The World Needs Supergrids, But There's a Problem
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ค. 2022
- If a green pivot is to happen, power grids must become “supergrids,” continent-spanning networks that can move green energy thousands of miles. The technology is here, but politics may stand in the way.
#energy #powermoves #bloombergquicktake
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I'm a landowner in Finland and when a grid company needs to work on my land, they just inform me and start working. The law says that they must cause only minimal damage to my land and clear up any mess, but I cannot stop them.
I like this system, power grids are more important than my "not in my backyard" feelings.
We need neighbors like you around the world
To be fair, to a rancher, it's not just a "Not in my backyard", mentality. That land given up is potential future earnings lost.
@@cmac3530 ranchers can still use the land under the power lines. They just have to provide access for maintenance.
@@Hereticalable It’s people who think like you who elected Trump here. Have a great day.
@@Hereticalable WHAT? So it is fault of the non-white guy living next door that the grid cannot pass over the land of the white guy? Well, that's a first
I am somewhat skeptic because of what I see happening in my area. A simple interconnection beween Canada and USA has been stopped by a referendum promoted by an american energy producer to stop a competitor. In this case clean hydroelectric energy will not be able to replace coal and gas to fight climate change.
And so it goes. Big money. All other utilities are government controlled, but not energy....
To be fair, the US is a laggard in these kind of mega imfrastructures, even Africa has a 800kv high voltage cable, let alone Asia amd those advanced countries. The US is atypical
It’s always private companies. They act like mafias.
Progress may not always look like a straight line. Often there are zigzags?
This is a problem even today within Canada with no national energy grid.
The Newfoundland government had to accept very unfavorable terms with Quebec for the Churchill Falls agreement in 1969 or they would not have secured the additional funding needed to complete the project and they would not have access to markets since Quebec would not allow an energy corridor to access markets in Ontario or US.
Contract is a 65-years wholesale rate with no provisions for inflation or escalation that ends 2041.
Well super grids are not really just a "proposal" in Asia. Indian national grid is already connected to Nepal Bhutan and Bangladesh and another HVDC line to Srilanka is under implementation (Madurai - Anuradhapura HVDC). So I think regional super grids are already becoming reality and might transform into intercontinental grids in the future
Lol. Sure...
Plan to connect Saudi Arabia via undersea cables too
China is the only country in the world that uses HVDC and HVAC in large scale. The system of 100 MW built by Simens is a little baby comparing with Chinese ones that have been using for long time. China's HV transmission technologies are the best and most mature ones in the world. as of 2020, China's State Grid had29 HV transmission lines in operation, 15 of them are HVAC and 14 are HVDC with total length of about 50,000 km. China uses HV system to connect all the country. It sounds the HV system is a new one while China's first 1000,000V HVAC line was put in operation in 2009. The distance is more than 600km and the capacity is 6,000 MW. China is building 24 HVAC and 14 HVDC new powerlines with total length of about 30,000 km between 2021-2025.
😂😅😅😅😅 comedian
@@user-dj3lo4iw2f+99999999 social credits
The Russia-Europe energy debacle shows that we cannot do an international energy grid, you can’t rely on adversaries for energy. Europe could connect within the EU, the US could potentially connect with Canada and maybe Mexico but a massive connected system that connects most of the world would be impossible from a national security standpoint
Don't put all your supergrids in the one basket.✌
Wouldn’t a international super grid actually solve those problems? It makes it easier to switch to a different supplier
Europe was relying on adversary for energy. If we had better supply of gas and electricity from Africa and Middle-East, Europe would not be in such bad situation right now.
Canada and the US already are connected by many high voltage transmissions lines. BC sells excess hydro electricity to Washington, Oregon and California all the time in excess of 10 TWh annually. It is called the Western Interconnection.
@@bbb800 the super grid will have vulnerable choke points.
There's a series of videos called "The Light Tamers" by a physics professor here on TH-cam that has the history of electricity in more details. Though Tesla was a main character in the story, the three phase/three wire system was developed by a Russian in Germany and Steinmetz developed a series of mathematical tools - mainly the Phasor - that were fundamental to the development of the field.
The first DC power transmission was installed in Brazil to get the 50Hz from the 8 turbines that generate energy to Paraguay into a town near where I live in São Paulo. However, that was only needed because on the agreement to build the Itaipu power plant a rather small country, Paraguay, got half of the generators and they were all built for 50Hz while Brazil uses 60Hz. Brazil has a historic debt with Paraguay because of the late 19th century war so I find the agreement fair.
Nós não devemos nada aos paraguaios.
They attacked first but it's true that we did an overkill
Nice, surprised Suncable wasn't mentioned as that project plans to power 15% of Singapore through the world's largest solar farm in Australia and already has billions in funding through a 4200km underwater HVDC connection to provide a stedy 3.2GW of energy from its 17GWh solar farm.
The route scouting was supposed to end this year. Have they started construction yet?
Singapore? Why not Indonesia which is much closer to Australia than Singapore? The cable have to go through Indonesia first right?
@@ggh_-ts6pn yes the cables go through Indonesia so they’re involved in the project. If it’s successful, there’s a plan to add Indonesia into the network as well.
