andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2021-11-17 12:00 pm

Interesting Links for 17-11-2021

danieldwilliam: (Default)

[personal profile] danieldwilliam 2021-11-17 03:32 pm (UTC)(link)
My bet (with myself) is that cables will probably win in the contest between cables and batteries.

If your line losses on a 15,000 km subsea cable are only 50% then power that costs $20 / MWH to produce in Chile comes off the cable costing $40 / MWH plus the cost of the cable - that means the cable can cost $60 / MWH and still be in the right ball park of cost for power.

I reckon we are a lot lot closer to $60 / MWH cables than we are to huge batteries. Not necessarily 15,000 km long subsea cables but long distance cables.

Not saying that batteries won't eventually become cheaper than cables but once the cables are built it will be a long time before they are replaced.
danieldwilliam: (Default)

[personal profile] danieldwilliam 2021-11-17 05:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Mind you a 15,000 km cable does sound very courageous, on a Sir Humphrey scale of bravery.
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[personal profile] danieldwilliam 2021-11-17 05:54 pm (UTC)(link)
I think the difficulty scales with depth and with the condition of the seabed. Both of which are influenced by the length. A longer cable is likely to go through deeper water and the longer the cable the more likely you are to hit difficult seabed conditions.

I think you could probably build a 3,000 km cable in shallow water and easy conditions for roughly 3 times the cost of a similar 1,000 km cable but find that a 2,000 km cable in very very deep water costs much more than twice the cost.

There may also be a limit to how deep you can put these things.Some pattern like; 100 meters, easy, 1,000 meters tricky, 6,000 meters very difficult indeed, 7,000 meters - might as well be on the moon.
danieldwilliam: (Default)

[personal profile] danieldwilliam 2021-11-18 10:46 am (UTC)(link)

The more detailed maps will be private in one way or another.