520350[source]
>Budgeted at €550 million, and completed at a cost of €600m

Amazing.

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pjc50 ◴[] No.44520443[source]
That's pretty good! Just a 10% overrun. By comparison, Hinkley Point C is now at "up to" £46bn from an initial £18bn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68073279
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1. kragen ◴[] No.44528707{4}[source]
It's good in its adherence to the budget (almost) and maybe its absolute price: €600M for 700MW is €0.86 per watt. That might sound terrible when compared to current mainstream solar panel wholesale prices of €0.11/Wp, but solar plants in the Netherlands have a capacity factor of only about 10% IIRC, so that is €1.10 per average watt, not counting balance of plant, permitting, etc. The cable may not run at a 100% capacity factor but it'll probably be over 50%.

Still, if module prices continue falling, even at poor capacity factors lime 10%, it'll be increasingly hard to justify paying such high prices to move energy around the continent; local overprovisioning and storage will be cheaper even if Norway is willing to produce the energy for free.