[alancalverd]

If you generate your own electricity, it would be less expensive, e. g. 0 p per mile.

Plus the amortisation of the generating equipment.

[alancalverd]

. It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.

It may make more sense to use a collection of wires- preferable with interconnections between them.
What some people would call... a "grid".

Why are you so resistant to this idea?

Who is resisting anything?  By all means estimate the cost of a 3000 mile grid of any description , allowing for the fact that 1000 miles is under (over? I think not!) the sea and it will be carrying about 8 times the maximum load of the UK's present grid.

You could reduce the undersea bit to around 100 miles by routing the power through such friendly and cooperative territories as Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, the ever-stable Balkans, and our jealous neighbors in Europe, but we're now looking at around 12,000 miles times as many overhead wires as you think fit.

I rather think that our hosts would be resistant, or would at least demand a slice of the cake,  and a whole generation of unemployables (formerly known as students)  would complain about electrical colonialism and throw your statue into the Thames.

[Bored chemist]

jealous neighbors

Jealous of what?

[alancalverd]

Our electricity crossing their land. Either electricity is a desirable commodity, in which case everyone will want some, or it isn't, in which case there is no point in generating and transmitting it. Just look at the fun caused by the UK government signing a contract with a UK company to manufacture a few tons of vaccine in Belgium, or having the gall to protect inshore fishing grounds!

[Bored chemist]

You do know that there is an international trade in electricity, don't you?

Our electricity crossing their land.

[alancalverd]

I quoted the current figures in reply #67 above.

65 years on, the "UK-other" trade is minimal with a maximum cable capacity of 5 GW, mostly to soak up excess French nuclear power, and at present net zero. The reason is that no nation state is going to install much more than required to meet its peak demand. There is a potential export of 1 GW from Holland "when there is excess wind power in Europe", but  as the prevailing wind is westerly, and the east wind is cold, it hardly ever happens!

If the UK adopts electric cars, so will everyone else in Europe (because green votes count), so there will be  a dearth of electricity in the civilised world. 

[hamdani yusuf]

Transition to electric vehicle is inevitable. You can only delay it, presumably for some financial gain while sacrificing others and the environment.

The age when internal combustion cars rule is over. Tesla and other BEV (battery electric vehicle) manufacturers are creating a phase transition where we will go from gas (or ICE) cars to battery electric vehicles extremely rapidly. Tony Seba and I agree: don't get caught with an ICE car once the transition happens. Internal combustion engine cars will be worthless in 2025 or 2030 at the latest. Legacy auto manufacturers, auto dealerships, banks that do auto loans, and even consumers will feel some pain as this massive transition happens.

[hamdani yusuf]

The gas grid presently holds and distributes 35% of the UK's total energy. Until 1963, 50% of the gas was hydrogen.  It has been economically feasible and indeed profitable since 1790.

Why did they stop distributing hydrogen?

[hamdani yusuf]

https://physicsworld.com/a/sunny-superpower-solar-cells-close-in-on-50-efficiency/

Key to the success of NREL’s device are three InGaAs sub-cells that excel at absorbing light in the infrared, which contains a significant proportion of the Sun’s radiation. Achieving strong absorption at these long wavelengths requires InGaAs compositions with a significantly different atomic spacing to that of the substrate. Additionally, their device has been designed with intermediate transparent layers made from InGaP or AlGaInAs to keep material imperfections in check. Grading the composition of these buffer layers enables a steady increase in lattice constant, thereby providing a strong foundation for local lattice-matched growth of sub-cells that are not riddled with strain-induced defects.

[Bored chemist]

The gas grid presently holds and distributes 35% of the UK's total energy. Until 1963, 50% of the gas was hydrogen.  It has been economically feasible and indeed profitable since 1790.

Why did they stop distributing hydrogen?

They moved from "town gas " to "North Sea Gas", largely because it was cheaper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas#Conversion_to_natural_gas

[alancalverd]

And less smelly - gas production and storage works had a particular miasma.

