News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on US Army deploys its first floating solar array. Parent comment

Re:US Army deploys its first floating solar array by chipsa on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:20PM (#31783020)
Yes, I made exactly that point above. But the point I'm making is that long distance transmission of water is also expensive from an infrastructure standpoint, possibly even more expensive than power (and also sometimes has transmission losses, depending on how they're moving it)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US Army deploys its first floating solar array by ch4s3 on Friday June 17, 2022 @03:25PM (#31783075)
> But the point I'm making is that long distance transmission of water is also expensive

Oh yeah, in case I wasn't clear that's exactly what I meant also.

The dream of covering a chunk of the Sahara in PV to power Europe and Africa seems like tilting at windmills.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US Army deploys its first floating solar array by ncmncm on Friday June 17, 2022 @07:19PM (#31785727)
But not for the reason you think.

The right place to put PV for Europe is in Europe. You will want solar farms in the tropics producing ammonia to ship around to wherever the wind flags for a few weeks, and to Finland in winter.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:US Army deploys its first floating solar array by ncmncm on Friday June 17, 2022 @07:18PM (#31785720)
Transmitting power is not, in fact, expensive.

Building an HVDC transmission line has capital cost, but marginal operating cost is near zero.

[ Parent | on HN ]