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Comment by grumpy-de-sre | Hacker News Reader

And don't be sleeping on the potential of UHVDC transmission.

This is like the potential of High-Speed Rail.

It isn't a theoretical, it's something China is 30+ completed projects deep on. The technology existed decades ago. We just treat infrastructure like it's an impossibility here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-voltage_electricity...

Was in Northern China recently,

Got to say the shiny and non-rusted transmission pylons in Hebei got me more excited than was probably warranted. I don't think I've seen a shiny pylon before, I guess we mostly just stopped building them decades ago.

On the topic of agriculture I was very impressed by all the polytunnels we spotted from the high speed rail heading north out of Beijing. Every valley, and nook and cranny was full of them.

Took a couple photos of a small town in inner Mongolia that we passed, was amazing seeing green crops in the middle of a Siberian winter.

I believe this was a farm using recycled water to grow cut flowers https://imgur.com/a/kw1IDZ3

I think those might be a specific kind of greenhouse rather than a standard polytunnel. The back wall is essentially a solar heat store.

Here's an article on them:

Chinese-style Solar Greenhouses

https://ag.purdue.edu/department/btny/ppdl/potw-dept-folder/...

Yeah, this highly optimized passive solar design is one of those things that seems very obvious when energy is too expensive to waste on international transportation or excessive heating in a cold climate. Citrus production in 40 below zero.

By pursuing artificially inexpensive energy we are doubling down on a great number of wasteful practices that are largely avoidable.

Thank you! That's exactly what they are. Even "higher" tech than I first anticipated.

What you and the GP are discussing are fundamentally different solutions to agrivoltaics. One is inherently decentralised (not only decentralised power generation, but also local nitrogen fixing and reduced water demand) and the other is Just A Better Grid™. Just A Better Grid™ is inherently valuable, but it's not a substitute nor is it in competetion with agrivoltaics.

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