New Undersea Power Cables Could Carry Green Energy From Country to Country (cnn.com) 92
What if across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, six high-voltage power cables stretched — each over 2,000 miles long.
CNN reports that a group of entrepreneurs "wants to build what would be the world's largest subsea energy interconnector between continents, linking Europe and North America...to connect places like the United Kingdom's west with eastern Canada, and potentially New York with western France...
"The Europe-US cables could send 6 gigawatts of energy in both directions at the speed of light, said Laurent Segalen, founder of the London-based Megawatt-X renewable energy firm, who is also part of the trio proposing the transatlantic interconnector. That's equivalent to what six large-scale nuclear power plants can generate, transmitted in near-real time." The interconnector would send renewable energy both east and west, taking advantage of the sun's diurnal journey across the sky. "When the sun is at its zenith, we probably have more power in Europe than we can really use," said Simon Ludlam, founder and CEO of Etchea Energy, and one of the trio of Europeans leading the project. "We've got wind and we've also got too much solar. That's a good time to send it to a demand center, like the East Coast of the United States. Five, six hours later, it's the zenith in the East Coast, and obviously, we in Europe have come back for dinner, and we get the reverse flow," he added.
The transatlantic interconnector is still a proposal, but networks of green energy cables are starting to sprawl across the world's sea beds. They are fast becoming part of a global climate solution, transmitting large amounts of renewable energy to countries struggling to make the green transition alone. But they are also forging new relations that are reshaping the geopolitical map and shifting some of the world's energy wars down to the depths of the ocean...
Already, energy cables run between several countries in Europe, most of them allied neighbors. Not all of them carry renewable power exclusively — that's sometimes determined by what makes up each country's energy grid — âbut new ones are typically being built for a green energy future. The UK, where land space for power plants is limited, is already connected with Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark under the sea. It has signed up to a solar and wind link with Morocco to take advantage of the North African country's many hours of sunlight and strong trade winds that run across the equator. Similar proposals are popping up around the globe. A project called Sun Cable seeks to send solar power from sunny Australia, where land is abundant, to the Southeast Asian nation of Singapore, which also has plenty of sun but very little room for solar farms. India and Saudi Arabia plan to link their respective power grids via the Arabian Sea, part of a broader economic corridor plan to connect Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
CNN reports that a group of entrepreneurs "wants to build what would be the world's largest subsea energy interconnector between continents, linking Europe and North America...to connect places like the United Kingdom's west with eastern Canada, and potentially New York with western France...
"The Europe-US cables could send 6 gigawatts of energy in both directions at the speed of light, said Laurent Segalen, founder of the London-based Megawatt-X renewable energy firm, who is also part of the trio proposing the transatlantic interconnector. That's equivalent to what six large-scale nuclear power plants can generate, transmitted in near-real time." The interconnector would send renewable energy both east and west, taking advantage of the sun's diurnal journey across the sky. "When the sun is at its zenith, we probably have more power in Europe than we can really use," said Simon Ludlam, founder and CEO of Etchea Energy, and one of the trio of Europeans leading the project. "We've got wind and we've also got too much solar. That's a good time to send it to a demand center, like the East Coast of the United States. Five, six hours later, it's the zenith in the East Coast, and obviously, we in Europe have come back for dinner, and we get the reverse flow," he added.
The transatlantic interconnector is still a proposal, but networks of green energy cables are starting to sprawl across the world's sea beds. They are fast becoming part of a global climate solution, transmitting large amounts of renewable energy to countries struggling to make the green transition alone. But they are also forging new relations that are reshaping the geopolitical map and shifting some of the world's energy wars down to the depths of the ocean...
Already, energy cables run between several countries in Europe, most of them allied neighbors. Not all of them carry renewable power exclusively — that's sometimes determined by what makes up each country's energy grid — âbut new ones are typically being built for a green energy future. The UK, where land space for power plants is limited, is already connected with Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark under the sea. It has signed up to a solar and wind link with Morocco to take advantage of the North African country's many hours of sunlight and strong trade winds that run across the equator. Similar proposals are popping up around the globe. A project called Sun Cable seeks to send solar power from sunny Australia, where land is abundant, to the Southeast Asian nation of Singapore, which also has plenty of sun but very little room for solar farms. India and Saudi Arabia plan to link their respective power grids via the Arabian Sea, part of a broader economic corridor plan to connect Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Copy pasta. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Sure grandpa, everything is woke. Yes, the woke Sun will boil all the oceans. But don't forget how you keep saying that's a good thing so we should burn more coal to make it happen.
