Euro Undersea Power Network

I was going to post it here but as a Value Hounds reply it has better context.

Subject: Re: Questions on Value Investing

Tesla (TSLA). Changed the game on electric vehicles. Trying to do hard things. Worth more than all the other car manufacturers on Earth, combined? Probably not.

https://boards.fool.com/tesla-tsla-changed-the-game-on-elect…

The Captain
Europe is doing what America should be doing but Las Tres Amigas is dead

A few years back, a project called Tres Amigas proposed to connect the three US interconnections with HVDC lines. Even though it argued that it wouldn’t trigger federal jurisdiction over Texas, the project ended up dying.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/lessons-from-the-texas-mess?s=r

Do batteries make more sense than grid interconnects?

1 Like

Do batteries make more sense than grid interconnects?

Go ahead and try to hook up 400k AAA batteries…

Go ahead and try to hook up 400k AAA batteries…

Why?

The Captain

Go ahead and try to hook up 400k AAA batteries…

Which reminds me of the SNL ad where the new Mercedes AA class was full of little batteries…
www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-mercedes/3021121

DB2

1 Like

Europe is doing what America should be doing but Las Tres Amigas is dead

A few years back, a project called Tres Amigas proposed to connect the three US interconnections with HVDC lines. Even though it argued that it wouldn’t trigger federal jurisdiction over Texas, the project ended up dying.

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Europeans have been busy expanding their HVDC grid lines under the sea. Texas always knows how to shot itself the foot. Tres Amigas would have prevented the problems with the 2021 polar vortex which caused 331 fatalities and $200 billion in damages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2021_North_American_c…

“Europeans have been busy expanding their HVDC grid lines under the sea. Texas always knows how to shot itself the foot. Tres Amigas would have prevented the problems with the 2021 polar vortex which caused 331 fatalities and $200 billion in damages.”


Could be you can’t get from ‘here to there’ without going under the sea there. Britain is an island along with Ireland. To get hydro from Norway and Finland to Denmark, it’s under the sea.

Same for proposed solar power installation in Africa that would feed power to Spain and Italy.


The Tres Amigas power interconnect would have cost BILLIONS of dollars and likely only be used a few times a year. There really wasn’t much of a business case for it.

The premise was it would wheel and deal solar and wind power , generated in NM and TX, ‘elsewhere’ and charge transport fees for it. On rare occasions with strange weather patterns and historic low temps in TX…it ‘might’ find enough energy elsewhere and wheel it back to TX, maybe.

Of course, New England is sucking power now out of Ontario and Quebec since it doesn’t have enough itself.

California? Heck, power emergencies every summer…and telling people to cut back. They suck their power from OR and WA state hydro. Meanwhile, they’re shutting down their nukes.

Of course, that solar power sort of disappears every evening at sunset (and drops before) so you have no power to export …if you’ve got solar.

Meanwhile, TX has sufficient energy 364 days a year so it’s not going to be importing power frequently. Not enough and likely won’t be to export solar and wind to other places - at ‘peak’ wind season (Spring/Fall) , might generate up to 50% of immediate need…

That billions of dollar of power line just sits there most of the time.

And which generators have gigawatts of power instantly available? Last ‘incident’ in TX, - OK, LA, NM, AR had zero spare power - they had rolling blackouts. well, NM escaped - barely.
. TN was hurting. So where was gigawatts of power coming from?

No one builds ‘extra’ capacity available on demand above projected ‘peak power needs’. Rate payers don’t like that.

At times, TX now generates 50% of it’s power needs from wind. On a yearly basis it’s 21% now and increasing. Nukes are 10%, solar a few percent. In 2020, it was 4%. As more and more windfarms and solar is installed in TX, more and more will come from renewables or non carbon sources. With reserves.

Now, how much more would rates have to increase to have this super conducting grid interconnect in plane and have ‘spare capacity’ to wheel across the country in emergencies?

Eastern grid is OK… rate payers there would rather build more lines to Canada for cheap hydro. Build off shore wind farms.

Western grid is OK…other than CA that’s already sucking lots of power from WA and OR. No one in WA or OR is going to get excited about a ‘grid tie’. During the day, CA generates a lot of solar and increasing fast. It disappears at night and when it rains in rainy season.

So where is the business case?

t.