Via a guest post at BraveNewClimate, a proposal for a large-scale engineering project that makes the Three Gorges Dam look like a weekend building job.
DESERTEC-Australia thinks solar energy, particularly CSP, is a feasible and affordable source for Australia’s future energy needs. All we need to do is spend a few billion on transmission lines to the desert. Plausible enough. But their long-term plans are just a teeny little bit more ambitious, if you read on.
There’s been a lot of speculation that Europe could get much of its electricity from solar power in the Sahara, with some long-distance power lines across the Mediterranean. Ambitious, but plausible, given the proximity. Heck, it’s only 13 kilometres across the Strait of Gibraltar. Australia has similarly attractive solar resources. But where in the heck would we send them. Well, how about where we currently send our coal… – yep, Asia, and, particularly China! Yep, if you read on far enough, they’re proposing a variety of different cable routes all the way to Singapore or even directly to China. The projected price tag for this engineering masterpiece? 500 billion dollars.
The most appealing thing about this idea is that the technology exists, in principle. High-voltage direct-current transmission is already used to send electricity surprisingly long distances with acceptable levels of line loss. Undersea electricity cables are also becoming more and more routine. This cable, between the Netherlands and Norway, runs 780 kilometres under the North Sea. Scale it up in length by roughly a factor of 10, and multiply the capacity by a couple of orders of magnitude, and you’re there! Easy…
As a sort-of engineer whose Dad spent time working on the Snowy Mountains scheme in his youth, this kind of thing has its appeal. But I can’t see how it can be viable. Aside from the gargantuan scale of the project – which can’t be easily split up into digestible chunks – this would be centralization of infrastructure on such a scale that the arguments about reliability and security of supply actually start to make sense. Not to mention that you’d have to wonder how the economics of the proposal compares to building CSP plants in China’s desert areas. They may have poorer solar insolation, but the construction costs should be lower and the transmission line infrastructure required would be a tad less ambitious.
But it’s a heck of a thought experiment, if nothing else.
You really think the EU will tolerate surrendering energy security to North Africa as well as the Middle East and Russia? Tunisia would need more than a few ads on BBC World to convince the polity, methinks.
And.. yeah interesting proposal, Robert.
Now that you put it that way, not really. That said, the EU is in a lot better position to defend energy assets in the Sahara than China would be to defend energy assets in Australia’s interior 6,000 kilometres away.
Aside from the problems with size, economics, and centralisation of infrastructure, one imagines there would also be any number of environmental difficulties to overcome – all that loss of habitat for native species! Ironic for a project that is meant to be ’sustainable’/'environmentally-friendly’/(insert favoured Green euphemism here.)
The European proposal has 2 sides to it. Most definitely the security issue is a huge hurdle. But the other side to that is that the security is largely a product of poverty. Europe’s flood of African illegal immigrants is also a product of poverty. By providing good quality employment across the top of Africa both issues may be eased. In the CSP system what would be spent on coal is spent on people power to clean and maintain. This fully implemented would be a huge employer for Africa. And many secondary industries near to the power facilities would start to become desireable to advantage of the massive amount of electricity available.
Big gamble? Yes. Worth the risk? Yes.
Interesting post, Robert.
BTW the post at BraveNewClimate is a guest post by Stewart Taggart, who is a Director of Acquasol Infrastructure Ltd. I don’t see this as being a problem, although it probably should have been acknowledged in the introduction of the post.
Taggart does have an interest in the renewable energy business, but he’s also having to look at it in a practical, commercial way.
Couple thoughts on the posts above.
Yes, connecting Australia to Asia over HVDC is a big and expensive undertaking right now. But what you’re leaving out is the effect of the “learning curve.” This is causing prices of solar energy to fall at a compounded rate of ~7% per year, which will make CSP cheaper than coal with CSS by 2012. HVDC is also falling in price. These extrapolations are crucial to debating the issues based upon correct ‘compound innovation-adjusted’ prices. To give one example, costs of fiber optic cable fell 99% in 25 years due, in large part, to information-sharing enabled by the internet. The efficiency innovations of ’sharing’ electricity across borders could spur those same effiencies, and lower costs.