But importantly, less poisonous. Oxford and Cambridge were prioritised for conversion to minimise suicides and accidental deaths: student accommodation always had radiant gas fires and the first item of academic equipment everyone purchased was a toasting fork. 

[wolfekeeper]

Let's say that a  self sufficient system in The Sahara requires 10 kW solar panel and 100 kWh battery.

You could say that, but a static 10 kW panel will only produce ~ 2.5 kW average during clear daylight and nothing at night so you need to install about 30 kW of generating capacity to charge the battery during the day.

NO. 10kW of fixed solar panels at the optimum angle in the Sahara make an average of about 2.5 kW over the entire year (solar panels there would make ~2500kWh/yr/kWp), not just during the day; so they make an average of 5 kW during the day.

But if you are also using power during the day, you need to install 60 kW of peak generating capacity to supply  8.3 kW continuously.

Yeahhhhhhhh. About that. **** No.

How is it that you could ever have thought and wrote that 10kWp solar panel in direct sunshine most of the time only makes 2.5kW on average during daylight hours???

UK energy consumption is about 5 kW per capita, so to supply the UK alone, from a hot desert location, you need to install 40,000,000 x 60 kW solar panels, each with a 100 kWh battery. At 50 sq ft per kW, that's about 500 square miles of panel: just feasible, perhaps, but it's not a happy environment for batteries and you have to find some way of preventing the whole thing getting covered with sand.

Now let's get that power to the UK. Say we install a 1,000,000 V DC cable (the reactive losses over 3000 miles would be very expensive with an AC supply). It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.

You really don't get how any of this works. Have you ever actually been an electrical engineer? Because you're not showing it.

[alancalverd]

Yes. Which is why I worry.

AFAIK the sun doesn't shine at night in the Sahara, so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day averaged over a year, it must be making 2.5 kW during daylight hours. The power output over time is pretty close to a half sine curve, and a little arithmetic will show you that  the area under a half sine of amplitude 10 is ~ 6.2 so the average power over 24 hours is 3.1 kW at midsummer, assuming no cloud or dust, and 2.5 kW over a year is optimistic. 

Not that it matters to the UK consumer, because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.

This is the 7th successive day with UK wind power below 15% of installed capacity. Gas and nuclear have been running at around 60% of installed capacity most of the week. If the UK is to go 100% renewable we need to install at least 10,000 GWh of storage capacity and 5 times the present wind generating capacity just to meet present electrical demand reliably. If you want to recharge enough electric cars to replace present fleet useage you will need to double the wind and storage capacity again. Who will pay?

[wolfekeeper]

Yes. Which is why I worry.

AFAIK the sun doesn't shine at night in the Sahara, so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day averaged over a year, it must be making 2.5 kW during daylight hours. The power output over time is pretty close to a half sine curve, and a little arithmetic will show you that  the area under a half sine of amplitude 10 is ~ 6.2 so the average power over 24 hours is 3.1 kW at midsummer, assuming no cloud or dust, and 2.5 kW over a year is optimistic.

NO.

If it's 2.5 kW AVERAGED OVER THE ENTIRE YEAR, and IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY AT NIGHT, and the AVERAGE NIGHT IS HALF THE OVERALL 24 HOUR DAY, then the AVERAGE POWER DURING THE DAY TIME IS 5 KW.

THAT'S HOW AVERAGES WORK.

Not that it matters to the UK consumer, because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.

The UK has an average demand of about 30 GW. With further electrification it may well increase. Nobody is suggesting we would get all our power from the Sahara. Renewables work stochastically, and the more different sources you have the better, since the variations average out. But as we've already established, you have ZERO grasp of statistics.

This is the 7th successive day with UK wind power below 15% of installed capacity. Gas and nuclear have been running at around 60% of installed capacity most of the week. If the UK is to go 100% renewable we need to install at least 10,000 GWh of storage capacity and 5 times the present wind generating capacity just to meet present electrical demand reliably. If you want to recharge enough electric cars to replace present fleet useage you will need to double the wind and storage capacity again. Who will pay?