Remember this is a Singaporean company that is trying to assist the Singaporean government in its net zero goals. It’s not Australias idea.
@@jonathanodude6660 Sun Cable is primarily funded by Australian billionaires and have chosen Singapore to deliver power as it physically does not have the space to have renewable energy production (unlike many other countries surround it). Australia was chosen as the power generation country due to the amount of sunny days in the year when compared to nations closer to the equator which get more cloudy days.
Morocco and the UK are planning the same
Not the future of "energy", but the future of "energy transfer". Those are related, but different concepts.
The future of ELECTRICITY transfer, electricity is only one of different sorts of energies!
@@jmt97400 Indeed. I concur, sir.
India also has a plan called OSOWOG - One Sun-One World-One Grid.
Lol they are not even able to have a stable grid in their own land.
I dont think solar is the best option for the world. hydro electric is the best without any doubt .It depends on regions.
@@cartman19892 😂😂 24/7.
@@cartman19892 are you still in the 1990s? India has energy surplus now. Besides OSOWOG has 100+ members including almost all of the western Europe and the US. So this will be a global effort.
Last time i checked, you guys in the west were having to pay a small fortune to even run a light bulb. What can we do, stolen money doesn't last.
Yeah well, lets see if India can actually pull it off.
Two things will make renewable energy possible. 1.) global super grid, 2.) power storage facitilies.
My money is on power storage facilities.
RE is possible right now.
Grids are only needed for place north of mid latitudes where winter sun isn’t sufficient for solar.
Closer to the equator, self generated electricity with storage is better.
Power storage facilities have issues too from a dispatchability point of view. One of the many important reasons why generators are superior to energy storage and there is consensus that hydrogen-burning turbines are a critical component to future energy grids.
Sadly power storage technologies hasn't keep up with the renewables. We focused so much on Lithium-based tech and only considering other options just recently, where the economy of scale isn't there yet.
@@n_core it hasn’t needed to. As long as fossil tech is in place, the grid is like a plug-in hybrid car where fossil based energy kicks in where needed.
The carbon footprint of setting up a global supergrid should be a lot lesser than power storage facilities.
Tesla didn't invent AC, he invented 3-phase AC, huge difference.
What’s the difference?
Power capacity and efficiency
3-phase AC is a special case of AC system. It's just AC with 3 phases. Saying that Tesla invented AC is like saying that McDonald's invented the hamburger LOL
@UCU-4PokhyUFjwPnr1Q0q4cw that may be true, but he still didn't invent it. The first practical generation of AC was done by Faraday before Tesla was born, and the theoretical knowledge about it goes back even further. It's simply untrue. Same thing with Edison, who is attributed many things which he actually didn't invent. He just made them available to the public.
@@DaveE99 Three-phase AC uses 50% more wires than single-phase, but can transport 100% more power - so you save money on your cables. It also allows for the easy creation of three-phase induction and synchronous motors, which can convert electrical energy to mechanical with impressive efficiency and without the need for unreliable commutators. The advantages are such that every single national-scale electrical grid in the world is built on three-phase power. No exceptions. They are all descended from Tesla's designs.
The problem with super grids is dependency on foreign countries. We need to figure out how to live in an area based off the area, not based of the fact you can import resources to live in an unsustainable area.
Without the pressure to supply for local demand with local power sources, we lose innovation and we abuse the power sources we already have. Just like oil/coal/gas.
There will be problems with renewables and a sustainable approach is a diversified one where the needs are met by tailor made solutions for the area, not just brute force imported.
Small modular nuclear reactors seem to be a way out of that problem.
We are not going to see that level of cooperation globally anymore, not with what happened when the cabal of WHO/WEF caused the worst economical collapse of the this and the next century, affecting billions of people.
People just don't want the risk of having a global logistics chain anymore.
Things will have to be produced locally, forget this idea of a global 'internet' of electricity.
Electricity is too strategic of a resource to share.
Well said. Being self sufficient with local power sources only is the way forward.
@@JeanPierreWhite lol, as if every community has the capacity to do so.
Just don't get dependent on autocracies.
@@monad_tcp how did the who cause the economic collapse?
@@JeanPierreWhite in an imaginary world yes. In a real world no.
its really dangerous to centralize sources of energy... Recent situation in Russia is obious example what might happened if you become dependent.
But a decentralised one linked like the opposite one combined could be the solution
Countries have to weigh the ecpnomic and environmental advantages of international interconnects against the potential loss of sovereignty and security. Israel is actively working on a connection to Greece and Cyprus, thence to Europe. There are proposals to connect to the Persian Gulf. Sounds grandiose.
But a supergrid allows for more flexibility in where energy is produced. Wether you want to rely on any one power plant in the grid is a different question
Tell that to the sun.
@@Jonas-uh7bb not really because you would need enough redundancy to reroute energy when some countries fall out and threaten to cut another country off. The cost of building a network like that would be crazy not to mention how wasteful it would be
In India we have one nation one grid unlike us where there are multiple grids. There are also synchronous interconnections to Bhutan, and asynchronous links with Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal. An undersea interconnection to Sri Lanka (India-Sri Lanka HVDC Interconnection) has also been proposed. A proposed interconnection between Myanmar and Thailand would facilitate the creation of a power pool and enable trading among all BIMSTEC nations
Actually the undersea interconnection India-Sri Lanka (discussed and no progress since 20years) is now discussed to be a pure overhead line!
