The world’s energy demands are growing exponentially and climate change is making it more difficult to keep the lights on. What can be done? A new power grid which would span across many countries could provide a solution, but nothing like this has ever been attempted before.
The “asean power grid” is a project that has been in development for over 10 years. The goal of the project is to build a power grid that spans the world, which will use renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
A connection to transfer solar energy between the deserts of northwest India and Oman, some 600 miles west, might be the first step toward a global electrical network.
The second section would go east from India, passing via Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Vietnam. According to Jagjeet Sareen, assistant director general at the International Solar Alliance near Delhi, which is spearheading the project, a few more links between already existing energy grids in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa could produce a network that stretches across ten time zones, powering one part of the world with juice from another. By 2050, the objective is to have the whole network connected.
Mr. Sareen explains, “The sun nearly never sets—setting it’s here, rising someplace else.” “If we could only link, we’d be golden!” Green power would be available everywhere.”
Transnational super grids—the idea of globe-girdling power networks that might move electricity, especially renewable energy, from locations where it is abundant to wherever it is needed—across continents, weather systems, and oceans—hold such potential.
The Bhadla Solar Park in northwest India has panels. One ambitious super-grid idea would connect these sites with another in Oman, 600 kilometers west.
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images photo
The great concept has been around for decades, but it has always met with formidable technological, economic, and political obstacles. Even today, the volatility in Ukraine has shifted the energy picture swiftly, illustrating the enormous obstacles that such global operations face.
Officials from Germany and Jordan proposed a proposal to power Europe with solar energy gathered in the Sahara in the mid-2000s, but it never got off the ground. Masayoshi Son, a Japanese entrepreneur and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., suggested an Asian super-grid in 2011 that would transport renewable energy from Mongolia to China, South Korea, and Japan. One of the most ambitious suggestions came from China’s national utility, State Grid Corp., whose former chairman Liu Zhenya revealed a plan in 2016 to use ultra-high-voltage cables to transport electricity from solar and wind projects in the arctic and in the equator throughout the globe. The cost is expected to be $50 trillion.
Nonetheless, many energy experts believe super grids will become more common in the future, thanks to technology advancements, lower prices, and governments’ increased willingness to transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy in order to combat global warming.
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“We need super grids both to supply mass clean energy and to ensure that it is affordable,” says Nicholas Dunlop, secretary-general of the Climate Parliament, a network of climate-focused lawmakers that has long championed its own Green Grids Initiative for transnational renewable electricity. That UK-backed program merged with the India-led ISA project to become the Green Grids Initiative-One Sun One World One Grid at the November Glasgow climate conference. Their long-term goal is to build a network that connects the electricity markets of more than 120 nations.
Around 90 nations have backed the idea, the World Bank has signed on as a partner, and Electricité de France SA, or EDF, is undertaking a study on how to effectively implement it. According to ISA’s Mr. Sareen, private financiers will jump in if regulators, governments, and development banks like the World Bank can be persuaded to underwrite the risks of various legs of the project, each of which could cost billions of dollars when the cost of adding renewable-energy installations is factored in.
Cross-border electricity trade in modest amounts is increasingly commonplace, for example, between the United States and Canada or within Europe. However, some in the sector argue that the idea of super-sizing such connected electrical grids is becoming increasingly significant since it might help alleviate the inherent capriciousness of power sources that are dependent on the weather.
A grid that extends beyond local weather systems may be able to transport energy to locations where power has been disrupted by catastrophes. On windy days, for example, it may take excess energy from a location with a lot of wind farms and use the larger network to provide that region with power when the turbines are becalmed. As the amount of renewable energy in the energy mix rises, such flexibility becomes more critical.
“I regard long-distance electrical transmission as an element of the energy-storage system,” says Steven Chu, a Nobel Laureate and former US Secretary of Energy who has long advocated for transnational grids.
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The capacity to transfer power across great distances is also critical for accessing resources in often-remote locations where renewable energy is best generated, such as empty, windy plains with acres of windmills or scorching deserts with solar panels. Mongolia, a country with similar geography and a tiny population, sees the rising worldwide need for green electricity as an export potential. Singapore, which has a large energy demand but insufficient area for solar expansion, is seeking to import.
