It doesn't really matter if you have some daylight remaining in the Americas while the sun is rising in Asia, all the solar energy is going to over the Pacific and will be for hours before it fully reaches Asia.
> Agree the connection part would be tricky
It would be “tricky” in the same way space colonization would be “tricky”… Like not entirely theoretically impossible, but still very far from what's practical today.
No, not like that at all. Laying cable is not difficult. Manufacturing 10,000km+ of cable is difficult, but we literally already have factories doing it. No where near space colonisation difficult.
We have 7000km gas pipelines. You think electrical cables would be more difficult or more resources?
I think you over estimate how much land you need to power the whole world. There is plenty of space. Even on islands in the Pacific Ocean.
> No, not like that at all. Laying cable is not difficult. Manufacturing 10,000km+ of cable is difficult, but we literally already have factories doing it.
You have no idea of the amount of such cables that would be needed, nor than you have any idea of the difficulty of laying them. It is difficult in the same way sending rockets is difficult: we know how to do it and have been doing it routinely for decades, but that doesn't mean we could scale it to the point your project would need, very much like space colonization.
> We have 7000km gas pipelines. You think electrical cables would be more difficult or more resources?
Yes, because it's “lengths times number of cables” that poses problems. The amount of power you'd need to be able to transfer is beyond imagination! I leave next to a nuclear plant that produces a mere 3.6GW of power, and there are multiple high tension power lines going from there, and only up to a few hundred kilometers away: in your fantasy you'd need A THOUSAND TIME more (over thousands of time more kilometers). If you managed to send a spacecraft that's a thousand time bigger than ISS, that's already space colonization for you already. Turns out scaling this up a thousand time is far from straightforward.
> I think you over estimate how much land you need to power the whole world. There is plenty of space. Even on islands in the Pacific Ocean.
You are underestimating it vastly. The world consumes 30 PWh of electricity a year. At 30% of capacity factor (which is the best you can hope for, realistically only achievable in low-latitude deserts without clouds), and 300MW/km², you'd need 40 000 km²: that's the size of Switzerland worth of solar farm, good luck putting that on pacific Islands…
Orders of magnitude matter, and you definitely lack the sense of scale for these things. What you're talking about is science-fiction material.
So you are comparing the global use of energy for a year against the nighttime load for a single day (ie when the sun is on the pacific )?
It’s a cool idea, and I’m pretty certain something like it is going to happen over time. Given we are seeing 10-100x (in gwh) of renewables be provisioned compared to any other type. So I guess welcome to science fiction!
> So you are comparing the global use of energy for a year against the nighttime load for a single day (ie when the sun is on the pacific )?
Well, this comments explains a lot. Why are you even having this discussion if your engineering literacy is at this level?
> It’s a cool idea, and I’m pretty certain something like it is going to happen over time.
As unlikely as space colonization, but who know what can happen in the next centuries.
> Given we are seeing 10-100x (in gwh) of renewables be provisioned compared to any other type. So I guess welcome to science fiction!
Fortunately nobody is actually interested in trying to make your whole-earth storage-free solar electric grid. So actual engineers may actually get something done ;)
> Well, this comments explains a lot. Why are you even having this discussion if your engineering literacy is at this level?
No it doesn't. I think you're missing what I mean. You need enough panels to generate ~82TWh/day. That roughly equates to 45 million panels of around 2m^2 so you'd roughly need around 136km^2. So they'd fit on Hawaii.
That's for the worlds entire consumption though, so even though you could fit the 45 million panels in one spot, in the middle of the pacific (so your previous point is moot) - you'd spread them around the world.
So despite no one apparently being interested in this crazy "whole-earth storage-free solar" We've already installed 1.75 billion panels globally to date. So the numbers are not a crazy engineering challenge. It's actually just a distribution problem.
But sure, stick to attacking me rather than prosecuting the idea. I'm sure that's how all innovation happens right?
> No it doesn't. I think you're missing what I mean. You need enough panels to generate ~82TWh/day. That roughly equates to 45 million panels of around 2m^2 so you'd roughly need around 136km^2. So they'd fit on Hawaii.
Thanks for confirming my previous point about engineering literacy, now at least I'm sure I haven't misjudged you before…
> So despite no one apparently being interested in this crazy "whole-earth storage-free solar" We've already installed 1.75 billion panels globally to date. So the numbers are not a crazy engineering challenge. It's actually just a distribution problem.
Well, glad you've abdicated your initial idea[1] altogether. And since that was the idea that I've been criticizing in the whole thread, maybe this wasn't too much of a waste of time on my side then. Yes we're installing solar panels, but yes we're investing in storage as well and no we don't plan on having a world-wide grid to leverage the spinning property of earth to compensate for their intermittent nature.
This project look like they are installing a 4000km cable between Australia and Singapore. With storage as well. But I thought you said long distance cables don’t work? That’s what you said.
Maybe you should let them know about the cloudy days? You said solar doesn’t work.
They mine uranium in that same part of Australia… why didn’t they choose nuclear? You said nuclear was better choice… because of weight!