Go Mongolia! I had no idea it had THAT much green energy potential. I knew it had a lot but that much? WOW!!!
One of the most open and sunniest areas in the world. Solar power.
Have you ever negotiated with Mongolians before?
Mongolia is Russia......!
@@GEOsustainable LOL. No. But once Mongolia (or rather the ancestors of mongols) conquered Russia.
I think the video is talking about both inner and outer mongolia. Inner mongolia is just a part of China, which along with other western parts of China is where most of Chinas investment is happening. Their is really nothing special about the specific country of Mongolia, much of central asian desert and mountain terrain is suitable for renewable energy generation.
The important thing is cooperation of every individual involve and set aside politics. No country should have a control on energy. Unless we overcome this, We'll have hard time achieving this.
That is asking for the impossible as long as there are authoritarian regimes in powerful countries, and as long as authoritarian regimes can arise anywhere, anytime.
@@samo4003 And what about interconnectors within the United States itself? If America were to actually have a NATIONAL grid with East-West HVDC linkage then excess Californian solar energy could be exported, wind power exported from the MidWest, and hydropower imported from Canada (unless you believe that Canada is in danger of becoming an authoritarian regime?).
The answer to the political issues you raise is redundancy - if there is more than one route for the electricity to travel then you can simply route it around the country that is being unreasonable.
Which is never going to happen, sadly. Power is controlled by big money, and big money controls governments. Big money exists because of oil. Don't look to governments, they have zero power to change anything.
@@samo4003 you mean corporations, politics in the western world flow trough the hands of the oligarchs
That is like asking china to let Taiwan be independent separate country, which is impossible. Or asking russia to stop being oligarchy and totalitarian also get out of Ukraine now, which is also impossible.
Seriously, more efficient transmission and clean energy is nice, but I think it's a red herring to the root source of anthropic climate change: too many people. If you really think climate change matters, and want to fight against it for real, not having baby and be childfree is a real way to do it.
The farther we try to transport electricity the larger the "line losses", energy dissipated as heat along the wires.
Interconnectivity of grids does still have important advantages though. It provides redundancy, so that a breakdown in one part of the grid can be bypassed through alternate routes. But in the end, the most efficient plan is to try as much as possible to have "distributed production", lots of small scale generation scattered around the grid. This reduces line losses. Also, as we move more and more towards solar and wind, we can take better advantage of their production periods.
This is why rooftop solar and small to mid-scale wind farms can work very well together.
Yes, there are times when the sun doesn't shine. But at those times, heavy cloud cover or night time, there is often wind to compensate. And sometimes conditions can be quite different between 2 locations just a few miles apart.
So, grid interconnectivity and distributed production can be designed to make much better advantage of these renewable resources.
And yes, I readily acknowledge they will not account for the large majority of our needs anytime soon. But they have an important place and we could be making much better of them.
Ideally, from an environmental standpoint, resources consumed locally are produced locally. This general principle almost always has advantages. Future urban development and growth really needs to factor that in.
Not with hvdc
What about underground transmission using low resistance superconducting materials? Hypothetically, of course, assuming it was technically and economically possible. Maybe a continental grid connecting US-Canada-Mexico. You could co-locate communication data lines, and both would be impervious to EMP and solar flare radiation. The cost would be exceedingly high but the potential benefits might justify the risk.
Man this makes renewable energy way more practical, love this!!
They forgot to mention what happens when they take high voltage DC down to usable energy. There is a big loss there.
And controllable by a One World Government, the WEF, like 1984.
Or maybe instead we just build more smaller nuclear reactors and we dont have to worry about transmission lines as much.
For some reason there is a secret agenda against using it. All the education proves a reactor would be the best choice but no one wants to do it.
its expensive and should only be used as a baseload. Renewables are by far the cheaper and will form the majority of our electricity production
It's possible, smr fit to fulfill energy nearby with cheap cost.
NO
You will still rely on transmission lines.
10:33 The Champlain Hudson Power Express is different from the other exemples in that it starts outside of the US in Canada. Québec currently has power surpluses and has been trying for more than a decade to build new lines to export that electricity. Québec is still building more capacity despite having surpluses. Québec wants to become the battery and power supplier of the entire North East. Québec's power grid is also very interesting in that it has some of the highest voltage AC power lines in North America, with the primary and secondary transmission lines operating at 735Kv and 315Kv AC. Theses high voltage lines were built in order to get power from large dams up north down to the population centers in the south over a distance of almost a thousand kilometers. The modern high voltage AC power lines was in fact invented for the needs of that project.
Bravo! Excellent educational video! From here in the States, thanks for sharing and the very best of luck to all of us!