Then there’s this argument about energy security etc etc. for instance with Europe and north Africa. The idea there is NOT TO BECOME WHOLLY DEPENDENT on North African power. For instance, the Europeans are also considering huge offshore wind farms, and even geothermal/hydrogen imports from Iceland over pipeline. The idea here is to have a mix. In the case of China, it would be sun from its own NW, wind from its own east coasts, and imports of solar from Australia. This becomes particularly sensible when you consider the time differences (our evening power cold power their mornnings) and the hemispheric differences (our summer sun cold power their winter and their summer wind could power our winter). Lastly, in terms of energy dependence in the case of Europe, little could be worse than being dependent on Russia for natural gas, wouldn’t you agree?
Of course the logical extension of all this is the constructiona HVDC cable/s that run east west around the globe at about the “desert” latitude (20-30 degrees North and South). It would produce energy from solar power sites located in “deserts” in Africa, North and South America, Asia, Australia.
The interesting thing here is that the energy flow would be basically constant – no need for energy storage at all.
Of course one persons desert is likely to be another persons home to say nothing of the local Flora and Fauna.
A Hign Voltage DC cable system could be built that would transmit say 1000 GW. Probably cost about 5 years of the US military budget (including the power stations).
Huggy
Oil is fairly easy to store and ship. Gas is a bit harder, but doable. Electricity is impossible to ship and virtually impossible to store.
Furthermore, drawing analogies between information transmission and energy transmission is a bit dubious. They’re subject to completely different constraints and scaling laws; the kind of exponential improvements in cost per bit seen in fibre optics is simply not possible for electricity carriage. Yes, an intercontinental energy grid will come down in cost, but it will remain an engineering project unprecedented in scope for decades to come.
The earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. Thus 3 or more solar power stations located at about 120 degrees apart will always be producing energy. Thus there is no requirement for energy storage. When it is dark on one side it will be full light on the other.
The attraction of HVDC is that it does not require synchronisation, is efficient and can be run undersea and underground over vast distances with very low losses.
It may look like a heroic engineering undertaking but the long term cost would be less than compared an equivalent nuclear program. Of course you would feed in other energy sources into this global DC grid including wind and even baseload such as geothermal. The big plus is that no fuel at all would be required.
Huggy.
Huggybunny, you’re really not trying hard enough. We need Dyson Spheres, NOW!
Wilful, yes I get the Joke but I am not proposing anything that is not entirely feasible with current technology. In fact it makes total economic and technical sense. HVDC has been around for over 100 years . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC
Multi terminal systems are not common but also well within current technology scope.
The real problem lies in the heads of otherwise well educated persons such as yourself and Robert Merkel (CP Snow was spot on BTW). HVDC is already used to “ship” electricity between countries and between differing grid systems.
From a political perspective such a system would force global co-operation (Co-operate or freeze).
If we really want to do something about GW and Peak Oil then such remedies will be required.
Huggy
I have to admit that I find the idea of such an unprecedented step forward in the development of clean energy on such a grand scale fascinating. And Australia would naturally stand to cash in from this new export industry as well.
Sadly, for reasons others have already mentioned, I think it’s probably a pipe dream. It would take a hell of a lot of trust to hand another country the switch to your country’s life support system. Even partial reliance on electricity supply that can be cut off in the blink of an eye would put most off. The ability to suddenly deny your trading “partener” the energry that makes the difference between a developed or developing nation and a stone age existence would give us such enormous leverage that it would be hard for them to refuse any demand we made.
I can’t imagine there would be very many countries willing to put themselves in such a vulnerable position.
For $500 billion you could get orbital solar, which is more reliable, more flexible, more efficient, leaves you with the start of an industrial base in orbit; and is inherently much cooler.
And you could attatch an orbital restaraunt to the station and offer a TRULY unique dining experience, rent it out for parties ect – the possibilities are endless.
I’ll bet Richard Branson already has the blueprints drawn up.