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0 pointsarinlen3y ago0 comments

> Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not.

The point of mentioning Brexit is to stress that the physics alone makes this sort of project hard to justify on technical grounds, specially when there is a wealth of renewable energy projects right around Britain's corner.

You need to be specially motivated to circumvent any of the low-hanging fruit projects with European nations to head down to Africa to get your electricity.

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mike_hearn3y ago

I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious - solar power requires lots of sunshine and land that isn't being used for anything. The UK doesn't have that, the Sahara desert does.

If it's an idea obvious enough to occur to a teenager 20 years ago it hardly requires politics to explain why it comes up now, does it? At the time I gave up on the idea because either I didn't find out about HVDC or it wasn't as effective as it is now. Transmission losses seemed to kill the idea. Now apparently that's more or less solved and other issues dominate like manufacturing costs and mineral availability.

As for renewables being abundant near by - where? UK already built tons of windmills. You can't get baseload-level renewable power from adding more of those because there are days when the wind stops blowing. As for solar in Europe, land is at a premium there and they're already wanting to use available resources for their own needs, rightly so. Also worth considering - for unclear reasons global wind speeds have been slowing down over time. Long term wind projects need to factor that in to their economic calculations. Solar doesn't have that issue.

arinlenOP3y ago

> I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious (...)

I'm afraid you failed to understand the point.

There is no question that Morocco has an impressive potential in solar power. Morocco's hydrogen production project is very exciting.

But that's besides the point, and not the issue being discussed.

What clearly is a bonkers idea and has no technical nor strategic justification, let alone in a national security perspective, is the UK wasting it's resources trying to get renewable sources way down in Africa, specially when there are already a wealth of projects already underway right next door.

For perspective, the Dogger bank is home for some wind farm projects which are already similar energy production capacity, such as the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank_Wind_Farm

mike_hearn3y ago

The project isn't funded so currently the UK isn't wasting or spending any resources on it at all, it's just a company that'd like people to give it money.

Nonetheless, adding more windmills isn't going to materially change anything at this point. To push renewables further requires them to be reliable enough to start displacing base load.

I don't personally think this cable idea is good either but more because of the costs and risks of cable cuts (possibly deliberate), than the belief that it can be done in other ways.

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mike_hearn3y ago

arinlenOP3y ago

> I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious (...)

I'm afraid you failed to understand the point.

There is no question that Morocco has an impressive potential in solar power. Morocco's hydrogen production project is very exciting.

But that's besides the point, and not the issue being discussed.

For perspective, the Dogger bank is home for some wind farm projects which are already similar energy production capacity, such as the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank_Wind_Farm

mike_hearn3y ago

The project isn't funded so currently the UK isn't wasting or spending any resources on it at all, it's just a company that'd like people to give it money.

Nonetheless, adding more windmills isn't going to materially change anything at this point. To push renewables further requires them to be reliable enough to start displacing base load.

I don't personally think this cable idea is good either but more because of the costs and risks of cable cuts (possibly deliberate), than the belief that it can be done in other ways.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse