Europe's Giant Grid

2010 international green renewable energy power grids planned in Northern Europe and Africa
Mar 21st, 2010 by admin.
2010 international green renewable energy power grids planned in Northern Europe and Africa

The world is left to find a solution to non-polluting electricity generation grids after the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to yield any solutions.

Being the lowest cost renewable energy technologies in current use in 2010 Solar and Wind power are the basis for the planning of huge projects. As both are intermittent sources of power due to the variability of sun and wind as the power source massive projects are planned in favourable weather locations such as the North African Deserts and the North Sea.

These plans are based on the conventional thinking of centralised old fashioned thermal power plants that deliver electricity to far away markets over long-distance transmission grids. It is now claimed that traditional losses over grids can be reduced from 40% to 15%.

The need for the use of long-distance grids still remains as Solar and Wind plants need to be located at optimum weather locations to achieve increased operational output capacity. Generally speaking both Solar and Wind plants are productive less than 50% of the hours in a year.

These projects are entirely dependent on:

Multi billion Euro investment in new Grid infrastructures.
Granting of high Feed-in Tariffs by the EEC.
To overcome the unreliability for full time supply of electricity other less efficient and more capital intensive methods such as tidal and ocean technologies are even planned into the technology mix.

Post the Copenhagen COP-15 Conference in December 2009 two renewable electricity projects planned on a tremendously large scale are being advanced by European Groups, one Solar, and one Wind.

These projects taken together show the state of technology actually in use today as the basis for renewable non-polluting electricity generation. Both based on massive long-distance electricity grids.



EUROPEAN ANSWER TO THE FAILED CLIMATE CONFERENCE
The Wind project is a nine-nation project to link power-generation projects in a high-tech North Sea power grid. The idea is to link wind farms off Denmark, for example, with solar parks in Germany and tidal power stations in Belgium to create a regional grid of clean power, and it’s been hailed by German papers as a major step in the fight against global warming.

The plan is similar to the Desertec solar project announced in Europe last year, which aims to bring solar energy from North Africa to European Union customers through a power grid under the Mediterranean Sea — using nothing but existing technology.

Initiated by the Non-Profit-Organisation DESERTEC Foundation, which was founded in 2008 to realise the DESERTEC Concept worldwide, and the Munich Re, the world’s leading reinsurance company, the Dii is a unique industry initiative which was launched as ‘DESERTEC Industrial Initiative’ in July 2009. The initiative aims at creating the conditions for an accelerated implementation of the DESERTEC Concept in EUMENA (Europe, Middle East, North Africa). The Dii was founded under German law as a GmbH (limited liability company) in Munich on 30 October 2009.

Source: http://www.desertec.org/en/news/

Economists and politicians see the planned supergrid as a milestone. “The cabling of the North Sea is the European answer to the failed climate summit in Copenhagen,” said Josef Auer, an energy analyst at Deutsche Bank Research. Despite the conference, he said, “Europe is pushing forward in its use of renewable energies.”

The nine nations involved — Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland and Norway — will reportedly commit €30 billion ($43 billion) to the supergrid of high-voltage, undersea cables over the next 10 years. The grid will redistribute and regularize power flows from sometimes-fickle natural sources, and internationalize an industry that can often be hampered by national interests.

The plan is similar to the Desertec solar project announced in Europe last year, which aims to bring solar energy from North Africa to European Union customers through a power grid under the Mediterranean Sea — using nothing but existing technology.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

“If the project goes through, it will revolutionize the European energy market. A network like this is the main prerequisite for a breakthrough in renewable energies.”

“Offshore wind farms produce huge amounts of electricity now, but they can’t run constantly. If they were linked to other renewable-energy sources like hydroelectric dams, tidal-energy stations or solar arrays in a single grid, natural variations in supply could be evened out.”

“The question is not whether a cooperative energy grid is sensible. The question is how quickly such a vision can be translated into concrete capital investment. This, in turn, relies on the will of both governments and corporations. They should sweep away administrative hurdles as soon as possible and commit a sizeable amount of money.”

The conservative daily Die Welt writes:

“As long as narrow national interests survive in energy politics, resources will be wasted. Today, the better part of European solar output is (inefficiently) produced in cloud-shrouded Germany and not in sunny Spain.”

“Now a solution is in sight. Nine European states want to lay an energy grid on the bottom of the North Sea … With a grid like this, green power would be constantly, reliably on tap. The international network would also form the basis for a European energy market, which would lead to more competition between suppliers and falling prices.”

“But the notion that a North Sea grid could be finished in 10 years is unrealistic. It’s taken 10 years to build a normal high-capacity grid in the Münster countryside in Germany. The technology still doesn’t exist to finish such a project: Necessary transformer stations for DC current haven’t been developed. And no energy firm would sink €30 billion in the North Sea before the technology is up to speed.”

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,670429,00.html

Emerging Renewable Electricity Technologies

Breakthroughs are easy to publicize, but genuine environmental victory means annihilating some major evils perpetrated by our great-grandparents. The bad old stuff has to be torn up and junked.

Our children and grandchildren will get up in the morning, look at the news, and instead of flinching in terror, they will see the edifying spectacle of the world’s brightest people transparently solving the world’s worst problems. This sounds utopian, but it could soon be everyday life.



We need to grasp the artificial environment from a full, long-term, holistic perspective. We can see just by looking at our own hands that we are uniquely suited to manipulating artificial objects. Humans are especially good with fire and edged weapons because they were discovered and invented not by us, but by our prehistoric ancestors. Furthermore, stone tools and fire are potent and dangerous technologies. By the standards of all other living creatures, they are fantastic, unimaginable, and horribly deadly. Today climate change is happening because of fire.

The consequences of bygone technologies are with us now; they’ve merely been rendered invisible by yesterday’s habits of thought. When we see our historical predicament in its full, majestic scope, we will stir ourselves to great and direly necessary actions. It’s not beyond us to think and act in a better way. Yesterday’s short-sighted habits are leaving us, the way gloom lifts with the dawn.

Whilst Solar and Wind are in use they can only ever hope to deliver a fraction of needed renewable electricity and the current North Sea and North African projects well demonstrate the maximum potential for their usefulness. These existing technologies need to be complemented by emerging technologies that have not yet made it to mainstream commercial use.