The thing we really need to do is add the HTSC (high temperature superconducting) component to an HVDC supergrid. The idea being instead of having piles of unsightly overhead HVDC lines crisscrossing everywhere to get this power around, you have more of a coaxial cable 'pipeline' in the ground. Pipelines go all over the place and people don't care because they are buried and out of sight. You build these in redundant loops snaking around the country and even world and armor them to a reasonable degree, then you have a high degree of redundancy while linking into many points of the existing grid as any cut through the armor just means the power may flow the long way around a redundant loop. Superconductors can carry at least 150x the power per unit of conductor than conventional copper conductors. Superconductors emit no heat and thus have no resistive losses. Superconductors act as natural surge suppressors if you push too much current through them. Also you can build conductors carrying hundreds of GWs of power per conductor with the main limit lack of demand to go higher. Coaxial DC power lines have zero external EMF, so nothing for the tin foil hat club to complain about. All you need to do is keep them cold with something like liquid nitrogen, an industrial cryogenic fluid we can mass produce on the cheap. At this a line you can shove say 200 GWs through, well you can afford the heat and electrical insulation to have very little heat loss while also ramping up the voltage to push that 200 GWs through it. You can place these lines under the ocean, no problem. Some country doesn't want to play nice, you just route around it as there is basically no loss for going the long way around.
Excellent analysis of an achievable technology to solve this problem. We need people like you, Jason, in positions of political power and authority.
There is a new room temperature super conductor "under pressure".
no there.s not, that was a false claim, and the pressures were astronomical@@jerryrobinson7856
Very nice, but I have 3 questions:
1- How much does a single project cost: installation, equipment, maintenance,...?
2- Will all consumers connected to the cable pay the same unit price?
3- Doesn't the interconnection of countries pose a challenge to their sovereignty and security?
@@verynice5574 lool.. sorry !
Dependence on fossil fuels for local power plants has proven to be even more of a threat to sovereignty and security, as Europeans are finding out now, thanks to Russia.
@@davestagner Before it was wood and fish oil. After that coal. Now, fossil, geothermal, hydro and nuclear.
Before you change all of this for sun and wind, ask yourself what is the quantity of energy used globally on earth and if this quantity is decreasing or incrising.
I believe in order to reach this ambitious goal of creating a super grid there has to be a global collaboration of all countries to establish an international renewable energy organization separated from any political issues ,its sole purpose is to provide clean energy for everyone in the planet by utilizing each country's energy producing potential and it should be adopted by UN as one of its subsidiaries .
You do t get it. That is highly political. Some countries have natural advantages when it comes to energy
It will happen if the USA becomes a superproducer of clean energy. The US could build a 100X100 mile agrovoltaic permaculture food forest and produce significantly more food and energy than the entire country needs just on that one property. This would require the next gen of robots to have ported Tesla FSD on-board, for autonomous mobility, as well as some additional custom AI software obviously, for intelligent & dexterous harvesting and pruning. The project would have a supercomputer and many grid-scale Tesla batteries adjacent, with a connection to the beginnings of an international-scale ultra high voltage line. But instead we spend trillions on fruitless, horrendous wars.
Thinking like the whole planet as one country for humanity...Grid can be best to start there... Many problems will be solved for sustainability...
i don't think Americans want our electricity being sent to China.
We still have communist regimes and Americans don't want to share our wealth with the rest of the world. a "one world one country" approach will never work.
other countries just don't hold American values.
We have to move firmly into Dwapara Yuga and out of Kali Yuga limitation.
There are a few companies working on plasma boring devices which could eventually allow for affordable underground tunnels to carry HVDC lines, and hopefully avoid the politics of surface land
I had the same idea of underground tunnels but wasn't sure it would be economically feasible due to boring costs. If it was there are three issues related to it, one negative and two positive.
Negative: Insulation. As i understand it above ground transmission lines are bare and insulation is provided by the surrounding air. This doesn't work underground. What is the cost of insulating underground wires and is it prohibitive?
Positive 1: Increasing efficiency by decreasing resistance using low temperature superconducting materials. This obviously can't be done with above ground transmission. Newer materials are being developed which work at low temperatures higher than near 0 degrees K. Is this technically and financially feasible?
Positive 2: Underground power lines are impervious to EMP and solar flare radiation. Communication lines could be co-located in the tunnels. The tunnels would not have the capacity to transport all of the required power and data but would transmit enough for essential amounts until terrestrial power was restored and more communication satellites could be launched.
I envision a continental backbone for US-Canada-Mexico.
nice overview but important information missing. How many long range HVDC lines are currently operating in the world? I remember something like 27 in China and 1 in Brazil bat that might have changed already ....
theres a few in england and was working on the design
If the freight railroads of America were forward thinking, they would make themselves the conduits for the grid. Build a grid AND electrify their lines. The routes exist, the tech exists, the locomotives exist.
@@lepidoptera9337 look up the soo renewable rail line. 350 miles of hvdc under a rail right of way. Already underway. Connecting it to substations along the way is cheaper than finding a grid connection if you want to electrify your rail line. Doing both would lead to massive carbon emissions reduction by killing two birds with one cable, pun intended. Some of us actually educate ourselves. Armchair who?
@@lepidoptera9337 I am talking about a trans national grid, as required, in the US. Railway lines may be among the best choices for routing such a network. It's really very simple.
@@mkkm945
It's really obvious. Apparently.
That means it can't be simple: why hasn't it happened?
