cancel2 2022
Canceled
Up until now the fact that The Sun does not shine at night (and often not at all in winter) has been an obstacle to the deployment of solar energy in Europe. Recent research, however, has revealed that winter in Europe coincides with summer in the Southern Hemisphere and that midnight at longitude zero coincides with midday at longitude 180, meaning that combining solar generation from different parts of the Earth will smooth out seasonal and diurnal variations and permit baseload solar power delivery.
Energy Matters has obtained access to an unpublished European Commission report which identifies the benefits of HVDC interconnectors that combine solar energy from Europe with solar energy from Fiji and points between, and which states that the EC will introduce the concept of “global solar linkage” at the forthcoming Bonn Climate Conference as a means of holding global CO2 emissions below the 2°C danger threshold. In this short post we reveal the details.
Lead authors Prof. Bryan Christopher of the University of Svalbard and Prof. Blake Anders of the Cook Island Institute of Sustainable Technology explained the concept. The Figure below shows Europe’s solar generation on two typical spring days, with maximum output normalized to 1.0 for simplicity. It clearly does not qualify as baseload.
Adding antipodal solar generation (green) fills in some of the European nighttime shortfalls but still does not provide baseload:
But the remaining deficits can be filled with solar generation from intermediate sites where solar noon is displaced by 6 or 18 hours relative to European solar noon. Adding these sites gives these results (intermediate sites blue and brown, sum of output black):
The western interconnector from Mexico delivers solar power from Mexico’s deserts, which lags Europe’s by about six hours, to Nantes, the closest point of approach at which the power can be easily fed into Europe’s existing grids. The eastern interconnector begins in Fiji, where solar noon leads Europe by almost exactly 12 hours, and links to Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia to take full benefit of Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere seasonal offsets. It continues through a landline from Sydney to Perth, and links to the Chagos Bank in the Indian Ocean on its way through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Mediterranean to its termination in Venice.
What is the Chagos Bank? It’s a 12,000 square kilometer area of protected sea water in British Indian Ocean Territory south of the Maldives where solar noon leads European solar noon by about 5 hours:
Covered by floating solar panels the Chagos Bank would generate around 2 TW of solar power, about four times Europe’s peak load. (Profs. Christopher and Anders emphasize that there is no shortage of developable solar potential. Plastered from shore-to-shore with PV panels Australia would generate enough solar to supply its annual energy demand 10,000 times over, and even gloomy Europe could generate enough solar to satisfy its energy demand about 500 times over. Even Fiji has the potential to generate up to 3 TWh.)
Questioned about interconnector capacity, Profs. Christopher and Anders admitted that these would be no ordinary interconnectors. ~10,000 volt HVDC cables with the capacity to transmit terawatt-hours rather than gigawatt-hours of electricity would be needed. As to how feasible constructing such cables would be, they were unable to comment except to say that Tesla was drawing up design specifications.
Finally on the question of line losses. These are not a problem. If only half of the input power arrives at its destination then the solution is simply to double the input. As the Professors noted, there is no shortage of solar potential at any of the source sites.
http://euanmearns.com/powering-europe-with-solar-via-the-global-solar-interconnector/#more-21472
Energy Matters has obtained access to an unpublished European Commission report which identifies the benefits of HVDC interconnectors that combine solar energy from Europe with solar energy from Fiji and points between, and which states that the EC will introduce the concept of “global solar linkage” at the forthcoming Bonn Climate Conference as a means of holding global CO2 emissions below the 2°C danger threshold. In this short post we reveal the details.
Lead authors Prof. Bryan Christopher of the University of Svalbard and Prof. Blake Anders of the Cook Island Institute of Sustainable Technology explained the concept. The Figure below shows Europe’s solar generation on two typical spring days, with maximum output normalized to 1.0 for simplicity. It clearly does not qualify as baseload.
Adding antipodal solar generation (green) fills in some of the European nighttime shortfalls but still does not provide baseload:
But the remaining deficits can be filled with solar generation from intermediate sites where solar noon is displaced by 6 or 18 hours relative to European solar noon. Adding these sites gives these results (intermediate sites blue and brown, sum of output black):
The western interconnector from Mexico delivers solar power from Mexico’s deserts, which lags Europe’s by about six hours, to Nantes, the closest point of approach at which the power can be easily fed into Europe’s existing grids. The eastern interconnector begins in Fiji, where solar noon leads Europe by almost exactly 12 hours, and links to Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia to take full benefit of Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere seasonal offsets. It continues through a landline from Sydney to Perth, and links to the Chagos Bank in the Indian Ocean on its way through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Mediterranean to its termination in Venice.
What is the Chagos Bank? It’s a 12,000 square kilometer area of protected sea water in British Indian Ocean Territory south of the Maldives where solar noon leads European solar noon by about 5 hours:
Covered by floating solar panels the Chagos Bank would generate around 2 TW of solar power, about four times Europe’s peak load. (Profs. Christopher and Anders emphasize that there is no shortage of developable solar potential. Plastered from shore-to-shore with PV panels Australia would generate enough solar to supply its annual energy demand 10,000 times over, and even gloomy Europe could generate enough solar to satisfy its energy demand about 500 times over. Even Fiji has the potential to generate up to 3 TWh.)
Questioned about interconnector capacity, Profs. Christopher and Anders admitted that these would be no ordinary interconnectors. ~10,000 volt HVDC cables with the capacity to transmit terawatt-hours rather than gigawatt-hours of electricity would be needed. As to how feasible constructing such cables would be, they were unable to comment except to say that Tesla was drawing up design specifications.
Finally on the question of line losses. These are not a problem. If only half of the input power arrives at its destination then the solution is simply to double the input. As the Professors noted, there is no shortage of solar potential at any of the source sites.
http://euanmearns.com/powering-europe-with-solar-via-the-global-solar-interconnector/#more-21472
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