According to that paper, electricity can be transported over very long distances (from North Africa to all of Europe in their project) with only minor losses (15%) using HVDC power lines.
If that's true, it seems to me that with such a HVDC grid, renewable energy doesn't have to be stored any more, apart from mobile applications of course. An additional advantage of DC occurs to me, you no longer need an expensive inverter to push your home grown power into the grid, a simple boost converter does the trick! Who was the idiot who invented AC power transmission in the first place? ;-) Michel 2009/9/17 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>: > See: > > http://www.desertec.org/downloads/summary_en.pdf > > This is well written. The map on p. 2 is revealing. Map caption: > > "For illustration: Areas of the size as indicated by the red squares would > be sufficient for Solar Thermal Power Plants to generate as much electricity > as is currently consumed by the World, by Europe (EU-25) and by Germany/MENA > respectively. (Data provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), 2005)" > > - Jed > >
