> Alongside the consistent output from its solar panels and wind turbines, an onsite 20GWh/5GW battery facility provide sufficient storage to reliably deliver each and every day
Four hour battery storage for renewables. The way of the future.
> This “first of a kind” project will generate 10.5GW of zero carbon electricity from the sun and wind to deliver 3.6GW of reliable energy for an average of 20+ hours a day.
The classic error, mixing up units: "3.6GW of reliable energy". The writer certainly means power here. [1] I work in energy, and have had teams like legal (and tools like Grammarly) think we're just mixing up words for fun. Regardless, definitely seems like a very sufficient install to supply real power and charge the battery for load shifting at utility scale.
"The Xlinks project is a pretty good concept, and yet…it needs access to materials already claimed by many others at prices increasing by the day, it needs to build an entire HVDC industry in Britain from the ground up, and it needs money, lots of it."
> it needs to build an entire HVDC industry in Britain from the ground up
Britain already has several HVDC undersea interconnectors with Europe. These are maintained and there is design and construction capability. If not in Britain, then nearby.
For the battery storage, perhaps they will ultimately choose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery. The cable manufacture seems like more a 'when' rather than an 'if' problem. The scheduled first phase of construction is 2025-2027, which we can reasonably expect to be delayed by 2-3 years if they are trying to build new manufacturing capability. Overall this still looks to be in the realms of possible/viable IMO.
This sounds like brexiteer project. Doubt this will actually happen. 3800 km of undersea HVDC cable just to circumvent the EU. 3800 km is the distance from St.Petersburg to Marocco.
Given that the UK has left the EU, couldn't you call every trade deal or cultural exchange with a non-EU country a Brexit project?
Even if it is, what is wrong with that? The people of Britain voted for Brexit and now need their elected officials to deliver, which motivates projects like these
Edit: to clarify, i live in London and i didn't vote for Brexit. Regardless of the outcome, I consider it a national security issue and a productivity boost to have cheap energy collected from a diverse set of sources from solar plants abroad to domestic nuclear energy plants and off-shore wind turbines.
If you live in Britain, would you really prefer Britain stop investing in projects like these, just because there was an election result you disagreed with?
Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The reason to go direct to Morocco are that transmission through regular AC grids would lose virtually all the power before it gets anywhere near the UK. 10GW is a hell of a load and you can't just pretend a grid is a bathtub at these scales.
But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakthrough tomorrow the political reasons to go direct would still be there. The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons. The UK doesn't want to be back in that situation. The EU would absolutely make energy transit dependent on all manner of entirely irrelevant topics - fish is the current one but there would be others - and thus making electricity supplies dependent on the EU would end up being equivalent to being sucked back in, not as a member state but as a vassal state.
I mean it probably would've been very hard to route it through Europe too. Morocco already has powerlines with Spain, but I'm not sure if it would make sense to transport that much energy through the existing grid? Especially since very high voltage powerlines are inherently more efficient, so a direct link might make sense. I'm not familiar with how the EU grid is laid out though, and the little knowledge I have is pretty specific the Québec Grid.
So if it goes ahead it will generate 10.5GW, but deliver 3.6GW for "20+ hours a day". I guess the 10.5GW figure is peak generation during the day with lots of wind + sun, then by using batteries it will be able to consistently deliver approx 1/3 of that, or 8% of current UK demand (from the article). Makes sense, but the headline used by the submission is a bit misleading.
At the same time, the electrification of heating + transport is predicted to approximately double UK electricity demand by 2050. So even if this goes ahead and works as intended, it will end up providing something like 4% of the UK's needs.
A whole bunch of comments here comparing this idea negatively to wind, nuclear or tankers filled with hydrogen (?!). Even if it goes ahead, there need to be like a dozen other new projects of similar scale just to meet demand on these small islands. If you also want to provide carbon free electricity to the other 10 billion people likely to be living on this planet by that 2050, then you need to multiply that dozen projects by a factor of at least 100.
I find liquefied Hydrogen to make more sense. In case of conflict (like now), undersea cables can be sabotaged with plausible deniability. The Royal Navy can protect a tanker en route from Morocco to UK, or a convoy of such tankers, there were two times in the not so distant history when it had to do just that. But how do you protect a continuous line of a few thousand km?
Separately, if at some random point in the future the relations between the UK and Morocco go south, it’s much easier to change suppliers if you use tankers. The EU is investing massively in Hydrogen, so the Worldwide Hydrogen market will be quite mature in 10 to 20 years.
Even from Morocco’s point of view, the same calculus applies. If the UK sanctions Morocco, and refuses to take delivery of electricity, how do you find an alternate buyer if the transmission line is in place? With Hydrogen tankers, you simply start selling to China or someone else, or you put the Hydrogen in some medium-long term storage. This gives you more leeway to negotiate whatever diplomatic situation you found yourself in.
