[HN Gopher] The World Grid and New Geographies of Cooperation
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       The World Grid and New Geographies of Cooperation
        
       Author : hackandthink
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2024-11-17 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (centerforneweconomics.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (centerforneweconomics.org)
        
       | CityOfThrowaway wrote:
       | The global grid concept is a fascinating piece of infrastructure
       | engineering.
       | 
       | But the anti-market rhetoric here feels completely backwards. The
       | article cites Shell building Europe's largest renewable hydrogen
       | plant, BP's $30B Australian investment, and major moves by other
       | energy companies... then somehow spins this as evidence that
       | corporate involvement is problematic?
       | 
       | Market incentives and existing energy infrastructure expertise
       | are exactly what's driving the current clean energy buildout at
       | scale.
       | 
       | I wish this was presented as the interesting systems engineering
       | challenge it is, rather than wrapped in reflexive anti-corporate
       | ideology. The technical aspects deserve serious analysis without
       | the political baggage.
        
         | namaria wrote:
         | Markets are societal structures, as are corporations. They can
         | be hijacked by special interest groups. They aren't inherently
         | bad or good. But since citizens united there has been an
         | enormous amount of maleficence and 'markets' often become a
         | byword for this because of how pervasive it's become.
         | 
         | It saves time to say 'market logic' or 'corporate' whatever
         | then to qualify the whole thing and the language patterns
         | settle into the lowest energy configuration like everything
         | else.
        
       | kibwen wrote:
       | The dymaxion projection is my favorite map projection, and I love
       | the idea of more resilient energy grids (and solar panels, while
       | we're at it). But the problem here is that the dymaxion
       | projection turns out to be terribly misleading in this context.
       | By relying on the dymaxion projection alone it makes it seem
       | inevitable that you'd have to have to traverse the bottleneck of
       | the Bering Strait, but in the realm of what is both practical and
       | achievable it makes absolutely no sense to make that the lynchpin
       | of a global grid. Presumably the idea is that when the western
       | hemisphere is lit it would be sending power to the eastern
       | hemisphere (and vice versa), but, no, you're not going to be
       | building a global backbone capable of powering half the world at
       | a time across five thousand miles of near-uninhabited wilderness.
       | You need infrastructure that pays for itself by connecting
       | geographically-proximal, densely-inhabited population centers.
       | And that might very well mean that it's more realistic to run a
       | cable between (for example) Boston and Ireland, which is not
       | apparent from looking at the dymaxion projection.
        
         | ricardo81 wrote:
         | Yes, the geopolitics puts a major brake on the idea. Perhaps
         | this is why some are looking towards space-based solar. I'd be
         | happy if either became economical and feasible. I'd sooner
         | place my bet on storage, whether it be batteries and/or stored
         | entirely chemically via hydrogen, ammonia etc- particularly in
         | places where geography limits hydro or anywhere off-grid.
        
       | fuoqi wrote:
       | The US can not build a unified grid. Japan still suffers from the
       | moronic 50/60 Hz split. Energy rich regions in the eastern Russia
       | have tiny energy links with the energy hungry regions of China.
       | And you still want to seriously claim that the world grid could
       | be practical in this century?
        
       | oceanplexian wrote:
       | Instead of building a trillion dollar superconducting
       | distribution network to overcome the inherit flaws of
       | intermittent, low density renewable energy, invest it into clean
       | nuclear and drop it in where we already have coal and gas.
       | 
       | And second, maybe instead of spending so much on consultants with
       | insanely bad takes like this one, we can spend it on STEM
       | education, and train the next generation of nuclear engineers.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-17 23:00 UTC)