The green chicken flies in the face of eco- boosterism once again. Someone above said they doubted the price of your subscription as investable knowledge . I don’t invest in markets but in my own insight. This piece and your others enriched by BTL from doers who know stuff rather than dreamers like Ambrose Evans-Prichard is well worth a few quid. For readers outside the U.K. AEP as we call him ( you have to parse his double baroque name), is well known for sucking in giant drafts of green hot air. He is clever enough to do what activist science and business journos do promote them via seemingly cogent analysis. That is until it meets logic and real industry expertise. This usually shreds his flights of fancy like a wind turbine does a sea eagle.
Hi Doomberg. Today a similar project in Australia called Sun Cable just went into administration. The absurdity of the is one is similar to the Morocco cable. On Sun Cables website they advertise 36-42GWh of battery storage. Singapore could get the same energy from 2 x 500MW nuclear reactors at a fraction of the cost. Another example of climate religion meets physics
For storage applications, one would probably want to use LiFePO4 batteries and not NMC. So no Cobalt or Nickel. Still need Lithium, however - that's still a valid concern. Advantages are that they are cheaper. Disadvantage is that it isn't quite as energy dense as NMC, but for stationary storage, you don't care.
This is the kind of project where liquid-metal batteries, if they were mature enough, may be helpful. I don't know if you've looked at prof Donald Sadoway's stuff, but it seemed promising.
So how many nuclear plants can one build for that money? Honestly and realistically if one includes the cost of deep underground storage facilities for waste somewhere near the plants themselves as part of the up front construction cost? If the answer is "only two" then it's not a dumb idea. Eventually cables and batteries will be made but the sun and the wind still won't cost as much as uranium.
What's old is new again. Vaclav Smil talked about this Moroccan Solar plant idea back in 2011(it's on YouTube) and mocked it to the point where a terrorist has to snip just one HV line and the whole EU is in darkness.
no one has mention the life of thesolar panels. my experience in colorado is they all get sandblasted and need to be replaced periodiacally. Just like the windmill towers cannot be
refurbished. another material avvailability issue.
Great article! The most promising green energy technology from my amateur understanding appears to be hydrogen. Would be great to get chicken little's thoughts written up on this energy source for transportation.
Nice article as always, Mr. Doomberg. I think you forgot to mention the maintenance cost of solar PV panels and the capacity reduction of Lithium-Ion batteries! In South Korea, many solar PV panels are literally bombarded by the bird droppings on daily basis. Who will clean the panels and repair the broken panels regularly? It will cost a lot to hire those maintain workers. Also, Lithium-Ion batteries have limited cycle durability, which reduces the energy capacity of batteries greatly over long time. Anyway, that kind of grand designs are very rarely implemented on the real world, so we better not worry too much about those projects!
Very happy to see intelligent people at Doomberg critiquing complex energy strategies very thoughtfully; however, Doomberg writes in this article "The Xlinks project is a pretty good concept..." I suppose it's pretty good if we presume large scale solar projects are a necessary component of future world energy, but there is no reason to believe this. Throwing so much attention towards solar energy development only gives credence to these efforts.
Solar and wind energy projects should all show superior economics, without subsidies, to existing power facilities, including nuclear, before ramroding mega-projects through justified mostly with warm feelings of saving the planet. One caveat: Power plants producing actual pollution (not CO2) should have appropriate discounts in their economics.
The biggest energy problem of the world today is conceptual. The belief that reducing CO2 emissions and nuclear power production is of paramount importance is crippling the world's energy balances and million's of lives are in the balance short term.
We need to inform the masses about what the actual world effects are of reducing CO2 emissions and compare any of the net negatives (if there are any) with the trade off of having far more resources to promote human flourishing long term.
The green chicken flies in the face of eco- boosterism once again. Someone above said they doubted the price of your subscription as investable knowledge . I don’t invest in markets but in my own insight. This piece and your others enriched by BTL from doers who know stuff rather than dreamers like Ambrose Evans-Prichard is well worth a few quid. For readers outside the U.K. AEP as we call him ( you have to parse his double baroque name), is well known for sucking in giant drafts of green hot air. He is clever enough to do what activist science and business journos do promote them via seemingly cogent analysis. That is until it meets logic and real industry expertise. This usually shreds his flights of fancy like a wind turbine does a sea eagle.