Rather, the thing that makes the most sense is for countries to rely exclusively on local power generation, and completely eliminate their reliance on other countries for energy. There is no infrastructure more fundamental than energy, because energy underlies all other infrastructure. Swapping out oil or coal or gas for liquefied hydrogen (or enormous intercontinental power lines) just trades one poor situation for another. Don't rely on any energy that you couldn't immediately switch over to providing yourself, even if it means paying an eye-watering premium.
> But how do you protect a continuous line of a few thousand km?
Cameras/sensors, and fast response time. You could put a sensor package every couple km. Given the amount of power this installation delivers, it wouldn't exactly break the bank.
This is really interesting in the context of what is happening locally to my home, we are about two miles from what is planned to be the UK largest domestic solar farm [0,1]. It will output 350MW, so the one proposed in Morocco will be about 28 times the size.
There has been a significant push back against the project locally and so I suspect it won’t be built to the scale proposed. The main criticism is that the land is particularly fertile.
Yes, I don't see the logic of using fertile agricultural land for solar PV. It seems like short term thinking and a planning failure. I've heard at lest one similar story regarding reforesting, i.e., a scheme that was planning to use fertile land in Wales that was ultimately canned due to local objections/resistance.
Morocco is pretty stable. There are no sectarian tensions, tribalism is basically non existent, and even the western sahara situation is stabilized with the US recently recognizing Morocco's claim to the region. Keep in mind that the moroccan state has existed in some form or another for around 1300 years. so the country is much more cohesive, and the central power more powerful than other "newer" post colonial countries.
It's very very far from being a perfect or even good country (for most of us moroccans), but it has an almost bulletproof record w.r.t foreign investment. The usually very slow "makhzen" (state bureaucracy) can suddenly become super super efficient to attract foreign capital. Tanger-MED and the huge automobile industry around it is a very good example of that.
It has the whiff a brexit about it. The current government is allergic to most forms of UK/EU cooperation. They don't want to give the EU extra leverage in the future, so its a means of diversification esp in the context of a lack of political will (strong NIMBY sentiment) to seriously invest in on-shore wind power in the UK. We already have 3-4 interconnects with EU countries if I recall: France, Ireland, Netherlands, ??? (a fourth?).
EDIT: Belgium and Norway is the fourth and fifth respectively, and apparently Denmark is planned.
UK is currently generating 30GW from all sources[1], so 10GW is a third of the national power requirement. Germany has just had a hard lesson in having significant energy dependency on Russia. Morocco is UK's 61st largest trading partner[2].
Morocco isn't Russia, but handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country in a less stable world region with limited history of partnership (European colonisation until the 1950s) seems daft. I mean, compared to building nuclear power inside UK territory and wind farms off shore of the UK. For national security reasons if not environmental ones.
> handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country
As horrible as it sounds, Morocco isn't a nuclear power and would be crushed in an afternoon by UK armed forces while western media across the planet creates a hundred different justifications and the world's diplomats send their congratulations for neutralising the energy terrorists because they couldn't care less what happens to them.
This is a completely different situation wrt to Germany <-> Russia
> Morocco isn't Russia, but handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country… seems daft.
Perhaps, but making yourself a vital part of keeping the lights on for a country with a brutal colonial history within living memory, a much more capable military, and a military base 36 miles from Tangier… seems even more daft.
I assume control, with the investment coming from the UK they want to have control of it. If it has to go via the EU they would loose that control and could potentially lose access.
I wonder what it would take to cut say a year off the time line; I realize 5 years isn't huge for a big project, but being pretty desperate for energy I wonder what it would take.
Oh, nice, so in case of wars a cheap submarine can just put a small and cheap charge deep in the sea and boom, 10GWp power are out of the UK national grid. How nice.
My fellow humans remember a thing: a national grid is not national because of politics but because a such critical part of a country infra it's better to be self-sufficient under nation borders and hopefully self-sufficient inside those borders even in case of major attacks (translated, not few big power plants, but many small and a distribution network designed to survive significant damages).
We, westerners have had the best industry and technology in the world, now for some neoliberals economic devastating ideas we pull it apart outsourcing anything because that's pay back, in thin air, well, and now we see a new world power, China, arise and we see our power wane. How much damage we want to take before annihilating with lifelong court rulings against those economy-driven society? We really want to wait till being completely lost?
This goes for all infrastructure. Destroying it is much easier than making it. But that 'cheap' submarine won't be as cheap as you think it is and it still has to do it undetected and it has to achieve some kind of objective. It also immediately gets two countries pissed off at you, one of which is in NATO and may well see an attack on its infrastructure as an overt act of war.
So you better think this over long and hard before sending your cheap submarine down there.