Re: (Score:2)
The "editors" are who deliberately wrecked a once influential website in the first place. There is no pressure to do better.
How about blue energy? (Score:2)
Can we also have purple, orange and yellow one?
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"Blue energy" has been used to refer to both energy from hydro dams and osmotic power generated by combining fresh water with seawater or brine.
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I'd like more purple energy please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I allow it only if it comes with the reprocessing of the leftovers.
Re: How about blue energy? (Score:2)
I'd settle for an explanation of what a gigawatt of energy is.
Re: How about blue energy? (Score:2)
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Nope, that's green. Or red, if blood has been spilled this night!
Electromagnetism (Score:3)
Re: Electromagnetism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Electromagnetism (Score:4, Informative)
Missing a bigger picture here. This is subsea. Subsea cables are typically contained with each phase individually coaxially shielded and all three phases in a common big arse cable underneath an armour, and often also lead encased. The combination of the shielding already present due to it being a subsea cable, and the cable design and layout (almost always similar to trefoil) means they wouldn't emit any EM of note even if they were AC.
EM radiation would be a bigger concern where the cables terminate on land, where the three phases get split out. Even then the EM field of a HV cable is only significant for a couple of meters in air. EM fields we typically generate are those on overhead conductors where the cables are stretched far from each other for cost reasons, or buried individual phases when the cable lengths are long and thus laid out flat rather than in a trefoil pattern (again for cost reasons).
Re: Electromagnetism (Score:2)
There arenâ(TM)t 3 phases. There isnâ(TM)t 1 phase. Itâ(TM)s DC. Thereâ(TM)s no need for any of these considerations.
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I was generalising. If it were 3ph AC (like other subsea cables - they aren't all HVDC) it wouldn't be an issue either.
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The trouble is that such a cable, if AC, will act as a capacitor if very long. Pretty soon, the energy required to discharge and charge the capacitor exceeds the energy transmitted.
See for instance: https://www.viking-link.com/ [viking-link.com]
Re:Electromagnetism (Score:5, Informative)
We have them in Europe and they use HVDC, so the fields are static and don't seem to cause problems.
Physics Lacking (Score:3)
How do they shield these so they don’t affect marine life?
They don't need to as sea water is an extremely good EM shield with a relative permittivity of ~80 or a bit less at low frequency which is likely what will apply here as they will be HVDC cables to reduce losses due to radiation. However, the power will absolutely not be transmitted at the speed of light - typical signal speed for coax is ~two thirds that of light and I doubt these will be co-ax. The fact that they do not seem to know the basic physics behind power transmission and are willing to spount nu
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How do they shield these so they don't affect marine life?
They don't need to as sea water is an extremely good EM shield with a relative permittivity of ~80...
Permittivity relates to electric fields. Although parent poster wrote "electromagnetic" fields, I suspect he meant "magnetic" fields, in which case the permittivity of sea water isn't relevant.
But as thegarbz pointed out earlier, the (relatively) close proximity of conductors with currents flowing in opposite directions will result in the magnetic fields cancelling each other. That said, the fields won't totally cancel - there will be some leakage. I can't comment on the strength of that leakage field rela
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Not a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much interconnectedness on things as critical as power means too much vulnerability to a malicious actor. Russian gas doesn't seem like such a great idea in hindsight, does it, Europe?
Internet lines get cut deliberately, now imagine an 'accidental' severing of a major power artery because of a regional dispute.
In my opinion, it's better if power generation is as localized as economically viable, with small interconnections for extra grid stability.
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agree, in a perfect world these would be great....but that isn't reality.
Probably better to first invest in making sure the European and American grids are connected and can share power. Then, depending on how much these cables cost, maybe invest in energy storage instead.
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Yeah we shouldn't make use of the savings available in normal times because it might be vulnerable to disruption in war (/s).
