£18B project to link UK to wind and solar farm in Sahara delayed by a year | Hacker News Reader

£18B project to link UK to wind and solar farm in Sahara delayed by a year

theguardian.com

5 pointsmontalbano8 comments

Africa’s energy needs should be met first.

Energy blackouts and high costs are huge obstacles in African development and progress.

There's much truth in this, but supply to the dense population points in Africa which have significant lack of power, and their ability to pay for both construction and use of power is moot. This is a proposal to spend $20+b and generate revenue. The revenue demands a market which can pay. the UK market can pay.

Africa is huge. Meeting its power demands is a huge problem. Selling power to the developed west is not in itself inherently bad, and if African nation states take equity in the proposal it could be both cash positive, and provide more energy which ultimately does become a viable sell in Africa. the UK will not depend on this source of power longer than it has to because the strategic risk is too high: its the Gazprom problem writ in another language.

So Africa puts itself second in other to meet the needs of the First World? Haven't we seen that before? It didn't work out well. That model only makes sense if decision makers in Africa are paid to "look the other way."

You're howling at the moon. Capital is being invested for profit. If the capital sources don't see profit (or as much profit) in the medium term from Africa, what do you expect them to do?

Nobody would dismiss a serious proposition to do this for African economic and social benefit. But, Africa isn't a nation, its a continent. Do the maths, and you will find Kinchasa is further away than London. The relative cost of power in Africa would exceed the equivalent percentile of income per capita from Europe by a country mile. So, it would be both relatively more expensive for those consumers, and probably as an income stream to the investors more risky.

I'm not in favour of this analysis btw. I would prefer that what you want happened but this is not a state enterprise investment for social development its a play for income from the UK energy market.

Nigeria is closer. It's a huge market and its flush with money. I don't live there, but I bet it has a lot of dirty power sources, since its an oil-rich economy. Displacing Oil with clean energy.. is hard.

The same complaint could be made of the AU-SG cable proposal: why the hell is it selling power to Singapore when the population of the NT in Australia is so dysfunctionally under-budgeted? And, why is it bypassing energy hungry Indonesia with 250+m consumers? Well.. it turns out the NT will be getting cheap power, and jobs, and Indonesia will probably buy HVDC sourced electricity before the cable reaches Singapore but the economics are pretty clear: Singapore has the money and wants the power: thats where the profit lies.

That's exactly what eastern Australia states are doing with our gas

Yes. And the gas companies say what W.A. did "won't work" and to suggest it is applied becomes "sovereign risk". Ha! they'd continue to extract wealth from the eastern states, even with a fixed price supply to domestic consumers. Its bogus as shit.

Andrews is on the money proposing re-nationalising state power and ending the faux market economy in public utility.

But that said, Australia IS a single economy, where Africa isn't.

Did they solve the transmission loss issue that has stopped this from happening since forever?

Transmission losses are a factor which goes to price. Not laws-of-physics effect, just price. If the input costs are low enough, you can set a price for delivery including transmission losses, which is viable.

This, from the proposed AU-SG HVDC cable [1]:

The electrical loss through HVDC cable is approximately 3% per 1000 km. Hence, it is anticipated that total electrical loss through this interconnector will be approximately 10% for the subsea portion.

the Western Sahara is comparably far from the UK. the total system loss due to the cable loss is likely to be the same.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41825-020-00032-z

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