No, this is the opposite of the future. The answer is in micro-grids and community power.
Micro grids are extremely inefficient and don't even work for renewables in most places. Massive grids are pretty much the only thing that can make renewables viable on large scale.
@@trendhouse6799 Inefficient how? Shorter transmission = less loss, right?
@@trendhouse6799 Technological constraints holds microgrid developments. Current solution is too expensive
Don't make yourself reliant on dictatorships, hopefully the rest of the world has learned that lesson now...
In the United States, we're probably going to have to pass federal legislation preempting local and state eminent domain laws so that there is a uniform way for the builders and land owners to work out agreements if we want to actually accomplish anything substantial.
That idea will fly like a lead balloon in congress.
@@steven4315 maybe we need to start electing people who want to see the whole nation succeed and not just their district.
The US routes already exist as part of Underground HVDC along the existing Interstate Highway system.
The only way that is going to happen is for a strong authoritarian government to take over and suppress all dissent. Thanks for wishing a dictatorship upon us. I'm sure you'll be happy to have it be a right-wing dictatorship under Trump or one of his kids? Or would you rather a left-wing one under whoever is behind the throne of that side?
Woah... one of these lines goes through my area... I've seen signs about it forever so I thought it was something local and I didn't really think much about it... Looks like there is only a handful in the entire US...
Exactly what I needed. Thank you for the value ❤
The remarkable information you provide to your viewers needs to be applauded. I sincerely appreciate your effort to expand your viewers knowledge. A sincere thank you!
David,
That would be a sensible post if what she is saying were true. It isn't.
She's carelessly retailing currently popular nonsense.
Somebody is promoting the name "Tesla" with tired old lies. I wonder who?
There's so many problems with this. When this grid goes down it could send us to the stone age. Not to mention relying on adversaries for energy/profit. Small separate grids can minimize damage.
NO WAY ! The aggregation of needs and supply leads it's self to massive corruption and extortion as we have seen very markedly here in Australia.
No, we need to work on smaller grids. A larger grid creates more fragility.
Electric or magnetic fields, move at 300,000km per seconds, while the associated electrons move as fast as termite.
What is your point? Electricity is transmitted by the moving electric/magnetic fields not travelling electrons. Consider AC current. If the electrons moved they would go back and forth in the same distance.
@@richardrose2606 I think Mark was merely correcting a mistake in the video that stated we "move" electrons through power lines.
@@reiddickson I'm sure you're right but it was unclear what he was referring to.
Nobody thinks about the grid… yeah neither did these Bloomberg reporters. Have you heard of Energy security? System stability? Protection systems?
RIP elephant, also, Buckminster Fuller was talking about a global HVDC network back in the 70s.
RIP? Nikola Tesla went broke trying to do it....in case you don't know about the Tesla Coil. You meant 1870, right?
7:47 Thank you for your commentary!
Europe will be the first continent connected by an energy supergrid 🥰
But you will still be in Europe with all of those Europeans.
As pointed out in video 11:50, China started their pilot run HVDC supergrid 10 years ago and already stepped into mass-scale projects 5 years ago. It is part of the "comprehensive poverty alleviation" programme.
We already have it! The European Synchronous Power Grid may not be a Super Grid in the definition that it is intelligent, but it already spans from Norway to Algeria and from Portugal to Anatolia.
@@user-xt6pb1mq7s And yet it's still nothing but a concept. Europe on the other hand is already building and extending it as we speak.
@@user-xt6pb1mq7s Europe is ahead of China.. there are many existing projects that connect countries already and many more under construction and under planning
Seriously? No one thought about using railroad right of ways to get power from Wyoming?
They're not wide enough for high transmission lines.
I would think that they could be buried since they can be laid undersea. A trench can be pretty deep so I guess it could accommodate a line similar to the undersea type. Although this might cost more you save time and legal bill.
Amazing stuff, great to see
It's a great effort to provide exact information about powergrid
Europe should come to terms with NW.African countries (Morocco, Mauretania, Senegal) to set up huge wind and solar farms in the desert, and transport the electricity to W.Europe. I return, these countries could use a part of the energy for their own use.
They proposed something similar with concentrating solar power tech, but wind would be an interesting idea
It's been discussed. There's a problem: You'd need new cables across the Med. Big, expensive cables. Lots of them. That's a ton of capital to invest.
It's already planned, at least partly: there are plans for a huge cable / project to the UK.
Stop let Europe make there own!!! Stop begging from Africa! It doesn't need to be Europe's power station! DNA still enough human power out of Africa already stop bumming!!!
Far too resource intensive and chaotic to do the heavy lifting of meeting our energy needs.
All energy sources have trade offs, NP rises to the top when compared to the alternatives. It requires a fraction of the resources to deliver clean reliable power 24/7/365. NP really is the premier example of ‘dematerialization’ in which we actually use less to produce more.
NP is the way to go to provide clean, reliable power with the least harm. the historic evidence all demonstrates that historically, nuclear has been the fastest way to decarbonize, requires the least raw materials and land, and results in fewer deaths per unit of energy produced
The Russia-Europe energy debacle shows that we cannot do an international energy grid, you can’t rely on adversaries for energy. Apart from mangolia with 3 TW, we have balochistan in Pakistan with around 1 TW potential could connect SAARC Countries. Great idea from a regional security standpoint!
