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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Sounds good. If they actually manage to build it, it might even become possible for Africa to start selling solar energy to Europe.
The distance is still a killer for that, it would either require to build an AC line from Morocco to Spain, a highly politically charged region or a high voltage dc line from Tunisia to Italy, which is quite the distance to cover.
Indeed, there are huge issues with that idea, but at least now there’s a plan to take a step in that direction. Who knows if we ever get there though.
The main issue with this plan, in my opinion, is that there (atleast seem) to be no redundant links. African countries barely manage to share borders, not to talk about rivers and resources, for the sake of safety this system should have atleast 2 links to different neighbours.
That’s certainly an issue, but I guess you have to start somewhere. If political chaos and turmoil doesn’t ignite all the cables and towers, they absolutely need to expand it later.
There is a project "Xlinks" to build an HVDC cable from Morrocco to the UK for this purpose. Who knows if it will succeed but it does have real backing.
Thats one hell of a distance, I really need to look more of these projects. But in my corner of europe people like to block these projects even tho they are so important
Transmitting and storing the electricity is going to be tough
Why not use the elec in Africa to create hydrogen from salt water?
Store it if needed Ship it in pipes (easier than electricity in powerlines) Ship it in cylinders
That sounds like a pretty good option too. Transporting hydrogen is pretty exciting, so I wonder if there would better form instead. Maybe some chemist out there could point out some obvious way to use the electricity to make a chemical compound more suited to this purpose. Hydrogen is really nice once you start converting it back to energy, but while in transit it has some highly concerning properties.
That would be ideal