The comparisons to both Russian gas and Internet cables are both poor ones.
In the first case being able to trade electricity between two continents is not like being dependent on an imperialist autocracy as a principle source of energy. In the second, despite occasional cable cuts undersea Internet cables work fine, and we do in fact depend on them, you just have redundancy. The power
Re: Not a great idea (Score:2)
I love your idealized scenario! It's wonderfully explained and everything.
I missed the part where you took corporate greed into account though, as it seems you simply skipped over that with "The electrical grid on both sides of the Atlantic has, and always will have, a great deal of generation redundancy and the temporary loss of the ability to buy part of your power cheaply from another continent would be made up by other more expensive power sources."
The Texas power grid supposedly has that too, until you
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Yep, and as a great example of that look at Ireland. It has two cables to mainland Britain, one of which is to the Irish grid. They are adding another to France, so that they can sell wind energy to France and buy nuclear from them.
If either cable goes down, Ireland won't go dark. They have one large flywheel already to help provide stability for their large amount of wind energy, and are looking at building another 5. They current one is in an old disused coal plant.
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Too much interconnectedness on things as critical as power means too much vulnerability to a malicious actor.
Nope, no vulnerability. When two interconnected grids disconnect they simply become islands, they keep operating independently with the capabilities they have. No one here is proposing America power Europe (or visa versa), so the disconnection makes you no worse off than now.
Russian gas doesn't seem like such a great idea in hindsight, does it, Europe?
The only thing that is a good idea for Europe is coal. That's what happens when it's your primary energy resource available. But coal is a bad idea too meaning regardless of what happens, unless Europe can switch to 100% solar and wind
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When two interconnected grids disconnect they simply become islands, they keep operating independently with the capabilities they have.
Assuming they have not become too reliant on that interconnect, which I think is the point.
Re: Not a great idea (Score:2)
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You know, you can probably get a nice mouthwash to get the taste of Putin's anus out of your mouth.
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Re: Not a great idea (Score:2)
The Russians Are Going To Have A Field Day (Score:3, Interesting)
blowing these things up.
Already the chinese and russians are cutting telecom cables and there is the "mysterious" destruction of Nordstream.
And while I'm at it...
power cables could carry green energy
Because the electrons are a special colour?
gigawatts of energy in both directions at the speed of light
Nope
The UK, where land space for power plants is limited, is already connected with Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark
Because Netherlands has *lots* of room, especially compared to Britan?
What shitty, breathless reporting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Russians Are Going To Have A Field Day (Score:4, Informative)
power cables could carry green energy
Because the electrons are a special colour?
Because unlike traditionally generated power, solar and wind can't be turned on in the regions and at the schedule we choose.
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Re:The Russians Are Going To Have A Field Day (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the electrons are a special colour?
Yes. Because colour is a concept we humans developed and we can arbitrarily assign it to things. Has anyone ever told you they were feeling blue? Did you start CPR on them due to fear that they were suffering hypoxia or did you understand the concept that something can be labelled a colour without absorbing the specific spectral pattern that would visually make it that colour?
If you don't understand what I'm saying it's because your understanding of language is "green between the ears".
Because Netherlands has *lots* of room, especially compared to Britan?
No because the Netherlands (and Belgium, and Denmark) are the western most easily accessible components of the ENTSO-E Transmission System.
Maybe a little less grammatical pedantism would help you understand the world a bit better.
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Because the electrons are a special colour?
Yes. Because colour is a concept we humans developed and we can arbitrarily assign it to things. Blah blah blah
Wow, talk about pedantism and missing the point: the cables can also carry coal-generated electricity, which is not "green".
Did you hear a 'woosh' overhead?
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Because Netherlands has *lots* of room, especially compared to Britan?
No because the Netherlands (and Belgium, and Denmark) are the western most easily accessible components of the ENTSO-E Transmission System.
So, tell the members of our tv audience exactly what that has to do with Britain having "limited land space for power". No room for a reactor?
A little less hostility will get you through your day with much less stress, sonny.
Energy loss over distance problem (Score:1)
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They're about the same distance, and the ocean floor I assume would be much easier to keep cool.
I don't necessarily think it's feasible, but it seems more feasible than across the US to me.