A little bit misleading saying the US cannot build transmission lines. The Pacific DC Intertie runs 1600 kilometers From Washington state to Southern California finished in 1971. The line capacity is 3.1 gigawatts, High voltage DC. Enough to power 3 million households. The converters at both ends of the line were built by swiss company ABB.
I feel like the transmission losses are the main thing stopping this, and not politics.
Excluding texas tho
Laos also have a huge Hydro-electric potential. Laos is trying to be the Battery of South East Asia. Singapore recently began importing electricity from Laos.
Renewable or not is utterly irrelevant. Calling something Renewable tells us absolutely nothing useful about energy sources. What's important is clean, reliable, low environmental impact energy. Let's retire the useless term Renewable.
As always great content
Excellent vid!!! Supergrids ARE CLEARLY A MUST if we want to achieve effective distribution of the sustainable energy!!! If succeeded we can start aiming for the global super grid and hopefully most of the world will agree to that!
I love how the presenter acts like property rights in the us are just the worst thing to ever exist
it's the "Amarica bad" narrative
@@timpike1616
Wey-yull, Texas isolating itself in its own grid so its people can freeze in the dark is not the most intelligent way of running things, is it?
'Course Texas isn't all of America. Thank goodness.
(Spoiler alert: the first 386 coin laundries in Japan have dryers made in Texas in them. They do get some stuff right down there.)
"bump up your current to a much higher voltage" current is measured in amps and voltage is what you are transforming up, to Lower the current in the wire because p=U*I the higher the voltage the lower the current for a given wattage. This allows for thinner wires.
Europe is already building super grid system for EU countries.
Doing it global is something that the world isn't ready for now.
But once its fully operational in Europe, then the rest of the world will follow our example.
While I fully support this idea as a form de-carbonizing our energy systems worldwide, I must also pinpoint the risk of relying in just one system for energy.
A very powerful solar flare event can wreak havoc on the grid, can last days, and in worldwide grid there is potential to create civilizational catastrophe. Solar flare of Carrington Event type level.
Such event could also disrupt all forms of communication.
If a solar flare hits Earth then all communication would already be cut. I personally don't believe it will be civilization ending. And a solar flare today would already take out most of earth's electrical infrastructure. So, either way, the problem isn't the power grid. But the fact that a solar flare hit earth.
Having multiple grids wont solve the problem if its Carrington size or larger either.
Not as bad as you'd think. Power grids have automatic disconnects. A Carrington-scale flare would trip them all, directly or via cascade - but it wouldn't actually damage much. Power would be restored within days in the major cities. Lower-priority rural areas might wait weeks. In the meantime some of the most critical areas, like hospitals, would switch to their diesel backups. So it's bad, it would cause billions of dollars of economic damage, but it isn't a civilisation-collapsing disaster.
Wrong! The future of energy is decentralization that doesn't need high capacity transmission grid.
Need both
The basic issues with decentralized power sources are stability and waste.
I don't imagine other countries linking together for this. Also poses the danger of countries just straight up cutting power to each other because of compliance issues. Which I think can cause a lot of problems especially for a more dependant country. But I don't see why this can't be slowly integrated in America. Can be incentivized and make a lot of money for businesses operating the grids.
I guess you guys are not considering the fact that we are back in the cold war days and something like this would only work 20-30 years ago.
Equipping this item debuffs Sovereignty attribute -100
Xlinks is a startup which is trying to build an HVDC between Morocco and Great Britain which can supply as much as 8% of electricity of the latter.
Great Info Bloomberg
Awesome. Never knew anything about this!
On a complete side note, I have seen this same Indian reporter in multiple videos, like the nuclear fusion one, and he seems to know exactly what he is talking about. This almost give me the impression that this guy knows almost everything on earth!
JC,
Wrong. This is typical TH-cam work, weaving in and out of touch with reality and heavy on popular myths.
In India Prime minister Modi Has launched One Sun One Grid.
The goal is same...to connect the world Some where is Sunlight somewhere not...the idea is to sent that light or electricity Made to the part where there is no sun.
LOL, and has been buying stockpiles of Russian oil since the start of the war in Ukraine. INDIA has been BOYCOTT by much of the USA because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.
If Russia were a cockroach, India would be the parasite that lives on it.
Quebec Hydro used HVDC technology since before 1990. Quebec Canada's population has some of the lowest electricity costs in the world. Quebec Hydro uses a 1480KM HVDC line to transmit up to 2000MW of power to Montreal and New England. Canada!
Governments around the world: "Let's build out HVDC power lines for green energy! We'll do minimal interruptions to property and compensate any lost land if any 😊"
The states: "Buh the glowies on my darn tootin ranch! 😡😡"
Or we just start building nuclear power plants where the power is needed?
That’s part of the solution, but not all.
The problem with Nuclear is that we are committing our descendants to having to pay to manage nuclear waste for hundreds of years if not thousands. simply to meet short term energy needs today.
@@JeanPierreWhite It's a tiny amount of waste for a huge amount of energy. No energy source comes without a cost.
sounds like a new weapon strategy. whoever controls the switch of the grid, controls the world.
