How Carbon Reduction and Smart Grid Work Together

A technology which requires you to work around it, rather than it work around you, has failed before it got started.

Demand management offers little value.

The only way wind and solar can get close to producing 100% of electricity (you still have transport and heating to deal with) is with a global grid. It would be technically and economical easy, but politically difficult.

I K,

I don’t know why a Global grid would be easy, and frankly I think it is a bad idea that could never work because it just is not practical.

If you look at the globe, there is a vast expanse of Pacific Ocean where we could not put solar cells, then there is a smaller Atlantic zone, and don’t forget the Forests in South America and West Africa,

You might wanna view the image linked below.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DANWPdPJzlo/UWjbrKwM_sI/AAAAAAAAAQI/xkfhQNwJkVI/s1600/global+grid.jpg

I don’t know why a Global grid would be easy, and frankly I think it is a bad idea that could never work because it just is not practical.

Why is it not practical, a bad idea, and never going to work?

If you look at the globe, there is a vast expanse of Pacific Ocean

And…….?

You do not need to place solar at every time zone, you can have it 3 hours spread on each end which means you can have a global grid which does not need to cross the pacific ocean. But even the pacific ocean is no threat to a global grid why would you cross that when you could just cross via the bering sea instead?

also for arguments sake think of placing PV plants at just 6 time zones all spread by 4 hours. That means you can have an equatorial distance of nearly 6,700km between plants yet still achieve a fairly constant output

I K,

Here are Two more pictures of the Globe:

Global  Picture 2

and 

Global Picture 3

For a global Grid to be meaningfull, we’d have to place enough solar cells around the world with the Intent that there will always be sunlight somewhere on the planet, and that the Solar cells being insolated at any one time will be providing power for the rest of the world.

What I am attempting to demonstrate  is that unless we want to build thousands of ships or construct artificial Islands, there isn’t anything to place those solar cells on, so as to be able to convert  enough sunlight to electricity for use in powering the planet 24/7.

Simply put, we just don’t have enough land area on which to position the required solar cells that would capture enough sunlight to power the globe continuously. This should be self evident unless I am missing something here.

Yes you are missing something.  Like I have said before you don’t beed pv plant continuously around the globe yoy can space them 5000km apart and still get a near constant output. 

The reason is solar output on a pv is fairly constant a couple of hours around noon.  So you can have a 4hour timezone difference and still get a constabt output

I K,

I wonder if someone who has knowledge in Meteorology or a similar discipline would chime in on this discussion. Not trying to be overly argumentative, but even if PV sites are space every 5000Km as you suggest, there are sufficient stretches where the only areas being insolated is just over the oceans.

As best as I can see there is not eneough land mass being Insolated, even when space 5000 Km apart, to provide continuos PV generated power for the planet.

Please see the animation here: 24 hour daylight animated

I don’t have time at the moment but if you could draw solar output through a sunny 24 hours. so at noon its at full capacity at night zero and between sunshine and noon rising and noon and dusk falling.

Then add a second pv curve to that but shifted 12 hours.  So now there are two ppeaks. One at 12 am and one at 12 pm. That would be how a pv system would look with 2 stations on opposite sides of the planet.

Now add two further curves. One at 6am and one at 6 pm. So now you have 4 peaks.  One at 6am one at 12am one at 6pm and another at 12pm. The graph now looks faorly steady and you only have 4 plants or roughly one every 10, 000km equatorial distance. 

Therefore you dont need to install pv across oceans.

I will do the graph when I have time.

But anyway what about yiur othrr assertions that a global grid would be a bad idea and difficult would you loke to state why

Ok here is a graph of solar output you would get from just 4 PV plants spread across the world at 6 hour timezone intervals, blue line, so an example would be west saharah, nevada, japan and east saudi arabia
As you can see the power output varies by just 10% around the average.

The red line is if you placed a plant at every 3 hour timezone, it varies by just 2% from the average output.
example would be west saharah, egypt, oman, east india, japan, hawaii, los angeles

Place 1TWp plants at each of those 8 locations and you would get more than 13,000TWh anual production from a fairly constant 1.5TW output

http://s12.postimg.org/5g2hvf7hp/solar_3_6h_timezone.png

HI IK,

I decided to do a little thinking and with the aid of some graphics and photoshop, I came up with this representation of what you are suggesting.

I used 6 4 hour zones because it allowed me to get all USA, African Sahara, and Australia, places known for good sunshine. And this arrangement seems the most efficient to me.

As I understand the issue at hand, we’d place 1 (or more) Terrawatts of PV solar in each of Boxes 2-6 and link each of them to some World-Wide Grid such that the whole Planet is being continuosly supplied with electrical power from at least Half of the PV Blocks, with the Block dirrectly below the sun providingf the most power at any one time.

Obstacles:

How lagre is a 1 Terrawatt array ?

Can we really create a unified grid powering all of planet Earth?

Are there other practical concerns, note that Box #1 is entirely over water?

Anyhow, this was a fun project.

Block 1 can be left empty if you place your pv plant at the most easterly of block 6 and most westerly of block 2

1TW on the equator with 20% efficient panels laid flat would take up 5,000km2. By comparison Australia is 7,700,000 km2 so you only need less than 0.1% for Australia. If sited away from the equator you would need more laad as you need to tilt and space your panels. On the other hand pv panels are getting more efficient and hence need less space

Yes we can create a global grid. Not sure what you mean by unified they dont need to be at the same frequency.

Also note the instant benefit of a global grid would be to get rid of the need to train or ship coal/gas aroubd the globe.  Insteas you would just send eletrons down the grid. So there are massive benifitd over just very high solar or wind capability. It would also allow countries rich in hydro to utilise them more productively for the whole world. 

I dont think a global grid is likely to happen but without it wind and especially solar are doomed to produce less than about one tenth of worldwide energy needs