It's true that the wind power is below average right now, but we're moving into the summer wind patterns, and it's been highly productive over winter. Solar production has been strong for the last few days.

The question is not who will pay, the question is who has and will be paying for the fossil fuel production we've been using previously. And the answer is all of us, both with our wallets, as well as our lungs, our asthma, and heart disease. We're spending more on fossil fuel power production per kWh than we spend on renewables.

[Bored chemist]

so if a panel makes 2.5 kW/day

What is that a unit of?

because nobody has suggested how to transfer 300 GW from the Sahara to the UK.

Actually, you did.

Say we install a 1,000,000 V DC cable (the reactive losses over 3000 miles would be very expensive with an AC supply). It has to carry 330,000 amps. That's a very fat wire.

And, while that's a silly design, it's easy enough to improve on it.
How about 330 cables rated for 1000 A ?
Cables with that capacity are commercially available.
https://www.cse-distributors.co.uk/cable/technical-tables-useful-info/table-4e1a/


It would be an expensive project.
But, of course, you only need it to supply the balance of the energy that can't be produced  locally.
If the UK had a variety of energy sources then it's unlikely that they would all fail at the same time.

Also, you keep going on about the idea that humanity should reduce the population.
That's a fine idea, but there is even less suggestion of how to implement it than there is for how to transfer a GW of power from the Sahara.

One way to get people to have fewer kids would be to demonstrate that there isn't enough resource for them.
A regular brown-out might do that quite well.

[alancalverd]

Now route your 330 cables from the Sahara to the south coast of England,
find some way of persuading everyone over whose land you want to route your cables that they don't need electric cars
and should be honored to allow your power to pass over their land without charge
and estimate the cost of crossing say 3000 miles of land and 300 miles of sea

You can take as a basis the  the latest undersea 150 mile 1GW Anglo-French cable, budgeted at £1,000,000,000.

And add 35,000,000 kerbside charging points, plus whatever switchgear and additional wiring is needed to uprate the grid and distribute the juice. and some data infrastructure to allow credit card recharging.

The cost of this venture cannot be borne by existing electricity customers because it will only benefit the owners of electric cars. So how much is it going to add to the capital cost of a car? And how much fossil fuel will be expended to build this project?

Remember the whole structure has to be in place by 2030 to meet government targets for banning the sale of internal combustion vehicles!

[Bored chemist]

and should be honored to allow your power to pass over their land without charge

That's a straw man you made up, isn't it?

find some way of persuading everyone over whose land you want to route your cables that they don't need electric cars

Ditto.

Do you not think your argument is good enough to stand on its own without making up tosh to support it?

and estimate the cost of crossing say 3000 miles of land and 200 miles of sea

I did.

It would be an expensive project.

[alancalverd]

Not a straw man.

Wayleaves have to be negotiated (I've done it) and paid for (I've received it).

If electric cars are good for the UK, then they must be good for every other country, surely?  and won't they need a magic electricity tree too? So wouldn't they prioritise their own grid?

Thank you for your brilliant financial input! Next time I'm talking to bankers and shareholders about a capital project, I'll present them with a one word budget : "expensive". 

[Bored chemist]

Wayleaves have to be negotiated (I've done it) and paid for (I've received it).

Nobody said otherwise- which is what makes it a straw man.

If electric cars are good for the UK, then they must be good for every other country, surely?

Nobody said otherwise, which is what makes it a straw man.

Do you not think your argument is good enough to stand on its own without making up tosh to support it?

[Bored chemist]

Next time I'm talking to bankers and shareholders about a capital project, I'll present them with a one word budget : "expensive".

If you are talking to the bankers and shareholders, it makes sense to make sure you have a robust estimate.
But I was talking to you, and you aren't paying for this project, nor are you the decision maker, so I didn't waste my time.