There is no "switch". The more decentralized the more secure, just like the Internet. And "decentralized" is not the opposite of a Super Grid - it is the definition of a Super Grid!
I hope you are right, and I do hope this "super grid" is as super as it sounds.
@@hape3862 At the end of the day, there are only so many countries in the world. And from them, a handfull will be massive consumers/producers.
Its just impossible for this to be truly "decentralized". Also the scales are massive. If a superpower decides to cut a country off (and probably force its allies to do so as well). That gap wont be filled by anyone really. That massive infrastructure wont pop up in a day in other countries to meet the sudden demand.
Unless the whole thing is super overbuild and there are massive amounts of redundant lines and generating plants even in smaller nations. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of this.
@@Mr30friends The European Synchronous Power Grid emerged just by connecting the existing national power grids. There were and are some interconnection lines to build and in order to make it a true Super Grid it has to become "intelligent", but that's in progress already. In order to get a worldwide Super Grid, we just had to connect more and more national grids to the existing one. North Africa is already part of the European grid. Great Britain has its connector to France since May (2022). So nothing stands in the way of connecting the rest of Asia and Africa. Although it is a huge network it is decentralized, mind you. The interconnectors between countries have to have a capacity of 15% of the national power production/consumption according to new regulations by the EU. This guarantees that there is 30% of wiggle room for over/underproduction in every country and for enough power to spread though the whole grid without bottle necks. That's it. It isn't rocket science. National grids once emerged in the very same way.
Edit: The problems you describe are the old problems with centralized grids, where a few massive producers (nuclear, coal etc.) had to supply millions of consumers in one national grid. But the worldwide or for that matter the European grid don't work that way anymore. Hundreds of thousands (if not Millions) of relatively small producers supply Billions of consumers. Your scenario with massive producers in deserts and dependent consumers elsewhere is old centralized thinking - the goal is to have solar panels on every roof top and relatively small power plants (hydropower, on and offshore wind parks, geothermal, waste incineration plants etc.) evenly distributed as well, whose power don't have to travel far through the high voltage grid but is consumed mostly regionally within the middle voltage grids.
@@hape3862 It does make sense in europe and thats why its already happening. But other regions are more volatile.
Funiest thing is that the examples used for linked grids are links 2 countries (UK and France).
What about the fact that most Southern African countries grids are connected...
With 1% of the annual world consumption for supergrid electricity exchange loss, the supergrid would be a formidable open air room heater with 248 terawatt/hour heat dissipation. You won't need a supergrid after the coming war with artificial winter. But men able to build and feed.
Decentralized power is where we need to head. More efficient solar, wind and batteries for individual homes. Or modular nuclear in every city.
imo we really need both - centralized as well as decentralized.
- faster to implement
- you can use advantages from both sides
- HVDC can save batteries by equalizing demand & generations (can have the potential to be cheaper than batteries)
- decentralized forms can relieve the grids, but for northern countries, you are still dependent on the grid in winter times. An option could however maybe be to use synthetic fuels to power your home then.
- centralized and decentralized batteries are needed nonetheless
- some energy forms like wind turbines is scaling in central generation (wind is faster+steadier if you go higher or off-shore), also biogas makes more sense in a bigger model (tho a personal use might sometimes be possible)
Regarding last point - no. Nuclear energy must be kept centralized, otherwise it's simply too dangerous.
I don’t fully understand but wouldn’t a super grid also present super vulnerability too like everyone cut off from power would be devastating
Yes, and that's one reason why it will not happen in that way. But building it in piecemeal type is already happening
Yes, this idea is a top down thought process. Politics is it's weakness.
If only there was a renewable form of energy that you could put in the exact same place as existing coal burning power plants, allowing you to utilize most of the existing infrastructure and avoid this problem altogether. *cough cough* nuclear energy.
شكرا بزفاف على هده المعلومات القيمة قناة رائعة تستحق المشاهدة بالتوفيق
What the world _really_ needs is DE-centralized power. Solar on our roof that is NOT grid tied. Do you know how much power is lost in transmission?! Keeping power centralized is only a power-grab. (see what I did there?)
I agree that we need to move towards decentralization. However solar on our roofs does need to have grid fallback. The grid is well maintained especially after a natural disaster. Finding someone to fix your solar after a natural disaster will take a long time and cost way more than it should. If utilities were smart they would sell solar users a maintenance plan.
Just imagine powering your home electronics without any of them needing a power brick.
Just imagining kneading bread by hand.
Imagining cranking a hand crank
Imagine eating a banana with the peel still on.
Can anyone explain why this farmer in the US was required to sell his land to the energy company and why he couldn’t continue to farm the land normally, after work was finished? How does this work if the route goes right through the middle of your property, does your farm ends up divided into two?