Re:Energy loss over distance problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Never heard of HVDC before?
What's more impractical is the claim of sending electricity at the speed of light. Even in a superconductor, the approximate speed of electricity is about 70% that of c.
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I beg to differ. Electricity over copper cabling transfers much faster than light does through copper.
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That's why they should use transparent aluminium.
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If you say so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Please pay particular attention to the Morocco-UK link.
Neither Country Has a Energy Surplus (Score:1)
Cost - 60 year payoff (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cost - 60 year payoff (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the conundrum of many green projects. They aren't cheap, but they are cheaper than *not* doing them.
The savings are long term and significant but harder to measure in 'less damage clean up' from climate change, while the price is up front and clear.
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It's $6-$9bn for 1100 Mw nuclear.
I'll take 6 new massive nuclear plants over a janky transatlantic cable, thanks.
https://www.synapse-energy.com... [synapse-energy.com]
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"It's $6-$9bn for 1100 Mw nuclear."
On paper. Wee bit more expensive in reality. Nuclear is legendary for being 'undersold' in terms of actual cost. And of course either fissile material on every corner or hundreds of years of storage that's not priced into that.
Wonder what the cost of terrorists getting nukes might be. Also not priced in.
Fake nuclear costs (Score:2)
No. UAE is now the proud owner of 5.6 GW of nuclear which SOK built for $20B
SOK is really into nuclear power.
Most of the cost you are thinking about is compliance costs and lawfare.
Re: Fake nuclear costs (Score:2)
And that every big nuke plant is a one off. Basic designs are similar but the details are all unique.
Oh and fission nuclear is so dangerous it *needs* to be wildly over engineered. Thorium doesn't have pressure issues or runaway risks. But still has some chemical engr issues to solve (caustic salts)
And refuting someone saying 6-9B with on that's literally double isn't exactly helping your argument.
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They built a 5.6Gw one for $20bn.
My quote was $6-9 for 1.1Gw.
I'd say that directly refuted your asserting it's actually more expensive.
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You said 5, that's just one. Without the cable, you need at *least* 2.
And of course we don't yet know whether the lower safety and regulatory req's of the UAE will compromise the operations.
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See: climate.
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A cable from France to Boston would be 5000km. The cost of a GW connect is going to be 10M/km. So the cost would be 50B. Assuming a 30% line loss and a 14 cent arbitrage it would make $100,000 per hour and be paid off in 60 years. I'm not going to invest.
So cheaper than a nuclear power plant, and would actually pay for itself without the need for government subsidies? ;-)
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10M*5000=50B, which if you live in a country that is not ruled by fools, gets you 10 GW of nuclear.
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HVDC line loss is about 3.5% per 1000km, and falling as the technology improves. So you would get about 17.5% loss or less, half what you are assuming.
As for the cost, it's cheap compared to e.g. gas pipelines. And a price well worth paying to reduce CO2 emissions.
Some countries have massive renewable resources that they will be able to export this way, just like the oil exporters of old. By the way, how much do oil and gas pipelines cost per km?
Stupid claims (Score:3)
>>> could send 6 gigawatts of energy in both directions at the speed of light
Electricity in a cable travels at less than the speed of light (e.g. 64% for a cat5 cable). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And, you don't want both ways, that would be daft. Hopefully they mean "in either direction".
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Light slows down as well in water and other materials so it means nothing if you don't specify "in a vacuum". Speed of light in optic fiber is about 2/3 of c, c being the speed of light in a vacuum.
Anyway, who care about the speed it travels at? Have you ever seen a gas pipe-line where the speed the gas travels at is judged important?
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Wait, you don't mean full duplex power.
Don't go HALF assed.
There's some game system that actually does that.
Well it has power in one direction and signal in the other, in the same wire.
Like double-simplex.
P.S. The half is bold because I can't italicise is and it is a pun for half-duplex.
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Yes I read this and thought; have they come up with a new medium to transfer electricity.
But another fact is that electricity (power) is always being pushed in one end and comes out the other, compared to data, where the data you want needs to travel the whole way before it can be eaten. Only if the power would stop at one end would it need to travel at the speed of light to be eaten again at the other end.