Personally I'd be much more concerned about the kind of damage marine life, fishing and cargo ships would do to that cable and how to armor against that. Probably by the time you've taken all that into account you have also defended against that sub. And finally, the same thing of course goes for all of those other undersea cables, communications ones for instance.
High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is much more efficient at transmission over long distances than AC. It can throw off your intuition on these things.
In China, there is a 3300 km line like this moving 12GW of power. This is a little bit longer, but not by much.
If you do not really know the loss why does it "sound inefficient"? I am pretty sure they've done all the due diligence and if the project is a go then the losses are acceptable.
I am more interested (again if the project is a go) what happens if / when some "friendly" people will mess with the cable.
cptcobalt|3 years ago
> Alongside the consistent output from its solar panels and wind turbines, an onsite 20GWh/5GW battery facility provide sufficient storage to reliably deliver each and every day
Four hour battery storage for renewables. The way of the future.
> This “first of a kind” project will generate 10.5GW of zero carbon electricity from the sun and wind to deliver 3.6GW of reliable energy for an average of 20+ hours a day.
The classic error, mixing up units: "3.6GW of reliable energy". The writer certainly means power here. [1] I work in energy, and have had teams like legal (and tools like Grammarly) think we're just mixing up words for fun. Regardless, definitely seems like a very sufficient install to supply real power and charge the battery for load shifting at utility scale.
[1]: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_vs_power
throwaway894345|3 years ago
sofixa|3 years ago
Only the beginning of the way i hope. 4 hours isn't even close to being enough for "reliable" electricity generation.
LightG|3 years ago
baybal2|3 years ago
[deleted]
qwedf|3 years ago
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/20000-volts-under-the-sea
"The Xlinks project is a pretty good concept, and yet…it needs access to materials already claimed by many others at prices increasing by the day, it needs to build an entire HVDC industry in Britain from the ground up, and it needs money, lots of it."
tuatoru|3 years ago
Britain already has several HVDC undersea interconnectors with Europe. These are maintained and there is design and construction capability. If not in Britain, then nearby.
1. https://www.northsealink.com/
2. https://www.ifa1interconnector.com/
3. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy... (Scroll down for electricity.)
redcalx|3 years ago
rcMgD2BwE72F|3 years ago
_fizz_buzz_|3 years ago
petr_tik|3 years ago
Given that the UK has left the EU, couldn't you call every trade deal or cultural exchange with a non-EU country a Brexit project?
Even if it is, what is wrong with that? The people of Britain voted for Brexit and now need their elected officials to deliver, which motivates projects like these
Edit: to clarify, i live in London and i didn't vote for Brexit. Regardless of the outcome, I consider it a national security issue and a productivity boost to have cheap energy collected from a diverse set of sources from solar plants abroad to domestic nuclear energy plants and off-shore wind turbines.
If you live in Britain, would you really prefer Britain stop investing in projects like these, just because there was an election result you disagreed with?
mike_hearn|3 years ago
But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakthrough tomorrow the political reasons to go direct would still be there. The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons. The UK doesn't want to be back in that situation. The EU would absolutely make energy transit dependent on all manner of entirely irrelevant topics - fish is the current one but there would be others - and thus making electricity supplies dependent on the EU would end up being equivalent to being sucked back in, not as a member state but as a vassal state.
mardifoufs|3 years ago
giorgioz|3 years ago
Also it would seem the south of France or Portugal would be much closer for the solar part.
dankboys|3 years ago
redeyedtreefrog|3 years ago
At the same time, the electrification of heating + transport is predicted to approximately double UK electricity demand by 2050. So even if this goes ahead and works as intended, it will end up providing something like 4% of the UK's needs.
A whole bunch of comments here comparing this idea negatively to wind, nuclear or tankers filled with hydrogen (?!). Even if it goes ahead, there need to be like a dozen other new projects of similar scale just to meet demand on these small islands. If you also want to provide carbon free electricity to the other 10 billion people likely to be living on this planet by that 2050, then you need to multiply that dozen projects by a factor of at least 100.
credit_guy|3 years ago
Separately, if at some random point in the future the relations between the UK and Morocco go south, it’s much easier to change suppliers if you use tankers. The EU is investing massively in Hydrogen, so the Worldwide Hydrogen market will be quite mature in 10 to 20 years.
Even from Morocco’s point of view, the same calculus applies. If the UK sanctions Morocco, and refuses to take delivery of electricity, how do you find an alternate buyer if the transmission line is in place? With Hydrogen tankers, you simply start selling to China or someone else, or you put the Hydrogen in some medium-long term storage. This gives you more leeway to negotiate whatever diplomatic situation you found yourself in.
kibwen|3 years ago
kaibee|3 years ago
Cameras/sensors, and fast response time. You could put a sensor package every couple km. Given the amount of power this installation delivers, it wouldn't exactly break the bank.
samwillis|3 years ago
There has been a significant push back against the project locally and so I suspect it won’t be built to the scale proposed. The main criticism is that the land is particularly fertile.