I recently went through a similar experience with a landowner in Ireland. A Wind Turbine company needed to build a track though his land to build and maintain a group of wind turbines (not on his land). Though both he and I welcomed the new Wind Turbines in the area, we were somewhat dismayed at the process. The initial contract was far too general and broad and didn’t address the typical worries of any landowner, controlled access to the land, damage to property or livestock, felling/replanting of trees, etc. and the initial track that was proposed would have devalued the property. They were essentially agreeable to all our changes and suggestions, but it did require a lot of “to-ing and fro-ing” between solicitors before the contract could be finalised (which the Wind Turbine company had to pay for) and a loss of time and money for both parties. I felt in the end that if the government really wanted to speed up the energy transition, they should put forward basic regulation addressing these contracts, to ensure that landowners rights could not be unreasonably infringed upon and allow for less involvement of solicitors and avoid every farmer having to negotiate individually the same things over and over again with each of their solicitors. As did the neighbours of this landowner. I disagree with NIMBYism, but we need to realise and address the issues for NIMBYism and after that experience I can understand landowners fears of dealing with large energy companies/their solicitors and feeling hoodwinked into doing something which may devalue their property or endanger their livelihoods. And from this video it doesn’t feel that the US government is doing a better job. Why can’t they energy companies pay rental to farmers when the line is up making it a win/win situation, rather than forcing landowners to sell parts of their property, after all they will be making massive profits moving around huge amounts of energy between states? And is there some reason why you can’t continue to farm around HVDC power lines? Is there a danger to crops or animals? They are so high in the air, they are hardly going to knock them down with farm machinery, what is the reasoning behind this?
The US can't even get Texas to interconnect!
The international cooperation required for such grids will only be possible when the USA military industrial complex, which needs war to survive, is disarmed.
Who is attacking ukraine again?
India is the only country who's taking it seriously even soudi Arab agreed
India, ? ? What r u talking about ? Go back to working at Walmart, Canada ...
@@slydawwg india is no longer poor people's country it's 4th largest economy.
I'm MBA working at well known company.
So wake up your racist a*s from 1800s mindset. And do some search.
200-300 billion is nothing for india
There are only India-internal HVDCs, no India HVDC goes to another country. So India is very un-seriously from that perspective...
Europe super grid is already well under construction. The UK plans on 26GW to the neighbours by the end of the decade and is already over halfway there.
@@Theactualstoic The topic is "HVDC" and there are no Indian HVDC connections to other countries.
Reading my statement helps to avoid asking questions like that.
Anyone know what’s the soundtrack used at the start of the film? 🙏
The handmade illustrations and charts are so cool
Noooo, interconnected distributed grids! Don't just think of renewable energy as just solar & wind - lots of other options & many being developed. Also, looking to china for solutions is problatic as it's a violently repressive gov rife with corruption with an imploding economy - they don't have all the answers.
Energy needs to be generated nearer to consumers. Interconnected distributed grids supported by energy storage facilitates this - lots of options. Community energy democratises the grid allowing many energy producers - think schools, libraries & welfare organisations earning extra income to support community projects not businessmen's private pockets. Micro & mini grids have already been implemented all over the world.
Stupidity: doing the same thing over & over again and expecting different results. Energy is a survival imperative and should not be a for-profit private business venture. Energy poverty occurs in all countries, even rich ones.
"Energy needs to be generated nearer to consumers. Interconnected distributed grids supported by energy storage" - totally agree
Russia shouldn't be in the grid. Trust me on this.
0:05 Grid
0:23 Birds
0:55 Supergrid
The companies in Europe and Asia are mostly sending their cables underwater, while the US is sending it over land, so there will be more issues with property owners.
This story does not dare show China's success with supergrid, barely talked about it. China has built many HVDC lines, the only country in the world that has built any. But this story doesn't dare show any.
Still a bias clouding our global vision, exacerbated by the man who hasn't got the guts to admit he isn't president anymore.
Can we stop messing around with wind, solar and other BS and just start building nuclear already...
Hope you realize building a nuclear power plant takes a decade. Usually more. We don't have that much time on our hands.
Make your own dang electricity. It's not rocket science.
So much forward thinking to push our world into a place of envolvement ... I don't understand why corporations don't learn from the past about respect. These farmers land is sacred what is the rule on the height of someone's land .. ? Is there such a law...
The cost and geopolitical risk obviously means this is never going to happen. Idk why Bloomberg makes videos on this pie in the sky nonsense.
Power lines are expose to storms and we really need a new way to,think about electrifying an area. Ottawa has gotten hit by 2 major tornados in 7 years causing major blackouts for a lengthy period of time. Build neighbourhoods creating and using their own energy. Small nuclear stations come to mind🇨🇦
Indeed!
Is this the company working with Suncable in Australia to build the Australia to Singapore underwater hvdc solar cables?
Yes, the global fascists, your gods in Davos certainly have grandiose plans for controlling humanity. They're also quite talented at selling those ideas as only positive in there outcomes. It's almost as if they have no understanding of fundamental laws of the universe like cause and effect.
Smoothbrained comment
Lay off the koolaid.
I like how you fascists think that calling everyone else fascists is going to somehow confuse people...
@@joshuaphillips755 that's what a fascist would say
Pat is right & those of you trying to dunk on him here are going to learn the hard way that he's right
I get reminded of the grid once a month, 12 months a year, and forever 😂
Bloomberg: Global Supergrids Could Be...
Russia: YES
Finally, wise words.
Volcanic geothermal energy generation can benefit greatly from this