I love this project and am really happy India is bringing the UK into this. It’s been floated since 2018 by Modi and creating an intercontinental solar grid, is just so incredibly insane in terms of scope it can’t fail 🙂
India have done some fairly cool things with solar, for example they started putting them above canal networks, this reduces water evaporation and keeps the panels cooler, so more efficient.
They also started bolstering their ability to manufacture solar panels from China but have a long way to go.
It does make that Morocco to UK line feel more likely.
Great news. Solar panel tech is so hot right now!
Today in “things that will probably not happen”
An inter-country grid of that scale is something that would be genuinely awesome. Each country could play to its strengths, Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro.
India has apparently invested nearly $100bn into solar power, and the use of it seems to be growing quite dramatically. I remember reading an article some time back that said that they were adding the equivalent of the entire solar energy capacity of France each year to their grid. Great news for the environment!
The UK can’t even manage to stay in an international union but wants to stem this? Haha.
Edit: wow Boris fanboys here are easily offended.
“Solar grid” is a stupid idea. Almost by definition, a solar grid is going to have areas which have solar (due to day time), and areas which do not (due to night time or the fact that they’re simply unsuitable for solar in the first place). The dark places on that solar grid are going to be very, very far away from the bright places (i.e. literally on the other side of the world), so the power losses would be massive (~3% per 1000km with HVDC).
What we need is a “grid”, i.e. lots and lots of comparatively short interconnectors between adjacent countries so that *whatever* form of power is available (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc.) is available for sharing to the adjacent nodes on the grid. That’s actually useful.
Should this work this would be a great achievement I hope it does! Also a potential rival in one type of infrastructure to the belt and road
They can’t even connect Northern Ireland which relies on Ireland for electricity
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I love this project and am really happy India is bringing the UK into this. It’s been floated since 2018 by Modi and creating an intercontinental solar grid, is just so incredibly insane in terms of scope it can’t fail 🙂
India have done some fairly cool things with solar, for example they started putting them above canal networks, this reduces water evaporation and keeps the panels cooler, so more efficient.
They also started bolstering their ability to manufacture solar panels from China but have a long way to go.
It does make that Morocco to UK line feel more likely.
Great news. Solar panel tech is so hot right now!
Today in “things that will probably not happen”
An inter-country grid of that scale is something that would be genuinely awesome. Each country could play to its strengths, Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro.
India has apparently invested nearly $100bn into solar power, and the use of it seems to be growing quite dramatically. I remember reading an article some time back that said that they were adding the equivalent of the entire solar energy capacity of France each year to their grid. Great news for the environment!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_India)
The UK can’t even manage to stay in an international union but wants to stem this? Haha.
Edit: wow Boris fanboys here are easily offended.
“Solar grid” is a stupid idea. Almost by definition, a solar grid is going to have areas which have solar (due to day time), and areas which do not (due to night time or the fact that they’re simply unsuitable for solar in the first place). The dark places on that solar grid are going to be very, very far away from the bright places (i.e. literally on the other side of the world), so the power losses would be massive (~3% per 1000km with HVDC).
What we need is a “grid”, i.e. lots and lots of comparatively short interconnectors between adjacent countries so that *whatever* form of power is available (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc.) is available for sharing to the adjacent nodes on the grid. That’s actually useful.
Should this work this would be a great achievement I hope it does! Also a potential rival in one type of infrastructure to the belt and road
They can’t even connect Northern Ireland which relies on Ireland for electricity
A grid connecting 140 countries, lmao.