Wiring. Dad, wot's Alverdiscott got to do wiv Morocco?

How much CO2 will be released during the manufacture of all that cable and the associated gear and buildings.

I shouldn't think that the residents would be best pleased either.

well if it supplies 7 million homes and costs 16 billion, then that's the price of a couple of years gas bills, so it should be a net win in a few years. Of course the DM is not known for getting its numbers right, and it is another energy dependence on somewhere w we have limited influence.

Mike.

I misunderstood this.

This is a mad idea. What is the power loss in 2560 miles of cables even at 1 million volts? It is still of the order of  7 amps ie 2 amps per cable. If that is 1kW per home, but Boris's plan needs at least 10 kW per home, so 70A, about 17A each. At 1 Ohm per mile that is 2560 Ohms so perhaps 10% overall power loss. 

The storage needed is likely to be 4 weeks worth of the wind contribution and 16 hours of the solar one, in other words probably about 100GWh at least. Where is the backup gas-fired plant? I suppose they won't pay for that!

I know, it must be April the 1st moved to October!

Mike is assuming there are no ongoing costs!

The article mentions 20GWhr of battery with 5GW max delivery - I presume not one 3v cell at full load delivering 1.6GA, but even at 1MV of battery and 5KA or some similar VA product juggling its looking at some chunky cables and a large field of portakabin size batteries. They are looking at 200km2 of tracking solar panel, so 15km by 15km if it was a square.

But a 3,6GW link as 2 * 1.8 is a lower power  rating than that French one that has just gone bang, so it can be done, and at hundreds of KV, then a 5% voltage drop gets you a surprisingly long way.

The north sea link is about 30% of the proposed length of this new one, runs at a ‘mere’  

+/-500kV so 1MV DC between poles and  has been working well on test so far.

Possible - probably, but not easy, certainly, an interesting one, definitely.

Mike

PS edit, not sure if you are aware of this earlier work in Morocco, they see it as a source of income, and store a few hours of run-on after dark in the form of the specific heat and the latent heat of melting of a blend of various metallic nitrates.

Perhaps the “surplus" sunlight could be used for electrolysis?

I read this earlier but unable to comment.

First thoughts.

How much electrical loss.

More important though is how much to build it all both in money and in carbon footprint.

What effect on the surroundings at both ends and anywhere betwixt.

In an ideal world if any nations like ours where connected globally to nations of differing politics and geography and time zones then at first glance it might seem worth a look but the the more you look at it the more questions it asks. 

Yes I must admit that my very first thought was "What?"

This proposal is clearly intended to connect into the UK grid system, so the very small population in the UK village where the cable lands is a red herring.

I can see the merits of such a scheme as fossil fuels become more expensive and climate change concerns grow.

I think that the battery would be better placed at the UK end in order to provide short term emergency power when the cable is out of order. 

It would be the worlds longest submarine power cable, by a considerable margin.

Interesting.  But not, it appears, not quite the longest in the world (by that time), if this Australia - Singapore link I saw a few days ago is true. 

About the UK - Morocco case, something of the order of 15% loss would seem plausible at full power, and the percentage would reduce at lower load.  These types of cables can be 1500 mm2 or more, and the voltage on each of the two 1800 MW parts could be well over 500 kV.   These are just estimates, based on the DM article and other recent subsea schemes.  It's not an unreasonable level of loss: something roughly 10% is lost in the grids within many countries, from large generators to households. And compared to producing then using hydrogen, it's much superior. 

Well, it's less than 6 times the length of the new UK/Norway interconnector: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58772572