0: https://www.mallardpasssolar.co.uk/
1: https://www.stamfordmercury.co.uk/news/amp/clock-is-ticking-...
redcalx|3 years ago
35mm|3 years ago
mardifoufs|3 years ago
It's very very far from being a perfect or even good country (for most of us moroccans), but it has an almost bulletproof record w.r.t foreign investment. The usually very slow "makhzen" (state bureaucracy) can suddenly become super super efficient to attract foreign capital. Tanger-MED and the huge automobile industry around it is a very good example of that.
a_humean|3 years ago
EDIT: Belgium and Norway is the fourth and fifth respectively, and apparently Denmark is planned.
blibble|3 years ago
the government agrees: https://news.sky.com/story/jersey-fishing-dispute-frances-si...
(and has denied construction of new interconnectors to France since)
Spain would definitely use an interconnector as leverage re: Gibraltar
zikero|3 years ago
tobylane|3 years ago
A few percent more sun, cheaper builders, I can understand this choice.
giorgioz|3 years ago
jodrellblank|3 years ago
Morocco isn't Russia, but handing your life support to a distant and culturally different country in a less stable world region with limited history of partnership (European colonisation until the 1950s) seems daft. I mean, compared to building nuclear power inside UK territory and wind farms off shore of the UK. For national security reasons if not environmental ones.
[1] https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live
[2] https://abmec.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2021-02-Moro...
Grimburger|3 years ago
As horrible as it sounds, Morocco isn't a nuclear power and would be crushed in an afternoon by UK armed forces while western media across the planet creates a hundred different justifications and the world's diplomats send their congratulations for neutralising the energy terrorists because they couldn't care less what happens to them.
This is a completely different situation wrt to Germany <-> Russia
gnfargbl|3 years ago
> deliver 3.6GW of reliable energy
and
> be capable of supplying 8 percent of Great Britain’s electricity needs
...from which I assume they're projecting a total energy consumption of about 3.6/0.08 = 45GW in 2030.
nyokodo|3 years ago
Perhaps, but making yourself a vital part of keeping the lights on for a country with a brutal colonial history within living memory, a much more capable military, and a military base 36 miles from Tangier… seems even more daft.
wewxjfq|3 years ago
The UK can't quit Russian oil, coal, and gas any faster than Germany - that should teach you a lesson.
BurningFrog|3 years ago
I'm intrigued by how 1,500km² of partial shade will transform the Sahara ecosystem.
I hope it will make more life possible in the shade.
7952|3 years ago
missedthecue|3 years ago
gnfargbl|3 years ago
Y-bar|3 years ago
_dain_|3 years ago
hetspookjee|3 years ago
Havoc|3 years ago
samwillis|3 years ago
fulafel|3 years ago
BurningFrog|3 years ago
danw1979|3 years ago
trebligdivad|3 years ago
kkfx|3 years ago
My fellow humans remember a thing: a national grid is not national because of politics but because a such critical part of a country infra it's better to be self-sufficient under nation borders and hopefully self-sufficient inside those borders even in case of major attacks (translated, not few big power plants, but many small and a distribution network designed to survive significant damages).
We, westerners have had the best industry and technology in the world, now for some neoliberals economic devastating ideas we pull it apart outsourcing anything because that's pay back, in thin air, well, and now we see a new world power, China, arise and we see our power wane. How much damage we want to take before annihilating with lifelong court rulings against those economy-driven society? We really want to wait till being completely lost?
jacquesm|3 years ago
So you better think this over long and hard before sending your cheap submarine down there.
Personally I'd be much more concerned about the kind of damage marine life, fishing and cargo ships would do to that cable and how to armor against that. Probably by the time you've taken all that into account you have also defended against that sub. And finally, the same thing of course goes for all of those other undersea cables, communications ones for instance.
fulafel|3 years ago
popol12|3 years ago
mabbo|3 years ago
In China, there is a 3300 km line like this moving 12GW of power. This is a little bit longer, but not by much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
KarlKemp|3 years ago
FpUser|3 years ago
I am more interested (again if the project is a go) what happens if / when some "friendly" people will mess with the cable.
Diggsey|3 years ago
onethought|3 years ago
hokkos|3 years ago
leke|3 years ago
nicbou|3 years ago
Yuioup|3 years ago
aaron695|3 years ago
[deleted]
rationalfaith|3 years ago
[deleted]
giorgioz|3 years ago
This is NOT technology is GEOPOLITICS, and it sucks!
cptcobalt|3 years ago