But the speed of light claim is a bad write-up. Unless you specify speed of light in another medium th
Factual correction (Score:2)
The UK, where land space for power plants is limited...
The UK, where NIMBYs sabotage all construction or development projects...
Transmission losses, etc. (Score:2)
What's wrong with decentralized electricity production? Lower transmission losses, greater resiliency against failure, etc.
Bad for a litany of reasons (Score:2)
Only Europe and US/Canada are still mostly democratic today. We'll see what happens in France today. Over 50% of the world's population has/had elections in 2024 and it looks like a changing of the guard from hope for the future to destroy everything as fast as possible for profit before the peaceful world gets destroyed. So once Trump gets in and carves up the world with Poopoo and Xi... and Eu swings hard right, Canada's a bit of joke the
Just No. A global power network dooms us all. (Score:2)
Why would we even want a one world power network that will also fail like a house of cards?
Self contained regions, while not ideal for some areas, is at least tolerant from being taken out by a one point of failure.
Great to see (Score:2)
... those projects, even if they may not yet be *quite* profitable yet.
If we can have 6 cables, then we can also have 60, or hundreds of them in the future. And
maybe shorter ones are sufficient.
To all the haters ranting about vulnerability: You're just expired oil&gas shills. Because oil&gas infrastructure
is just as vulnerable or more, and the source countries are amongst the worst of the world. In case you missed
it, we need to shut down oil&gas as fast as possible.
Each and every project pro
Something derangement syndrome? (Score:3)
From the fine article:
âoeA subsea cable could be exploited by a transactional presidency like Trumpâ(TM)s in order to force concessions from Europe in other areas,â Rizzi said. âoeAnd once you build that tie, itâ(TM)s very difficult to untie it.â
Right, it is Trump we need to be worried about. No worries about Putin using energy exports to force concessions from Europe, we need to worry about Trump.
At least we are seeing people understand the implications of an over dependence on international energy trade. There's nothing inherently wrong with international trade, that includes energy, but if one's economy relies on this too much then a disruption in the markets can leave a nation in a dire situation where some other nation uses trade as a means to influence policy.
I recall seeing accusations of neocolonialism from UK building undersea power cables to Africa. One claim being that the source nations need energy more than UK does. Well, as it is now Africa isn't using this energy, and by selling energy to UK they have money to build their own stuff. We could not build these cables and let Africa try to find other means to jump start their economy. Once built though then that means African nations have some influence on Europe.
If Europe wants low CO2 energy with the least international headaches then build some nuclear power plants. Maybe the nuclear power plants would take longer to build than an undersea power cable but its at least not handing out rope to be hanged with later. Perhaps build the cable for the immediate gains in energy but also build nuclear power plants so undersea power cables aren't used as a noose later.
Green energy? (Score:2)
NOPE NOPE NOPE (Score:1)
Baron_Yam : Russian gas and Europe (Score:2)
Well, the US could always blow up their own cables to stop the Russians getting their hands on the electricity
------- @Baron_Yam [slashdot.org]: “Too much interconnectedness on things as critical as power means too much vulnerability to a malicious actor. Russian gas doesn't seem like such a great idea in hindsight, does it, Europe?
Internet lines get cut deliberately, now imagine an 'accidental' severing of a maj
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Aw, not getting enough attention with your Putin propaganda, had to repost as the root, eh?
Your 'point' is pointless, you're still supporting my view and just to fucking stupid to know it in your rush to defend Putin.
A vulnerability is still a vulnerability, regardless of who takes advantage of it, dimwit.
Synchronised networks? (Score:2)
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There's no way this could be 3 phase AC. First, the losses from reactance and skin effect would be awful. Second you need to run 3 conductors for 3 phase and only 2 for bipolar HVDC. With HVDS, your only losses will be the conductor resistances themselves as DC does not experience the skin effect or hace reactive losses.
As a bonus, converting yo DC also solves the 50 to 60Hz power line frequency problem. There are currently HVDC back-to-back conversion facilities in Brazil and Japan which convert between 50
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As the electricity travels near the speed of light, it experiences time dilation/redshift that can be tuned to convert it between 50 and 60 Hz.
No, seriously, as the sister post notes, it's very likely DC.