European Super Grid

Additionally we will need to live with a supply constrained electricity net. Sometimes there just isn't more available and variable pricing will be needed to reduce demand. Of course the Texas power crisis showed that even if prices rise 50x some people will stubbornly keep using power regardless and basically go bankrupt. But perhaps this is just because nobody is used to actually matching demand to supply vs the current situation where supply is always matched to the demand at all costs with (rolling) blackouts as the only effective measure to reduce demand.

I imagine that in a near future where most cars are electric (and thus transportation is a significant part of electricity demand) it should be quite easy to temporarily reduce demand, even in winter: just stop commuting for a few days (at least all office workers). Also big industrial consumers could be incentivized to reduce demand when supply is too low. It might require some design adjustments, but shutting down most industry and working from home for say 0-5 days a year is surely more cost effective than massively overbuilding renewable energy supply, making giant batteries.

Priorities should probably be 1. More grid interconnections (even out supply variability), 2. cheap long term storage like hydro, 3. demand reduction. I think we need all three to transition to a 100% fossil free future.

> Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar.

There isn't much growth potential for hydro since it's more dependent on geography than the others and many sites are already occupied. Short of mega-projects trying to exploit ocean currents.

> Build enough wind and solar to cover the total energy needs evenly during the year

That means you need to overbuild PV and wind independently, which may be an option but a costly one. And you'd still need more storage, 6 days are too short, there are lulls that last longer than that.

If seasonal storage can be built then it would complement both sources and could decrease the required overbuild factor. So it's still good idea to pursue it to reduce cost and reliance on a single source type.

> Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar.

What? North eastern India (e.g. Leh) has hydro only in summer as the snowpack melts. In winter it can be -30 C with limited solar resource.

Iceland does lots of geothermal power.. indeed power intensive industries like aluminum refining favor Iceland due to low power cost.

Sure, it's hard to know how far geothermal in Iceland could scale..

But there is an active volcano, how much worse can it get? :)

So what? Use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroe_Islands as junction, and branch from there to Scotland and Norway.

Each branch wouldn't be that different in distance from the part between Cyprus and Crete from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAsia_Interconnector or the related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroAfrica_Interconnector

You're right. I was incorrect to state that Brexit hasn't affected the electricity market. Obviously there are different trading procedures in place now.

But there's no evidence that energy volumes moving between the EU and UK have declined since Brexit. In fact, trade volumes have increased on last year, due to the new France-Angleterre 2 (IFA2) interconnector coming online in January.

Additionally, there are multiple further new interconnectors under construction or being planned for the 2020s. Despite changes to the details of how the market operates, the UK will be increasingly closely tied to EU energy markets by virtue of being more physically connected to them.

UK interconnectivity with Europe to rise despite Brexit: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/world-regions/europe/uk-...

AIUI, photovoltaics also lose a lot of efficiency when they heat up, so the ideal place to use them is somewhere cool but with a lot of sun.

In contrast, solar thermal runs at extremely high temperatures to begin with, so even in a hot climate, there's a huge temperature difference from which to extract power.

It seems to me that mirrors would be cheaper than photovoltaics, and the power-plant itself is a fixed cost, so most of the cost must come from the motors and electronics needed to angle the mirrors, and the maintenance of that.

I wonder: could you have a system where the mirrors are all fixed in place, and you simply move the target as the sun moves. (Or at least move a smaller set of mirrors/lenses that refocus the light onto a fixed target)

I'm not sure what's so difficult in reusing glass and aluminum and resurfacing wafers.