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Comment by nnurmanov | Hacker News Reader

China spans almost 5 timezones, they could create chain of solar panels and extend solar day by additional 5 hours

Not accounting loss in transmission lines over long distances and cost of building even-higher voltage lines than those already used in the normal grid that's optimized to serve consumers closest to power stations, else Africa would be powering most of Europe.

China already has country spanning HVDC and UHVDC to bring hydro and coal to the cities in other regions that need it.

Transmission losses with HVDC lines are small, 3.5% per 1000km. China are experts in ultra-high-voltage transmission lines. And are building a ton of solar plants in the western deserts.

There are proposals to install solar panels in North Africa and run HVDC lines to Europe. There was one recently about running a line all the way to Britain from Morocco.

I'd say they are expert buyers & users, because all you see are cars and logos of western companies like Siemens, ABB and so on, implementing them.

Even if you made a bog standard HVDC cable and wrapped it all the way around the planet[0], the transmission losses are only 60% or so, which is smaller than the price difference between PV (or wind) and nuclear.

[0] don't do that, the current cables are optimised for the current transmission distances, so it's simultaneously easy (wider cables have less resistance) and harder (you need to care about earthquakes) to make a different design better suited for global scale

Not according to china.

The country can span five time zones[0] geographically while still legally being only one.

[0] I'd only count it as four; the difference is a fencepost error IMO.

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