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What are they going to do about the inconvenient fact that electricity transmission is only really good for 1000 miles. Okay for southern europe, less good for the north.

Or will they take ideas from the stranded wind initiative in the US and use the electricity to create useful burnable chemicals ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 05:29:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
As I understand it, if you're prepared to invest, you can create DC transmission good for about 4000 miles or so. In the past, cheap oil has made that investment uneconomic, but I presume that calculation is changing.
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 05:39:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I presume that you can use solar power to drive a generator a thousand miles away, so you could relay it that way. Probably not terribly efficient, but it depends how much power you have handy.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 05:46:04 AM EST
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Synthetic hydrocarbons from Solar is a good idea. Another consideration is that if the South of Europe gets its electrical power from North Africa it doesn't need to import French nuclear-generated power which is freed to export North in larger quantities.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 06:20:11 AM EST
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With HVDC, the losses are quite small. There just hasn't been a need for very long connections until now, and thus no need for the specific infrastructure associated with very (very) high voltage.

But this makes sense.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 08:14:03 AM EST
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i thought stranded wind was into making ammonia for chem fertiliser.

which would probably be useful for something else as well.

what about glass? all that sand..

i know it's heavy, but plastic might get expensive. (as it should, until we figure out how not to pollute so much).

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 at 09:57:24 AM EST
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