Shipping energy hundreds of kilometers through standard alternating-current lines was previously uneconomical due to power losses that increased significantly as the distance increased. However, industry analysts claim that advances in the technology, hardware, and cost required for ultra-high-voltage direct-current lines, where losses are drastically reduced, have made trans-continental power transport considerably more cost-effective than in the past.
China’s State Grid, the global leader in long-distance cable construction, revealed at the end of 2018 that it had completed a 1,100-kilovolt, 2,000-mile line that runs diagonally across the nation from the Xinjiang area in the northwest to Anhui Province in the east.
Long-distance underwater cables are more difficult and costly to install. The expense of laying the lines in deep water is high. Transmission specialists believe that the cables must be insulated, and that no materials presently exist that can withstand the heat generated by the highest-voltage lines. Developers will have to make due with lower-voltage lines and higher power losses as a result.
China is transmitting electricity 2,000 miles from Xinjiang in the northwest to Anhui in the east, using ultra-high-voltage cables and converter stations like this one in Xinjiang.
Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images photo
Nonetheless, some people are taking the risk. Sun Cable, located in Australia and Singapore, has proposed a 2,600-mile underwater line to transport solar electricity from northern Australia to Singapore; Xlinks Limited, based in the United Kingdom, is developing a line almost as long to transport power from Morocco to the United Kingdom. Both businesses are privately held and intend to attract funds mostly from private investors.
Playing with Fire
Sun Cable, an energy-grid company, has proposed that electricity from a vast solar farm it wants to construct in northern Australia be sent to Singapore.
Singapore
This is where the power comes in.
Darwin
The beginning of the underwater cable
Elliott
Solar power plant with battery backup
Undersea
regarding cable
2,600 kilometers
Overhead
line of power,
around 500 miles
Singapore
This is where the power comes in.
Darwin
The beginning of the underwater cable
Elliott
Solar power plant with battery backup
Undersea
regarding cable
2,600 kilometers
Overhead
line of power,
around 500 miles
Singapore
This is where the power comes in.
Darwin
The beginning of the underwater cable
Elliott
Solar power plant with battery backup
Undersea
regarding cable
2,600 kilometers
Overhead
line of power,
around 500 miles
Overhead
line of power,
around 500 miles
Undersea
regarding cable
2,600 kilometers
Elliott
Solar power plant with battery backup
Darwin
The beginning of the underwater cable
Singapore
The time has come for power.
here
Politics continues to be a significant impediment to cross-continental electricity trade. Governments would have to agree on how to pay for and operate any long-distance electric lines or new connections between their existing grids—complex issues that would pit entrenched interests against one another.
When nations aren’t close allies, sharing power is more difficult.
Mr. Chu argues that “people are really worried about their electrical supply” because “you can’t efficiently store vast volumes of it,” so any outages strike the local system instantly. “It’s on a completely different level than the supply of oil or natural gas.”
Today’s super-grid designers, having learnt from years of blocked ideas, argue for constructing massive networks by repurposing existing infrastructure. According to Philippe Lienhart, an expert on power grids at EDF who is directing the interconnection research for the initiative launched at the Glasgow summit, much of South Asia’s power grids are already connected together, as are the Gulf states of the Middle East, and Africa has multiple regional networks.
“It’s a narrative of interconnectedness of regional interconnections,” he says, adding that by deliberately connecting lines across areas and reinforcing grids where connections are weak, you might theoretically patch together something extremely large.
It’s also crucial to choose the route with the least amount of resistance. Consider the electrical line that connects India and Oman. There are two options for connecting the countries: a less costly, mostly overland route via Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, or a more expensive, technically challenging one directly over the Arabian Sea.
According to ISA’s Mr. Sareen, the land option is substantially less expensive. “However, you won’t find a single expert, technical or non-technical, who says it’s possible.” Super grids would have to begin where “political will is greatest,” he believes.
Phred Dvorak can be reached at [email protected]
Everything Has a Future | Energy & Climate
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The “supergrid floor game” is a strategy game that simulates the construction of a power grid to span the world. The player has to build and maintain power plants, transmission lines, substations and other infrastructure while also managing demand for energy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you make your own power grid?
A: No, you cannot make your own power grid as there are copyright restrictions set in place by the games creators that prevents users from creating their own Power Grid.
Where is the biggest power grid in the world?
A: The United States has the biggest power grid.
Can renewables power the grid?
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