Not leveraging spinning, we are installing solar globally because the sun shines everywhere. Can you point to country not installing solar?
You didn’t refute my math on panels, is it wrong? I’m happy to learn. Or you just trolling? (Your error earlier was thinking you needed to produce the whole years worth of electricity every second or hour? Hard to tell, but it’s off by multiple magnitudes… you don’t need to do that, you have a whole year to produce it)
> by a 4,500 km (2,800 mi) 3 GW HVDC transmission line.
3 GW
Also it's still a project, a very ambitious one that is, which is projected for shipping in ten years, and whose budget has already doubled compared to what's initially projected and has already bankrupted once before getting saved, so it's a bit early to use that as a example of how straightforward such thing is… At this point, it is as “real” as fast neutron reactors…
> Maybe you should let them know about the cloudy days? You said solar doesn’t work.
Who said that? Not me. You know discussing energy technology isn't like supporting a sport team… If anything, I'd argue that the environmental impact of solar makes it the worst of the non-fossil energy source. But it works, it just doesn't work the way you think it works, you are off by orders of magnitude at every levels, that's the problem and that's why you end up with science-fiction “ideas” to save the world.
> Not leveraging spinning, we are installing solar globally because the sun shines everywhere.
Then you've abandoned your idiotic idea you started with and we're good, there's no much need to continue this discussion since you retracted the take I've been criticizing from the beginning.
> You didn’t refute my math on panels, is it wrong? I’m happy to learn. Or you just trolling? (Your error earlier was thinking you needed to produce the whole years worth of electricity every second… but you don’t need to do that, you have a whole year to produce it)
The fact that you think that I “needed to produce the whole years worth of electricity every second…” in my previous calculation is an example where your math is wrong. There's also the fact you don't realize that your “136km²” is off by multiples orders of magnitude (Hawaii is 16 THOUSAND of square kilometers, and even your project in Australia is going to be 150km² wide[1]), or that you don't even realize that your calculation ended up with “45 million panels” and one sentence after that you say with a straight face that “We've already installed 1.75 billion panels globally”, without realizing that somehow it would mean that we'd have 30 times too many solar panels already… In addition to the math, there's also a lack of basic practical sense, like you can't multiply the size of the panel by their number to get the surface of a solar farm, and you cannot fit a solar farm on a mountainous island of the same surface unless you also plan to level the mountain altogether, and so on and so on.
I’m convinced you don’t understand my words. Is English your second language?
136km is less than 16000km soo all the panels would fit there. That was my point????
The Australian one is spaced out because they have so much land they don’t care. So I still don’t get your point.
I think you are the one off by orders of magnitude, because you are confusing panel capacity with generation. Just to double check that, do you agree a single 400w panel generates conservatively 1800w/day ?
Yes we have installed enough panels to power the whole world many times over. But they aren’t connected… again that is my point.
There are HVDC cables in use all over the place. That tech is very much process out. Do you get what a 3GW line can do? It can deliver 72GWh in a day.
EDIT
I’ve realised rather belatedly you are just a troll. Apologise for the overfeed.
> I’m convinced you don’t understand my words. Is English your second language?
It is, but it's not a language problem here… The problem is that all you write is nonsense!
For instance:
> The Australian one is spaced out because they have so much land they don’t care.
Like the I know the real estate in the Australian desert must be cheap, but why spend a HUNDRED TIME too much money on real estate just because it's cheap? You think the project financiers are completely dumb? Why can't you even imagine that your calculation is broken?
> Just to double check that, do you agree a single 400w panel generates conservatively 1800w/day ?
Come on. I don't know if I should laugh or sigh at this point.
> Yes we have installed enough panels to power the whole world many times over. But they aren’t connected… again that is my point.
Is there a sentience life behind this account or is it a markov chain language model? If there is, please take a big breath and think about what you just wrote. Seriously.
> Do you get what a 3GW line can do? It can deliver 72GWh in a day.
7.2⋅10¹⁰Wh/day, compared to the 8⋅10¹³Wh/day that the humanity consumes. That's 3 orders of magnitude off, that's how much you'd need to scale it up. Scale ISS by 3 orders of magnitude and you have a spaceship that's 5 times bigger than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, to keep the space colonization analogy. Scale the (provisional) budget required by this project by 3 orders of magnitude, and you get one year worth of US GDP. That's how non-trivial this is.
You should try and learn to manipulate orders of magnitudes, because that's a skill you're lacking and it really shows. The scales involved in such a discussion are so big you cannot rely on your intuitive sense of scale.
That's a stupid metric, especially when you consider that the limit between the Pacific and Antarctic Ocean is completely arbitrary.
Just spin it and you'll see what I mean: https://earth3dmap.com/3d-globe/
It doesn't really matter if you have some daylight remaining in the Americas while the sun is rising in Asia, all the solar energy is going to over the Pacific and will be for hours before it fully reaches Asia.
> Agree the connection part would be tricky
It would be “tricky” in the same way space colonization would be “tricky”… Like not entirely theoretically impossible, but still very far from what's practical today.