I Would wonder if this couldn't be applied to the Caribbean and the US.
Most of the island nations in the Caribbean rely on burning fuel oil which is extremely expensive in dollars per mmbtu terms.
for reference the distance between Maimi who pays 10.4 cent per kilowatt hour
and the Bahamas that pays 32 cent per kilowatt hour is something like 150 miles.
that's a third the distance of the Uk Norway connection referenced here.
and nowhere near the depth as Noraway has that deep trench between them and the UK.
Hi Doomberg. Today a similar project in Australia called Sun Cable just went into administration. The absurdity of the is one is similar to the Morocco cable. On Sun Cables website they advertise 36-42GWh of battery storage. Singapore could get the same energy from 2 x 500MW nuclear reactors at a fraction of the cost. Another example of climate religion meets physics
For storage applications, one would probably want to use LiFePO4 batteries and not NMC. So no Cobalt or Nickel. Still need Lithium, however - that's still a valid concern. Advantages are that they are cheaper. Disadvantage is that it isn't quite as energy dense as NMC, but for stationary storage, you don't care.
The madness of fools going to such crazy lengths ( literally !!! ) when the UK is sitting on wonderful reserves of Shale Gas.
Nothing cute or comical to say here.. But, I applaud the effort to a sustainable future, non the less..
This is the kind of project where liquid-metal batteries, if they were mature enough, may be helpful. I don't know if you've looked at prof Donald Sadoway's stuff, but it seemed promising.
So how many nuclear plants can one build for that money? Honestly and realistically if one includes the cost of deep underground storage facilities for waste somewhere near the plants themselves as part of the up front construction cost? If the answer is "only two" then it's not a dumb idea. Eventually cables and batteries will be made but the sun and the wind still won't cost as much as uranium.
What's old is new again. Vaclav Smil talked about this Moroccan Solar plant idea back in 2011(it's on YouTube) and mocked it to the point where a terrorist has to snip just one HV line and the whole EU is in darkness.
its hvdc not hdvc
no one has mention the life of thesolar panels. my experience in colorado is they all get sandblasted and need to be replaced periodiacally. Just like the windmill towers cannot be
refurbished. another material avvailability issue.
nulcear is the only option. The faster we stop pretending that wind and solar are an option the better for humanity.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ramez-naam-futurist-author
Great article! The most promising green energy technology from my amateur understanding appears to be hydrogen. Would be great to get chicken little's thoughts written up on this energy source for transportation.
Nice article as always, Mr. Doomberg. I think you forgot to mention the maintenance cost of solar PV panels and the capacity reduction of Lithium-Ion batteries! In South Korea, many solar PV panels are literally bombarded by the bird droppings on daily basis. Who will clean the panels and repair the broken panels regularly? It will cost a lot to hire those maintain workers. Also, Lithium-Ion batteries have limited cycle durability, which reduces the energy capacity of batteries greatly over long time. Anyway, that kind of grand designs are very rarely implemented on the real world, so we better not worry too much about those projects!
Very happy to see intelligent people at Doomberg critiquing complex energy strategies very thoughtfully; however, Doomberg writes in this article "The Xlinks project is a pretty good concept..." I suppose it's pretty good if we presume large scale solar projects are a necessary component of future world energy, but there is no reason to believe this. Throwing so much attention towards solar energy development only gives credence to these efforts.
Solar and wind energy projects should all show superior economics, without subsidies, to existing power facilities, including nuclear, before ramroding mega-projects through justified mostly with warm feelings of saving the planet. One caveat: Power plants producing actual pollution (not CO2) should have appropriate discounts in their economics.
The biggest energy problem of the world today is conceptual. The belief that reducing CO2 emissions and nuclear power production is of paramount importance is crippling the world's energy balances and million's of lives are in the balance short term.
We need to inform the masses about what the actual world effects are of reducing CO2 emissions and compare any of the net negatives (if there are any) with the trade off of having far more resources to promote human flourishing long term.