Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

Re:Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to chall... by jurjenh on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @04:09PM (#3700151)

New Zealand has had a 600V HVDC link from the South Island to the North Island for quite some years - most of the power is generated by the hydro lakes in the south, then delivered via a 610km link to a substation in the north, where it is fed into the normal high-voltage transmission grid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island

So it is a proven technology to have this as a long distance link (been in operation since 1965) and it is capable of bi-directional power transfer as well.

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Re:Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to chall... by nitrogen on Wednesday March 14, 2012 @12:18AM (#3701762)

I'm curious where you get the "600V" number from -- is that 600 volts? According to the Wikipedia page you linked the system uses "+270kV and −350kV", which is in the range I would expect. Maybe you meant 620kV, the difference between +270kV and -350kV?

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Re:Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to chall... by jurjenh on Wednesday March 14, 2012 @06:13PM (#3705675)

My apologies, that must've been some confusion in my mind... it was a 600MW HVDC link... although it is higher now, and works are underway to bring it up to somewhere near 1.4GW.

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Re:Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to chall... by pjscott on Wednesday March 14, 2012 @05:14PM (#3705399)

HVDC definitely makes sense for connecting islands together. The cable goes underwater, and in water, the capacitance of the cable is much increased by the greater dielectric constant of the water, which makes AC transmission less efficient.

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